Authors

Discussion

This paper explores the process of nuclear cultural heritage-making in two Soviet atomic cities, Obninsk and Sarov. While both cities were originally established as secret, Obninsk was eventually opened up and played an important part in the Soviet nuclear diplomacy, as it hosted the first Soviet nuclear power generating reactor. Sarov, however, remained a closed city because of its direct association with the nuclear weapons design. In the last two decades both cities saw a vigorous development of museums and expositions documenting their nuclear past. Drawing on an ethnographic and archival study, this paper brings to light the hitherto unstudied phenomenon, the assembly of the nuclear material culture as heritage within the Soviet and post-Soviet Russian nuclear industry. It argues that nuclear cultural heritage-making can be regarding as a case of “infrastructuring dissent,” where traditional political bureaucratic power is decentred by introducing new types of actors and logics of action. The ongoing Russia’s war against Ukraine calls for a critical revision of the extent of this form of dissent; the paper, therefore, assesses the ambivalence of the material nuclear culture as it can be deployed to challenge and bolster the nationalist and imperialistic notions of Russian nuclear power.