Abstract
RUSSIA: Surveying the nuclear cities
“The most terrible thing is that no one is waiting for us anywhere, either abroad or in this godforsaken country.” So said a scientific worker living in one of Russia's closed nuclear cities when he was interviewed recently by noted sociologist Valentin Tikhonov. As Tikhonov found, such sentiments are all too common in the cities where Russia's nuclear weapons and missiles are built. His survey of Russia's nuclear workers, issued in early May, was commissioned by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Tikhonov, who is affiliated with the Russian Academy of Sciences, first began conducting surveys on the views of workers in the closed cities in 1992. His earlier polling provides a baseline for evaluating how attitudes have changed since then.
Russia's Nuclear and Missile Complex: The Human Factor in Proliferation (www.ceip.org/npp) paints a gloomy picture of poor living conditions, low salaries, and nuclear cities residents' increasing desire to leave the country, even as they become more despairing about the possibility of doing so.
A total of 500 employees in the nuclear and missile cities of Sarov, Snezhinsk, Seversk, Zarchniy, and Trkgorniy—in all, 2 percent of the total worker population in those cities—were interviewed. The respondents needed no special inducements to reveal their thoughts: “The selected participants were so thankful for an opportunity to talk about their life … that they were very cooperative and [needed no] financial motivation.”
The majority of nuclear experts in the 10 cities receive wages of less than $50 per month, an amount that is larger than it may seem at first glance, since living costs in the closed cities are considerably lower than in the United States. However, the vast majority have not received any meaningful pay increases since 1992, despite major increases in the cost of living.
More than 60 percent of those surveyed suggested that a salary of some $250 would be adequate to their needs, demonstrating that significant improvements in living conditions should be within reach. (That, of course, is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it wouldn't take much money for the Russian government or private enterprise to raise salaries enough to keep the estimated 24,600 expert nuclear workers from looking elsewhere for work. On the other, it wouldn't be difficult for would-be weapon states to offer salaries high enough to lure the most desperate of Russian experts to work in their weapons programs.)
If there were an upturn in the Russian economy, it might be easy to raise income levels to a more desirable level in the closed cities. Unfortunately, as Tikhonov reports, “Specialists working in the atomic cities [have] actually suffered losses” during the recent period of reform.
While restrictions—like needing special permission to go abroad— were once compensated for by relatively high standards of living, more than 89 percent of the interviewees say their standard of living has declined since 1992. As one summed up his current situation, “I am simply fed up with this way of life.” Few members of the population express much hope for the future.
Nearly 60 percent say they have taken second jobs, and 70 percent of those say they earn roughly as much from outside sources as they do in their primary employment. More than two-thirds said it was their economic difficulties that forced them to moonlight.
At first glance, the number of workers with second jobs might be interpreted as an encouraging sign that the population is willing to find alternative means to support themselves, to show initiative, and to try to be entrepreneurial. On the other hand, through those additional jobs they may be more likely to come in contact with front companies or agents looking for workers with weapons-related expertise. Then, too, once the initial taboo of working for entities other than the government is broken, it may be easier for them not to ask too many questions about potential employers.
Internal migration within Russia is problematic. A high percentage of workers in the closed cities have been provided with housing. But if they leave for Moscow, for instance, they would need to purchase housing there, something very few can afford.
Then there are those who want to leave the country. Surprisingly, the total number expressing an interest in emigrating has declined since 1992. But this is in part a result of the frustrations many have encountered when trying to leave—arranging to leave is neither simple nor cheap.
Still, one in seven said he or she would like to work abroad. More disturbingly, a number of workers seemed not to care where they might end up or what kind of work they could be doing. Six percent of those who were interested in working abroad said they would work “any place at all,” and 46 percent said they would be willing to work in the military field for a foreign country.
In raw numbers, more than 200 of those surveyed said they would work for anyone and do anything. And if one assumes that not everyone willing to do so would express that willingness openly, the number who might take any job could be considerably higher.
When asked what has prevented them from leaving the cities and finding better lives for themselves and their families, workers' responses were plaintive:
“I would like to go abroad with great pleasure, but sometimes I don't have enough money even to buy cigarettes, so I am in the depths of despair.”
“Everything and everyone pose obstacles, no money either in the purse or in view, and no one has any use for us anywhere. In a word, it's a dog's life.”
“Everything—red tape, lack of money (I don't even have enough to get to Chelyabinsk), and the whole of this Russian bedlam—prevents me from going abroad.”
“No money, no connections, no nothing that could help me run away to where people live like human beings.”
Conditions in the cities now seem ripe for agents of would-be weapon states and/or black marketers to try to use discouraged Russian workers to obtain know-how and materials to build weapons of mass destruction and missiles. While internal security practices may have so far prevented mass migrations, the potential risk seems likely to grow along with the growing desperation of the population.
The results of Tikhonov's study and the apparent conditions in the cities make it all the more difficult to understand the Bush administration's move to cut funding for the Nuclear Cities Initiative, a U.S. program designed to help create new jobs in several of Russia's nuclear cities. The administration favors reducing last year's already reduced budget of $25 million to a request for only $6.6 million. Experts within the program question whether this sum is sufficient to maintain operations in even one of the cities, let alone expand to new areas. While congressional supporters will try to restore the budget to this year's level, the lack of political support within the administration could threaten the very survival of the program.