This year marks the 45th anniversary of the atomic explosion at the Totsk military training ground. Today, there are few living witnesses to that nuclear test. One of them, a well-known Ural writer and journalist, retired Lieutenant Colonel Semyon Borisovich Shmerling, kept a secret about the events of those days for many years? Today we introduce readers of the magazine to his story about the Totsk atomic test and the fate of its participants.

I, at that time a correspondent for the district military newspaper, together with several colleagues published a multi - issue newspaper at the training ground and experienced all the vicissitudes of the exercise: I witnessed the hard work of many thousands of soldiers led by Marshal Georgy Zhukov. He turned out to be one of the first military journalists to visit the epicenter of a nuclear explosion a day later (just a day!) and without special means of protection, which at that time we knew almost nothing about...

First of all, I remember the exemplary order and careful preparation for a dangerous and responsible action. Imagine: 188 kilometers of trenches and communication lines were dug at the training ground, 385 trenches for artillery, 400 for tanks and self-propelled guns. The soldiers worked in forty-degree heat and a shortage of drinking water. The crew of the plane trained continuously, dropping a dummy imitating an atomic bomb into the epicenter day after day.

Never forget the day and moment of the explosion. Following a deafening crash, terrible even for me, a man who had served in the Great Patriotic War as a battery commander, the wall of the trench pushed me, released me, and pushed again. And when it became possible to look at the giant black pillar, my heart sank: it seemed that it was coming straight at us. Fortunately, it only seemed that the "mushroom" was moving away. And I must admit, soon there was even some euphoria: a "training battle" was held! Everything is in perfect order. But the feeling was short-lived.

Everything changed when we went to the epicenter with our photojournalist Kostya Shamin the next morning on the orders of the editor-in-chief. On the way, we saw a lot of defeated, mangled military equipment: tanks, planes, guns. Hundreds of animal corpses: horses, cows, sheep, even camels.

I remember a terrible picture... Not to recognize the wonderful corner of Nature, where the pine forest is intertwined with oak groves - not a bush, not a tree. It was as if we were walking on another planet. His feet were buried in a thick layer of dust: the ground had obviously been lifted up by the explosion, pulled several kilometers up, and then crumbled down. In the cross - shaped trenches of the epicenter-the corpses of experimental lambs. They were handled by specialists in overalls and mittens. Not far away, the forest was still burning, and a village - one of four whose inhabitants had been previously resettled-was ablaze.

There, in the epicenter, we certainly did not understand the real danger that threatened all of us. People worked almost without protective equipment, as, indeed, much later, in the first hours of the Chernobyl accident...

We treated everything that happened with interest and even with humor. I remember how they pulled a ram out of the buried command post. The animal was still in shock after the explosion and couldn't move at first ? my legs were weak. Then suddenly it started to run. And the soldiers laugh: "Catch " kompolka"! This joking recollection was already tragic when a few months later I learned that my comrade's son had fallen seriously ill and died: a "trophy" from the epicenter had fallen into his hands ? an item that my father brought back from training. And then, year after year, there were not only incomprehensible diseases, but also deaths. A series of deaths.

Here is what Alexey Ivanovich Zaruba from the village of Zarechny told me many years later: "There was a period when I started to bleed heavily. Blood was coming from his mouth, nose, and ears. I was treated for a month in the district hospital and was in good health. Then " gy1 / 1-val 12 more times in military hospitals and sanatoriums, 15 times in civilian hospitals. In 1967, he lost consciousness for nine days and did not leave his hospital bed for five months. I spent almost three months learning to walk again... After a successful blood transfusion, the doctors said: You are a lucky guy!"

The life of participants in nuclear exercises after the explosion is a lot of very different, but always scary stories. Surprisingly, in the vast majority of cases, suffering people were silent about the causes of their troubles. Taboo! Bound by a subscription not to disclose the secret of the exercises, people in dire need of treatment were silent. It was supposed to keep the secret for 25 years. But it wasn't until thirty-five years later that the press discovered the ban on Totsky teachings, although, if you think about it, this was a secret of Polichinelle. After all, the explosion at the test site was visible for tens of kilometers, and possibly much further. But didn't they notice large movements of troops and equipment in the vicinity of the training ground, the appearance of high-ranking authorities, hundreds of cars, large warehouses with food covered with tarpaulins?..

However, even if we accept the conditions of the obligatory "non-disclosure", was it really impossible to find ways to control the state of health of the "atomic" warriors? Why not oblige all military enlistment offices where they were registered to conduct regular medical examinations of people? If you think about it, you could find different ways to monitor the health of those people who faithfully performed their military duty. But no one was doing it.

False secrecy has ruined and crippled the lives of tens of thousands of people and their loved ones. The ice broke only in 1990, when, at the initiative and insistence of the test participants themselves, a Committee of veterans of special Risk units was created. It was headed by V. Ya.Benzianov, a Petersburger who was irradiated at the Totsky landfill. After much trouble and proof, the Committee became an official organization. It would seem that now you can at least retroactively put on a special account those who suffered at nuclear landfills, on nuclear submarines. But it wasn't there! Proving your participation in life-threatening exercises, it turns out , is incredibly difficult.

?This is not the first time I have met with the head of the Sverdlovsk regional organization of the Committee of Veterans of Special Risk Units, Viktor Goloshchapov, who experienced the terrible power of the atom: a serious illness broke many of his life plans. Goloshchapov's desk is literally littered with letters from suffering people asking for help. Most of the applicants report that it is impossible to prove their participation in nuclear tests.

- Here is the answer received by one of the participants of the Totsk exercises from the General Staff, - says Viktor Alekseevich.

I read: "Dear... we fully understand your indignation caused by the red tape with obtaining information confirming participation in the Totsk exercises. Unfortunately, until recently, documents related to this problem, including the lists of participants, were classified and most of them were kept in military units and institutions. Only in March 1993, the Minister of Defense signed Order No. 148, ordering you to transfer all the documents you are interested in to the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense in Podolsk by the end of the year..."

So, only after forty years, they began to assist veterans in finding documents. In the same 93rd year, funding for the Committee of Veterans of Special Risk Units was also started. However, the problems continue. Goloshchapov showed me a very remarkable letter from the Podolsk archive. It contains an extract from the order on the personnel of the 51st mechanized Regiment about the participants of the Totsk exercises. Unfortunately, there are no name lists in the order. So, none of the soldiers and officers of the regiment has the opportunity to prove their case...

"I personally," says Goloshchapov, " received a certificate of participation in the tests. But it contained a minuscule number of X-rays, allegedly received by me...

To date, it is almost impossible to accurately determine the number of my fellow Uralians who participated in exercises 1 Tonk or other dangerous tests. Until the 90s, they were simply silent. In addition, their current accounting is more than approximate. For example, it is believed that about 45 thousand military personnel were stationed at the Totsk training ground. But is this true? And after the nuclear explosion, many soldiers and officers eliminated its consequences. There were also civilians.

For example, our countryman Nikolai Aleksandrovich Zelenin took out infected armored vehicles. But hundreds, thousands of people participated in such works. Sverdlovsk resident Ivan Ivanovich Chapyshev, a signalman by military profession, was engaged in rolling up communication lines at the training ground long after the exercises. He had also cooked porridge and taken firewood for the camp kitchen from the" surviving " burnt forest. What is his fate? "I've been feeling heavy for years... They were often taken to the hospital by ambulance..."

Six hundred Sverdlovsk residents who claimed to have been tested are far from accurate: how many have already passed away during the long years of silence!

As I have already said, there were groups of experimental animals called "teams"at the Totsky training ground. They were designated by letters: team "B", team "C". In the archive, you can find out how many animals were in a particular "team". According to Goloshchapov's ironic remark, only the command "C" was not taken into account, where "C" is soldiers, soldiers of all ranks. Because of this, I have to repeat myself: most soldiers and officers can not prove their participation in risky tests. Like, for example, Ivan Yakovlevich Zagainov from the 12th Guards Division and many others. And Dvoeglazov Yuri Alekseevich recently died without receiving the coveted document...

Of the participants of the exercise who live in Yekaterinburg (there are 56 of them left alive), only 12 received veterans ' certificates...

Nevertheless, I must say that there is some progress in improving the situation of those people who risked their health by participating in high-risk activities. A Center for the treatment and rehabilitation of victims has been opened and operates in St. Petersburg. It is practiced by the most experienced specialists. However, it is difficult to get into this small medical institution. There are good changes in Yekaterinburg as well. The Chernobyl Rehabilitation Center has finally opened its doors to sick participants of nuclear tests. The regional military enlistment office has issued the first batch of submissions for awarding participants of the Totsk exercises with state awards. Such attention to veterans of special risk units is encouraging. Nevertheless, I am still convinced that these good initiatives are only a small fraction of what the soldiers of the Fatherland deserved, who did not spare their health and life in the name of protecting it.

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