Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

by Svetlana Alexievich

it was an accident that produced, in a way, more survivors than victims—and this book is about them.

they are ordinary human activities gone terribly berserk.

“It was probably sabotage. Someone set it up. All the guys think so.” That’s what people were saying then. That’s what they thought.

He always used to say to me: “You have no idea how beautiful Moscow is! Especially on V-Day, when they set off the fireworks. I want you to see it.” I’m sitting with him in the room, he opens his eyes. “Is it day or night?” “It’s nine at night.” “Open the window! They’re going to set off the fireworks!” I opened the window. We’re on the eighth floor, and the whole city’s there before us! There was a bouquet of fire exploding in the air. “Look at that!” I said. “I told you I’d show you Moscow. And I told you I’d always give you flowers on holidays . . .” I look over, and he’s getting three carnations from under his pillow. He gave the nurse money, and she bought them.

But he—he—every day I would hear: Dead. Dead. Tischura is dead. Titenok is dead. Dead. It was like a sledgehammer to my brain.

“You have to understand: this is not your husband anymore, not a beloved person, but a radioactive object with a strong density of poisoning.

He only fell asleep at night after he’d taken my hand. That was a habit of his—to hold my hand while he slept. All night. So in the hospital I take his hand and don’t let go.

You’re sitting next to a nuclear reactor.” It’s all mine . . . it’s my love.

I came back from the cemetery and called the nurse’s post right away. “How is he?” “He died fifteen minutes ago.” What? I was there all night. I was gone for three hours! I came up to the window and started shouting: “Why? Why?” I looked up at the sky and yelled. The whole building could hear me. They were afraid to come up to me. Then I came to: I’ll see him one more time! Once more! I run down the stairs. He was still in his bio-chamber, they hadn’t taken him away yet. His last words were “Lyusya! Lyusenka!” “She’s just stepped away for a bit, she’ll be right back,” the nurse told him. He sighed and went quiet. I didn’t leave him anymore after that. I escorted him all the way to the grave site.

Four hours later they told me she was dead. And again: we won’t give her to you. What do you mean you won’t give her to me? It’s me who won’t give her to you! You want to take her for science. I hate your science! I hate it!

I killed her. I. She. Saved. My little girl saved me, she took the whole radioactive shock into herself, she was like the lightning rod for it. She was so small. She was a little tiny thing. [She has trouble breathing.] She saved . . . But I loved them both. Because—because you can’t kill something with love, right? With such love! 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.

If we’d beaten Chernobyl, people would talk about it and write about it more. Or if we’d understood Chernobyl. But we don’t know how to capture any meaning from it. We’re not capable of it. We can’t place it in our human experience or our human time-frame.

We had political officers, they’d hold political discussions with us. We were told that we had to win. Against whom? The atom? Physics? The universe?

But no one believed it. How can you believe in something incomprehensible?

Write about it? I think it’s senseless. You can’t explain it, you can’t understand it.

“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.”

At first, the question was, Who’s to blame? But then, when we learned more, we started thinking, What should we do? How do we save ourselves? After coming to terms with the fact that this would not be for one year or for two, but for many generations, we began to look back, turning the pages.

We didn’t understand then that the peaceful atom could kill, that man is helpless before the laws of physics.

Our propaganda in motion. A whole factory of daydreams. Even here our myths were at work, defending us: see, we can survive anything, even on dead earth.

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.

Everyone called them heroes. [Cries.] It’s impossible to suffer like this without any meaning. Without any of the old words.

We—I mean all of us—we haven’t forgotten Chernobyl. We never understood it. What do savages understand about lightning?

There is a lot of romance in those words. For me, for my generation—I’m sorry, I see by your reaction, you think I am celebrating something terrible, instead of human genius.

They believed in their physics, they were of the generation that believed in it. But the era of physics ended at Chernobyl.

The apocalypse—nuclear winter—in Western literature this has already all been written, as if they were rehearsing it. They were preparing for the future.

This man-made version of the end of the world has been taught since the industrial revolution of the eighteenth century. But atom bombs won’t disappear even after they destroy the last warhead. There will still be the knowledge of atom bombs.

decisions. We turned out to be defenseless. That was the main feeling in those days. Just a few people were deciding our fate, the fate of millions. At the same time, a few people could kill us all. They weren’t maniacs, and they weren’t criminals. They were just ordinary workers at a nuclear power plant. When I understood that, I experienced a very strong shock. Chernobyl opened an abyss, something beyond Kolyma, Auschwitz, the Holocaust. A person with an ax and a bow, or a person with a grenade launcher and gas chambers, can’t kill everyone. But with an atom . . .

We annulled their labor, the ancient meaning of their lives. We were their enemies.

look back on those days. I was close to something then. Something fantastical. I don’t have the words to describe it. And the words, “gigantic,” “fantastic,” they just don’t do it. I had this feeling . . . What? I haven’t had that feeling again even in love.

Our politicians are incapable of thinking about the value of an individual life, but then we’re not capable of it either.

hut! For us, city dwellers, the home is a machine for living in. For them it’s an entire world, the cosmos.

Because you need to add something to this ordinary life, in order to understand it. Even when you’re near death.

They talked about Chernobyl like it was an accident, an ordinary accident.

This is already history—the history of a crime.

families. They’re swimming, tanning. They don’t know that for several weeks now they’ve been swimming and tanning underneath a nuclear cloud.

I’m afraid to say it, but we love Chernobyl. It’s become the meaning of our lives. The meaning of our suffering. Like a war. The world found out about our existence after Chernobyl. It was our window to Europe. We’re its victims, but also its priests. I’m afraid to say it, but there it is.

And this is right next to a deep philosophy—their relationship with death, with time. It’s not for some gum and German chocolate that they refuse to leave these peasant huts they’ve been living in their whole lives.

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.

The doctors said that I got sick because my father worked at Chernobyl. And after that I was born. I love my father.

Yulia, Katya, Vadim, Oksana, Oleg, and now Andrei. “We’ll die, and then we’ll become science,” Andrei used to say. “We’ll die and everyone will forget us,” Katya said. “When I die, don’t bury me at the cemetery, I’m afraid of the cemetery, there are only dead people and crows there,” said Oksana. “Bury me in the field.” Yulia used to just cry. The whole sky is alive for me now when I look at it, because they’re all there.

I work in a library, I read a lot of books, I meet many people. I want to talk about death, to understand it. I’m looking for consolation. I read in the papers, in books, I go to the theater if it’s about death.

I’d say, “How does this taste?” He wouldn’t know.

They say, “Chernobyl,” and they write, “Chernobyl.” But no one knows what it is. Something frightening opened up before us. Everything is different for us: we aren’t born the same, we don’t die the same. If you ask me, How do people die after Chernobyl?

On the last day, there was this moment, he opened his eyes, sat up, smiled and said: “Valyushka!” That’s me. He died alone. As everyone dies alone.

Even the dead fear these dead.

Who took him away from me? By what right?

All the talk about how the land, the water, the air can kill them sounds like a fairy tale to them. They have their own tale, which is a very old one, and they believe in it—it’s about how people kill one another with guns.

But the Zone—it’s a separate world, a world within the rest of the world—and it’s more powerful than anything literature has to say.

These people had already seen what for everyone else is still unknown. I felt like I was recording the future.