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From Legacy to Heritage

This article examines Russia’s post‑Soviet efforts to deal with military nuclear waste that has been accumulating since the dawn of the nuclear age. It focuses on two major areas affected by radioactive waste mismanagement: the extensive territories in the Ural region polluted by the Maiak Production Association and nuclear waste dumps in the Arctic. The article traces public debates about the remediation of waste that initially met with resistance from the Russian military and state security in the 1990s and shows how in the 2000s and 2010s this resistance gradually faded as the government began to inventory radioactive waste more systematically, assess its environmental and social costs, and find ways to contain it. Parallel to these attempts, the semantics of military waste have evolved. Radioactive waste has been transformed from a toxic legacy whose disclosure could damage Russia’s international image to part of the national heritage, the country’s glorious military past and its continued nuclear might. This article shows how and why this reframing has occurred, and how this has facilitated a shift in attention away from nuclear programs’ damage to public health and the environment to their patriotic history and meaning.