Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs on local water resources and biology. Pugwash does not have formal membership. All participants take part in their individual capacities and not as representatives of any organization, institution or government. Anyone who has attended a meeting is considered a "Pugwashite". There are more than 3,500 "Pugwashites" worldwide. As the birthplace of the Pugwash movement, the Thinkers' Lodge was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 2008. The Jubilee 62nd Pugwash Conference devoted to nuclear disarmament will be held in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, in 2017. The conference will celebrate the 60th anniversary of the first Pugwash Conference, held
Soviet influence on the peace movement of the Pugwash movement, said that there were a few participants in Pugwash conferences from the Soviet Union "who were obviously sent to push the party line, but the majority were genuine scientists and behaved as such". The main activity of the WPC was organizing enormous international peace conferences with thousands in attendance; they condemned western military action, armaments and weapons tests but refrained from criticizing Russian aggression. For example, in 1956 the WPC condemned the Suez war but not the Russian invasion of Hungary. Because of the energetic propaganda of the WPC from the late 1940s onwards, with its