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Alisher Khassengaliyev: Radiation does not disappear — the question is how we learn to live with it justly

April 2026 marks the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster — one of the most devastating nuclear catastrophes in human history. Its consequences reshaped entire regions, displaced hundreds of thousands of people, and continue to affect environmental and human health to this day.

Forty years on, a new generation is confronting the legacy of nuclear harm — not only around Chernobyl, but also in Qazaqstan, one of the primary sites of Soviet nuclear testing. Across these regions, researchers and activists are working to address what is increasingly understood as nuclear injustice: the long-term social, environmental, and political consequences of nuclear programs.

In this context, we are sharing an interview with Alisher Khassengaliyev — a Qazaq independent researcher in social studies and international relations, Co-founder and Executive Member of the Steppe Organization for Peace (STOP), and a Dialogbüro Fellow 2025. In the conversation, he reflects on nuclear justice, decolonization, and the ongoing struggle for recognition and support for communities affected by radiation.

Alisher was awarded the Dialogbüro Fellowship in 2025, a program that enables researchers, scholars, journalists, artists, and other professionals to spend one month in Vienna developing their projects in a focused and supportive environment.

Finally, a note from our team: on April 6, 2026, we closed the open call for the Dialogbüro Vienna Fellowship 2026. We received a large number of applications and will get back to all applicants as soon as possible — thank you for your patience.

Interviewer: Marika Semenenko, “She is an Expert”

Marika Semenenko, “She is an Expert”: Could you tell us about your work as part of your Dialogbüro scholarship?

Alisher Khassengaliyev: I am a member of the STOP initiative — Steppe Organization for Peace, a Qazaq youth initiative working on nuclear justice. Nuclear justice means addressing and compensating for the harm caused to people and the environment by nuclear projects. The main focus of our work, and of my own involvement, is restoring justice for communities and ecosystems affected by nuclear testing at the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site.

We work across three main pillars that are deeply interconnected.

The first is research at the local, regional, and national levels. Together with my colleague Adiya, I research social support systems for people affected by nuclear testing in Qazaqstan, as well as environmental remediation. We analyze existing policies, identify gaps, and work on reforming them in line with Qazaqstan’s international obligations — including the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and other international frameworks focused on the recovery of the Semipalatinsk region.

The second pillar is national advocacy. Members of STOP, including myself, currently participate as experts in a working group under the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Qazaqstan on issues related to the Semipalatinsk site. The goal of this work is to propose amendments to the 1992 law on social support for people affected by nuclear testing and design sustainable development solutions for affected region. We engage with authorities of all levels to influence how these policies are shaped in practice.

The third pillar is international advocacy, aimed at ensuring that the voices of affected communities are heard at the global level. A key part of this work is advocating for the complete prohibition of nuclear weapons. As representatives of a country that lived with nuclear testing for forty years, we bring lived historical experience to these discussions. We work in solidarity with other affected communities — including those in the Marshall Islands, Kiribati, French Polynesia, Algeria, Australia, and Japan — to push for the global ban and elimination of nuclear weapons.

Marika: I’d like to ask about your personal motivation. Why did justice — and specifically nuclear justice — become something that really mattered to you? What drew you into this work?

I came to this through my education. I studied international relations and political science, and nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation are key pillars of Qazaqstan’s foreign policy. Later, I had the opportunity to do an internship with the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Qazaqstan. At the time, they were working on the Qazaq translation of Dr. Togzhan Kassenova’s book Atomic Steppe: How Qazaqstan Gave Up the Bomb, and I was assisting in the publishing process. That book completely changed the way I saw Qazaqstan’s history — especially the Soviet period and the early years of independence in the 1990s. It made the scale of harm caused by nuclear testing at Semipalatinsk very real to me.

With the comprehensive historical and analytical foundation that Atomic Steppe and my work with Dr Kassenova gave me and with the decolonial perspective I developed in my early academic journey, I began to see nuclear testing as part of a wider system of colonial violence: a relationship between centre and periphery in which a dependent population had no real voice. Their land, their environment, and even their bodies were treated as resources for carrying out these horrific experiments.

All of this came together in a way that still grounds me as a researcher, as a citizen, and simply as a human being. I can’t step away from this work, because I see a profound injustice that needs to be addressed and transformed.

Marika: What does decolonization, or decolonial work, mean to you personally?

Decolonization, or decolonial practice, is a process we are living through. It is constantly evolving, and it is difficult to reduce something as large and complex as decoloniality to a single, fixed definition.

For me, first and foremost, it is a search for justice. Decolonization is a process of reclaiming and creating universal, inclusive justice — justice for people harmed by colonization and who continue to live with its consequences today. But it is also about justice for those at the top of the system, because the very system from which they benefit ultimately harms them as well.

Metaphorically, colonialism or coloniality has an insatiable nature: it consumes everything around it, and in the end it devours its own empires. Empires collapse, and I believe they collapse precisely because they consume themselves through their own colonial policies.

For this reason, I see decoloniality as a lens and decolonization as a process that is essential for everyone — not only for those who have been oppressed, but for society as a whole.

Marika: There is an idea that the environment will always carry the trauma of slow, colonial violence, and that justice is ultimately unattainable. How do you relate to this perspective?

Alisher: I think I partly agree with this perspective, and partly disagree. I agree that it is extremely difficult — in the environment, in people, in political systems, and in society — to fully cleanse ourselves of the colonial experience. When you work with radiation, you understand that it does not simply disappear.

Radiation will remain with us. It is hard for me to fully grasp what “forever” really means, but this is the reality: radiation stays in the environments it has entered and in the bodies of the people it has entered. So yes, achieving a state of perfect justice or complete purification is impossible.

At the same time, I do not see decoloniality or decolonization as a process that aims at ideal purity or perfect justice. Instead, I understand decolonial justice as the search for ways to live well — and even happily — with the experience, the trauma, and the contamination that we, including nature itself, have been subjected to.

It is also about allowing the environment to continue existing and regenerating. Ultimately, the environment often needs only one thing from humans: to be left alone. Nature is capable of doing the work itself. We can see this at the Semipalatinsk Test Site: today, radiation levels on the surface are relatively normal, and much of the radiation has moved deeper into the soil. In that sense, it does not severely disrupt the natural cycles of the steppe. Nature, in a way, is cleansing itself — and by now, we should have learned that we do not know better than nature.

Nature, in a way, is cleansing itself — and by now, we should have learned that we do not know better than nature.

Marika: How is the trauma of nuclear testing perceived in Qazaqstani society, and do people who have never lived in the affected areas understand it?

Alisher: In Qazaqstan, there are many people who were directly affected by nuclear testing. Qazaq authorities have estimated that up to around 1.5 million people were exposed to radioactive fallout from testing, and over one million people have received official certificates confirming survivor status and access to certain social benefits.

Today, it’s hard to say exactly how many people are affected in a broader sense, because the legacy goes beyond those who hold certificates. Unfortunately, radiation harms also work over time as many health consequences can appear with long delays, and research has also examined possible transgenerational effects.

That’s why we are already speaking about third and fourth generations of survivors — children born to parents exposed to excessive ionising radiation. So this trauma has affected a large portion of Qazaqstan’s population.

Many people left contaminated areas over the years and now live across the country. There are even WhatsApp groups and other informal communities where survivors connect and support each other.

There are also people who didn’t live in these regions permanently but worked at the test site — conscript soldiers, for example, who prepared the area and cleaned up after tests.

The Semipalatinsk Test Site saw more than 450 nuclear tests between 1949 and 1989, so this was a long-term system that required large workforces and repeated operations over time. This is why not only Qazaqstan but, for example, Russia has a federal law providing social guarantees to citizens exposed to radiation as a result of nuclear tests at Semipalatinsk.

Qazaqstan’s support system is built around the 1992 social protection law, which is largely tied to presence in designated radiation-risk zones and also includes people who lived, worked, or served there, with additional pathways where a causal relationship between exposure and certain conditions is established for descendants. However, in practice, many people experience gaps in recognition and support. For many survivors, the framework feels morally outdated, and it often reduces a complex, lifelong harm to narrow eligibility categories and limited benefits.

One of the huge problems is recognition. Many first- and second-generation survivors can access social support, while later generations often struggle to be recognised — especially those born after the site’s closure — even though families in highly contaminated areas continue to report serious health burdens and fear around inherited vulnerability.

Our organisation is advocating for stronger recognition of later generations as well, especially children from highly contaminated areas — and we are also working for systemic reform of the law itself, so that support is updated, dignified, and aligned with the realities people live with today, not only with what is easiest to certify on paper.

Summing these factors up, I think almost every Qazaq has relatives, friends, or colleagues from affected regions who have faced difficulties linked to this historical trauma. So for many people, it feels very close.

Although over the years the state tried to reshape the discourse around the Polygon, especially during the height of Nursultan Nazarbayev’s personality cult, the focus increasingly shifted to his personal role in closing the test site. This created a sense that nuclear testing was a problem of the past, something we had already overcome. Semey also lost its regional status when the Semipalatinsk region was abolished and merged into East Qazaqstan Region in 1997, which reduced the city’s political voice and visibility. For years, the issue faded from public awareness.

I think awareness is only now returning. Several events contributed to this. In 2022, amid political turmoil, Nazarbayev’s personality cult began to collapse; Semey’s status as a regional centre was restored with the establishment of the Abay Region; and the war in Ukraine reminded Qazaq society that Qazaqstan once had nuclear weapons. That same year, Togzhan Kassenova’s book was published locally, sparking public discussion and reminding people that the legacy of the test site exists and will continue to exist.

Marika: Can you tell us about the main challenges — or perhaps some positive developments — in working with government structures?

Alisher: Working with the government is difficult, and I can’t say it’s always a positive experience. That said, there were some notable shifts in government engagement with society in 2022 — a period that, from my perspective, felt like a relatively narrow window of openness and responsiveness, even if it was uneven and didn’t apply to all institutions.

For context, in January 2022, what many in Qazaqstan call “Bloody January” occurred. The protests began in western Qazaqstan, triggered by a sharp rise in the price of liquefied petroleum gas, which is widely used as vehicle fuel in that region. They quickly spread across the country and became broader in both geography and message. Thousands of citizens all over the country took to the streets, voicing deep frustration with inequality, corruption, and the political order associated with the Nazarbayev era. After violence erupted in Almaty and a heavy security response followed, including the deployment of CSTO forces at the government’s request, President Tokayev moved to reassert control and signal responsiveness, including by taking over the chairmanship of the Security Council from Nazarbayev, and pairing this shift with reform language and social justice agenda.

The same year, for example, he highlighted the need to develop Semey and proposed establishing the Abay Region with Semey as its centre. For civil society, moments like this created an opportunity to open communication with parts of the state and begin working together on specific issues.

One visible example around the Polygon agenda was the work of the public committee “Polygon 21”. After a 2021 conference and consultations, local activists from Semey prepared petitions and letters to the government outlining concrete proposals including restoring Semey’s status as a regional centre, creating an interdepartmental commission, developing a sustainable development programme for affected territories, and updating the 1992 law. Their petition reportedly gathered tens of thousands of signatures. And only after 2022 this pressure translated into institutional steps. After a meeting involving the Ministry of Ecology and other agencies with the initiative group of “Committee Polygon-21,” the government decided to create an interdepartmental working group to more thoroughly analyse the social situation of residents in territories adjacent to the test site across Abay, Karaganda, and Pavlodar regions.

Another important development was the re-establishment of the Constitutional Court, which began operating from 2023, with the idea that citizens could directly defend constitutional rights through it. And notably, one of the first Court’s cases directly touched the Polygon-related social protection framework: it considered a complaint challenging Article 13 of the 1992 social protection law, where benefits are tied to living in radiation-risk zones, and the applicant argued this discriminated against affected citizens who had moved away.

By 2025, as we scaled up our advocacy work, engagement often felt more cautious and bureaucratic, and in some spaces, simply harder to sustain. But the groundwork built in 2022–2024 still matters. It helps us maintain channels of communication, even when the overall environment is less dynamic.

At the same time, “the government” is not one actor. It is made up of different institutions and people. Some officials are empathetic and understand the importance of this issue, especially those with personal ties to affected regions. Our strategy has been to identify allies within government structures and work with those who genuinely care about this history and the need for change.

Marika: What role does Russia, as the successor of the Soviet Union, play in addressing nuclear injustice in Qazaqstan, and should it take responsibility?

Alisher: Russia’s role matters not only because it is widely treated as the continuator state of the USSR in the UN system, including holding the former Soviet seat at the United Nations and on the Security Council, but because the Soviet nuclear programme that was conducted on Qazaq land is part of the historical legacy Russia still claims institutionally.

People often ask whether Russia should pay compensation. Ethically, I think Russia bears a special responsibility to acknowledge the harm and to support justice for affected communities. Legally, questions of responsibility and reparations can be complicated, but the basic principle in international law is that a state responsible for harm has an obligation to make reparation, full stop.

At the same time, under current geopolitical circumstances, it is, gently speaking, unlikely that Russia will offer an apology or meaningful financial responsibility in the near term. So our work focuses on tools and mechanisms that can help communities here and now — strengthening national support, improving victim assistance and environmental remediation, and building international cooperation through frameworks that do not depend on Russia’s political will.

And I would add one more thing. While Russia has a particular responsibility because the tests were carried out under Soviet rule, I also believe the international community carries a collective responsibility for the nuclear age as a whole. Nuclear testing was not only the tragedy of the places where it happened — it was enabled by the Cold War security order and global norms that treated certain lands and bodies as acceptable “testing grounds.” This is why the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) is so important for Qazaqstan and for affected communities worldwide: it aims to create a global framework where survivors and contaminated environments are not left alone with this legacy. The Treaty places obligations on affected states to provide victim assistance and environmental remediation, and it also commits other States Parties to cooperate and provide technical, material, and financial assistance.

Marika: What does happiness look like for people living with the trauma of nuclear injustice? What could make them happy today?

Alisher: I think happiness is closely tied to obtaining justice, and therefore basic material well-being. Our goal is to help build a foundation for affected regions to develop, so people have real opportunities to live fulfilling lives and realise their potential.

Specifically, this means transforming the social support system established by the 1992 law. That law was created just a year after Qazaqstan gained independence, at a time when the country was still building its basic institutions. Today, the needs of local communities are very different.

Access to healthcare is central to happiness, in that sense. In many affected areas, people don’t have reliable access to the full range of medical services they need locally. Specialists, equipment, and resources can be limited, so even moderately serious conditions often require travel to Astana or Almaty. One of our main goals is to help ensure people can receive high-quality, free healthcare closer to home, alongside effective social support.

These challenges exist across Qazaqstan, but affected regions are unique because people lived under nuclear testing for decades and were exposed to radiation risks that shaped their health, family histories, and everyday sense of security. Many families live with a heavy burden of illness, anxiety, and long-term social stress and that directly impacts well-being.

These communities — our fellow citizens — deserve strong, dignified support from both the state, civil society and international community. That is exactly what we are working to advance.

2026-04-07 09:47