The Pope and the War: The Secret History of Atomic Exercises in the USSR. Totskoe-1954

On September 14, 1954, an atomic bomb with a yield of about 40 kilotons was detonated at the Totsk range near Orenburg. As part of an experiment to study the effects of a nuclear explosion, within just a few hours, military personnel in chemical-protection suits passed through the epicenter. The secret operation code-named “Snezhok” turned into a catastrophe: more than 45,000 soldiers and 10,000 civilians were exposed to deadly radiation.

This audiobook is the result of more than twenty years of research by journalist Vyacheslav Moiseev. He began collecting information grain by grain back in the 1980s, carefully studying accounts from eyewitnesses of the atomic blast, and then—declassified documents from archives and carefully selected publications in the media. His audiobook addresses the responsibility of the organizers of the Totsk experiment toward the involuntary participants of the rehearsal for the apocalypse, toward Russia, and toward history itself.

Even though the atomic exercises were considered a great Soviet secret, over the years when talking about state affairs wasn’t accepted (primarily because it was unsafe), they turned into a kind of tradition for us, people of Orenburg: a story that everyone learned from childhood—either from those who saw the nuclear blast with their own eyes, or from those who knew the eyewitnesses personally.

For whom:

For those interested in the history of the USSR, the topic of atomic confrontation between the USA and the USSR, and the unknown history of atomic exercises in the USSR.