Taboshar: the history of the uranium secrets of Tajikistan. Taboshar: From ballistic missiles to galoshes Who lived in taboshar until the 1990s

The architecture of this city was created by prisoners of war soldiers Nazi Germany, uranium deposits and enterprises for the production of ballistic missiles were developed by leading specialists of the USSR. The secret Tajik city of Istiklol (until 2012 Taboshar) was not marked on any map of the world at one time. Since then, everything has changed here.

Asia-Plus, together with its partners, Open Asia Online and SM-1 TV channel, went to a ghost town to get acquainted with its strange and slightly creepy history.

HISTORY Taboshar began in 1936. Then in the world only the idea of ​​​​creating atomic weapons. The Soviet Union reacted sluggishly to it, although a uranium deposit was discovered near Taboshar ten years before the construction of this city began. Everything changed during the Great Patriotic War, when Stalin was informed that Great Britain had already calculated the cost atomic bomb. A decision was immediately issued State Committee Defense "On the mining of uranium" dated November 27, 1942, in which an order was given to organize the extraction and processing of uranium ores until May 1, 1943. The first batch of ore was supposed to be four tons, and this task was to be completed at the Tabosharsky plant.

The war was in full swing, and there were not enough free hands. Almost all Soviet men fought at the front. By this time, the Soviet army already had enemy prisoners of war, and the leadership of the USSR took an extreme step: it was decided to involve them in the construction of the secret city of Taboshar. So there was a free labor force.

Khamidullo Karimov, a veteran of the nuclear industry, is one of the few residents of Istiklol who remembers the time when German prisoners of war built this city. He ended up here in 1948, came to work at the uranium mines by distribution after studying in Tashkent.

"Germans? They worked here like donkeys,” he says. - Sorry, of course, for such a comparison, but I can’t call it another way. They did not have any improvised mechanisms, this city was built with bare hands.

Construction was carried out from dusk to dawn, prisoners of war were led to construction sites under escort from the camp, which was located outside Taboshar. It seems that the Germans were engaged here not only directly at the construction site, but also completely designed this city. Its narrow streets can hardly be distinguished from the streets in some burgher district of the western part of Berlin. But perhaps the gloss of modern Germany is not enough for the inhabitants of present-day Istiklol.

“I worked in the uranium industry for 50 years, undermined my health, and my pension was 235 somoni (about $30), and, thank God, the president added another 120 somoni ($14), and we live,” says Kh. Karimov.

As evidence of undermined health, the veteran shows his hands: he has them as if after serious burns that have not yet healed. Khamidullo Karimovich says that the whole body looks like this, and adds that colleagues suffered from the same ailments. Now there are no more specialists with such work experience in the nuclear industry as Kh. Karimov has left in Istiklol.

uranium mines

FOUR years ago, when Russia celebrated the 70th anniversary of the start of uranium mining, veteran uranium mining industry doctor of chemical sciences Yuri Nesterov - a man who was directly related to Taboshar - recalled that the atomic age in the Soviet Union actually began with Central Asian donkeys. All the main work on uranium mining in Taboshar was indeed carried out at first with the help of this draft power. There were no roads or sufficient equipment.

Under the same conditions, in parallel with the development of the Tabosharskoye deposit, the Leninabad Mining and Chemical Plant, located a few kilometers from the uranium mines, in the city of Chkalovsk (now Buston) was raised. This plant is considered the firstborn of the nuclear industry of the USSR, because the first Soviet atomic bomb was created from uranium enriched here and the first atomic reactor. And this uranium was obtained in Taboshar.

“Prisoners of war not only built houses, they were the main workers in the uranium mines in Taboshar, because there was no one else to do this,” Khamidullo Karimovich continues. - They even lived in their camp next to the mines. Nothing can be done: captivity is captivity.

Such living conditions plus hard work did their job: out of hundreds of prisoners of war, soldiers of the fascist army, only a few were able to live to receive documents and be able to leave Taboshar. It happened in the late 80s; however, by this time the German prisoners of war were able to dissolve in the international population of the city. The old-timers of Istiklol say that they did not hold a grudge against them. Moreover, the city was also a place of exile for representatives of the Soviet Germans, to whom the inhabitants had no complaints at all.

Larisa Vyacheslavovna Shtadler is a piano teacher at a local music school. Once her grandfather, because of his nationality, came here as an exile from Leningrad, in Taboshar he married her Russian grandmother.

“Here, my grandfather had no problems because of his nationality,” she says. - He worked all his life at the local car depot, they lived well. True, no one from the family took his last name until the 70s, it was only the descendants who became Stadlers.

Along with prisoners of war and exiles, the entire color of Soviet specialists in the nuclear industry also came to Taboshar. The scale of uranium mining after a few years of work exceeded even the most daring expectations. The Tabosharskoye field stretches over more than 400 hectares, thousands of tons are mined here every year. uranium ore. Closer to collapse Soviet Union this industry has become useless to anyone. The field was mothballed, Taboshar left first the best specialists, and then most of former international population. Now the main cog in the nuclear industry of the USSR has turned into a large dump of radioactive waste, more than 10 million tons of it have accumulated in the vicinity of the city during the active mining of uranium.

"Dawn of the East"

BUT, of course, not all pages of the history of this city are so sad. Its inhabitants also had their little joys. Despite the fact that from the very beginning Taboshar was a closed, secret city, where one could get only with special passes, this status also gave its inhabitants great advantages.

“Specialists from the center came to us and wondered how we live here,” says Natalya Perevertailo, a resident of Istiklol, a music school teacher. - Firstly, we were very friendly, we celebrated every holiday together; secondly, everyone was captivated by the beauty of the city and nature around; and, thirdly, we had direct Moscow support, and store shelves, even in the most scarce times, were littered with inaccessible goods.

Taboshar was also famous for its high wages. This became especially noticeable when the city opened large enterprise Zarya Vostoka (now State Unitary Enterprise Nuri Okhan). It happened in 1968, and the new plant was presented to the residents as a large production of galoshes and other rubber products. Only it was directly subordinated to the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU.

“And galoshes were produced, and hoses, and sewing workshops were part of the enterprise, but this, of course, was not the main purpose of the plant,” says CEO SUE "Nuri Okhan" Ziyodullo Nosirov. “The main thing was that the Zarya Vostoka plant was a large production facility working for the defense industry of the USSR.”

The workshops of this plant are still scattered throughout Istiklol. Some of them are located, as expected, in the industrial zones of the city, for the other part, special underground bunkers were prepared. On the surface of the earth, Zarya Vostoka produced consumer goods, underground - charges for Soviet ballistic missiles.

Citizens say that those who worked in the production of galoshes often did not even know what else their enterprise was doing. There were no doubts about frequent visits to the plant by high-ranking officials from Moscow, or high wages, or the chic, by Soviet standards, plant administration building.

Every year they produced six million pairs of galoshes, provided Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan with these products, and did not blow a mustache. Until the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Taboshar experienced this collapse very hard. Accustomed to the closed regime of the city, the Moscow provision, the Tabosharians could not find themselves in a new life. Many left, not all adapted to the new place. Of the former population of the city, now almost no one remains. The collapse of the USSR did not survive the production of ballistic missiles; only galoshes survived, now this is the main line of production at the Nuri Okhan factory.

However, in last years in Istiklol, there is hope again: near their city, Chinese investors have already reconstructed a cement plant, and the construction of a metallurgical town is next in line. Residents of Istiklol still have no doubts about the uniqueness of their city and believe that Chinese investments can save it.

Perhaps it will happen, but it will be a completely different story.

Story

In 1925, Taboshar opened the largest Central Asia deposit of uranium ores. It is located within the Karamazar mining district. The Karamazar group of deposits was discovered by Sergei Fedorovich Mashkovtsev following the traces of old mines. When compiling geological map geologist Sergei Mashkovtsev discovered samples with radioactive minerals at the Taboshar mine. Since 1926, the first geological exploration party (GE) under the leadership of B.N. Nasledov began to work at the Taboshar mine, which revealed a number of ore veins, including the large uranium-bearing Leading. Geological exploration work continued for many years. In 1930-1931. at the Taboshar deposit, Giredmet conducted research on the extraction of radium from ore. Work on the extraction of radium was carried out in 1934. By 1935, a small village, a mine and an experimental hydrometallurgical shop (chemical plant) were built. Selective extraction of the richest ore was carried out with jackhammers, which were manually sorted on the surface at the exit from the adit. Taboshar received the status of an urban-type settlement in 1937 and served as a base for prospectors and miners. Before the Great Patriotic War, the mine was mothballed. In 1941, plant “B” of the Main Directorate of Rare Metals was evacuated to Taboshar from Odessa, which included a hydrometallurgical workshop (plant No. 4) and the Odessa branch of Giredmet of the People’s Commissariat of Colors of the USSR with a planned target of producing 4 tons of uranium salts per year. The mining and processing of uranium ore at the mine in Taboshar began in 1943 to create the Soviet atomic bomb in pursuance of the decree of the State Defense Committee (GKO) of the USSR of November 27, 1942. On the basis of plant "V" of Glavredmet, Tabosharsky, Adrasmansky, Maylisuysky, Uigursaysky and Tuyamuyunsky mines for the extraction and processing of uranium ores to uranium oxide, it was organized by the GKO Decree of May 15, 1945 No. 8582 ss / s at the request of I. V. Kurchatov in the system of the NKVD of the USSR Combine No. 6 with control in Leninabad of the Tajik SSR. In 1960, uranium mining by heap leaching (HL) from Taboshar ores was started. By the beginning of 1945, the Taboshar mine administration was the only operating mining enterprise that was still in the stage of industrial exploration and preparation, and not in operation. In 1946, for the construction of enterprise No. 11 (Mine Administration No. 11) of Combine No. 6 on the basis of a uranium mine in Taboshar, a department of builders was created in the NKVD system, mainly from prisoners and special migrants. By July 1946, Experimental Plant No. 3 was located in dilapidated adobe buildings on the basis of the Taboshansky Experimental Plant "B" of the People's Commissariat of Colors. The construction of the closed city "Leninabad-31" and an enterprise for the processing of uranium ore began. Scientists and qualified specialists were sent to Taboshar, as well as captured Germans and deported Germans. The city had two schools, a hospital, developed infrastructure. By the end of the 1980s, the deposits were worked out and uranium production decreased and completely stopped with the collapse of the USSR and the start of the civil war (1992-1997) .

In addition to uranium deposits, Soviet period a number of deposits of gold, silver, tungsten, bismuth, other non-ferrous metals, as well as high-quality marble were explored. Flux materials and facing stone were mined. In the village there was a production of facing slabs and souvenirs.

Since 1968, the Zarya Vostoka plant has been operating in the village (since October 1991 - the Zarya Vostoka production association, since April 2001 - the State Unitary Enterprise Zarya Vostoka), formed as a branch of the Aleksinsky Chemical Combine and belonging to the USSR Ministry of Mechanical Engineering. The plant produced rubber shoes and anatomical gloves. The plant worked for the defense industry of the USSR. The plant made parts for strategic missiles and tested rocket engines. Currently, the plant produces consumer goods and rubber products.

In Soviet times, the Taboshar branch of the Leninabad garment factory worked. After the collapse of the USSR, the enterprises were partially mothballed.

The overwhelming majority of the population before the collapse of the USSR were Russians. With the beginning of perestroika, ethnic Germans began to move to Germany. Most of the inhabitants of Taboshar with the collapse of the USSR and the beginning civil war(1992-1997) left Tajikistan.

Taboshar received city status in 1993. In 2012, the city was renamed Istikol. In November 2012, the joint Tajik-Swiss silver mining enterprise "Kanchol" began to operate in the city of Istiklol.

In 2017, an Agreement was signed between Russia and Tajikistan on the reclamation of uranium tailings and the disposal of decommissioned uranium mining and processing facilities.

Notes

1. Population of the Republic of Tajikistan as of January 1, 2018 (indefinite) . Agency on Statistics under the President of the Republic of Tajikistan. Retrieved 30 May 2019.
2. Zakhvatov, Andrey. Taboshar: history of uranium secrets of Tajikistan (indefinite) . Sputnik (March 13, 2017). Retrieved 30 May 2019.
3. Several settlements, villages and jamoats renamed in Sughd (indefinite) . News of Tajikistan-IA "Asia-Plus". Retrieved January 20, 2013. Archived from the original on February 2, 2013.
4. Taboshar // Strunino - Tikhoretsk. - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1976. - (Great Soviet encyclopedia: [in 30 volumes] / ch. ed. A. M. Prokhorov; 1969-1978, v. 25).
5. Karamazor // Brief Geographical Encyclopedia: Volume 2: Yevlakh - Millibar / chapter. ed. A. A. Grigoriev. - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1961. - 592 p. - (Encyclopedias. Dictionaries. Reference books.). - 82,000 copies.

In Tajikistan, it is called the city-legend. Taboshar, once secret in the Sughd region, is now starting a new life. Many years ago "MIR" made a material about this city. A new story has been prepared for the TV and radio company. Vera Ismailova, correspondent of MIR 24, found out how Taboshar lives today.

The road at the foot of the Kurama Range leads to the city of Taboshar, now Istiklol. For many years this city was under the cover of secrecy because of the rich deposits of uranium, gold and silver. At one time, it was not even marked on any map of the world.

In the Karimov family photo album, every picture is a page of history. They met here at closed city. Khamidullo worked in the mines, Mukhabbat sewed bandages for the miners. Together for 62 years. When the head of the family arrived in Taboshar, there were only tents and sheds.

There is a version that the first Soviet atomic bombs were filled with uranium mined in the 1940s at a mine near Taboshar. Victorious in the Great Patriotic war the country needed raw materials for the production of nuclear weapons, and by the mid-1940s, the construction of a closed city began here.

“There was a closed zone, they let me in with passports. The stores had Moscow supplies, everything was there. They lived together: Germans, Tatars, Kirghiz, Kazakhs. All nations were there,” says Mukhabbat Karimova, a resident of Istiklol.

In the 1940s and 1950s, prisoners of war were brought here. They built up the city center. Thanks to them, a piece of Europe appeared in the Asian mountains.

The architecture of the city was created by German prisoners of war. That is why local houses and courtyards can hardly be distinguished from buildings and streets somewhere in Germany or Switzerland.

The ex-mayor and honorary citizen of Taboshar remembers well the best years in the history of the city, when the Zarya Vostoka plant worked. It carried out orders from the defense industry of the USSR. The plant remains closed to this day.

“This enterprise worked for the defense industry, but also produced handicrafts: galoshes, hoses, respirators,” says Isakjan Zakirov, a resident of Istiklol.

After the collapse of the Union and civil strife in the Republic, Taboshar looked like a ghost town. The field was mothballed, funding stopped, enterprises stopped.

“Everything fell into decay: both roads and sidewalks. Decayed at home. It was hard with water, light. Now we have overcome these stages,” says Tatyana Panteleeva, a local resident.

At the end of September 2011, President of the Republic Emomali Rahmon visited Taboshar. He proposed to rename it to Istiklol, which, translated into Russian - "independence". New name - new life. Build parks, squares, kindergartens. On the outskirts of the city, the construction of a large metallurgical plant is being completed. Perhaps soon Istiklol will regain its former glory - a unique industrial city.

Next year the city will celebrate its 80th anniversary.

DUSHANBE, November 28 - Sputnik, Andrey Zakhvatov. The secret city of Taboshar, where Soviet scientists worked on the creation of the first atomic bomb in the middle of the 20th century, was built by German prisoners of war and Soviet Germans deported to Central Asia.

Recently, the metallurgist of the German city of Augsburg Alexander Brittner, who once spent his childhood in this city, visited Taboshar. He told Sputnik Tajikistan how Taboshar has changed in 25 years.

Gone with the Wind Wars

Alexander Ivanovich, how did it happen that your German family ended up far from their historical homeland - in the Tajik city of Taboshar?

In the 40s of the last century, preparations were made in the USSR for the creation of nuclear weapons, and scientists and qualified specialists of many specialties were sent to northern Tajikistan to develop a uranium deposit.

For the construction of the city and the extraction of uranium ore, prisoners were sent to Taboshar German soldiers, as well as Germans exiled to Tajikistan from the Crimea, the Volga region and other places. That is how my parents got to Taboshar in the early 1940s, they were Germans who lived before the war in Nikolaev region Ukraine.

There were many deported Germans - I remember well that out of 30 students in our class in Taboshar, about a third had German surnames - just like me.

For several years, in the mountains, 40 kilometers east of the Tajik city of Leninabad (now Khujand), the Germans built the city of Taboshar, very similar to "little Switzerland", whose architecture resembles the cities of Western Europe.

Alexander Brittner - meeting after 25 years In addition to residential and industrial buildings, a beautiful park, stadium, swimming pool, large gym. The House of Culture worked with many different circles, a library, a large clinic, a hospital, the House of Pioneers, schools, kindergartens, shops, and household services.

In the summer, hundreds of children rested in the departmental pioneer camp "Eaglet". Until the mid-60s, Taboshar was on the "Moscow" supply - food, clothing, shoes and many other goods.

In the 1950s, the captured Germans who survived after working at the uranium mine returned to Germany, and many of the deported Soviet Germans remained to live and work in Taboshar. Remained in the city and several hundred soldiers who passed through the PFL (checking and filtration camps of the NKVD) Soviet army who have visited German captivity and in the environment.

Did the inhabitants of Taboshar know that working at a uranium mine is extremely harmful?

Of course they did. Despite the provision of people with respirators (they began to be produced at the Taboshar enterprise "Lepestok"), mortality from selicosis (a lung disease) among men working in the extraction of uranium ore was high in the 1940s and 50s.

In the early 50s, the family of a famous Soviet and Russian actor lived in Taboshar Oleg Yankovsky. Have you ever met him?

Their family lived near the entrance to the city, in its lower part. But, to be honest, now I don’t remember if I knew him and his brother Rostislav, who also later became a famous actor - we were children then.

But I know for sure that our fathers worked at Shakhtstroy. My father worked as a painter, Oleg Yankovsky's father worked as an engineer.

Is it true that in post-war years in Taboshara there was a surge in the birth rate?

Yes it is. At that time, most families had large families. Two city schools with Russian as the language of instruction were overcrowded. Together with me, four more children grew up in the family, and we lived opposite the park - in a small apartment of a stone house built by captured Germans, in which people still live.

Did all the Taboshars have enough work to do?

There were no problems with work. Skilled workers and engineers received good salaries, and the urban infrastructure of Taboshar compares favorably with many other cities - it was in Taboshar that back in the 1960s gas and central heating began to be supplied to residential buildings.

After the 8th grade, I entered the vocational school of Leninabad and after receiving the qualification of a gasification specialist, having returned to Taboshar, I worked in the Gorgaz system.

Then he served in the army at the Baikonur cosmodrome, where he acquired the specialty of a plasterer and finisher and worked until his departure to Germany.

And when did the Taboshar Germans get the opportunity to leave for their historical homeland?

For some reason, many people think that they began to leave after the fall of the Berlin Wall and after the collapse of the USSR, but this is not so. The first German families began to leave for Germany earlier - after Gorbachev came to power, in 1985, when the USSR and Germany agreed on cooperation in family reunification.

Departure was also allowed for people who married German citizens and did not possess state and military secrets. Paperwork took a long time - both in the USSR and in Germany.

But the bulk of the Taboshar Germans, including my family, left Taboshar in the first half of the 1990s, when the civil war broke out in Tajikistan.

Do you remember this time?

Of course, I remember well. There were no hostilities in the Leninabad region of Tajikistan, but the population of Taboshar experienced an acute shortage of food.

Bread ration cards were introduced for city dwellers. The vast majority of Taboshar Germans did not privatize their housing and simply left their apartments. Selling some of the furniture and household items was a great success for people.

Far from home

It is known that from the 1970s to the present, more than 4 million Soviet Germans have moved to Germany. How did the historical homeland meet compatriots?

We arrived in Augsburg - an ancient city with a population of 250 thousand people in the southeast of Bavaria. We, visitors, were immediately provided with everything we needed - food, clothes, household items.

For this, within a year after our arrival, we were paid quite substantial sums. Furniture, household appliances could be obtained "second-hand", in good condition - for free or for little money. Cash benefits were assigned to the needy, pensions were issued to pensioners.

For the first time, my wife and I were given a family hostel - a room in a three-room apartment, but with the possibility of improving living conditions. We lived there for the first year, and then received social housing - a three-room apartment in which we still live. Families with two children of different sexes received four-room apartments.

And what was the situation with work and salary in Germany, and was it difficult to adapt in an unfamiliar country without knowing the language?

Of course, the language barrier at first presented certain inconveniences. But the authorities gave the repatriates the opportunity free education German. As for work, few of the repatriates found a job in their specialty, which they owned in the Soviet Union, since European standards and requirements in Germany are completely different.

Local authorities offered not only various employment options, but also the opportunity to learn new specialties. I almost immediately found a job that was not particularly related to knowledge German language- at a metallurgical plant for the remelting of scrap metal, where I still work.

My salary and my wife's pension allow us to live normally, take care of our health, and travel once a year. In a year I will retire, but we will still have the opportunity to go somewhere on vacation.

In the summer of 2017, my wife and I decided to go home - to Tajikistan, to Taboshar. We found out on the Internet that the Bahoriston sanatorium operates near Taboshar, on the Kairakkum Sea, ordered tickets and flew to Khujand.

Meeting after 25 years - And what were your first impressions of meeting with your homeland?

Trips and tickets for September were purchased quickly, without problems, and our first impression was that we flew to a completely different country. Over the years of living in Germany, we have visited several countries, we have seen beautiful cities and capitals, we have seen Paris, we have seen many wonderful places to visit, so surprise us high quality service was quite difficult.

In the center of Tashobar

But what we saw in Bahoriston turned out to be much higher than our expectations. Medical procedures and equipment, organization of recreation, meals - on the high level. We swam in the sea with pleasure, traveled on excursions to Khujand, walked around places familiar from childhood.

I was pleased with the improvement of the northern capital of Tajikistan - the city has more greenery, many flower beds. I was struck by the scale of the construction of residential buildings on the right bank of the Syr Darya. Many high-rise buildings appeared, many rich private houses - these are called villas in Europe.

As in the old days, they walked around the main bazaar of Khujand "Panchshanbe", the abundance of which can amaze the imagination of any European. After two weeks of rest, we went home - to my hometown of Taboshar.

Were you worried before the meeting with Taboshar?

Of course I was worried. I experienced the greatest excitement when I approached house 31 on Lenin Street in Taboshar, where I grew up. Returning after many years to the city of childhood, I stood and saw in front of me the doors to my past, which could be entered.

At the entrance of the home

A few years ago, Taboshar was renamed Istiklol, but the changes affected not only the name. At the entrance to the city, instead of the monument to Lenin, a new stele with the coat of arms of the Republic of Tajikistan was installed.

The number of renovated houses built in the 1940s and 50s is growing. There is practically no European population in the city, and of my old acquaintances I was lucky enough to meet only a few people. Of the Germans who lived in Taboshar during the Soviet years, I met only one.

Over the past 25 years, overcoming the post-war devastation, the city has experienced many "diseases" - the systems of heat supply, electricity supply, and water supply have worn out. Such a scale of production as in the days of the USSR, when many thousands of employees of the Zarya Vostoka plant worked in Taboshar, has not been in the city for a long time.

But local authorities, schools, shops, a clinic, a local market - all this works. Friends told me that the times when electricity was supplied to the population of the city according to a hard limit - a few hours in the morning and in the evening, have passed.

I was glad that, along with small and small enterprises and trade, a cement plant has already been built and is operating near Taboshar at the expense of Chinese investment, and a metallurgical plant for the production of lead has recently begun work.

Entrance to the Taboshara park

We lived in Taboshar with friends for a whole week, walked around the city, visited the cemetery - it is in good condition. We saw a renovated stadium, a renovated sports hall where children work out. We were delighted with the updated entrance to the city park - it was not so beautiful even in the heyday of Taboshar.

We saw with our own eyes how the well-being of people is gradually growing. Almost everyone has mobile phones, many have the Internet, although the speed of the Internet is still low. Many citizens have used imported cars, mostly German Opels. But the main thing is that they felt that the population of the city believes that hard times are over, which means that life in Taboshar will definitely get better.