The Totskoye exercise was one of the largest Soviet live nuclear weapons tests involving troops, exposing 45,000 soldiers to a 40 kt atomic blast.
Key Facts
- Bomb yield
- 40 kilotons kt
- Weapon used
- RDS-4 nuclear bomb
- Troops involved
- 45,000 soldiers
- Detonation time
- 09:33 a.m. local time
- Commanding officer
- Marshal Georgy Zhukov
- Operation code name
- Snowball (Snezhok)
By the Numbers
Location
Cause → Event → Consequence
Following the United States' development and testing of nuclear weapons, the Soviet military sought to understand how to conduct offensive and defensive ground warfare in a nuclear battlefield environment, prompting the design of a large-scale live nuclear exercise.
On September 14, 1954, under Marshal Georgy Zhukov's command, the Soviet Army detonated a 40 kt RDS-4 nuclear bomb aerially over Totskoye village in Orenburg Oblast. An army of 45,000 soldiers then marched through the hypocenter area shortly after the blast as part of the military training exercise codenamed 'Snowball.'
The exercise demonstrated Soviet capability to integrate nuclear weapons into conventional military operations, but the 45,000 troops who marched through the blast zone were exposed to significant radiation. The site's epicenter was later marked with a memorial, and the long-term health effects on participating soldiers became a subject of ongoing concern.