Leonov recalled the reaction in the Soviet Union: "There were lots of letters addressed to the government, all of which asked how it could have happened, how come Americans were ahead of us.

He explains in the documentary: 'In 1991 when the test site was closed and Kazakhstan declared a moratorium everything broke ...

The Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb, known in the West as Joe-1, on Aug. 29, 1949, at Semipalatinsk Test Site, in Kazakhstan. The Soviets called their first atomic test "First Lightning." ...

Putin’s Journey, a new two-hour CBC News documentary premiering Friday ... s path from childhood poverty to KGB agent in the Soviet Union, then from part-time taxi driver to the presidency ...

Between 1949 and 1991 the Soviet Union detonated 116 above ground bombs, whose massive radioactive mushroom clouds were witnessed by thousands of innocent and unsuspecting Kazakh villagers.