Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

by Svetlana Alexievich

“They asked the Armenian broadcaster: ‘Maybe there are Chernobyl apples?’ ‘Sure, but you have to bury the core really deep.’ ”

Posting Chernobyl jokes straight from the source

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.’ ”

Posting Chernobyl jokes straight from the source

And don’t ask me anything else. I’ve told you everything. [Cries.] Wait. I want you to know. I’m not afraid of God. I’m afraid of man.

Oh, God, where do you find the strength to meet the things that the next day is going to bring?

Guy comes home from work, says to his wife, “They told me that tomorrow I either go to Chernobyl or hand in my Party card.” “But you’re not in the Party.” “Right, so I’m wondering: how do I get a Party card by tomorrow morning?”

Posting Chernobyl jokes straight from the source

You want another joke? After Chernobyl you can eat anything you want, but you have to bury your own shit in lead.

Posting Chernobyl jokes straight from the source

I’ve thought a few times that someday they’re going to start hunting the scientists the way they used to hunt the doctors and drown them in the Middle Ages.

Want to hear a joke? This prisoner escapes from jail, and runs to the thirty-kilometer zone at Chernobyl. They catch him, bring him to the dosimeters. He’s “glowing” so much, they can’t possibly put him back in prison, can’t take him to the hospital, can’t put him around people.

Posting Chernobyl jokes straight from the source

“Next to the hill you’re on your tractor, across the way there’s the reactor. If the Swedes hadn’t’ve told, we’d be on the tractor, getting old.”

Posting Chernobyl jokes straight from the source

The fox sees how a gingerbread man is rolling through the forest. “Gingerbread man, where are you rolling to?” “I’m not a gingerbread man, I’m a hedgehog from Chernobyl.” Ha-ha.

Posting Chernobyl jokes straight from the source

In Khoyniki, there was a “plaque of achievement” in the center of town. The best people in the region had their names on it. But it was the alcoholic cab driver who went into the radioactive zone to pick up the kids from kindergarten, not any of the people on the plaque. Everyone became what he really was.

I don’t remember any serious conversations, but I do remember jokes. ‘Now all the stores have radio-products.’ ‘Impotents are divided into the radioactive and the radiopassive.’ And then suddenly the jokes disappeared.”

An American robot is on the roof for five minutes, and then it breaks down. The Japanese robot is on the roof for five minutes, and then—breaks down. The Russian robot is up there two hours! Then a command comes in over the loudspeaker: “Private Ivanov! In two hours you’re welcome to come down and have a cigarette break.”

Posting Chernobyl jokes straight from the source

ten days. But no one listened to us! No one listened to the scientists and the doctors. They pulled science and medicine into politics. Of course they did!

And then people would say to me: “Professor, why are you going around scaring everyone? Do you think you’re the only one worried about the Belarussian people? And, anyway, people have to die of something, whether it’s smoking, or an auto accident, or suicide.”