Word: chelyabinsk
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Okay, you won't find the last item in every Russian picnic basket, but Natalya Mironova and Gosman Kabriov aren't your average picnickers - and the sweeping lakes that surround the industrial city of Chelyabinsk, 1400 km (870 miles) southeast of Moscow, aren't your average fishing holes. In fact, Mironova and Kabriov are anti-nuclear activists. Chelyabinsk isn't far from the massive Mayak nuclear complex, which processed materials for the first Soviet atomic weapons. During the 1940s and '50s, Mayak pumped nuclear waste directly into the rivers that ran through villages in the area, exposing hundreds of thousands...
...note the comings and goings of birds. On a tour of some of the remaining hotspots near local towns and villages, they dip their buzzing Geiger counters into one still-contaminated river where we'd later see kids wading ankle-deep. At day's end, instead of returning to Chelyabinsk to spend the night in the grim Soviet surrounds known as "Tank City" for its role in equipping the Red Army, we headed for a holiday camp Kabriov knew on the shores of the massive Lake Uvil'dui, not far from where the Mayak facility's waste is now stored...
...popular unrest that defeated Moscow's candidate for President might spill across the border. And independent Duma Deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov insists that the danger is real: "These spontaneous protests signal the moral end of Putin's corrupt secret-police regime," he told TIME. In some regions, such as Chelyabinsk in the Urals and Kemerovo in Siberia, authorities caved in and reinstated the transport benefits, if only temporarily. But scores of protesters were also charged with misdemeanors, such as violating public order and impeding transport. Pro-Putin Duma Deputy Andrei Isayev threatened punishment to "those who seek to carry the orange...