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Book Reviews
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Voices from Chernobyl:
The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
by Svetlana Alexievich
(240 pages; Dalkey Archive Press, 2005. www.dalkeyarchive.com)
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I first visited Kiev, Ukraine, in 1996, shortly after the tenth anniversary of the world’s worst civilian nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, and, coincidentally enough, the same year the oral histories in this grim and haunting book were being compiled. As a documentary filmmaker, I found myself exploring the Chernobyl museum, principally a memorial to the fallen firefighters who battled that blaze. Alongside a plastic model of the crippled reactor was an older style computer, its monitor staring at me blankly. I figured this was the display terminal I had heard about which demonstrated the radiation fallout patterns over Europe, and since it didn’t appear to be working, I thought I would do what ever old-school DOS user knows: I pushed Ctrl-Alt-Del on the keyboard and waited. About a minute later, an older docent came up the stairs, screaming at me in Ukrainian, which I did not understand. Thankfully, a younger man appeared, calmed her down, and explained my error. On the roof of the museum is a map of the world, and for each reactor, a small, embedded light bulb. In my callous attempt to “fix” the problem, I had blacked out the entire western hemisphere. So it is, that a simple human error can have seemingly global consequences.
Now, on the twentieth anniversary of the nuclear tragedy comes a well-documented and extensive oral history on the subject, the facts of which are well enough known: In the wee hours of April 26, 1986, operators at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station were experimenting with an attempt to see at how low a power level the reactor could be safely operated; in order to do so, they had to disable manually some of the safety systems. Their experiment failed, and in a matter of seconds the power excursion literally blew the lid off the reactor. In the hours and days that followed, hundreds of men, “liquidators” as they were known, were called in to battle the fire that raged out of control. As these oral history stories reveal, most were unaware of the dangers that awaited them. They were given none of the shielding or protective gear that was mandatory in the West for such an operation. A physician who had made such recommendations had been censored and now lives with the guilt of not having spoken out more forcefully. Many soldiers recall being told to drink shots of vodka for protection from the radiation. Some of these men were military conscripts, “coerced” into a job they would rather not have done; others had only thoughts of being heroes and saving the “Motherland,” themselves only a generation removed from their patriarchs who fought so valiantly against the Germans in World War II. We saw echoes of this on September 11th, when so many firefighters, with duty as their highest calling, rushed to the rescue, with no thought for their own safety.
There were very few immediate deaths. The slow, lingering death from cancers came years later, and the dead are no longer present to tell their tales. However, the interviews with their survivors — wives and children whose lives were shattered — are at times almost too painful to read. This is a book that at best can be taken, like the radiation itself, only in small doses, for its impact is equally searing, burning you from the inside out. As one mother writes:
We were expecting our first child. My husband wanted a boy and I wanted a girl. The doctors tried to convince me: “You should get an abortion. Your husband was at Chernobyl.” He was a truck driver; they called him in during the first days. He drove sand. But I didn’t believe anyone. The baby was born dead. She was missing two fingers. A girl. I cried. “She should at least have fingers,” I thought. “She’s a girl.”
Then there is the macabre humor:
If you don’t play, you lose. There was a Ukrainian woman at the market selling big red apples. “Come get your apples! Chernobyl apples.” Someone told her not to advertise that; no one will buy them. “Don’t worry!” she says. “They buy them anyway. Some need them for their mother-in-law, some for their boss.’”
Memoir after memoir, these dark tales unfold with the brooding overtones and almost medieval surreality of the central Europe in Jerzy Kozinski’s stories: Hunters paid to roam the countryside, hired to kill the pets and farm animals the residents were forced to leave behind when ordered to evacuate; refusniks who stayed behind, defying soldiers and demanding that “moonsuit”-clad scientists “show them” this “so-called radiation.” Even more disturbing are accounts of the heavily contaminated “hot zone” being resettled by war refugees from Tajikistan, who have no memory of the incident and wonder if it can be any worse to live in a place where you can’t “see” your enemy.
The cumulative effect of these personal monologues is a study in the clash between a largely rural, agricultural society living much as they had in the 19th Century suddenly forced to deal with a 20th Century phenomenon beyond their comprehension. They watch as their once fertile soil is plowed under, their houses buried, all the while asking, “What is this atom? Can you show it to us?” Behind their pleas, one senses anger, loss, and mostly, a sense of betrayal by their government.
It is fitting that this book, difficult though the reading may be, appears at the time of a renewed push for nuclear energy, touted as a solution to global warming. We cannot forget the consequences associated with nuclear power — even as our own experience with Three Mile Island seems forgotten among today’s youth. While it is oft repeated that reactors of the type built at Chernobyl aren’t used in western or developed nations, it should be remembered that it is not simply the technology that was at fault at Chernobyl. What happened at Chernobyl (and Three Mile Island) was human error, and because we can never be perfect, neither can the machines. In fact, the specially built robots designed to “remotely” clean up Chernobyl all failed, while the humans continued to work (their mechanism only failing after years of protracted illness). This book is a sober reminder of the hubris of technology and the all-too-human consequences of its failure. m
David Weisman (davidweisman@charter.net) is a video oral historian living in Morro Bay, and the board president of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility. The Alliance is planning to commemorate Chernobyl in April, 2006. Get updated information at www.a4nr.org.
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