Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

by Svetlana Alexievich

“Why did you lie to me?” she says. “There was no other way. If I’d told you, you’d send me home. It was a sacred lie!”

Death is the fairest thing in the world. No one’s ever gotten out of it. The earth takes everyone—the kind, the cruel, the sinners. Aside from that, there’s no fairness on earth.

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.’ ”

Recently they found a horse in the forest that had gone wild. It was dead. In another place they found a rabbit. They hadn’t been killed, but they were dead. This made everyone worried. But when they found a dead bum, no one worried about that.

I’ll tell you: So many people suffered, and no one ever answered for it. They put away the director of the station, but then they let him out again. In

People came from all around on their cars and their bikes to have a look. We didn’t know that death could be so beautiful.

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

We heard rumors that the flame at Chernobyl was unearthly, it wasn’t even a flame, it was a light, a shining. Not blue, but more like the sky. And not smoke, either. The scientists had been gods, now they were fallen angels, demons even.

I’m a person who lacks the instinct of self-preservation.

That was in the event of a threat. Here we had three thousand micro-roentgen per hour. But they’re worried about their authority, not about the people.

The State always came first, and the value of a human life was zero.

“The Belarussian people will remember you someday, you’ve done a lot for them, but you shouldn’t have written to Moscow. That was very bad. They’re demanding that I relieve you of your post. Why did you write? Don’t you understand who you’re going up against?”

did. I remember the night, after he died, I sat next to him—and suddenly I saw this little puff of smoke—I saw it again at the crematorium—it was his soul. No one saw it except me. And I felt like we’d seen each other one more time.