Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

by Svetlana Alexievich

In 1986 the Soviets threw untrained and unprotected men at the reactor just as in 1941 they’d thrown untrained, unarmed men at the Wehrmacht, hoping the Germans would at least have to stop long enough to shoot them.

I remember an old woman janitor, who taught me: “There are sicknesses that can’t be cured. You just have to sit and watch them.”

Why are these things together—love and death. Together. Who’s going to explain this to me? I crawl around the grave on my knees.

I prayed that we’d go together. Some gods would have done it, but He didn’t let me die.

The place we called our motherland doesn’t exist, and neither does that time, which was also our motherland.

Don’t write about the wonders of Soviet heroism. They existed—and they really were wonders. But first there had to be incompetence, negligence, and only after those did you get wonders: covering the embrasure, throwing yourself in front of a machine gun. But that those orders should never have been given, that there shouldn’t have been any need, no one writes about that. They flung us there, like sand onto the reactor. Every day they’d put out a new “Action Update”: “men are working courageously and selflessly,” “we will survive and triumph.”

But I know people robbed the place, took out everything they could lift and carry. They transported the Zone back here. You can find it at the markets, the pawn shops, at people’s dachas. The only thing that remained behind the wire was the land. And the graves. And our health. And our faith. Or my faith.

“They picked out spots for the churches literally from heaven. The church fathers had visions. Secret rites were performed before they built the churches. But they built the nuclear power plant like a factory. Like a pigsty. They poured asphalt on for the roof. And it was melting.”

You have no idea how much of what was sent into the Zone as aid came out of it as contraband: coffee, canned beef, ham, oranges. It was taken out in crates, in vans. Because no one had those products anywhere. The local produce salesmen, the inspectors, all the minor and medium bureaucrats lived off this. People turned out to be worse than I thought. And me, too. I’m also worse. Now I know this about myself.

Everyone found a justification for themselves, an explanation. I experimented on myself. And basically I found out that the frightening things in life happen quietly and naturally.

But that’s also a form of barbarism, the absence of fear for oneself. We always say “we,” and never “I.” “We’ll show them Soviet heroism,” “we’ll show them what the Soviet character is made of.” We’ll show the whole world! But this is me, this is I. I don’t want to die. I’m afraid.

On the way back, the sun is setting, I say, “Look at how beautiful this land is!” The sun is illuminating the forest and the fields, bidding us farewell. “Yes,” one of the Germans who speaks Russian answers, “it’s pretty, but it’s contaminated.” He has a dosimeter in his hand. And then I understand that the sunset is only for me. This is my land. I’m the one who lives here.