Dr. Anna Ledkova reprinted with permission from
Poison Fire, Sacred Earth,
TESTIMONIES, LECTURES, CONCLUSIONS,
THE WORLD URANIUM HEARING, SALZBURG 1992
pages 228-231

Were the people not resettled too late? The tests were carried out before the resettlement, too. According to the statement of the retired General Lieutenant Kudryavtsev who was at that time in charge of the Northern Sea Fleet, the first under water nuclear explosion was carried out on the 25th of September 1955 in a bay called Chernaja -- a place where the Nentsy lived -- at a depth of 50 meters. Two years ago, a test on the surface took place here, too. The most intensive test period on Novaya Zemlya falls into the scope: 1958, there were 26 explosions in the atmosphere and under water; in the year 1961, there were 24 explosions; in the year 1962, 36 explosions. Their total amount of the trotil [TNT] equivalent exceeds 90 megatons. No other nuclear testing site on earth had such a colossal load. And if we take, for example, the maximum density of the radioactive fallout according to the total beta-activity, which were registrated by the state hydro-meteorological services in the year 1962 in the village Amderma, then it appears that it exceeded today's values 11,000 times. Already at the end of the fifties, the level of the radioactivity in the chain "plants -- reindeer -- human being" on the territory of the Nenets region exceeded the index number ten times. In 1991, for the first time during these secret years, our committee which was headed by the writer Tolkachev, who lives in Arkhangelsk, visited Novaya Zemlya. They collected hundreds of samples of the soil, of plants, of the animal world to analyze the content for radionuclides. These are the results: Strontium-90 in the soil up to 1,550 Becquerels, in plants up to 1,330, in the meat and bones of rodents up to 2,550. The conclusion is clear -- the majority of samples which were taken from Novaya Zemlya contains strontium-90, cesium-137 in 20 to 30 times larger amounts than in other regions of the country.
Anna Ledkova and Galsan Tchinag . . . The radioactive load of the native inhabitants of the North is the same as the average dose of radiation of those people who live in the vicinity of the Chernobyl accident! . . .
My suggestions: We need an independent expertise on an international level. The scientists from the native population have to be among them. We have to know how long we still have to live, and the most important thing is, we have to know the truth -- even the bitter truth -- about the health of our children. At this international meeting I learned the whole truth, even the most bitter truth, all the sufferings of the people of the terrestrial globe. If it is possible, I will ask my government with the words from a song: "Do the Russians want war?", from another song which we sang in our youth: "I really do not know any other land where the humans live so badly."
Scientists! Why do you kill small nations, the aborigines? What bad things did we do, why did we become guinea-pigs? Scientists! Relinquish your doctor-knowledge, become people and not murderers! Authorities! Come to your senses! You ruined generations. We doctors do not want to harvest the fruits of your experiments. Stand in the place of the doctors and look in the eyes of dying people, of suffering mothers, or, even better, resettle there in these sorrowful corners! Wake up!


Dr. Anna Ledkova

Dr. Anna Ledkova, Nentsy Nation, Novaya Zemlya, CIS. Child-ophthalmologist.
(This speech was held originally in Russian)

Dear Participants of the Hearing! I bring you greetings from 35,000 Nentsy who live on the vast expanse of Arctic coast in our motherland -- Russia. I send the humblest thanks to all the organizers, to the government of Austria for the invitation and the warm reception. Here I stand in front of you, a Nenets woman. In keeping with the Nenets tradition I sewed myself a national dress in three evenings. I will show it to you. My grandmother made a lace of this belt when I was born. She made a very long belt according to the tradition of the Nentsy so that our family would live on for a long time, and this belt I have to hand on to my daughter, to my grandchildren.

The tundra was so beautiful in the years of my childhood. The clothing of the Nentsy was always very beautiful, and winter clothing was made out of fur with such difficult patterns like the one on my bag.

My name is Anna Ledkova. I was born and grew up in the tundra. I am a doctor by profession. I am a child-ophthalmologist. The grandfather on my father's side had a huge herd of reindeer. My father was forced to join the Kolkhoz [collective farm], and later our family was forced to live in a village for my father didn't allow the reindeer to be inoculated. My father and my mother cried a lot. So we left the tundra and lost our reindeer. And then my father decided that we all had to get the best education possible in the Soviet Union. The Nentsy people had to suffer a lot, tears, sorrow, humiliation, injuries. For some reason, in Moscow they thought they knew better about how the Nentsy were to live.

In the fifties they began to force our people to settle down. The women and children were separated from their providers -- from their husbands and the fathers of their children. The men had to go alone in the frost, rain and snow storms. (I beg your pardon, my thyroid glands are enlarged and that is why I drink so often. Excuse me.) But the women -- the custodians -- were always near the husband in order to be able to feed him well, to warm him up, and to support him in his hard struggle. They forced us little children away into a boarding-school. I was insulted for life because they cut off my long, beautiful plaits. All the experiments were always carried out in our Nenets district because we live nearer to Moscow. There were experiments on the islands of Novaya Zemlya, too.

I want to say that the photo stand -- Mr. Photographer from Japan took the first four photos for us. You can have a look at them during the break.

And now a bit of history. Novaya Zemlya was the motherland of the Nentsy people. The Novaya Zemlya -- the Big Island -- is first referred to in the London chronicles in the year 1559. The famous captain William Barents reached the northern point -- Cape Desire -- in the year 1596. 200 years after Barents, Savva Loshkin, Fjodor Rotmyslov, Paktusov, Tsyvolko, Karl Boirl and Fyodor Litke repeated this trip. In the year 1869, Khoma Vylka, the later Khonets, came to the islands; he was the father of the original famous Nenets painter Tyko Vylka, who was born on 12th of February 1886 on the island of Novaya Zemlya. This was a bit of history.

I want to say that 6,500 Nentsy and 6,500 Komi live in the Nenets autonomous okrug [region], the others are Russians and other peoples. Altogether there are 55,000. I want to give you data which has been published during the last two years and the statement of Olga Andrejevna Ledkova, the inhabitant of the island of Novaya Zemlya; I am not her relative, we just have the same family name. She could not come here, because she is old and cannot fly in a plane. From the year 1954, the fast building of the "Object 700" began, that is how the northern testing site for nuclear weapons was called. All the economic activity of the Nentsy on the island -- fur hunting, reindeer breeding, fishing -- was stopped, the local council was dissolved and more than 100 families of Nentsy and Russians were resettled.

According to the words of the resident Olga Andrejevna, who lives now in Naryan-Mar, on the 15th of July 1957, all the working people were given money equivalent to the sum of 1,200 rubles, they were put on a ship and taken to Arkhangelsk. There they were put into huts. Later on they gave the Russians flats, but the Nentsy wanted to settle in the Nenets region, and at the end of September 1957, they were taken again to the islands of Kalguyev, Vaygach and to the town Naryan-Mar.

Were the people not resettled too late? The tests were carried out before the resettlement, too. According to the statement of the retired General Lieutenant Kudryavtsev who was at that time in charge of the Northern Sea Fleet, the first under water nuclear explosion was carried out on the 25th of September 1955 in a bay called Chernaja -- a place where the Nentsy lived -- at a depth of 50 meters. Two years ago, a test on the surface took place here, too. The most intensive test period on Novaya Zemlya falls into the scope: 1958, there were 26 explosions in the atmosphere and under water; in the year 1961, there were 24 explosions; in the year 1962, 36 explosions. Their total amount of the trotil [TNT] equivalent exceeds 90 megatons. No other nuclear testing site on earth had such a colossal load. And if we take, for example, the maximum density of the radioactive fallout according to the total beta-activity, which were registrated by the state hydro-meteorological services in the year 1962 in the village Amderma, then it appears that it exceeded today's values 11,000 times. Already at the end of the fifties, the level of the radioactivity in the chain "plants -- reindeer -- human being" on the territory of the Nenets region exceeded the index number ten times. In 1991, for the first time during these secret years, our committee which was headed by the writer Tolkachev, who lives in Arkhangelsk, visited Novaya Zemlya. They collected hundreds of samples of the soil, of plants, of the animal world to analyze the content for radionuclides. These are the results: Strontium-90 in the soil up to 1,550 Becquerels, in plants up to 1,330, in the meat and bones of rodents up to 2,550. The conclusion is clear -- the majority of samples which were taken from Novaya Zemlya contains strontium-90, cesium-137 in 20 to 30 times larger amounts than in other regions of the country.

I want to say that besides the nuclear testing site on Novaya Zemlya, there is a rocket launching site near Arkhangelsk. The Nenets region is a target for military men. The military men test along the whole coast, the whole tundra is covered with the splinters of the rockets. I say this because for two years, from 1970 till 1972, I worked in the village Shojna as a doctor, and the military men always said that "today the field exercises are going on, today the Nentsy are being shot at".

During the last five years, MIG-type military planes shot by over our heads. They flew over the town. To the protests of the inhabitants there was a short answer: "This is our testing site." There was already a case when a plane fell down into the lake near Naryan-Mar. Experiments of such nature are carried out on us. What are the consequences? The information was mentioned in the magazine The Northern in April, 1991. The author was Tatarintsev, the Head of the Sanitary Epidemic Station of the town Vorkuta which is situated 560 kilometers from the testing site Novaya Zemlya. In the middle of the seventies, they discovered strontium-90 and cesium-137 in plants and in the reindeer meat. And in 1962, the content of cesium-137 in the organism of the reindeer breeders was 100 times more than in the other inhabitants of Vorkuta. The radioactive load of the native inhabitants of the North is the same as the average dose of radiation of those people who live in the vicinity of the Chernobyl accident!

We medical experts know that radiation is dangerous for human beings even in the smallest doses, because it causes mutations of the genetic code and growth of malignant cells. The expectation of explosions causes the development of neurotical states in people. The electromagnetic field influences the human being, it is the fifth factor of a nuclear explosion, it destroys the nervous systems and the heart. I will mention the official data according to the statistics of the district hospital of the town Naryan-Mar, where I work as a doctor. I often drive into little villages and come to sad conclusions: In those villages which are situated on the sea coast, the duration of life is very low. The Nentsy -- reindeer breeders -- rarely reach 50 years of age, and women rarely reach 60 years of age. On the island of Vaygach, a reindeer breeder from the island of Vaygach said to me one day: "I always feel the explosions. And why, tell me, please, doctor, why do they wipe us out in this way? Would it not be better to shoot all of us Nentsy on one day?"

Here are our figures from the Nenets district, the data are per 1,000 people: During the last five years -- from 1986 till 1991 -- the birth rate of Nentsy was 30.8. In the year 1991, it was 33.8 and the mortality rate of Nentsy was terrifying: 7.2; 9.8 in the year 1991. In absolute figures it looks like this: The birth rate of the Nentsy in 1986 was 208, it was 213 in 1991, and in total in the district the birth rate was 1,100 in 1986 and 850 in 1991. As you see, there is no natural increase in our population in the demographic index numbers.

The mortality rate during the first year of life was six people in 1986, nine in 1990 and six people in 1991, in total in the district 28 babies died during the first year of life in 1986, 27 in 1990, 13 in 1991. The mortality rate during the first year per 1,000 Nentsian children is as follows: 28.8 in 1986, 43.6 in 1990, 28.2 in 1991. In the district: 26.4 in 1986, 29.6 in 1990, 14.8 in 1991. This doesn't mean that the doctors do not work. We all try hard. The total mortality rate of the Nentsy in absolute figures is as follows: 49 people in 1986, 59 in 1990, and 65 people died in 1991. In the district: 310 people died in 1986, 371 in 1990, and 364 in 1991.

The congenital anomalies of Nentsy in absolute figures are as follows: Two cases in 1986, four in 1990, and one in 1991, and in total in the district: twelve in 1986, seven in 1990, and five in 1991. Neoplasms per 1,000 of the population are also mentioned in the statistics. The kinds of congenital anomalies, i.e. deformities are cardiac defect, hydroencephalitis, the cases of cataracts. As a medical ophthalmologist, I can say that congenital cataracts are appearing more and more often. Anomalies of refraction in the case of school children constitute 25 to 30 percent. I connect an intensive lowering of the visual acuity of children of this generation to the radioactive radiation of our population. Already the second generation is growing up since the moment of the first explosions.

There are cases of death due to cancer among my relatives. My elder sister lives on the island of Kalguyev. Her husband died of lymphatic sarcomas, and her grandson who had been born in 1975 -- I suspected myself that he had a tumor in the tibia when he was eleven years old. The child was operated on. Histological tests showed there were no cancer cells but we have to doubt it, because our medicine lags 100 years behind yours. Now our people say: "If somebody dies before the age of 60 years, then it is a death by force because of cancer or some heart disease."

Now, the population of my district suffers from very severe mental stress. They live in permanent fear for the life of the children, a poor standard of living. The authorities in our country have finally achieved the desired aims. The result is unemployment, poverty, illnesses, alcoholism. In the year 1992, the population is increasingly driven into alcoholism because there is a decree by the President of Russia about free trade. The cooperators, speculators, traders, who are killing people bring alcoholic drinks instead of food. The young people perish in the rivers; they do not have money, they barter vodka for salmon. In every village one can meet 20 to 40 bachelors of every nation younger than 30. They are mainly unemployed, have-nots in the full sense of the word, because they get miserable amounts of rubles. The reason is clear: They were torn from their roots, the tundra. Our authorities blame everything on the alcoholism of the native population. In the years of my childhood the Nentsy could not allow themselves to drink because they were responsible for the lives of their children, for keeping the family.

My suggestions: We need an independent expertise on an international level. The scientists from the native population have to be among them. We have to know how long we still have to live, and the most important thing is, we have to know the truth -- even the bitter truth -- about the health of our children. At this international meeting I learned the whole truth, even the most bitter truth, all the sufferings of the people of the terrestrial globe. If it is possible, I will ask my government with the words from a song: "Do the Russians want war?", from another song which we sang in our youth: "I really do not know any other land where the humans live so badly."

Scientists! Why do you kill small nations, the aborigines? What bad things did we do, why did we become guinea-pigs? Scientists! Relinquish your doctor-knowledge, become people and not murderers! Authorities! Come to your senses! You ruined generations. We doctors do not want to harvest the fruits of your experiments. Stand in the place of the doctors and look in the eyes of dying people, of suffering mothers, or, even better, resettle there in these sorrowful corners! Wake up!

Once again, many thanks to the organizers, to the government of Austria for the invitation. In Nenetsian, in the translation, "we were glad to see your kind eyes". That is how the Nentsy say "thank you".