Nevada-Semipalatinsk Movement

The Nevada-Semipalatinsk Movement, the first anti-nuclear protest movement in the USSR, was founded in 1989. Led by author Olzhas Suleimenov, it protested the extensive Soviet nuclear testing in Kazakhstan since 1949. The testing facilities there comprised the largest underground nuclear test site in the world, and resulted in the exposure of several hundred thousand people to dangerous levels of radiation and the transformation of nineteen million hectares of land into unusable disaster areas. Supported by victims of nuclear testing in the US state of Nevada, the movement was successful and the testing facilities officially closed in 1991.