Soviet System Successfully Covered Up Third Largest Nuclear Accident in History

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 29 – For those of us who began studying the Moscow state in Soviet times, one of the saddest phenomena of the last 30 years has been the general neglect, after an initial burst of attention during glasnost, of new information about what now is known about some of that system’s greatest crimes.

            That is now a double tragedy: On the one hand, this neglect has continued to lead to a minimization of the horrors of the Soviet system, a system that was in many ways far worse than most now acknowledge. And on the other, Putin, the current Russian ruler, is seeking to take his country back to those horrors – and having success because so many have been forgotten.

            One of the worst of these was the September 1957 accident at the Kyshtym plant where plutonium was being refined for nuclear weapons. Ever more information is coming out about what was the third largest nuclear accident in history exceeded in some respects only by Chernobyl and Fukushima.

            New details about how the Soviet operators although generally copying what the Americans had done cut back in the construction of barriers which provided some protection against radiation so as to speed up production for Soviet nuclear weapons (nemoskva.net/2025/09/29/do-chernobylya-i-fukusimy/).

            As horrific as these steps were, perhaps even more horrible is that Soviet officials continued to deny that any of those working on the Kyshtym plant – including soldiers, prisoners, and free workers – had suffered any serious illness let alone death as a result of exposure to the nuclear cloud that rose from the plant.

            That was achieved primarily by three means: open lying about what had happened, dispersing the people involved to other plants before their illnesses could be diagnosed so that any deaths would be counted elsewhere, and forcing those who were involved in the cleanup to sign 25-year non-disclosure agreements.

            Those in Russia who see nothing wrong with a return to the Soviet system need to pay the closest attention to the reports about what happened at Kyshtym and how Moscow covered it up, and those in the West who want to understand the crimes of both the Soviet leadership and the post-Soviet Putin one need to do the same.