By Bruce Kennedy
CNN Interactive

As long as there have been nuclear weapons, there have been individuals opposed to them. But it took several years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki for those individual voices to become a chorus of disapproval.

That chorus eventually led to anti-nuclear organizations, some of which became formidable political influences on the world stage.

During the years immediately following World War II, the mass movement for nuclear disarmament was strongest in Europe. In the mid-1950s, Britain was home to several such groups, including the H-Bomb National Campaign, the National Council for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons Tests, and the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear Weapons, or DAC.

But one of the most influential anti-nuclear groups, both past and present, is the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). Founded in February 1958, CND -- along with DAC -- made international headlines several weeks later with a protest march from London to the British nuclear weapons facility at Aldermaston. The CND's annual Easter marches soon became major events, with tens of thousands taking part.

The CND demanded Britain unilaterally get rid of its nuclear weapons. In Britain's 1964 general elections, the Labour Party, after CND pressure, campaigned on a platform to cancel government plans to buy U.S. Polaris nuclear missile submarines. But when Labour candidate Harold Wilson became prime minister, he ignored earlier promises and went ahead with the Polaris purchase.

Wilson's actions helped undermine the CND's power and kept it weakened for the next 15 years.

Similar anti-nuclear groups, such as the Dutch Interchurch Peace Council (IKV), also gained ground on the European continent. East and West Germany, aware of their "ground-zero" position in any Cold War confrontation, were fertile ground for peace and disarmament movements.

But while most Western anti-nuclear groups have had an adversarial relationship with their respective governments, the Soviet bloc officially supported and fostered disarmament groups -- and encouraged such organizations in the West.

"The Soviet Union did see a window of opportunity when the U.S. lost the war in Vietnam, when a young generation was coming of age in Western Europe", says Jeffrey Herf, author of "War by Other Means: Soviet Power, West German Resistance, and the Battle of the Euromissiles."

Indeed, Soviet officials openly acknowledged the benefits they received from the lack of a singular political voice among the Western peace organizations, along with the political pressure those groups brought on their governments.

"I think the peace movements in Europe are very effective," Yuri Zhukov, Pravda columnist and chairman of the official Soviet Peace Committee was quoted as saying in 1983. "It's evident they worry the West."

There were also claims of covert Soviet funding of Western anti-nuclear groups. In 1982, John McMahon, deputy director of the CIA, testified before Congress that the U.S.S.R. had channeled $100 million annually to the Western disarmament movement, and that such funds "enabled the movement to grow beyond its own capabilities."

The recent opening of files in East Germany reveals that the Stasi, or state secret police, were active within East German peace groups, Herf says. But he adds that the most important aspects of Soviet peace policy in Europe, especially in West Germany, were public. Fear of nuclear war, he argues, overwhelmed any differences the anti-nuclear groups saw between Soviet dictatorship and Western democracy.

"Everybody knew the Soviet Union was financing peace events, saying the United States was going to blow up the world. Were (anti-nuclear groups) tools of the Soviet Union? If so, only unconsciously. The mood of the peace movement was 'a plague on both your houses.'"

The anti-nuclear movement underwent a renaissance in the late 1970s. That was when NATO, concerned by the presence of Soviet intermediate-range SS-20 missiles in Europe, decided to counter with a deployment of similar-range Pershing II and Cruise missiles.

Hundreds of thousands of people took part in anti-nuclear demonstrations across Europe, condemning NATO's decision. Plans to deploy Cruise missiles at the Greenham Common U.S. Air Base in Berkshire, England, prompted the establishment of a women's "peace camp" just outside the base's gates. The women began a permanent vigil -- and in December 1982 an estimated 30,000 linked hands around the base.

Despite the pressure from the CND and other disarmament groups, NATO went ahead with its deployment plans in 1983.

"The deployments of 1983," says Herf, "were turning points. Had the protest movements directed against Western nuclear deployments succeeded, (Soviet) hard-liners would have said, 'We can drive the Americans out of Western Europe peacefully.' The hard-liners played the military card and lost. At that point, Gorbachev could make the argument that, 'We (the Soviets) have nothing left to offer, we must reform.'"

Public pressure on both Soviet and U.S. governments helped play a role in the signing of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in late 1987 -- the first agreement between the two Cold War rivals to eliminate an entire class of nuclear missiles.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the anti-nuclear movement has shifted its perspective toward Asia. In recent years, nuclear tests by China, and by France in French Polynesia, have triggered a wave of regional protests in Asia and the Pacific.

The new nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan also has given the anti-nuclear movement new momentum. Organizations such as the Movement in India for Nuclear Disarmament (MIND) and Pakistan's Action Committee Against Arms Race (ACAAR) are reminding their nations of the horrors of nuclear war -- with the support of such groups as Japan's Gensuikin, or Congress Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs.

The acclaimed Indian author Arundhati Roy summed up the passions of many in the anti-nuclear movement in a recent magazine article.

"The nuclear bomb," she said, "is the most anti-democratic, anti-national, anti-human, outright evil thing that man has ever made. If you are religious, then remember that this bomb is man's challenge to God. ... Look at it this way. This world of ours is 4,600,000,000 years old. It could end in an afternoon."