Word: chelyabinsk
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...Okay, you won't find the last item in every Russian picnic basket, but Natalya Mironova and Gosman Kabriov aren't your average picnickers - and the sweeping lakes that surround the industrial city of Chelyabinsk, 1400 km (870 miles) southeast of Moscow, aren't your average fishing holes. In fact, Mironova and Kabriov are anti-nuclear activists. Chelyabinsk isn't far from the massive Mayak nuclear complex, which processed materials for the first Soviet atomic weapons. During the 1940s and '50s, Mayak pumped nuclear waste directly into the rivers that ran through villages in the area, exposing hundreds of thousands...
...note the comings and goings of birds. On a tour of some of the remaining hotspots near local towns and villages, they dip their buzzing Geiger counters into one still-contaminated river where we'd later see kids wading ankle-deep. At day's end, instead of returning to Chelyabinsk to spend the night in the grim Soviet surrounds known as "Tank City" for its role in equipping the Red Army, we headed for a holiday camp Kabriov knew on the shores of the massive Lake Uvil'dui, not far from where the Mayak facility's waste is now stored...
...popular unrest that defeated Moscow's candidate for President might spill across the border. And independent Duma Deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov insists that the danger is real: "These spontaneous protests signal the moral end of Putin's corrupt secret-police regime," he told TIME. In some regions, such as Chelyabinsk in the Urals and Kemerovo in Siberia, authorities caved in and reinstated the transport benefits, if only temporarily. But scores of protesters were also charged with misdemeanors, such as violating public order and impeding transport. Pro-Putin Duma Deputy Andrei Isayev threatened punishment to "those who seek to carry the orange...
...vital centers of Russia's military-industrial complex had long been hidden away in closed cities referred to only by code names -- Chelyabinsk-65 or Sverdlovsk-45 -- located far from Moscow, in the Urals or Siberia. Today the cities are no longer secret, but life there has changed for the worse. Scientists earn less than $100 a month, and political control remains in the hands of the military, the KGB and former Communist Party officials. As factory subsidies erode and payrolls shrink, thousands of Russia's most talented researchers and millions of factory workers are struggling just to survive. They...
...thus been decided, the Russians explained, that it would be preferable if my companion would agree to deal through another nuclear-weapons complex, this one in the Chelyabinsk region. If the businessman agreed, the three Russians were still willing to act as liaisons for the transaction. "You've met the KGB man," the scientist assured us. "There will be no problems. But for Chelyabinsk, they think it would be best if you make a development loan to a private company that has been set up, instead of buying the materials directly." As collateral for the loan, the company associated with...