Summary of Kate Browns argument in Plutopia
Kate Brown’s book, titled “Plutopia: Nuclear families, atomic cities, and the great Soviet and American plutonium disasters” discusses the first nuclear disaster in history to have happened locally. Kate relates factors such as urban planning, scientific research, labor history and public health. According to her, the Soviet and American societies were largely transformed following the production of nuclear weapons. She claims it created a whole new kind of society with newly defined safety risks. This essay seeks to critically analyze Brown’s book. The term plutopia refers to those unique, aspirational communities that satisfied postwar societal desires in the Americas and the Soviet Union. Prosperity then was at such an enticing level that many citizens ignored the piles of radioactive waste accumulating around them (p. 4). Brown goes on to analyze the state policies in the U.S.S.R and U.S.A that influenced the creation of the nuclear cities of Ozersk and Richland, the resultant societies from those areas, and the differences between the histories of American and Soviet Plutopia.
State Policy
Brown demonstrated severally how the two nuclear cities of Ozersk and Richland initiated the simple categories of totalitarian, communist, capitalist and democratic. It should be noted that Richland had no private property nor civic authority. The plant workers would lease their homes from the government and they would get their salaries from the companies running the plant. These companies also paid the policemen and the mayor. The Russian leaders in Ozersk came to find out that introducing Western consumer goods was one sure way of keeping skilled workers satisfied. Brown keeps shifting between Richland and Ozersk, giving detailed accounts of the two, and this makes it a bit hard to follow the book. But this is understandable because the...
For instance, when one of the plants risked a budget cut, the other one would make efforts to increase production. This perceived rivalry went a long way to stabilizing the two plants for continued existence. It is recorded that the two plants resorted to risky shortcuts in their operations due to the prevailing atmosphere of fear and pressure, so they could meet their production goals.
Brown details the years when the two plants reached a...…on record how Stalin assured Igor Kurchtov that though Russia was poor, a select few could still live in their own dachas and drive their own cars. Kurchtov was the chief physicist overseeing the Soviet atomic bomb project.
The residents interestingly appeared at peace with this situation. They proved patriotic enough by participating whole wholeheartedly in the work which was vital for national defense. It is interesting how they could forfeit their own rights for material gain. It is difficult to find such kind of sacrifice in humans, especially in the current state of affairs in the world. This lasted even beyond the collapse of the Soviet Union. Numerous Ozersk residents voted to maintain their guards and their fences. They saw it better to have security within the city other than exercise their freedom of movement.
Conclusion
Brown’s Plutopia successfully compared two atomic production facilities during the cold war era. Up till now, the effects of such militarized citizenry remains fresh in the minds of Russians and Americans. The willingness of the plutopias to forfeit their human rights for the desire of affluence resulted in an unprecedented nuclear disaster, whose negative effects are being felt up to now.
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