Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

by Svetlana Alexievich

Chernobyl, while an accident in the sense that no one intentionally set it off, was also the deliberate product of a culture of cronyism, laziness, and a deep-seated indifference toward the general population.

In the first days after the accident, all the books at the library about radiation, about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even about X-rays, disappeared.

Then we discovered a sign, which all of us followed: as long as there were sparrows and pigeons in town, humans could live there, too.

Every day they brought the paper. I’d just read the headlines: “Chernobyl—A Place of Achievement.” “The Reactor Has Been Defeated!” “Life Goes On.”

Mission Accomplished

My grandmother and grandfather remember that they never had a childhood, they had the war. Their childhood is the war, and mine is Chernobyl.

People turned out to be worse than I thought. And me, too. I’m also worse. Now I know this about myself.

I’m on the commission. Everyone knows we can’t sign those papers. It’s a crime. But in the end I found a justification for myself, just like everyone else. I thought: the problem of clean feed is not a problem for an environmental inspector. 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.

as a writer, I’ve thought about this, how it’s as if there are two people inside me, the pre-Chernobyl me and the post-Chernobyl one. And it’s very hard now to recall with any certainty what that “pre-” me was like. My vision has changed since then.

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!

They needed to talk about physics, about the laws of physics, but instead they talked about enemies, about looking for enemies.

What power! This limitless power that one person could have over another. This isn’t a trick or lie anymore, it’s just a war against the innocent.