L’Empire des steppes

Kazakhstan has been the rubbish dump of USSR for decades. Highly polluting nuclear, chemical and bacteriologic experiments have taken place in that area and unwelcome people have been banished there. This film is a journey into the heart of the human and ecological catastrophe of Kazakhstan, a wonderful country with such a concentration of poisons, especially in its northern regions, that the rate of death, genetic mutations and malformations has reached record levels. The nuclear weapons testing range, some dozen miles from the city of Semipalatinsk, has been the scene of 450 explosions in the last few years. At present, there are still many children with cancer or genetic mutations in hospitals, irrefutable evidence of the fact that not only the disaster is going on but it will also affect the next generations.

Kazakhstan, now an independent country, is trying to get rid of this heavy heritage, but this is not the only problem it has to face. Its obsolete industries and the difficult passage to market economy make both the new rich and the new poor regret the sad “Soviet” past. 

L'empire des steppes is part of a series of four documentaries entitled Les empires de l'Asie centrale (The Empires of Central Asia).