ABSTRACT
In the second half of the 1950s, Soviet scientists stood at the crossroads in understanding radiation effects on the living body: Their perspective was changing from that of a mere follower of Western studies to that of a radical critic. Looking for a disregarded context in which research on radiation effects emerged as a major topic in Soviet science, this chapter explains the indigenous needs for such research in the Soviet Union as well as its early development. The Soviet Union succeeded in their nuclear weapon development in a very short time. Forcibility, however, brought the related people to a lot of “rough-and-readiness” and “oversights” in the treatment of radioactive waste. Several Soviet scientists and medical scientists were involved in the disposal of radioactive waste, the rescue and treatment of persons exposed to radiation, the development of measurement methods and radiation protection, and other activities in Chelyabinsk-40, where a series of radiation exposure incidents repeatedly occurred, and also in relation to the East Ural Radioactive Trace in September 1957. After that, we trace the path along which many physicists and other scientists came to take actions for the normalization of biological sciences, i.e., the downfall of the Lysenkoites’ dominance.
