"To my fellow countrymen, those who have
died, those living, and those unborn..."
(Taras Shevchenko)
Chernobyl. For every
inhabitant of the world today, this word has come to symbolize a nuclear
nightmare, indeed marking a moment that began a new era for our planet. But before the seventh decade of the last
century, that name merely belonged to a small and ancient town in the Ukrainian
district of Polesye (population 14 thousand); it was bestowed upon one of the
most powerful atomic power stations of the former USSR when a Central Committee
of the CPSU determined Chernobyl to be the town nearest (18 km) to the station
being constructed, and automatically used the name. And that name stuck—despite the later, more
formal naming of the station after V.I. Lenin, and despite the
much larger city
which was immediately constructed in the station’s very shadow: Pripyat.
How many films have been made already, how much written and told
about the Chernobyl catastrophe, an inexhaustible subject whose lessons human
genius will never fully comprehend! With enough time, certainly. And
yet, these mournful lessons could also come to nothing, on account of an
international nuclear lobby that is increasingly using the world oil crisis to
re-stimulate atomic engineering and expand full-scale to every corner of the
earth—including huge construction plans for new nuclear power stations in
Chernobyl-devastated Ukraine.
Even the small continent of Australia is
faced with plans for constructing 25 nuclear stations (3).
For the sake of a momentary benefit--huge profits for certain individuals and
corporations--nuclear lobbyists have managed to manipulate the international
Agency for Atomic Energy (IAEA) and the World Health Organization (WHO) (4) into
criminally underestimating the consequences of a catastrophic technological
accident, and they would surely like to erase the name Chernobyl from mankind's
historical memory. But it is said that those who do not learn from the
mistakes of the past will be condemned to repeat them--to "step on the
same rake," as we say in Ukraine.
That is why today it remains an urgent task for humanitarians, and all people
of good will, to continue to sound the Chernobyl bell so that its reverberation
may be felt by every living person on the planet.
Clearly, it is impossible for one article to capture the immensity of the
problem posed by Chernobyl. But at the request of Dr. Natalia Fernandez
Diaz (5), Professor of Intercultural and International
Communications at the Free University of Barcelona, I shall try in this article
to illuminate but one of the unknown facets of this tragedy: the plight, the
unbearable burden, of women "singed" by Chernobyl ...
Except for the unexpected biographical portraits (including the deep,
soul-wrenching confession of Lyudmila Ignatenko) contained in "The
Chernobyl Prayer" of the Belarussian writer, Svetlana Aleksievich (a deep
bow to her from all the Chernobyl victims for this truthful, if brief,
chronicle!), it is possible to name only one book devoted to the women of
Chernobyl: The Women of the Zone, by the Ukrainian writer and poet,
Svetlana Jovenko. In truth, it would be best to devote a whole book to
these wonderfully creative women (6), including the noted
Ukrainian poet and researcher of history and ethnography, Lina Kostenko, from
the Chernobyl Polesye--to the many women whose lives and creativity are
intertwined with Chernobyl ... And certainly, women's destiny cannot be
separated from universal destiny. Still, among other lessons, the
Chernobyl accident confirmed the axiom that the burdens and troubles of life
always lie heavier on female shoulders.
How many of these Chernobyl women were there, and how many will there still
be? A hundred thousand? In the millions--if each one could be
counted? Not only those victims still living (or more accurately, barely
surviving), but those who no longer suffer, who have left this world, as well
as those born since with insidious genetic defects, and those who on account of
this inescapable trouble could not be born at all ...
I think that even many novels cannot suffice to consecrate fully even the
female facet of the problem of Chernobyl. And each woman's portion is
unique and tragic in its own way.
Thus I shall
not now pause upon on the lot of those thousands of women working alongside the
Accident Consequences Liquidation team (ACL) at the Chernobyl Atomic Energy
Station (ChAES), women whose functions included providing sanitary, medical and
food services for the actual “liquidators,” [those who who dealt directly with constructing
the sarcophagus’] In fact, the official data from the Ministry of Emergency
Measures of Ukraine lists only military men, 600 000 officers and
urgent-service soldiers mobilized to work on the ACL at the ChAES (7); it does not include station workers or regular citizens. But the work of women there – at the very
height of the Chernobyl crisis – was no less dangerous and heroic. This
important and extensive subject awaits future researchers and writers of the
Chernobyl annals...
I shall also
refrain from elaborating on the subject of those so-called “visiting women of
easy behavior” (prostitutes), who,
according to the stories, were quite prevalent in the a zone the year after the Chernobyl accident. The conditions of this zone were surely those
of any military campaign; and in its stress, danger and extremity, the Chernobyl
accident has even been called a war by its direct participants, who refer to
life having been divided along those terms:
they speak of life before the war.
Nevertheless it
is necessary to note that these women too were subjected to radioactive
pollution, and that they have suffered no less than the official ‘liquidators,’
but, as opposed to the liquidators, the data on their illnesses and deaths (as
well as the illnesses and deaths of their probable children) will forever
remain beyond the Chernobyl statistics.
But I'll not write about these "heroines of the invisible front" only because I could not personally meet personally any of them,
and describing documentary events on the basis of hearsay is not in my rules …
In this
article, I shall try to offer but the contours of the theme of Chernobyl’s
impact on women by describing the fates of several women in close proximity to
me. A mere few – out of the many thousand stories of my
fellow sisters in suffering and my fellow townsfolk of the once young and
beautiful city of Pripyat, all of whom have their own mournful statistics of
heavy loss. In one entryway alone of
the nine story building (or House) in the Kharkov area of Kyiv where some of
the Pripyat evacuees reside, not one of the floors does not include someone who
has already died of cancer, heart problems, leukemia, or some other
Chernobyl-induced illness ..
In these long post-Chernobyl years, we have already become
accustomed to the sharp deterioration of health in autumn and spring, and also
in autumn and spring, to the especially rich and mournful mortal “crop” of
Chernobyl victims (chernobyltzy). Last autumn alone we had to say good bye
once again to three neighbors in our entrance, among whom was Valentina
Rjabuha, a woman of amazing courage and a fate too tragic—even by Chernobyl
standards.
But in the early spring of 1986, she
was still living happily in her beloved city of Pripyat, where she had moved with
her husband Yuri and their first-born son, Dmitri, from a small Ukrainian town
with the radiant name of Happiness. And
by 1981, already in Pripyat, their second son, Oleg, was born…
At that time, it seemed to her that
life had gone well: the beloved husband,
the fine family, the solid friends, the interesting work with a decent salary
(by USSR standards), the spacious, cozy apartment (by the same standards) in a
beautiful, modern city, close to the capital, Kyiv – but a stone’s throw away
–and all that remained was to live and let live…
But then came the night of April 25,
and by the 26th, everything had changed catastrophically: the ChAES accident, close to two days of
uncertainty and horrendous worry over her husband, who was then at work at the station, evacuation… In fact, she, too, was an employee of the ChAES, and had
wanted to remain in the city with her husband.
But Yuri categorically commended her to be evacuated on April 27, along
with their sons, telling her in surprisingly prophetic works: “One of
us should stay with the children!”…
And although the station workers—as
opposed to thousands of other former inhabitants of Pripyat who repeatedly and
often hopelessly knocked on various official cabinet doors—were given places to
live in Kyiv, and although Yuri himself, who continued to work on the LCA at
the ChAES, was bringing home more money than most in those times, life was
nevertheless broken …
The chronic illnesses of Valentina and her children began.
But even more terrible was that Yuri soon began to die away before her
very eyes, quickly … For a while, he was able to hide the pain from him wife,
but then it became continuous and intolerable…
His sufferings broke her heart (although the courage with which he bore
the tortures of his pain taught her the stoicism with which she was to bear her
own compounding tortures). Nevertheless,
while he was with her, life continued, because for her he was not only her
beloved husband, her friend and supporter, but the very heart of the family,
its light …
Yuri Rjabuha died in December of
1991 from intestinal cancer. He was
almost 42. With his death, the light in
Valentina’s life was extinguished. She
could never reconcile herself to this loss.
But she had to go on for the children, and now more than ever she
recollected Jurij’s words: “One of us should stay with the children!” So she, a “second-degree invalid” of the
ChAES, continued to struggle with her own progressive illnesses for the sake of
her children. She tried to do it all: the apartment was always clean and cozy, and
on the table was always something freshly cooked for her beloved sons, who (as
often happens with teenagers having their own problems at an awkward age)
seemed almost not to notice their mother’s pain and suffering …
Then in 2003, both her kidneys
suddenly stopped working. Doctors
managed to resuscitate her, but she was then doomed to have a most unpleasant
treatment three times a week: hemodialysis. This vital treatment required an artificial
kidney procured for her with great difficulty by Yuri’s former friends from the
LCA (even now, the treatment is as scarce as almost everything else used to be
in the USSR). How difficult it was for
her to reach to the urology hospital on the other side of the city! Especially in the winter, when the hilly
footpaths in the vicinity of the hospital became covered with a sheet of ice
that even healthy legs could not navigate easily—let alone the legs of one so
sick. Here she often slipped and fell,
cried silently, and waited, sometimes hours, for some passerby to help her
reach the hospital clinic…
Unfortunately, I could not help her
when she went. I could only support her
by offering some needed medicine if I had it at the right moment, or by getting
occasional help from foreign friends or from the Kiev society of former Pripyat
residents, the “Fellow Townspeople”, or most of all, by simply
listening. For she often made a
neighborly visit, came by to
unburden her heart. And more than once I
witnessed the tears of sorrow and despair that she always hid from others …
And how could she not despair? When
her Chernobyl pension (now that of a “first-degree invalid”) amounted to 180
grivnas a month (about $35), almost all of which went for medicine and
treatment? Often Valentina did not have
enough not only for her children’s food and needs, but for the 100g of meat and
other nutritional needs her own body needed following the “wash-out” from her
hemodialysis treatments.
Once I met her in the yard of our
apartment building as she returned from one of her treatments, hardly able to
move her legs. She uttered the terrible
words: “How much more can we
suffer? They should poison our drinking
water and stop this torture forever!” I
could only reply with a joke, saying that we were already so full of radiation,
medicine, and other chemicals that no poison could now do us in …
Fortunately, these attacks of
despair lessened in Valentina, and gradually she learned to overcome even her
fear of death…
It happened that, due to an increase
in my own treatments, I did not learn immediately about a critical
deterioration in Valentina’s health, and about a horrible new trial: gangrene, and the amputation of her leg. I learned of it only when the superintendent of
my entryway asked me to help collect money to give to her sons for her
treatment following this operation. But
the very next day, the inhabitants of our “Pripyat House” were gathering money
for her funeral… And, two days later, in
accordance with tradition, at the third entryway, we all gathered together to
say good-bye to her. And we asked
forgiveness—some of us silently, and others aloud—for not having been able to
take onto our own shoulders more of her unbearable burden. And although it sounds terrible to say so, in
this sorrowful parting, but for the grief of our own loss, there was a joyful
insight that she had finally ceased being tortured… May the kingdom of Heaven now be hers!
And as a neighbor, she also would
always come to the aid of Valentina and her husband. Once, after Yuri’s death, Larissa said to me
that this Pripyat man had an unbelievably strong strength of will—at times
almost superhuman … Even in his last days, despite hellish pain, he would
refuse medication, and she managed to prick him but once, attempting to
anesthetize him when it was already useless …
At that point, she did not yet know
that within six months she too would pass through an intolerable trial through
sore affliction. On May 18, 1992,
Larissa suddenly lost her son Vladimir (affectionately known as Volodya, and
born on March 21, 1975) when he had a heart attack sitting at his desk at
school only days before the end of the school year. Surely only someone who has lost a dearest
loved one can imagine what this mother must have felt to have gotten the call
from the school, and then to have struggled for eight hours with her colleagues
at the cardiology hospital for the life of her son, and in vain! And what must his
sister, Natasha, have felt at suddenly losing her wise and gentle big brother,
her trustworthy protector? And what must
his father, Alexander, have felt? He, an
ChAES engineer who was still working on the LCA, who had already seen a lot,
but who went completely gray in a matter
of days? The death shook us neighbors as
well—we who also had seen a lot! So
almost all of the residents of the House, together with the students of Kiev
school No. 261, filled the schoolyard to say goodbye to Vladimir Kovaljov, tenth
grade graduate, before the procession of his final ‘graduation’ … That day,
everyone cried upon his coffin—large and small, and many heartbroken speeches
were spoken, and the school bell was rung just for him … Even his true friend,
his collie, rushed with a silent howl through the crowd, unable to find a place
to escape from sorrow …
That day, doctors were already there
on duty for Voldya’s mother and father, and the first aid vehicle accompanied
the funeral procession (as it does all Chernobyl funeral processions)…
Even months later, it was painful to
see Larissa swollen from tears and antidepressants … But, thank God, she had
her husband and daughter, and now even a grandson—those who make it necessary
to struggle for life. Thus, over the
course of time, and despite her own Chernobyl-caused physical disabilities, her
vital optimism and charming smile have returned to Larissa … In any event,
Larissa prefers not to speak with strangers about her problems, and especially
not about the death of her son …
And then there is Valentina Korzh,
from the seventh entryway of our House.
Right after her husband’s death from stomach cancer on April 6, 1993 (he
was born January 16, 1955), she was ready to scream out to the world how
unscrupulously and cruelly official medicine had treated her husband.
What happened was that in 1992-3,
the “radiation therapy” clinic of the Kiev Hospital No. 25—where Michael was frequently
treated for a basic diagnosis of “acute
radiation sickness,” as well as a host of other diagnoses—repeatedly tried
to smooth over statistics on the serious decline in the health of Chernobyl
accident victims. As chronic patients of
the clinic have told me (for I, too, have received medical treatment there
several times), this trend began after a visit to the hospital by Angelina
Gus’kova, a professor from the Moscow Hospital No. 6, and a notorious follower
of the academician L.A. Il’in (8).
After this visit, almost all the
patients of the clinic [add “who spoke to me” ?] complained that their doctors
wanted to retract not only the diagnosis of
“acute radiation sickness,” but diagnoses of other related chronic diseases, a different set of which had emerged for each Chernobyl victim. I
could only answer them with the advice that they should request—in exchange for
removing these diagnoses—certificates declaring them “absolutely healthy” and
“ready for work” and for “new heroic actions” (since they would have had no
right [or better, “would not
have had the gall”?] to issue such certificates to those so truly ill.
In the case of Michael Korzh, who
worked as the driver in the most dangerous sites of Chernobyl, including the
industrial platform of the ChAES, the clinic
doctors deleted practically all of his diagnoses—even that of “stomach
ulcer”—shortly before he died. Accordingly,
without the diagnosis of “cancer,” they did not treat it …
For this reason—for the terrible
death of her husband without medicines and medical support, Valentina Korzh was
ready to scream to the world just after his death. But no one heard her then. No one wanted to hear… She, who had managed
in those difficult “years of reorganization” to bring up her small daughter,
Tatiana, became isolated, having had to remain alone with her sorrow and
constant grief. And even now, she does
not want to speak with strangers about what she has gone through, does not want
to recollect … After several attempts, I
have stopped trying to arrange interviews for her with foreign journalists,
whom she was refused each time, plaintively asking my pardon…
Valentina’s entryway
neighbor, also a former Pripyat inhabitant (pripyatchanka),
is Natalia Lihoshapka, who buried her own husband Leonid, a former worker of
the ChAES, in 2000. She herself has gone
through a series of hospitalizations, surgeries, and x-ray therapies for her
lactic gland cancer, but has still kept a fighting
spirit. For the sake of her future
little grandson, and her son, for whose lives Natalia now struggles, she is
ready to tell everyone who can bear the truth about Chernobyl—and about the
long and agonizing suffering of her husband, now dying from complicated
meningitis without the necessary medical aid, and about her own powerless
diligence in trying to heal or just to alleviate his terrible torments… The pain of repeated losses... Over the course of time, it dulls. And those of us who survived Chernobyl are no
longer shocked by house yards more often than not draped in funeral colors, and
now almost emotionlessly hand over money for the next neighbor’s funeral… as
though new trouble will not be knocking on our own doors…
In 1984, Katya (Katerina) was only
20 when she fell in love and married the quiet musician with the very kind
eyes. She had known him for a while,
since he was the expert accordionist who always accompanied the children’s
performances, whether on school mornings or evenings, or at other city
events.
Those eyes did not deceive her. He enveloped his “Katen’ka” with warmth, care
and kisses, especially after the birth of their son, Kostya, on July 12,
1985. The three of them joyfully met the
new year of 1986, and made great plans for the future—which the Chernobyl
accident decided to amend in its own way…
They endured those first trials:
two days and nights of uncertainty, in a city filled with radiation and
rumors about an accident at the nuclear station (while a government commission
debated over what to do with the inhabitants of Pripyat); then, evacuation,
homelessness, pennilessness… At last, they were able to find a place to live in
Kiev, on account of Victor having remained to work in the Chernobyl zone. And despite the warnings of doctors and
acquaintances, they even ventured to give birth to a second child. So on June 1, 1988, another son appeared in
their family, Yaroslav…
During the course of caring for the
children, and masked by her other diseases (those so common to all the former
Pripyat inhabitants), Katerina did not even notice the fatal illness creeping
upon her. Her stomach cancer was
discovered only in its terminal stage… So when Katerina was admitted for a
long and exhausting regimen of treatment to one the Kiev clinics specializing
in treating Chernobyl victims, she knew that any therapy was already
useless. Moreover (as was often the
case) since the facility did not even have the strong anesthetic needed to
lessen her pain, she asked to go home with the excuse of celebrating her son’s
birthday.
And she managed to make Yaroslav’s
birthday into a real holiday. Katerina
mobilized all of her strength to hide all of her unbearable pain, and managed
to be joyful until after the boys had gone to bed. So as not to sadden the birthday of her son
for his whole life, she even managed to hold on until the beginning of a new
calendar day … Katerina Ponomarenko died
on the night of June 2, 1995…
Victor told me all of his through
his sobbing, having visited our place a month after her funeral to share with us
his sorrow. He came to us with Kostya
and Yaroslav—nice, inquisitive boys, each of whom had had his own childhood
dream before the death of his mum.
Kostya had dreamed to become a musician like his father, and Yaroslav an
English translator—and his English was already not bad for his seven
years. But now they proclaimed to me
with eager ambition that they wanted to become doctors “to avenge Mom.” In this way, with their childlike innocence, they expressed their despair at not having been able to ease their
mother’s suffering, or to save her…
Now, whenever he left his shift,
Victor searched for someone who could look after his sons in his absence. He could not give up his job in the zone,
because to find a comparably paying job in Kyiv was impossible. This situation could not last long, and so he
married again in a few years. Even now,
though, he still brings white flowers home from Pripyat for his Katen’ka—to put
them before the large portrait of her occupies the most visible spot in their
Kyiv apartment…
When the horribly fatal nuclear
accident occurred, Olenka was not yet five years old. Certainly, she did not understand the
heightened alarm and anxiety of her parents on that 26th day of
April, nor into the evening, when her dad—as he always did on Saturday
evenings—played at another wedding. She
did not understand why someone woke them in the middle of that night, nor why
they had to stand for so long on the 27th in a long corridor with
their bags packed, until finally the children could stand it no longer and ran
off into the yard, followed by the adults who ran after them…
The municipal housing officials who had woken the residents
of the hostel had warned them of the radioactive danger, telling them not to
venture out of the building into the street.
So the adults had thrown on some clothes and converged in small groups
next to hastily packed suitcases, boxes and backpacks, discussing events of the
previous day—speculating, analyzing and arguing what now awaited all of them…
The children ran around playing tag and war.
And the smallest kids, as always, sought out their favorite sandbox,
which was only a few meters from the road to the power station, along which—on
this second day—various emergency vehicles were rushing back and forth,
including fire trucks and ambulances, but silently, without their sirens on…
So as not to repeat the story of
Olya’s illness and death which Ivan Chemezov has already told—to me at the
time, and to our mutual friend and colleague, the journalist Lyubov
Kovalevskaya (who herself has suffered many health problems and the illnesses
of her daughter)—I shall simply quote his own words from her wonderful article,
“Help the Child to Die” (9):
“…
In April, something fatal… A small tumor appeared on the back below our
daughter’s neck. We began to worry and
asked a doctor. He assured us that it
was an ordinary lipoma which should be removed, but which should not cause
worry. We believed him… And time began to work against us, against
our daughter—the tumor began to grow and to become more concentrated. When doctors did surgery, they discovered
that it had metastasized all over her body.
Olya asked: “Did I become ill
because we lived in Pripyat?” “Was it
because of the Chernobyl catastrophe?”
“Will I recover?” Only to the
last question could we answer, “Yes!”
…The struggle
for the life of our daughter began. We
rushed to various Chernobyl organizations and funds, clinics and
institutes. But it was a useless waste
of forces and nerves: the circle was not
opened. We had not asked for anything
supernatural—only the usual questions:
what to do, how to help her, how to ease her suffering, what medicines
would be necessary … Olechka’s legs became paralyzed, her kidneys stopped
working, her liver swelled, her back began to hurt. What could we do? We were not doctors, not experts… I then began to understand a terrible
thing: the more heartbroken a person is,
the more shamelessly and ruthlessly doctors will extort money from him, imply
they have “something up their sleeves” when in fact they know they can do nothing. But they also know another thing: parents will sell the shirts off their own
backs to save their children. I have
encountered dozens of similar parents, who won’t give up hope until the end,
who pay exorbitant prices for the services of doctors and nurses, who pay every
fee for any trifle, for any movement the doctor makes… this doctor who has a
duty, who has taken the Hippocratic Oath… On our terrible path, there were only
two exceptions to this vicious rule!…
The doctors discharged
us from the hospital… to die at home.
But our daughter had such agonizing pain that she screamed with an
inhuman voice. She constantly needed
anesthesia, but this was available only at clinics. And she was only 13, undergoing such terrible
trials which even an adult could not have withstood. Through the efforts of some kind people, we
were able to get into the Ministry of Health, and we were able to procure even
a small room for ourselves. We did
everything ourselves: we cleaned her
liver and stomach, we healed the decubituses.
We re-read the mountains of medical books and directories in search of
answers to our questions, which we had asked the doctors in vain. And no one in the hospital, not even the main
doctor, could insert a catheter! My wife
went to the trauma unit, where they showed her how to do it—and she could do it
from the first. In one week, she learned
everything. And I ran all over the city
in search of medicine, cotton wool, needles, dropper systems… All these things
needed to be found and bought, since in the hospital there was almost
nothing… They told us that they had
injected her with morphine to anesthetize her, but she had no relief and
screamed continuously… the girl had not one moment of rest; her eyes had not closed for a week… We
figured out that they were injecting her with analginum with dimedrol. When the honest doctor injected her with
morphine, the child slept for five hours…”
As you recall, dear reader, the
Korzh family, the Lihoshapka family, the Ponomarenko family, and many thousands
of other Chernobyl families who have lost their relatives, encountered a
similar situation. Like Olenka, little
Oksana Chechko, born in Pripyat half a year before the Chernobyl accident, died
horribly in 1993 from a retinoblastoma of the eye; and little Lyubochka
Shvydka, who was born in Pripyat in 1985, lived for only about two years with
her evacuated parents in Kyiv, where she died from leukemia in February on
1987, and so on, and so on. It is not
possible to describe each of these tragedies, some of which happened even close
to us…
Some people think that it is not
necessary to depict or describe the suffering of those doomed to die,
especially that of children. That it is
cruel to recall and recount their pain and torments… Yes, of course it is hard
to read about it, and hard to look at it…
Even I—when I heard not just the
stories of the tragedies, but the heart-breaking crying and monstrous screams
of dying children themselves, at the premiere of my friend, Rollan Sergienko’s (10) new film, “Chernobyl; Funeral Feast”—even I thought, maybe this
really is too cruel?! But there and
then I decided that it was justified cruelty—and moreover, a necessity!…
How else can one convey all of the
pain and suffering which the unhappy mothers of these dying children see every
day? How else can one show the true face
of this tragedy to those who are “safe”?
How else can one shake people’s hearts—even the indifferent
ones—including the hearts of officials and those in positions of authority, and
the hearts of those who deliberately or inadvertently plan and prepare for new
Chernobyls?
So I shall continue the story of
Olenka Chemezova with one more excerpt from the article by Lyubov Kovalevskaya,
where Olya talks about her last, terrible trials to Zhuenya Dudarova (11), her best friend in Pripyat and then in Kyiv:
“…
I visited her in the hospital, sat near her bed and stroked her back where the
tumor was, as she had asked me to do.
She felt a little better after that.
Olya suffered from terrible pain and cried almost all the time. She prayed for help… We could not help… The
doctors refused to inject her with more morphine, they said that they didn’t
have enough and could not use it all up on one dying person. But up to the end, I hoped! For a miracle, too!... But this pain… Any sound, even a rustle,
caused Olya pain… But she did not lose consciousness…
I had been
friends with Olya since we were very young children—possibly, from the
cradle. We went to the same kindergarten
in Pripyat, the same school, the same teacher, had the same hobby and general
passion for music—we wanted to go to a conservatory together. Olya was extraordinarily talented. In 1993, she placed second in the
Ukraine. She played Mozart … We were
like sisters. Like a single whole. Each of us could not be without the other.
After
her surgery, she felt better, but only for three days. It was hard for her to play the piano, but
she played all the same, even though it upset her. She wanted so much to recover faster so she
could celebrate her 14th birthday on September 23. But she ceased being on August 3.
And it was so hard for me to believe Olya had died. in the last days, she probably guessed or
felt that she was dying… wanted to die faster to get rid of the pain. And there and then, she said that she wanted
to live, that she was worried, that I would go on living in the world without
her… I don’t know how I shall live
without her now. I know that I could
never find another such friend. I have
lost half of my life, half of myself, half of the world. Why did adults create such a disaster? We did nothing wrong. My friend and I were only three years old
when they exploded the reactor…”
It is difficult to add anything to
the intimate recollections of this slight girl from Pripyat. Except that even now I cannot recall Olenka
without tears and without a bitter lump in my throat… Thus I wrote these verses for her:
To
Olenka Chemezova, a young, talented pianist who died of cancer in the summer of
1995
Touch
the wounded heart
of
the city still holding the warmth
of
your lost childhood,
of
the ghost of an echo of your laughter …
One
touch of your radiant fingers
on
the dusty keys of the city’s soul,
and
she will regain consciousness, will stir,
will
escape from illusory silence, --
will
start singing, begin to cry, begin to laugh,
a
polyphonic civic organ.
The
screen of inexhaustible memory
will
be lit in the opened heavens.
The
dark eye sockets of dead buildings
will
once again be filled with the heat of human beings …
The
city will hold its breath for a moment
as
you are lowered into your house …
And
again the polyphony of voices from the street
will
begin to be heard in the routine of busy life …
as
though everyone were alive, and all had returned,
as
though the city were still alive…
Touch! Pripyat is waiting for the effortless touch
of
those already in a higher world…
Lovely
angel, one of many
similar
pure angels of his.
Despite
a death so early and so awful, Olenka Chemezova still gives light to everyone
who knew her, and who now learns about her.
Olya’s photos with her parents, the video recordings of the concerts in
which she played, as well as home videos in which she still plays upon the
piano—by herself, and giving piano lessons to her young sister, Katya (born
January 3, 1989), and singing with her and her parents… For the first year
following her death, they could not look at all these without pain and despair,
but soon after they received a sort of enlightenment – as though Olya had given
them a sign that there she is well,
and that for her sake, and for the sake of her memory, they should live
brightly and joyfully. And so the three
of them together try to live a dynamically creative life… The memory of Olya
gives them strength…
Perhaps her younger sister will
become an accomplished pianist or actress.
Still, she will never be able to fill the lost part of that unique
microcosm of a web of human destiny in which the loss of even one talented child
is irreplaceable—not only for a family, or for a country, but for the whole
world …
And how many unknown Mozarts,
Shakespeares, Rembrandts, Copernicuses and Einsteins has this grim harvest taken away—and continues to take away? … Indeed, what
numbers should be included by those who want to tell the truth about the
Chernobyl catastrophe, and by those, even now, twenty years later, who want to
ignore or underestimate it? Full and
accurate statistics are still unavailable.
But even if it were possible to trace and identify each victim, such
statistics would not be exhaustive since the grim harvest, unfortunately,
continues, and will continue into the distant future.
And how many mothers of a future
Chernobyl still await their fate, in which the happiness of motherhood will
suddenly be overshadowed by the most horrible tragedy? For there has not come to light any greater
sorrow than that of a mother who has survived her own children—especially if
the child has died suffering, and at an early age. Indeed, for any mother, her own child is always
the dearest, most unique thing, and although time might deaden the pain of the
loss, and tighten the wound, it cannot cure it for the sorrow is incurable and
unforgettable …
And how are we to measure the
sorrow, as well, of a woman who could not become a mother, whose child was
never born and will never be born, ever?
For Chernobyl is guilty of this, too. Even in my own vicinity, there are many such
women—those who in the spring of 1988 were forced to agree to a c-section or
abortion, even in the last months of pregnancy.
Doctors had been told from above to
locate and warn the population about the undesirable effects of radiation
exposure. And they were very
diligent…
Once, I witnessed the performance of
such instruction. During May of 1986, some
of us including Lyubov Kovalevskaya, were returning from the Chernobyl zone
(where we, Pripyat journalists, went frequently enough in order to talk to
people who confided in us, but who otherwise did not trust the official media,
which at the time was covering only “the Pripyal nightingales”) We were returning to “Culture House,” in
Irpin, near Kyiv, where the Ukrainian Writers’ Union was temporarily—and almost
illegally—lodging us young writers, first alone and then with our children; and
we shall always feel immense gratitude to them for these few months not in the
streets.
At the time, we returned at any
opportunity. That day in Poliske, an
acquaintance of ours from the Pripyat Civic Executive Committee who had been
re-located in this small town just after the evacuation, put us in a car
shuttle—a black Volga, which in the USSR at the time was used only by bigwigs.
And so, when we had almost gotten to Teteriv, and had reached a
checkpoint (there were many such checkpoints along the road from the Zone),
patrolmen in white uniforms (the standard outfit for all those working then in
the Zone) stopped the car. They asked
the driver to leave. And while two
patrolmen talked to him, a third glanced inside the car.
He presented himself as a doctor,
and then asked the question—which stunned us:
were we pregnant? In the face of
our indignant bewilderment—that it was none of his business—he quietly
explained that he needed to warn us that on account of the radiation, a
pregnancy would be most undesirable, and that if we were pregnant, it would be
better to have an abortion sooner that later, and so forth.
Note that this “doctor” did not know
that we were not relatives of CPSU bosses, but ordinary citizens traveling in a
government car … So the interruption of
pregnancies in the months after Chernobyl was not a mere fable …
This happened to several women—to
Pripyat friends and colleagues of mine, among whom was Olga Snegir. And this event, so serious and distressing
for many, was for Olya the biggest tragedy of her life. In May of 1986, she not only lost her unborn
daughter, but also the chance and hope for ever having children … And this
misfortune has weighed heavily upon the rest of her life…
Olya was born in 1955 in the village
of Poliske, in the Chernigov region near what would become Pripyat, the city
which would in time become fatal for her.
After Nizhin closed the cultural education school, she moved to Pripyat
and to the civic Culture Palace, and she met a circle of those who admired her
and quickly became her friends. Here
she—still young and surprisingly beautiful—could be recognized as the deep and
multi-talented person that she was, and a remarkable children’s choreographer.
Also, she also met here her destiny, a young engineer at the Chernobyl
nuclear station, Victor Lunkov… So she—loved by all, especially by her young
pupils and their parents—lived eight years of full creative energy in Pripyat,
down to the fatal day of April 26, 1986 …
The Chernobyl catastrophe found her
in the sixth month of her long-awaited pregnancy … After artificially removing
the fetus, the doctors allowed her to bury the almost perfectly formed baby …
Even now, Olya cannot forget her own tiny daughter, whom she had the chance to
hold in her hands, dead.
For the first years after the
evacuation, she unconsciously tried to communicate less with her former
townsfolk, who now lived beside her in
Kyiv. She would have liked to flee, to
escape, to leave behind everything that reminded her of this travesty. To forget—not to know, not to see, not to
hear anything about Chernobyl … Thus, in 1993, Olga seized with pleasure an
opportunity that had been unexpectedly presented to her husband: to move to Germany—first for temporary
residence, and then for permanent residence—where she herself was able to
resume working at her favorite activity, dance, working as a children’s
choreographer…
Here again, just as in Pripyat, she
very quickly became the favorite teacher of her pupils and their parents … In addition, destiny presented her with the
acquaintance of an old German woman who became a sort of fairy godmother for
her and her husband. this woman not only
immediately loved Olga, and welcomed her into her home as a daughter, but even
officially adopted her, giving her a second surname—Wagner. In this way, Olya’s life in Germany proceeded
almost like the fairy tale about Cinderella…
But Chernobyl has a long hand. The illnesses which had constantly undermined
Olga’s health with time took away her ability not only to dance, but to work
with children… And once again the heavy memories began to pursue her,
especially those of the daughter who would have been almost a young woman.
In Germany in 2002, she exhibited
her work publicly for the first time.
Soon afterwards, Olga Lunkova-Wagner became a member of the Art Forum
’99 in Rejnbah, and then she went on to participate in several other
prestigious art exhibitions in Germany.
Her works were first exhibited in Ukraine from April to July of 2006. in
the National Chernobyl Museum, where visitors could see nineteen of her
sculptures from four of her series, “Chernobyl,” “Movement,” “Music,” and
“Miniatures”…
The assistant director of the
National Chernobyl Museum, Anna Korolevskaya, wrote of Olga’s works: “I think that anyone who, even once, has admired
their perfection and grace cannot ever forget this stone miracle, unexpectedly
brightly lit by the soul of this former pripyatchanka [Pripyat woman] .
And it was not incidental that
themes of women and motherhood figured so prominently in this Chernobyl
exhibit. Generally, images of mother and
child are embodied in most of her works—as though, by these images embodied in
stone, she were aspiring to fill in the unfulfilled part of her soul, the
irremediable pain of the motherhood that could not be…
During her visit to Kyiv, Olga had
the chance to visit the now-dead Pripyat, to go into her abandoned building,
into her former apartment … But even thinking about it gave her pain. As Olya then told me, for the first three
months of her exhibition, she could not even go into the Chernobyl Museum,
because she would have an asthma attack on the steps of even this abstract
territory of the Chernobyl catastrophe, and her heart would skip … Before this,
she had not even known that the Chernobyl wound, which had left such a keep
scar on her heart, was still so fresh and its pain still so sharp. She spoke about her unborn daughter with such
love and tenderness, and with such bottomless grief in her eyes, as though she
had lost the baby not 20 years before, but several days ago … From everything,
it is evident that her work with stone brings Olga not so much rest, as a sort
of oblivion from her own pain. The exhibition of her works in the
Chernobyl Museum was named “Scars in Stone”…
And how many scars from Chernobyl
remain in the souls, hearts, and fates of millions of inhabitants of Ukraine,
Byelorussia, Russian, and other countries of the world?
Two years have passed since my
sister Nadazhda buried her husband—former lieutenant colonel Anatoly Kopotenko (12) (February 12, 1950-May 26, 2005), but she still cannot help
sobbing at the mere mention of him or of Chernobyl. No, they did not live in Pripyat. Before the Chernobyl catastrophe, they lived
in a small military town in Belarus (where, by the way, I arrived with my son
after the evacuation “on three days” (13), still hoping to return to Pripyat…)
And Anatoly, on duty with the
chemical military unit that he commanded, began working on the ChAES LCA on May
7, 1986. He worked for almost a year and
a half, with only one brief break, directing 24 settlements. Under his orders,
twenty-four contaminated areas were cleared of their radiation pollution.
Often, not caring about
repercussions from regional authorities, he forced the chairmen of state farms
to bury tons of radioactive hay which had already been prepared for
cattle. Sometimes, Anatoly also went to
Pripyat, since his military unit was stationed nearby, in the settlement of
Krasnoe (so later he would ask us in all earnestness exactly which parts of
Pripyat my son and I had been on April 26-27, and and how many times.
In addition, Anatoly and his
soldiers worked on deactivating the destroyed fourth block of the ChAES and,
together with Management Group 605, they erected a wall between the third and
fourth blocks of the station. During
this process, he always went ahead of his soldiers with a dosimeter so that
they would be exposed to less radiation…
They were exposed to a lot of
radiation then—sometimes only one run up to the roof would expose them to 100
BER (the biological equivalent of aroentgen) or more, although, of course, all
of these readings are approximate… They could not know the exact amount, since
the highest reading on the scale of the disposable store-bought dosimeter was
50 BER! As they put it then: “The most dangerous sites just blew the
dosimeter away”… So they would end up
writing down the amount as 25 BER: and so
some of these men died almost immediately after returning home, while others
lingered longer and painfully, such as Anatoly himself (who, before Chernobyl
was perfectly healthy, but upon returning home several times had to be
practically pulled out of death by Nadezhda, their daughters, and the doctors …
In the last years of his life, when he could
hardly go on, when he was already so choked that he could hardly sleep, and
only when sitting up, he suddenly began to become active in schools and on the
radio, and in other venues, on Chernobyl Day—in order to speak about the situation
at Chernobyl, as though he felt he was running out of time to tell people the
truth. Anatoly was convinced that it was
necessary to close the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant immediately, instead of
continuing the work which was seventy percent useless and absurdly burning up
young lives (14).
To the end of his own days, “Nash
Batya” – “Our Dad,” as the soldiers had affectionately named their thirty-six
year old commander – tormented himself with the faults of others, the faults of
those who had sent him and his subordinates there, of those who in time would
receive awards and medals for “Chernobyl heroism.” Meanwhile, many of the true heroes of
Chernobyl, who years before should have been recognized as such, had to go
begging, and lay in hospital beds for yours, exhausted and unheard … And even
after the deaths of these true heroes, their mothers and widows frequently
could not manage to prove that their illnesses were a consequence of their work
on the liquidation of consequences of Chernobyl catastrophe. As these truly
courageous and truly injured people a medical officials often made stamped with
the insulting diagnosis of “radiophobia”
(15) while the make y
themselves made off with Chernobyl pensions and privileges… By the way, without
the corresponding documents.
It is impossible to list all the
other similar uncontrollable circumstances that would have polluted other
territories and the people living there, and which cannot be counted among the
official Chernobyl statistics. Also not
counted would be my sister, who could not stand being apart from her husband,
and who, at the end of May 1986 came to visit him in the Zone for several days. And she did not come alone, but brought both
daughters—Irina (born in 1975) and Olena (born in 1979)—in the spirit of the
wives of the Decembrists… Indeed, this
thoughtless step complicated their fates, since both she and the girls soon
began to have more health problems, which wors, one cannot officially connect all these diseases and deaths
with Chernobyl itself—and this fact has affected thousands of people—many of
whom do not realize that their own health problems (or the deaths of their
relatives) are a result of the accident.
Consider, for example, those residents of Kiev who went to work via Bus
Route 46, the route taken by that long caravan of buses which carried us from
Pripyat on April 27, 1986; I have noticed that that plenty of buses regularly
took this route, since I had often taken it from Pripyat when I went to visit
the homes of my friends who lived in the Voskresenka neighborhood of Kyiv. And how much radioactive dirt was tracked all
over the USSR by the inhabitants of Pripyat who had been happy owners of
cars—the “zhiguli” and “zaporozhec”—since the authorities, in a second
announcement about the evacuation, allowed them to leave independently and to
go wherever they wanted? …en
each year. In addition to a set of
chronic problems that suddenly appeared, each of them has had surgical operations,
as well—Nadezhda has had several … She now needs to have her thyroid removed
because of a tumor which could become fatal at any time, as the doctors tell
her … But she is so tired of hospitals and doctors, on account of the long
years of Anatoly’s illness, that even her daughters cannot convince her to take
even a short course of the vital therapy she needs …
For their sake, and for three
grandsons, she continues her struggle for life.
Nadezhda (which means Hope) no
longer has the strength to believe in a fine future, but she still wants to hope that her daughters and grandsons
will have any future at all! …
And Irina has also had the luck meet
kind people who have supported her family in critical moments, both morally and
financially …
Her family—and about two dozen
Pripyat families—will always remember and bless with special gratitude two
remarkable Bavarian women, Johanna Schuhmeir and Suzanne Henning. They personally, and with the help of their
female friends from the ecological organization “Mutter Gegen Atomkraft,” and
from the Ukrainian Diaspora of Germany (including Olga Tkachenko, Irina Kozak,
and others), during the most complicated years of the post-Soviet period,
offered periodic financial aid, and annually sent many a Christmas parcel,
which not only enriched in those days a very poor Christmas table, but which
literally dressed all members of the family …
Thank God in this cold, pragmatic
world, we still have people with warm and not indifferent hearts (usually
women), who palpably understand the golden rule and the mutual responsibility of kindness! By the way, among other things, Chernobyl has
also revealed very brightly this human faculty of disinterested compassion and
mercy. I think that it would be
necessary to write a separate book about such people, who have helped many
Chernobyl victims to escape from gloomy despair and loneliness, to revive the
belief in God in their souls, and their hope for Kindness and Understanding (16).
Unfortunately, most of the doomed
victims of Chernobyl must now rely for concrete help more from these kind sorts
of people than from any state or international programs and funds … And
certainly, they must rely upon God! …
Inna Matkovskaya still hopes for God
and kind people—she is a young mother from a family of former Pripyat residents
who now lives in our House. Her
daughter, Katya, was born in the summer of 2005 with a very rare syndrome: Mac-Gune-Olbrajt syndrome. Even modern hormone treatments can only hold
off the process of accelerated aging for three years—after that, a fatal
outcome … Our doctors calm the unhappy
mother by telling her that in some countries, there are surgical operations
that can help the baby, but only during the period when the hormone therapy is
still effective. All of Katya’s family,
and even their friends and neighbors, knocked on every door … And now it seems
that even if it were possible to raise the financial resources, there would be
no official of any ministry capable of placing the child in the needed
hospital. The time has almost run out,
and with it, the last hope for the life of the child leaves this family ..
In 2006, the peak of this family’s
despair coincided with the next falsely optimistic official report of the
consequences of the Chernobyl accident by so-called experts of the IAEA … Oh, I would like each one of them—especially
their chief Moscow expert—to glance for one moment into the suffering eyes of
this poor child’s mother, into the eyes of a still living Valentina Ryabuha,
into the eyes of the young pianist Olenka Chemezova dying in agony, and into
the eyes of thousands of people with such a tragic destiny … whether after having done so, their hands,
not having trembled, could truly write such false conclusions … . And whether
the already screaming statistics on the victims of Chernobyl – even the
official ones – might not increase exponentially by taking into account these
individual statistics of truly injured people... Instead, however, these experts are satisfied
and pleased with themselves, writing their dissertations and going to their
various conferences and symposiums; they feed in safety parasitically upon the
Chernobyl catastrophe, while the simple victims of the disaster either die in
pain or barely survive because of chronically insufficient funding of Chernobyl
policies and programs; these experts, in their own comfort, often overlook the
fact that with tragedies like Chernobyl, not all the millions in the bank, nor the
thickest bunkers, nor the richest country houses or high State cabinets, will
be able to protect themselves – for the long hand of Chernobyl’s effect can
reach them, too, or their children, or their grandchildren …
However, I think that many such
officials, having looked into the eyes of the victims, would say that as human beings they could understand
the horrors of all the consequences of the Chernobyl accident, but that as representatives of their respective
ministries and departments, they would have to say that ‘there were no
essentially harmful effects upon the people evacuated from the zone,” and so
forth. Just as in the winter of 1988,
when we interviewed certain “competent people” for our film Threshold (17), one of them stated that “as a regular human being” he agreed
with our conclusions and shared our alarm, but that “as a representative of his
ministry, he had to tell us that…” – at which point the usual lies poured from
his lips
Similar actions are typical of those
who support inhumane technologies, programs, and political systems. For example, in military circles and among those
who support human cloning, there are those who try to convince the world that
it is absolutely safe and can be useful! … Moreover, there are even people (or
more accurately, non-people?) who assert that the Earth could actually sustain a
Chernobyl accident every year!... That is the equivalent of saying that the
Earth could sustain five hundred nuclear bombs set off each year without
harmful effects. After all, the
radiation emitted from Chernobyl amounted to 50 million curies—that is, the
equivalent of five hundred nuclear bombs the size of which were dropped on
Hiroshima in 1945 …
And if all this is so safe, why have
the WHO and the IAE accepted an “Agreement” (4) on the non-disclosure of information about consequences of
nuclear accidents and testing? Why did
the USSR authorities withhold information about Chernobyl (4) and its consequences (4)? Why even now do the
main dissemblers of false information about Chernobyl happen to be leading
experts of the IAEA? And why has the
IAEA—in the face of the current situation, and numerous protests by high
ranking world-class scientists and their organizations—once again compelled the
United Nations to pass, putting it mildly, untrue resolutions about Chernobyl? The answer is simple: they had, and have, something to hide! Or perhaps they are panicking that revealing
the truth would cause mass panic … and they themselves in fact suffer from an
extreme case of “radiophobia”? No, they
aren’t afraid of mass panic, nor do they suffer from that notorious “radiophobia.” What they do fear, however, is losing massive
profits, since nuclear stations are directly connected with manufacturing
military plutonium. Nuclear stations are
the mere flip side of manufacturing nuclear bombs, and thus provide a fig leaf
for those military industries and corporations lobbying to develop nuclear
power all over the world. Just imagine how
much progress could already have made, how much cleaner and safer the world
would be, if all of this enormous effort had been channeled instead into
developing ecologically safe means of alternative power! …
In the years immediately following
the Chernobyl catastrophe, many of us struggled alongside various ecological
organizations to try to combat the lies and falsehoods, the corruption,
arbitrariness, and double standards, that permeated the Soviet regime. And
although I remain convinced that this indefatigable struggle remains necessary,
and that indeed it can change governments and political systems, I have also
come to understand that always and everywhere greedy and unscrupulous people
are attracted to positions of authority.
Unfortunately, human nature has not changed much since the Stone
Age—except that now, humans hold in their hands not stone axes and cudgels, but
modern technology and the unfathomable destructive power of its weapons For
this reason, truly improving the situation and saving our world requires first
that one change oneself, that is, human psychology. And you can read more about that in my
article, “Modelling of the future – a reality”
(18).
And although it sounds strange to
say, in this sense the Chernobyl catastrophe has actually led to some positive
glimmers, including an awakened consciousness and reassessed values of the
majority of the residents of the former USSR—which led to the disintegration of
this huge regime of lies and double standards.
Unfortunately, enduring lies still prevent mankind from learning all its
lessons, beginning with the necessity for each person in the world to undergo a
spiritual regeneration—what Al Gore expressed so well (while he was still US
Vice President) in a speech at the National Chernobyl Museum in the summer of
1998, after he had visited dead Pripyat and the Chernobyl Zone. And I am confident that anyone who acquires
this Chernobyl lesson will never allow anyone to muffle the bell of
Chernobyl! The modern world demands that
each person understand, from an early age, that we all live—in one bundle, as
it were—in a very fragile world where all of us must feel our responsibility
for everyone else. And in order not to
repeat fatal mistakes, we who live in the present, and who think of the future,
are obliged to remember the past…
Unfortunately, with each year that passes, fewer chances remain
to record on paper or film, the living memory of these events, as more and more
heroes, victims and eye-witnesses of the Chernobyl catastrophe pass away to the
“the other world.” But since it is still
not too late, I would be good to issue a book of collected memories, like the
hefty edition on the Great Famine and genocide of 1932-33 (19) in the Soviet Ukraine (the Holodomor) This book by Radjankij
Pismennyk, entitled The Famine of 33;
National Book – Memorial, was
issued published in Kiev in 1991, and collected thousands of living
testimonies.[i] Of course, one such book
will not be enough to make diehard apologists for the communist ideology and
so-called Soviet well-being admit
(you mean “it won’t cause them to admit”; they are quite happy to ‘deny’!) the
fact of this monstrous crime against a whole people. Unfortunately, official institutions around
the world, frequently invested in developing nuclear technology, are often not
interested in preserving the memory of Chernobyl. And our descendents will reap the fruit of
this forgetfulness …
Thank God, I still have the hope that our children will preserve
the memory of the Chernobyl catastrophe and the beloved city of their childhood
and youth: Pripyat. Several years ago, I was pleasantly surprised,
to the point of tears, when I first saw the web site Pripyat.com (20), whose young organizers had collected together with such
affectionate tenderness so much relating to Chernobyl. Even more unexpectedly pleasant for me was
the fact that two years ago, my own son, Alexander Sirota, joined them, and now
he is the editor-in-chief of the Russian internet edition of it. Young enthusiasts of the site have had so
many ideas, plans, and projects for virtually preserving the accurate
historical memory of Chernobyl, including the idea of obtaining an
international designation for Pripyat and the zone around it as the biggest
technological accident of the twentieth-century. To this end, about a year ago, Pripyat.com
and the newpaper “Literary Ukraine” together generated a petition to save the
city of Pripyat (21). On the web site, there is also a virtual
memory book, where eyewitnesses continue to contribute their memories and
testimonies. Perhaps, in time, enough
such testimonies will have been collected to issue a hefty volume, and a
sponsor to realize the project will be found …
A people without memory, humanity that forgets, has no
future—because repeating the mistakes of the past again and again can only lead
to a fatal outcome. Therefore, for the
sake of our planet’s future, we have no right to forget the Chernobyl tragedy
“lest our descendents say, despite any grateful words, not only that we left
them Chernobyl and a spoiled environment, but that we left them without Hope …”
(22)
EPILOGUE
As I was finishing this article, Tamara Golovchak called me to
tell me that her husband, Yuri, died on November 7 (2007). May the kingdom of heaven be his!
He died of a stroke, and although he was plagued by a cluster of
Chernobyl diseases, his main trouble before he died was polycystosis of the
lungs. Note that he was not a smoker,
but he did inhale a lot of radioactive dust while laying pipes beneath the
destroyed ChAES Reactor No. 4 in May of 1986.
Then, some days later, a new dose of poison for all of us
Chernobyl victims emanated from the channels of our television sets: the new United Nations Resolution on Chernobyl
(on November 19, 2007).
In this article, I had originally hoped to outline the fates of
a mere handful of women and their relatives, in order to show the human face of
the problem, and not to focus on the bigger issue of Chernobyl, the great lie—reminding readers of it
only in the Notes. However, while
speaking about individual fates of Chernobyl victims, it is still necessary to
pause and consider this, the most obvious continuing psychological effects
I shall not here comment on the Resolution itself, whose wording
is logical enough, as is its decision, which has sounded in the mass media, to
cease all financial support to the injured countries. For that matter, over the last two decades,
most Chernobyl victims saw practically nothing of any of this support
anyhow—these mythical millions of sponsors’ help (23).
But my fellow countrymen and I are offended by another aspect of
it—namely, by the categorization of Chernobyl victims in this lofty UN
document, and by the head of the UN Program Development for CIS countries,
Louise Vinton, who was interviewed by RIA News. For they have again offered us
“psychological help” to overcome the so-called “radiophobia,” which I have
already mentioned (4). I can assure them that many victims of
Chernobyl would willingly—and free of charge!—share with officials their twenty
years’ plus experience of survival (as would our colleagues in Japan, the hibakusi who survived the nuclear bombing
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki). And note—it
has been heroic survival under
permanent and extreme conditions (24), including the sort of stoic endurance of agonizing suffering
that you have seen in this article… And
how far would these officials (or even the less paid ones) get on the monthly
pension of a “second-class” Chernobyl victim, which has now been ‘raised,’ as
it were, to 515 grivnas (about $100 US)…
In this light, it is simply blasphemous that in the Resolution
they suggest that we limit ourselves to healthy, inspected, certifiably
radioactive-free food. In fact, a lot of
real Chernobyl victims would be glad to get even the bare minimum of any food
at all (recall the plight of the late Valentin Rjabuha, who before she died was
a “first-class” ChAEs invalid)…
I very much regret that my poem “Radiophobia” is still pertinent (15) twenty years after the
Chernobyl accident:
Is this only – a fear of radiation?
Perhaps rather – a fear of wars?
Perhaps – the dread of betrayal,
cowardice, stupidity, lawlessness?
The time has come to sort out
what is – radiophobia.
It is –
when those who've gone through the Chernobyl drama
refuse to submit
to the truth meted out by government ministers
("Here, you swallow exactly this much today!")
We will not be resigned
to falsified ciphers,
base thoughts,
however you brand us!
We don't wish – and don't you suggest it! –
to view the world through bureaucratic glasses!
We're too suspicious!
And, understand, we remember
each victim just like a brother!..
Now we look out at a fragile Earth
through the panes of abandoned buildings.
These glasses no longer deceive us! –
These glasses show us more clearly –
believe me –
the shrinking rivers,
poisoned forests,
children born not to survive…
Mighty uncles, what have you dished out
beyond bravado on television?
How marvelously the children have absorbed
radiation, once believed so hazardous!..
(It's adults who suffer radiophobia –
for kids is it still adaptation?)
What has become of the world
if the most humane of professions
has also turned bureaucratic?
Radiophobia
may you be omnipresent!
Not waiting until additional jolts,
new tragedies,
have transformed more thousands
who survived the inferno
into seers –
Radiophobia might cure
the world
of carelessness, satiety, greed,
bureaucratism and lack of spirituality,
so that we don't, through someone's good will
mutate into non-humankind.
And today, I address this poem to Louise Vinton and all of the
authors of the Resolution, and the “experts” of the WHO and the IAEA who most
likely generated the erroneousness. And yet, they are probably deeply
indifferent to the fates of the victims of this accident; if they were not so,
surely they would be more humane, and not issue statements which actually kill
injured people – for I am sure that many have already suffered fatal heart
attacks and strokes after receiving this official offer of “psychological help” from official
institutions to the victims of Chernobyl.
Let me cite only two of the many other negative consequences of
such statements. First, do these
high-ranking officials really not know that every such word from such a
high-ranking body ends up instructing officials on all the other levels? So in Ukraine (and also in Russia and
Byelorussia), the Chernobyl programs that are already being reduced each year,
might end up being eliminated altogether?
In this way, the Resolution will
have the effect of taking away not only the abstract
so-called help to Chernobyl victims, but also—by jeopardizing real programs
for people who already can hardly make ends meet—forcing them into the barest
struggle for survival, which will surely hasten their death rate. Second, there is the real psychological factor.
Those who make such statements do not understand their devastating on
real victims, who are in fact less afraid
of radiation and life’s stresses than most people. That is because for all these years, these
survivors have practiced all possible means of rehabilitation—from “a healthy
way of life” (25), including both traditional and non-traditional therapies, to
seeking to perfect the spirit (by the way, in the midst of the atheistic USSR,
many “chernobylcy” became devout believers).
And note that this all occurred without the so-called “psychological
help” from high-ranking experts, to whom, I expect, any money from the UN
resolution will once again be directed—that is, it will go to their own
programs and accounts, and not to really helping the victims themselves…
But the worst effect of the Resolution, its assessment and
statement, is that it will once again block the way for simple human
compassion, for even those crumbs of concrete help sent to victims from the
kind and merciful individuals of the world who, believing its lie, might be
persuaded not to respond to any new concrete calls for help (such as Katya
Matkovskaya’s …) So these poor souls,
barely surviving, if not dying, once again get branded with the label
“radiophobia,” and thus, once again, must remain alone in their trouble.
Let me emphasize once again, official gentlemen of the United
Nations, the victims of Chernobyl do not need your so-called sponsored help,
which they never did see, and never will see.
They do not even hope for your compassion.
But
they do demand your elementary respect for their suffering and trouble, which
your thoughtless assessment and statement only aggravate …
Moreover,
the victims of Chernobyl would be very grateful if international organization
as respected as the United Nations would pass a Resolution condemning—indeed,
holding criminally responsible—anyone who dares to brand another with the
unreasonable and humiliating term, “radiophobia”!
It is necessary to add that the articles of the Resolution about
the decade of rehabilitation and steady development of the areas hurt by the
Chernobyl accident, even within the limits of the 30 km “zone of alienation”
around the ChAES, are surely correct. But this assessment should also be more
specific and verified by radiation levels in each particular community (because
even in some villages quite a distance from the station, we found places and
stains with high radiation levels, whereas near the 10 km zone, there were
places with more or less normal readings).
However, the main point to notice (and admitted by the Resolution
itself) is the stipulation that no one should occupy the 10 km zone around the
station, which remains most dangerous for people to live in, and which will
remain so for hundreds, even thousands, of years (26).
Regarding the city of Pripyat, however, and its absence in the
Resolution, it seems that someone would like to wipe its name from the map—perhaps
so that mankind might forget Chernobyl, and so that nuclear magnates might
continue constructing the most dangerous objects on the planet!
To conclude this article, then, let me once again remind all
people of good will, including those in such a high-ranking organization as the
United Nations, of the very important initiative—so important for ecological,
social, cultural, political, and psychological reasons—introduced by the
organizers of Pripyat.com and the editors of “Literary Ukraine”: that Pripyat be granted international status
as a City, Museum, or Monument to the world’s most devastating technological
accident of the twentieth century (21). And
we would be most grateful if the UN General Assembly could add it as an article
to the Resolution on Chernobyl so that our Pripyat might continue for years and
years to be a Reminder, to prevent other such tragedies and catastrophes from
happening again the in future.
2007,
Kyiv, Ukraine
[i] Robert Conquest’s landmark
1986 study Harvest of Sorrow:Soviet
Collectivization and the Terror-Famine published by Oxford University Press
is the authoritative account of this event.
Notes:
1. “Chernobyl, – byl'nik m., byl' (bylina); byl'ec.; byl'njak`; koniki; budyl'nik`(alarm clock), – the kind of the large wormwood (polun)” (Vladimir Dal’).
2. “The third Angel blew, and the big star has fallen from the sky, burning like the lamp, and it has fallen on a third part of the rivers and on sources of waters. And name of this star was polun; and the third part of waters has become bitter like polun’, and many of people have died of waters, because they became bitter.” (Revelation, VIII-10,11.).
3. On December, 1, 2007 when I have already finished translation of this article in English, my Australian friend Michael Barry has informed me that the new government of Australia under pressure of the public has refused plans of construction of nuclear stations (see Michael Barry' site "The Nuclear Flower"). Thank God! – That though there the common sense has won.
4. See the article of Michael Fernex "The Chernobyl catastrophe and Health care", in which See the article of Michael Fernex "The Chernobyl catastrophe and Health care", in which he has explained why the World Health Organization (WHO) remained absent during the first five after the Chernobyl accident on health studies and in particular studies on the genome and why this Organization still remains so inefficient in this field by the fact that it is still blocked by an "Agreement" signed in 1959 with the International Agency for Atomic Energy, (IAEA). The secret documents of the Ministry of Health and other departments of the former USSR about concealment of real consequences Chernobyl not less eloquently confirm a reality of such criminal "Agreement".
Only some facts from secret documents about Chernobyl catastrophe:
I. From the Letter of the chief of 3-rd Central administrative board of the Ministry of Health of USSR Shul'zhenko№ У-2617 from 27.06.86 "About amplification of a mode of privacy at performance of works on liquidation of consequences of accident on the Chernobyl atomic power station", in which it was recommended:
4. To make secret information on accident;
8. To make secret information on results of treatment;
9. To make secret information on a degree of radioactive defeat of the personnel participating in liquidation of consequences of accident on the ChAES.
II. An explanation of central MMC (Military-Medical Commission) of the Ministry of Defence of the USSR from 08.07.87 № 205 signed by the chief 10 MMC the colonel of medical service V.Bakshutov, addressed to the military commissariats:
* Presence of sharp somatic frustration, and also attributes of an aggravation of chronic diseases at the persons, who are involved in liquidation of consequences of accident of the Chernobyl atomic electric station (ChAES) and not having attributes Sharp Radiation Sickness (SSS), should not be put in a causal relationship with influence of radiation.
* At drawing up of certificates on illness not transferred in SSS at the persons, who were involved in work on the ChAES, in item 10 to not reflect the fact of involving them to the specified works and the total dose of the irradiation which have not reached a degree of sharp radiation sickness.
This explanation does not contain instructions on the definition of illness on the basis of given research of the patient, and orders notorious distortion of the origins of disease, falsification of diagnostics, and consequently also wrong treatment.
III. “The List of data on questions of accident on the Chernobyl atomic power station, which forbidden to publication in an open seal, transfers by radio and TV ", authorized by the decision of the governmental commission № 514 from February, 29, 1988, restricted the following data:
1. Data on a level of radiating pollution on the separate settlements, exceeding a maximum permissible level /MPL/.
2. Data on parameters of deterioration of physical serviceability, loss of professional skills of the operational personnel working in special conditions on the Chernobyl atomic power station, or the persons involved in works on liquidation of consequences of accident.
IV. The directive letter of the First deputy minister of public health Services of the USSR of Shchepina O.P. (21.05.86 № 02-6/83-6), addressed to Minister of Health Ukrainian SSR Romanenko A.E., in which it is underlined, that "according to earlier given instructions, to the persons who have undergone influence of radioactive radiation, taking place in a hospital and not having attributes of sharp radiation sickness, must be established the diagnosis "vegeto-vascular distony".
And further: "to the workers involved in emergency works, at reception of maximum permissible beam loading and in case of their receipt in a hospital for inspection to expose also the diagnosis"vegeto-vascular distony"like the practically healthy persons and not to involve them to the further emergency works on a target term".
Thus, Ministry of Health of the USSR, by default, without inspection of patients and presence of the clinical data, without taking into account a state of health and specific features of each of victims or patients as a result of influence on them ion radiation, at absence of data on a concrete doze of the irradiation and a stage of development of illness, in infringement of medical ethics and the constitutional Law on health protection, demanded of all medical institutions subordinated to it and workers to recognize as all their healthy and to expose preset by the ministry common for everybody, i.e. collective, the diagnosis: vegeto-vascular distony.”
----------------------------
I think that such facts don’t need comments!
In our film "Threshold" (17) there is the episode, filmed in the spring of 1988 in the All-Union Science Centre of Radiation Medicine of Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR (ASCRM AMS USSR) in Pusha Voditsa (where, by the way, with 1987 on 1992 I also had "the treatment" on two - three times in year). In this episode: sick people have gathered in the yard of this clinic and very emotionally tell to Rollan Sergienko about lie and double standards which reign in this "medical" establishment... I shall not describe all this drama episode (thank God, now you can see this in our film), I shall tell to you only about "personal statistics" of one sick liquidator Nikolay Zhukov, which tells there about, that the military department has taken from their small village on liquidation of consequences of Chernobyl accident a 5 persons (young and healthy!) and that in result: four from them, to whom have written down as much as possible allowable dozes of an irradiation -- 25 BER (the biological equivalent of a roentgen), now are hardly sick. And the young guy, to whom they have written a doze 5 BER, has already died…" Also that now he (Zhukov) - the invalid, has the whole bouquet of chronic diseases and he has named diseases practically of all bodies and systems of an organism…In the conclusion of his monologue he shows the five fingers of a hand and speaks: "Look! Us was five healthy people! Because they did not take to Chernobyl the sick people! And what I can to do now?!. Whonow will take me for work of such sick?!. For whom I ‘m necessary?!...). Soon he too has died! -- The Empire heavenly to him!..
Unfortunately, the majority of true victims of Chernobyl have approximately same "the personal statistics".
5. See site "The First Centre for Memories, Biographies and Testimonies of Women".
**
The author of a story "The woman in the zone" Svitlana Jovenko also was the initiator and the composer of the unique English-Ukrainian edition the book-photoalbum "Chernobyl concerns everyone", Kiev, publishing house "Dnipro", 2000, the interview with Svitlana Jovenko in Ukrainian see here: http://www.umoloda.kiev.ua/number/969/164/35225/;
***
About great Ukrainian poetess and the known keeperof the Chernobyl memory and Chernobyl traditions Lina Kostenko see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lina_Kostenko.
7. See the photoalbum "Chernobyl: time of overcomings", Kiev, "Chernobylinterinform", 2001.
8. L. A. Iljin - theacademician of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR, director of Institute of biophysics of Ministry of Health of the USSR. Also he - the main creator of the lie about the medical consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe and the author of the term the"radiophobia", which became one of main among psychological factors of deterioration of health of victims of Chernobyl... For this his activity for the sake of covering one more of the long circuit of the awful crimes of USSR L.A.Iljin from 1988 became the person non-grata in Ukraine. And now this person – is the main expert (!!!) of the IAEA.
" … Academician V.Legasov told to writer Alesya Adamovichu, that he daily reported conditions on the Chernobyl atomic power station to members of the Political bureau, but their attitude was unequivocal: "Terminate faster there with your accident, – at us here the West very noisy". The governments of two injured republics also constantly reported on a situation there to the Prime-Minister N.Ryzhkov. The Ukrainian Party Leader V. ShCherbitsky asked the help, but his Belarus colleague Slyunkov presented situation there as normal. Not casually in Belarus the evacuation of the population from the struck districts began only in three years after Chernobyl catastrophe. They presented “the tested medicine“ – the lie to population, which was alarmed not on the joke.The CPSU, Soviets and science together bleached a situation. Vice-president of Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR L.Iljin and the head of the State Committee on Hydrometeorology of the USSR J.Izrael, perfectly knowing scales of disaster, generously distributed the "soothing pills of lie".Even the criminal liability for use by the citizens of dosimeters has been entered, in particular, in time of the purchase of food in the markets and at the shops, that the population could not deny the false data. The government has established fifteen rubles of the extra payment to people living in the infected zones, that witty people have there and then christened as "mortals" (for the coffin – the comment of L.S.). The Soviet authorities have presented the false data and in the IAEA too. They have declared, that emission of radioactive substances in an atmosphere was 3 % while actually it has reached 80 %. Group of deputies of a Supreme Soviet of the USSR have addressed in 1989 to the General Public Prosecutor of the USSR A.J.Suharev with the requirement about excitation of criminal case against those officials, which by their lie have doomed on the silent extinction of people in zones of radioactive pollution. By the end of 1989 the deputies have received the answer-formal reply from Office of Public Prosecutor of the USSR, in which they was informed about the engaging to the criminal responsibility of the heads of the Chernobyl atomic power station (that is - have again punished "switchmen" – the comment of L.S.)... " (N.Mormul " Total lie").
By the way, after removal of the governmental secret from the theme Chernobyl, it's became obvious - how many harm thistotal liehas brought. In first, inmedical and social aspects– when people have not been provided with the sufficient information and means of protection, and that has considerably increased the received dozes of radiation, besides, thisliehas removed terms of the probable help to victims. Second, not pseudo, and the realpsychological factoralso considerably increased consequences of Chernobyl accident, - it was the notorious term"radiophobia", by which in the first years after Chernobyl catastrophe the official medicine "has branded" victims. Thus, compelling them constantly to prove to physicians and associates, that their sudden problems with health and their sufferings are really connected to influence of the ionized radiation, instead of with their suspiciousness and "stresses". Such necessity daily to prove, that "you are not a camel", distortion by physicians of the real changes in your organism, not sympathy and nonunderstanding of people around you, more trusted to lie of the authorities which generated your trouble and have thrown you alone with it – every day increased feeling of injustice, depression and a hopelessness of the real victims of Chernobyl, and also worsened their health. Thank God, in 1988 the public nevertheless could break this wall of lie and falseness (with the help of our film "Threshold" too), that at once has much more facilitated a psychological condition of victims and has opened a way for from social protection...
11. Father Zhenya – Vladimir Dudarov, the friend and colleague of Ivan Chemezov, was the musician of thePripyat musical group "Pulsar" too (a little about the group "Pulsar" see here: https://youtu.be/7CB4raseGy0 ).
12. About Anatoly Klopotenko see the article of V. Krasilnik "Nash Batya" (Our Dad), the newspaper "POST CHERNOBYL", № 9, September 2004, in Ukrainian.
13. The announcement of the temporary evacuation of the population of Pripyat (as informally they have explained to us then - for three days, but it has appeared for all life!) first time has sounded on a city radio network on April, 27, 1986 at 13.30.
The text of the official announcement of the evacuation was such:
"Attention! Attention! Dear comrades!
The city council of People's Deputies informs, that in connection with the accident on the Chernobyl atomic power station in city of Pripyat there is adverse radiating conditions. The Soviet and Party organs, military units undertake necessary measures. However with the purpose of the providing of full safety of people, and first of all of children, there is a necessity to carry out temporary evacuation of city dwellers in the nearby settlements of the Kiev area. For this purpose to each apartment house today on April, 27, since 14-00 hours, buses will be sent in accompanied byworkersof militia and representatives of city executive committee. It is recommended to take with itself the documents, extremely necessary things, and also the food on the first case. Heads of the enterprises and establishments determine a circle of workers, which remain on a place for the ensuring of the normal functioning city. All apartment houses for the period of evacuation will be protected by the workers of militia. Comrades, temporarily leaving the habitation, please do not overlook to close a windows, will switch off electric and gas devices, to block water faucets. We ask to observe calmness, organization and order at the realization of temporary evacuation."
Audio record of the real announcement of evacuation you can see in our film "Threshold", now it sounds almost in all films about Chernobyl.
14. Lieutenant colonel Anatoliy Nikolaevich Klopotenko speaks about the this fact in film of the Spanish cinematographers "Radiophobia", 2005 - shortly before his death. Lieutenant colonel Anatoliy Nikolaevich Klopotenko speaks about the this fact in film of the Spanish cinematographers "Radiophobia", 2005 - shortly before his death (about the film see here: https://youtu.be/6oLWdAKHMDk).
16. Many facts of the display of high mercy are already described in the book of Natalia Baranovskaya "Ukraine. Chernobyl. The world"(Kiev, Nika-Center, 1999), however, as far as I know, this book so and has not reached the wide reader.
21. The text of the Appeal to the President, the Government and the Supreme Rada of Ukraine, to the Chapters of all countries of the world, the Council of Europe, UNESCO, the United Nations about granting to city Pripyat the international status of the City -- museum, the City - monument of the greatest technological accident of a planet see here: https://youtu.be/TpRqrEc1QV4 .
23. For example, even in the first months after accident because of bureaucratic inconsistency we with the girlfriend could not receive even the sum in 50Soviet rubles from the international Red Cross. The truth, then in Polesskoe (where, after evacuation, all Pripyat organizations and the enterprises temporarily were placed) we have received on 15 rubles so-called – "for theelevating".
24. Also us all time try to convince, that after"radiophobia" (15) the main frompsychological the factorsof disease of the population, is the stress connected to resettlement and constant social and economic problems. I not deny presence and influence of all these kinds of stress, however I shall remind, that theconditions of a survival in the former USSR have made people over hardy, especially to any stresses. Therefore people speak: that for the European or the American – will death, for the former inhabitant of the USSR – it's a real nothing! And it – the truth!..
For ex ample, similarly to the majority of inhabitants of the former USSR, before Chernobyl I also had a lot of the personal stresses from too heavy vital situations and problems: from long not having of own habitation and constant shortage of money; from heavy divorce with the father of my son and the search of a new residence and work, practically without livelihood with the small child on hands, (thank God, I have found all of it then in Pripyat) – to my mum's death, which was too heavy for me, etc., etc. Not speaking, about social and political problems, and, first of all - the absence of freedom, i.e. the life in a stuffy atmosphere of a constant hopelessness (who did not live in conditions of full absence of freedom, hardly can understand this permanentpsychological factor, the pressure of which cannot be compared with any stresses and phobias!!!).
And the main thing, at least, three times (not including often crossings on another's, removed apartments!) I have been compelled to change various residences: from the farewell with then loved city of my childhood and youth Frunze (the capital of Kirghizia, nowadays – Bishkek) and the moving together with parents on the native land of our ancestors – Ukraine in 1975; in first in Kherson (where I had too gloomy and hopeless life), and then with the husband – in the nice young city Komsomolsk of Poltava area; and, at last, after divorce – in young, fine city of Pripyat (which I loved at once), where I have moved, having left to my former husband (and his new wife!) just hardly received new apartment …, etc., etc. But all these stresses and problems only have mobilized my forces, activity and work capacity!!! Thus,then I was not simply absolutely healthy and extremely active, – I always knew (felt!), that I can do all is absolutely (from any heaviest physical, intellectual and creative work – up to any psychological and emotional loadings!!!)...
BUT after Chernobyl my life was changed cardinally already half-year later, when I for the first time in a life (except for a maternity home!) has appeared in a hospital (after temporary loss of vision and in a heavy condition) where I have stayed almost three months (and then - constant hospitals, surgical operations etc.)!.. But most of all then I was oppressed even by not various frequently sudden pains, unexpected losses of consciousness and a constant, unusual weakness, -namely suddenly sharply broken rhythm of a life when I have felt suddenly that I can not almost anything (any time on a habit I still promised any people something to make, but even more often I could not fulfill these promises!)... I.e., as other victims, I should was adapt for a new rhythm and new way of life too for a long time.Even now, though I already for a long time have learned to be pleased to everything, that I able to make (even to the smallest!), sometimes I nevertheless have some despair from my ultralow capacity to work now. I confess that this article, which was promised to Natalia Fernandez, I wrote more one year (by small portions and with the big breaks), though up to Chernobyl (or as at us speak, before "war") I would write it only during a pair of nights!.. But, that the most important, I with the great pleasure would spend the rest of forces for realization of creative plans, which much more pleasant and more lightthan the Chernobyl theme. However, unfortunately, constant aspiration of known forces to ignore or pervert a consequences of this timeless tragedy and simple human problems of majority of the victims of Chernobyl practically do not give to me an opportunity to make anything else.
25. By the way, about "a healthy way of life" – among the injured population of people with harmful habits is much less, than even among the usual population of Europe and the USA, let alone Russia and Belarus, which really suffer from these problems (Ukraine, in this sense, does not differ from other European countries). – As the majority even from those from them, who up to Chernobyl hadharmful habits, because of serious problems with health have stopped to drink and smoke (for example, the same Anatoly Klopotenko who up to Chernobyl was the inveterate smoker, after returning from a zone at once has completely refused this harmful habit because of sharp deterioration of health). Probably, the data of the so-calledexpertsabout harmful habits among the injured population are based on their supervision on the "liquidators" and those who now works in territory of the Chernobyl zone. As, not a secret, that from first months after Chernobyl accident there the opinion has been widely distributed that alcohol reduces influence of radiation, therefore intoxication became norm for workers of a zone and station - I also can testify to it, unfortunately! But this fact cannot be distributed on all the liquidators and, especially, on the evacuated population and all injured people, because overwhelming majority of us - peoplewhich are not drinking and not smoking!Even those some destinies of victims,which I have mentioned in this article are deny this false thesis of the Resolution that "a unhealthy way of life, smoking, alcoholismhave the more expressed negative character than the radiation", because almost all heroes of this article even up to Chernobyl had no harmful habits…
Activity of radionuclides in a reactor of №4 of the CHAES at the time of accident
radionuclide
|
period of half-disintegration T(l/2), day
|
Power output , МэВ/of disintegration
|
Activity absolute, МКи
|
239Np
|
2,35
|
0,16
|
720
|
99Mо
|
2,75
|
0,28
|
160
|
132Tе
|
3,25
|
0,24
|
73
|
132I
|
(3,25)
|
1,84
|
|
131I
|
8,04
|
0,39
|
86
|
140Ва
|
12,8
|
0,18
|
135
|
140La
|
(12,8)
|
2,30
|
|
141Cе
|
32,5
|
0,80
|
150
|
103Ru
|
39,4
|
0,49
|
130
|
89Sr
|
52
|
0
|
63
|
91Y
|
58
|
0
|
70
|
95Zr
|
64
|
0,74
|
130
|
95Nb
|
(64)
|
0,76
|
130
|
110mAg
|
250
|
2,84
|
0,5
|
144Ce
|
284
|
0,02
|
90
|
106Ru
|
367
|
0,20
|
60
|
134Cs
|
2,06
|
1,55
|
4,0
|
125Sb
|
2,77
|
0,44
|
0,7
|
90Sr
|
28,8
|
0
|
6
|
137Cs
|
30,2
|
0,57
|
8
|
238Pu
|
87,7
|
0
|
0,02
|
239Pu
|
24380
|
0
|
0,02
|
240Pu
|
6537
|
0
|
0,03
|
242Cm
|
163
|
0
|
0,49
|
* In the sequence of increase Т (1/2).
** In brackets the half-life period of the mother's radionuclide is specified.
--------------------------
Also it is necessary to take into account, that as a result of accident many new elements were formed. Still in 1988 our Ukrainian academician of biophysical sciences Dmitrij Grodzinsky wrote about it.He named more than 200 elements, but on his opinion the most dangerous from all –it's so-called “hot particles” - the alloy of different elements with the plumbum, which by hundreds tons was dumped in the destroyed reactor. Notice, that till now there are only the devices, capable tomeasure only some the radionuclides acquired by the person (briefly living iodine both long living strontium and cesium!). Presence of “hot particles” in an organism of the person (most of all in a lungs) was observed by the Belarus scientists only after death of victims (one “hot particle” irradiates fabrics around of itself up to 3000 roentgens – BER, biological equivalent of a radio-activity), therefore the cancer of lungs so frequently was met at the Belarus machine operators and tractor operators already from 1988, and the more often – than closer to a zone of the rigid radioactive control they worked...
At all it, it is possible to assert that the lie about Chernobyl - really most radioactive element on the Earth!
FROM THE VICTIMS OF THE CHERNOBYL CATASTROPHE": 
