Chernobyl

A Documentary Story

IURII SHCHERBAK
CHERNOBYL: A DOCUMENTARY STORY
 Chernobyl:
A Documentary Story

Iurii Shcherbak
Translated from the Ukrainian by lan Press

Foreword by David R. Marples

Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-0-333-49667-1 ISBN 978-1-349-19858-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-19858-0

Translation © Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies

University of Albena, 1989
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1989
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly and Reference Division,
S!. Manin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010

First published in the United States of America in 1989

Reprinted 1990

ISBN 978-0-312-03097-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Shcherbak, Iurii, 1934-
Chemobyl: a documentary story / Iurri Shcherbak ; translated
from the Ukrainian by lan Press.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-312-03097-1
I. Chemobyl Nuclear Accident, Chemobyl', Ukraine, 1986.
I. Title.
TK 1362.S65S47 1989
363.1'79-<1cI9 88-38509
CIP
 Contents

Fort'word VII
Translator's Note XI

Author's Prel'ace XIII

Relleetions 1
2 That Bitter Word 'Chernobyl' 9
3 Before the Accident 15
1· The Accident 23
5 The Entire Guard Followed Pravyk 27
(} Bilokin From the Ambulance Service 39
7 The Extraordinary Convoy 49
H Before the Evacuation 55
9 The Evacuation 61
10 One From the 'Little Football Team' 79
11 The View Over Kiev 89
12 "The Danger 01' an Explosion Has Been Eliminated" 97
13 The Flight Over the Reactor 105
14 Dr. Hammer and Dr. Gale 115
15 By What Are People Tested? 129
16 The Last Warning 141
 Foreword

David R. Marples

Yurii Shcherbak's Chernobyl was published in the Soviet

monthly journal, Iunost, in two issues in the summer of
1987, and also in the Ukrainian journal, Vitchyzna, in the
spring of 1988. This English version appears as a result of an
agreement negotiated between the Canadian Institute of
Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) and the USSR Copyright Agency
in Moscow. Although a second volume is now being issued
by Dr. Shcherbak, it was feit by CIUS that the first is com-
plete in itself and that its appearance before the Western
public should not be delayed further. This remarkable litde
book represents our first eyewitness testimony to the events
of and succeeding the Chernobyl disaster of April and May
1986.
To the Western mind, the word Chernobyl brings to mind
specifically the week or several weeks that followed the
nuclear accident of April 26, 1986. Our attention span is
guided by the media, often by the headlines in several
selected newspapers. Chernobyl as an event was notable in
dominating those headlines for perhaps longer than any
other event in the memory of a postwar generation. Yet, in
early May, its extensive coverage ended. It had other effects:
anti-nuclear groups in the West were revitalized by the dis-
aster. Several countries whose governments had wavered
viii CHERNOBYL

over the choice of nuclear or non-nuclear energy finally

gravitated toward the laUer course. Thereafter, the main
concern in the West about Chernobyl was the state of im-
ported food in North America, and in Western Europe, the
radioactive fallout and its effect on this same food chain.
For the Soviet Union, however, the real drama of Cherno-
byl had yet to unfold. A dramatic battle had begun to
counter the fallout of the raging atom that continues today.
It is being fought by various means, some successful, others
less so. While some areas were successfully decontaminated,
others that appeared to be weIl beyond the danger area were
found to be irradiated. The population appeared to be often
confused, fearful of the effects of radiation, known and un-
known. It is symptomatic that as late as the summer of 1988,
the two main newspapers in Kiev began to publish figures on
the radiation background, to assure citizens that it was
within the norms of safety.
Chernobyl occurred during the General Secretaryship of
Mikhail Gorbachev, aleader and statesman who had quickly
earned the respect of the West, particularly through one of
his twin policies, glasnost, or openness (the other is
perestroika, or restructuring). Glasnost, somewhat belatedly,
played its own individual role in the sphere of nuclear en-
ergy, particularly after the summer of 1987, when a concern
for the ecology spilled over into the nuclear sphere. In
Ukraine, through the vehicle of the weekly newspaper Liter-
atuma Ukraina, the Ukrainian Writers' Union questioned
the viability of a programme for nuclear power development
that had not taken into account its effect upon the natural
environment. It was feit that the republic lacked the neces-
sary water supply for a major capacity expansion, while in
areas such as Chyhyryn, the planned nuclear power plant
was to have been built in a famous historical area, the for-
mer seat of the seventeenth-century Hetman state.
By the fall of 1988, the Soviet nuclear power programme
had been modified considerably. At the time of writing, it
has just been announced on Radio Moscow that a Commis-
sion headed by Vice-President of the Academy of Seien ces,
 Foreword IX

Evgenii Velikhov, has concluded that the Crimean nuclear

plant should not be built because i~ is located in an area of
high seismic activity. Velikhov's name appears in the pages
of this book. Public feeling in the republic is so sensitive
about the subject of nuclear power plants that several other
plants in Ukraine have also been shelved or abandoned:
Odessa, Kiev, Chyhyryn and Kharkiv.
Another prominent name that features regularly in these
pages is that of Valerii Legasov, the First Deputy Chairman
of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy and the head of
the Soviet delegation to the International Atomic Energy
Agency in Vienna in August 1986. In April 1988, Dr.
Legasov committed suicide. His memoirs, published posthu-
mously in Pravda, reveal a deep concern far the way in
which nuclear power plants were being built and operated.
His tragic and untimely death cannot be divorced from the
accident at Chernobyl, as Shcherbak reveals in his interviews
with the late scientist in these pages.
This is not to say that Yurii Shcherbak and his colleagues
are opposed to nuclear power or are fundamentally at odds
with the Soviet energy programme per se. As the text reveals,
Chernobyl has had a profound psychological impact on the
Soviet people. Many feel, like Shcherbak, that if pitfalls are
to be avoided in the future, its lessons must be learned.
Through the interviews held with participants in the Cherno-
byl tragedy throughout this book, Shcherbak reveals both the
good and the bad. The underlying statement, which surfaces
in the final chapter, is that this is "The Last Warning." An-
other mistake with the atom could be the last. It is fair to say
that generally this attitude pervades the Soviet rather than
the Western public, but that is not to deny its validity.
Shcherbak hirnself is a trained doctor, and the author of
some nine acclaimed novels. He is also chairman of a group
within the Ukrainian Writers' Union known as Zelenyi svit
(Green World) that is concerned with the protection of na-
ture. This combination of talents and interests has enabled
hirn to produce a unique historical document; an eyewitness
testimony to Chernobyl that is interspersed with the author's
x CHERNOBYL

frank and perceptive comments. The immediacy of the dis-

aster is illuminated in these pages by those who lived
through it: firemen, doctors, scientists, party and government
workers, helicopter pilots and journalists. There is the con-
trast between those collapsing from radiation sickness after
fighting the graphite fire in the building of reactor No. 4 and
the final chapter in which the author comments on the
simple joys of lying on an uncontaminated bank aside a
peaceful river. We can either take care of this land, Shcher-
bak seems to say, or see it turned into an unpopulated and
uninhabitable desert.
 Translator's Note

Iurii Shcherbak's Chernobyl is an important event in

Ukrainian, Soviet and world literature. The views and re ac-
tions of people of all walks of life are represented here, as
they spoke, shaped by the art of a considerable writer. I have
done my best to give a reasonable rendering of the text as
printed in two issues of Vitchyzna, including the preliminary
section Vid avtora, which follows this as the Author's Preface
and explains better than I could aspects of the history of the
work and the writing of Book 2.
So me preliminary notes on the translation are appropriate.
First, the title. It is, we all know, Chornobyl, but the world
knows it as Chernobyl and I have decided to use this form.
Prypiat, however, remains Prypiat and all other pi ace and
personal names follow CIUS style. Secondly, abbreviations are
either expanded or left as they are, with explanation as
appropriate. Where an acronym has an internationally recog-
nized form, e.g., CPSU for Communist Party of the Soviet
Union, I have used that. I have used USSR for the Soviet
Union and UKrSSR for the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Repub-
lic. Thirdly, to make matters absolutely clear, this translation
has been made directly from the Ukrainian text, excepting the
Russian song by Vysotsky and a reference to the Russian texts
of Gubarev's The Sarcophagus and Gogol's Mirgorod. I am
XlI CHERNOBYL

very grateful to David Marples and CIUS for resolving the

difficulties with which lieft them.
The experience of Chernobyl is unique in the history of the
world in revealing to us the potential scale of a catastrophe
involving the peaceful use of nuclear energy and the dangers of
the appeal of 'technology for technology's sake.' There is much
to learn, and Shcherbak, in his insistence on the need,
everywhere, for openness and international co-operation, sets
us weil on the way to a more secure future.

lan Press
Queen Mary College
University of London
 Author's Preface

T here is one particular question among the many with

which readers of the documentary story Chernobyl un-
failingly confront me, whether it be in letters or in the course
of numerous encounters: Why did I first publish this story
not in Ukraine but in Moscow, in the magazine Iunost?
And almost always the questions simultaneously carry
within them a sort of answer: 'We, of course, understand that
in Ukraine you could hardly have managed to p~blish it in
fuH, but ... '
I consider it a duty to give a truthful answer, bearing in
mind that the story reaches the Ukrainian reader after a
year's delay. Like any Ukrainian writer, I bear a sense of
deep responsibility for my native language and literature and
their development, and so it is not appropriate to avoid fun-
damental, burning and highly topical questions. Particularly
today, when we are living through a moment of truth ..
First. The magazine Iunost played a significant role in my
literary life: it was precisely in its pages, starting in 1961,
that my first articles were published, and in 1966 the editor-
in-chief, Boris Mikhailovich Polevoi, supported my candida-
ture for the Union of Soviet Writers. I shaH always remember
this with pride and gratitude.
And so, when at the VIII Congress of Soviet Writers in
xiv CHERNOBYL

Moscow in June 1986 the editor-in-chief of funost, Andrei

Dementiev and his editorial colleague Iurii Zerchaninov
came to me and proposed that I write a documentary story
about Chernobyl for the magazine, how was I to refuse? And
was it necessary for me to refuse? Particularly since not a
single Ukrainian magazine had at that time rushed to me
with such a proposal. Moreover, I am not at all convinced
that I would have written this story had it not been for the in-
itiative of funost. I had given no thought to it over that anx-
ious summer, and could quite easily have limited myself to
articles in Literaturna Ukraina and Literaturnaia gazeta.
Secondly. WeIl aware that it was a very important all-
Union vehicle (the circulation of funost amounts to over
three million copies!), I very consciously wrote the story pre-
cisely for this magazine, wanting its numerous readers in the
remotest corners of our land and abroad (the magazine is
read all over the world) to find out as quickly as possible
ab out the true course of events and the real dimensions of
the national calamity which befell us in April 1986. I became
convinced that I had Qone the right thing when, during my
recent journey to Venezuela and Peru, I met people who had
read the story; and this is also clear from the letters which I
receive from all over the Soviet Union and other countries.
And, thirdly and last. I will not go against what I really
feel. The further my work on the text proceeded, the more
clearly I understood that its fate in Ukraine might not be an
easy one. I have considerable experience of work in Ukrain-
ian literature and, in the past, have experienced for myself
that braking mechanism which in the years of stagnation I
would automatically apply. I could imagine how. I knew pre-
cisely in which 'hot spots' of the text someone's cold and
pitiless red pencil might pass, smoothing over, embellishing
and softening that which could not be softened if one wanted
to bring back a sense of worth to oneself and one's words.
At that time, in the summer of 1986, the struggle for glas-
nost was only just beginning to unfold, and many areas,
Chernobyl among them, remained beyond the bounds of
criticism. The tradition of regulating and rationing the
 Author's Preface xv

Truth, as if it were something in short supply, was still alive.

One thing was permitted 'in the centre' and another-far
less of it and far worse-in the localities. And I was con-
vinced: there was one Truth for everyone, our Truth, the
Soviet Truth. There wasn't and couldn't be a 'republican,'
'regional' or 'distriet' truth. This was an absurd fiction of
people who were against a breath of fresh air, who naively
feit that it was possible, at the end of the end of the twentieth
century, to get rid of awkward problems which had devel-
oped in our society by means of prohibitions and silen ce ...
Perhaps I was wrong in my pessimistic forecasts regarding
the amount of glasnost in Ukraine. Perhaps my story would
have been published without the slightest cuts. Who
knows ...
Upon reflection, when I gave my work to the magazine
Iunost I had before me the example of Oles Honchar, who
first published his story of warning The Black Ravine in Mos-
kovskaia pravda. In their time the same thing was done by
Chingiz Aitmatov, Vasil Bykov and Ion Drutse.
And all the same, even as I tried to persuade the reader of
the rightness of my choice and decision, all the time I feit
pangs of conscience: Chernobyl had to become a fact of
Ukrainian literature.
And I am very grateful to the magazine Vitchyzna for
proposing to publish the Ukrainian text of the story, all the
more as apart of the sections was originally written in
Ukrainian.
At this moment I am working on the second part of Cher-
nobyl, and I hope that this year it will be published simulta-
neously in the pages of Vitchyzna and Iunost. A great deal of
material has been gathered: the testimony of witnesses, let-
ters, recollections and documents. I want to believe that this
will give me a chance to reveal unknown aspects of the acci-
dent to the reader, to recreate objectively the atmosphere of
those tragic days, to demonstrate the greatness of the people
who i~ improbably difficuIt conditions struggled with the ef-
feets of the accident; I want, in Book 2 of Chernobyl, to hear
the voices of prominent writers and scientists ring out with
XVI CHERNOBYL

their reflections on the future of humanity in the anxious

light of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power station.
It is the readers' attention and support which inspires me
to this.
 That's it, the Zone!
And immediately such achilI over my skin ...
Every time it's that chill, and even now I still don't know
if that's how the Zone receives me or
if it's the Stalker's liule nerves playing tricks.

Reason is the ability to use the powers of the surrounding

world without ruining that world.
O. Strugatsky, B. Strugatsky,
Picnie by the Roadside, 1972.
 1
Reflections

A year has passed smce the accident at the Chernobyl

power station.
A year, no more.
But how distant, how idyllically c10udless that pre-
Chernobyl world now appears to us-calm, unhurried, self-
confident, plunged for years as it were in somnolent, in-
dulgent, all-permitting placidity.
For everyone who participated, directly or indirectly, in the
tragedy of Chernobyl, time seems to have split into two un-
equal parts: before 26 April 1986 and after. One of the
heroines of our narration, Aneliia Perkovska, has some apt
words to say about this: 'It was really reminiscent of the war.
Every one of us in the Town Committee has kept until now
this sense of a boundary: before the war and after the war.
We simply say: that was before the war.'
The time that has elapsed since the accident, particularly
the first, most difficult months, months which seemed to last
a whole eternity, can bedivided into several epochs, stages,
periods, moments-call them what you like-with their pe-
culiar features and characteristics, with c1early outlined
spans-lasting from the tragic Ukrainian spring of 1986,
strangely lovely, in the snow-white blossom of the gardens
and the fuH Hood of the rivers, aspring which henceforth
 CHERNOBYL

will enter all textbooks of history, all chronicles and legends

of humanity, to the deep and dark autumn, when in Cherno-
byl a meeting took place: work was complete on the erection
of the sarcophagus, the structure which covered over the
ruins of Block No. 4.
A year, the blink of an eye in the history of humanity, a
year isn't a particularly long span of time even in the life of
any person. But in the course of that year-no, not a year,
but just a few months-we all suddenly matured, grew up by
a whole epoch, we became harder and more exacting both
toward ourselves and toward those who take responsible de-
cisions, those in whose hands human existence and the fate
of nature rest; we began, in a different and more severe way,
to evaluate the deeds and actions of all those months, the
words pronounced and published during that time, so diffi-
cult a time for the people.
For the price which had, and would have, to be paid for
Chernobyl was too high.
In the communication of the Central Committee of the
CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR of 14 De-
cember 1986, preliminary summaries are given of how, over
a very compact period, large-scale tasks connected with re-
moving the consequences of the accident at the Chernobyl
nuclear power station were resolved, and certain figures and
facts are included which give an idea of the extremely com-
plex and unique work undertaken to save the destroyed
power block, work which was carried out in difficult circum-
stances.
A full interpretation of what happened (let us remember
the Great Fatherland War) is a matter for the future, per-
haps the distant future. No writer or journalist, however well
infonned he might be, could do that today. The time will
come, I finnly believe, when the Chernobyl epic (the thought
never leaves me that this is indeed an epic, which, in its
colossal scale, touches the fundamental questions of people's
existence: of life and death, war and peace, the past and the
future) will appear before us in all its tragic fullness, in all its
polyphony, in the grateful biographies of the real heroes and
 Reflections 3

the scornful characterizations of the criminals who allowed

the accident and its grievous consequences-they must aIl be
cited by name!-giving fine and precise figures and facts,
giving the complexity of their everyday circumstances and
official cunning, of people's hopes and illusions and giving
the variety of moral positions taken by the participants in the
epic. I think that, in order to create such an epic we will re-
quire new approaches, new literary forms, different, let us
say, from War and Peace or Quiet Flows the Don. What will
those approaches and forms be? I do not know.
And all the while ... All the while I feel I want to propose
to the reader my own original presentation of the documents
and facts, of the testimony of witnesses-shortly after the ac-
cident it fell to my lot on several occasions to be in the Zone
and in the places adjoining it.
The Chernobyl explosion took people into a new period in
the development of civilization, aperiod about whose possi-
bility only writers of science fiction had conjectured vaguely
and intuitively. The majority of rational and optimistically
inclined scientists and technically minded pragmatists, be-
cause of their limited imagination and consequent self-
confidence, were incapable of foreseeing any such thing and,
clearly, did not desire to. It is only individual, very far-seeing
scientists who recently began to dweIl on the catastrophic
consequences of an incredible concentration of industrial
and scientific forces. The words of Academician V.A.
Legasov, published in the pages of this story, testify to this.
In the space of a few days we as it were took a step from
one epoch, the pre-atomic epoch, into an unknown epoch
which demands a fundamental restructuring of our thought.
Not only human character, but also many of our conceptions
and methods of work underwent severe examination.
Fate has given us the opportunity to peep over the edge of
night, that night which will fall if nuclear warheads begin to
explode. The Chernobyl accident has brought humanity a
series of new problems, not only scientific and technical
ones, but also psychological ones. It is very difficult for our
consciousness to reconcile itself with that absurd situation
4 CHERNOßYL

where mortal danger does not even have taste, colour and
smell, but is measured only by special apparatus, which at
the time of the accident was, incidentally, either not avail-
able or not ready to wark.
The accident showed us that man, if he wishes to survive,
must develop a new, 'apparatus' way of thinking, com-
plementing our sense organs and current methods of investi-
gating our environment (far example, microscopy and
chemical analyses) with Geiger counters.
The danger in Chernobyl and around there was dihited in
the fragi-ant air, in the pink and white blossom of apple and
apricot trees, in the cloud of dust on the streets and roads, in
the water of village wells, in the cows' milk, in the fresh
green of the gardens, in the whole of idyllic springtime na-
ture. But really only springtime?
Already in autumn, when I was in the Polissia region chat-
ting with people of the villages of Vilcha and Zelena Poliana,
I became convinced of how the new demands of the atomic
age were entering the consciousness and daily life and
customs of people. The former, eternal cast of village life
had come into conflict with the new realities of the post-
Chernobyl world: dosimeter operators told me how very dif-
ficult, almost impossible it was to clear the thatched village
roofs of radiation; burning leaves were very dangerous. We
became convinced of this in Vilcha when we placed a
dosimeter against a bonfire which had been lit in a farmyard
by careless farmers: the device reacted with a considerable
increase in the reading. So much for your 'and the smoke of
the fatherland for us is sweet and pleasant. ' And so, as a re-
sult, burning firewood was forbidden here; as one doctor
aptly said, every stove in the Polissia region had been con-
verted into a little fourth reactor. The population was pro-
vided with coal.
Who a year ago could have known that an increased radia-
tion level would show itself in mushrooms, peatbogs, black-
currant bushes and in villages at the corners of buildings
where the rainwater ran from the roofs ...
Since it was imperceptible, the danger aggravated some
 Reflections 5

people's sense of insecurity, but other people's most reckless

disdain: more than one such bold person paid with his
health for his 'boldness,' ignoring the simplest and, it must
be noted, quite effective precautions.
It is only by an objective ~nowledge of the real situation,
unwarped by anyone's 'optimistic' good will or c~mcealed by
layers of mystery, it is only by taking rational precautions
and by a continuous control of radiation levels that people in
the danger zone can have the indispensable feeling of
security. That is one of the indisputable lessons of Cherno-
byl.
When I was in the emergency zone, observing how great a
tragedy had unexpectedly befallen tens of thousands of
people, I often recalled our Iiterary discussions 0.1 a topical
theme, on the present and future of the novel or story, on the
positive hero and the need to 'study' (!) Iife and other things
which at that time seemed very important to uso How aca-
demic and remote from this Iife they seemed there, in the
Zone, where before my eyes an unprecedented drama had
unfolded, where the essence of humanity was extremely
quickly revealed, as in the war: all the masks suddenly flew
off people's faces, like leaves from trees under the effect of
defoliants, and the pompous-sounding prattlers, who at
meetings exhorted us to 'acceleration' and 'activization of the
human factor,' now turned out to be common cowards and
scumj it was silent, unnoticed plodders who were the real
heroes.
Let us just take the old fireman, 'grandad' Hryhorii Mat-
viiovych Khmel and his story, unhurried just like village Iife.
He and his two sons, also firemen, suffered somewhat dur-
ing the power-station accident and were in various hospitals
in Moscow and Kiev. His wife was evacuated from the vil-
lage near Prypiat to the Borodianka area and carried on
working, preparing food, which she took out to machine op-
erators in the fields. What sort of Iiterary or social problems,
often quite trivial and wretched, that beset us in our lives,
can be compared with the drama of these people, who con-
ducted themselves with great human dignity? As I listened to
6 CHERNOBYL

the story of the thoughtful Ukrainian Khmel, 1 for some rea-

son thought of Gogol's Taras Bulba. Mter what 1 leamed
and saw in Chemobyl, there was a time it seemed 1 would
never take up my pen again: all traditional literary forms, all
the subtleties of style and intricacies of composition-it all
seemed to me infinitely remote from the truth, it all seemed
artificial and useless. Several days before the accident 1 had
finished my novel Causes and Effects, which tells of the doc-
tors in a laboratory investigating particularly dangerous in-
fections, who are struggling with an illness as deadly as
rabies; and although some situations in the novel are by a
strange coincidence similar to those 1 was to see (bearing in
mind a difference of scale from what happened, of course),
the novel somehow was very quickly ob literated from my
consciousness, was pushed back somewhere, into a 'time of
peace.'
It was all swallowed up by Chernobyl.
Like a gigantic magnet, it attracted me, it excited my
imagination, it forced me to live in the Zone, its strange,
twisted reality, to think only of the accident and its effects, of
those struggling for their life in dinics, trying to tarne the
atomic genie in immediate proximity to the reactor. It
seemed base and inconceivable to stand aside from events
which were inflicting such calamity on my people. For long
years before April 1986 1 had been pursued by a feeling of
guilt, guilt because I, a native of Kiev, a writer, a doctor, had
passed by on the other side of the tragedy of my native town,
the tragedy which had occurred at the beginning of the six-
ties: the damp sand and water accumulated in Babyi lar,
which the authorities wanted to make into a recreation area,
broke through a dike and poured into Kurenivka, causing
much destruction and human victims. For long years
Ukrainian literature (and 1 along with it) had been silent
about this catastrophe, and only recently Oles Honchar in
his story The Black Ravine and Pavlo Zahrebelny in his novel
Southern Comfort turned to the events of that terrible dawn
in early spring ... And why did 1 remain silent? 1 could have
collected facts, the testimony of witnesses, 1 could have
 Reflections 7

found out and named those guilty of this calamity. .. But I

didn't. Very likely I had at that time not acquired the
maturity to understand certain very simple, very important
truths. And the time was such that my voice was not heard: it
was weaker than a mosquito's whine: I had behind me at
that time only my first publications in Iunost and Liter-
atumaia gazeta, and I was only just writing my first story As
in the War. .. I say this not in justification, but for the sake
of the truth.
Chemobyl is something I perceived quite differently, not
only as my personal misfortune (nothing actually threatened
me), but as the most important event in the history of my
people since the Great Fatherland War. I could never have
forgiven myself my silen ce. True, being at first a special cor-
respondent of Literaturnaia gazeta, I saw my task in a rather
narrow way: I would write ab out the doctors taking part in
eliminating the effects of the accident. But the simple course
of life forced me progressively to broaden my sphere of in-
vestigation and to meet hundreds of the most diverse people:
firemen and academicians, doctors and policemen, teachers
and power workers, ministers and soldiers, Komsomol work-
ers and metropolitans, an American millionaire and Soviet
students.
I listened to their stories, recorded their voices on tape,
and then, deciphering these recordings by night, again and
again I was struck by the genuineness and sincerity of their
testimony, by the precision of the details, by the aptness of
their reflections. Turning these recordings into text, I strove
to preserve the structure of speech, the peculiarities of termi-
nology or jargon, and the intonations of these people, resort-
ing to editing only when absolutely necessary. It seemed very
important to me to preserve Lhe documentary and un-
contrived character of these human confessions.
Iwanted the truth to be preserved.
I am aware of the utter ineompleteness of the material
which I offer to the reader: the testimony of the witnesses
which leite here applies primarily to the first, most serious
stage in the accident; there is certainly mueh to say about the
8 CHERNOBYL

construction of the sarcophagus and about the events con-

nected with the decontamination of the locality, and about
the extremely rapid construction of fifty-two new villages in
the Kiev area, and about how the state offered compensation
for the materiallosses of the victims and, of course, about
the selfless work of the medical workers in the Zone and
beyond it. How many extraordinarily interesting human
destinies, how many unsung heroes! But I do not consider
my work finished and shall continue to collect material in
order to complete this story.
 2
That Bitter Word
'Chemobyl'

Chernobyl.
A pleasant littie provincial Ukrainian town, swathed in
green, fuH of cherry and appie trees. In the summertime
many people from Kiev, Moscow and Leningrad Ioved to
holiday here. They came here for a long time, not in-
frequently for the entire summer, with their children and
members of their households, they rented 'dachas,' in other
words, rooms in wooden one-storeyed buildings, they
prepared pickles and preserves for winter, picked
mushrooms, which were to be found in abundance in the 10-
eal woods, sunbathed on the blindingly clean sandy banks of
the Kiev Sea, and fished. And it had seemed that here the
beauty of Polissia nature had blended astonishingly
harmoniously and inseparably with the four blocks of the
power station, encased in concrete and situated not far to the
north of Chernobyl.
So it had seemed ...
When I arrived in Chernobyl at the beginning of May
1986, I (could I have been the only one?) peeped into the
strange and incredible world beyond the looking glass,
tinged with invisible and consequently even more ominous
hues of heightened radioactivity. I saw something which the
day before had still been difficult to imagine even in the
10 CHERNOBYL

most fantastic dreams, even though everything had an over-

all ordinary appearance. And later, on subsequent visits,
everything already did seem normal ...
But first. ..
It was a town without inhabitants, without the resonant
voices of children, without the normal everyday, provincial
unhurried life. The shutters were tightly dosed, all the
buildings, offices and shops were locked and sealed. On the
balconies of the five-storeyed buildings near the fire station
there stood bicydes and the washing was drying. No
domestic animals remained in the town, the cows didn't moo
in the morning, there were only wild dogs running around,
hens ducking, and birds singing their carefree songs in the
leaves of the trees. The birds did not know that the dusty
leaves had, during those days, become a source of increased
radiation.
But, even abandoned by its inhabitants, the town was not
dead. It was alive, it struggled. But it lived according to the
strict and for us completely new laws of the extraordinary
conditions of the atomic age. In the town and around it there
was a great concentration of technical equipment: powerful
bulldozers and tractors, mobile cranes and earth-moving
machines, excavators and concrete-carriers. Facing the
Regional Committee of the Party, dose by the monument to
Lenin, an armoured troop carrier had stopped dead, and a
young soldier in agas mask was peering out of it. Under
spotted camouflage nets radio stations and military freight
trucks had been deployed. And in front of the Regional
Committee and the Regional Executive· Committee, from
where the leadership was directing the whole operation,
there stood dozens of cars: black Volgas and Chaikas, as if
there was some high-level conference in progress. Some of
these cars, which had 'contracted' radiation, had afterward
to be left for ever in the Zone ... At the approaches to Cher.,.
nobyl there were numerous dosimeter checkpoints, where
there was a very strict inspection of cars and tractors; in spe-
cial areas soldiers wearing green anti -chemical protection
suits decontaminated technical equipment which had come
 That Bitter TtOrd 'Chernobyl' 11

out of the Zone. Sprinkling maehines eontinuously and lib-

erally washed the streets of Chernobyl, and numerous
traffie-regulation offieials stood around, just like on the busy
main roads of Kiev on the days before holidays.
But wh at is the history of this littie town, destined to enter
the ehronicle of the twentieth eentury?
There lies on the table before me a sm all and-putting it
as preeisely as possible-eomfortably and old-fashionedly
published booklet whieh eame out over one hundred years
ago, in 1884. Its title is very engaging for the modern reader:
The Town of Chernobyl in Kiev Province, described by L.P.
(Retired Soldier).
With the serupulousness of a real military man, living in
leisure and not knowing what to do of use, the author
studied the geography, history and eeonomy of this
unimportant little town, situated one hundred and twenty
versts to the north of Kiev. 'Early historians relate,' writes
L.P., 'that when the Great Prince of Kiev Mstyslav, son of
Monomakh, in 1127 sent his brothers against the Kryvychy
along four roads, Vsevolod Olgovyeh was ordered to proceed
through Strezhiv to the town of Borysiv. Strezhiv was consid-
ered the most southerly liule town in the Polatsk Principal-
ity, where Rohvold around 1160 settled Vsevolod Hlibovyeh.
In the time of this prince Strezhiv, later named Chernobyl,
was considered an apanage principality.'
'In 1193 in the chronicle Strezhiv is already called Cher-
nobyl. It is written: 'The Prince of Vyshhorod and Turov,
Rostyslav-the son of the Great Prinee of Kiev Riurik (he
ruled from 1180 to 1195), "rode hunting from Chernobyl to
Tortsyiskyi". '
The author traces in detail the complex strands in the his-
tory of Chernobyl-who indeed did not own the town? At
the end of the seventeenth century Chernobyl came into the
possession of the Polish nobleman Chodkiewicz, and right
up to the October Revolution the Chodkiewicz family owned
over fifty thousand acres of land here.
The name of Chernobyl made abrief and tantalizing ap-
pearance in the history of the French Revolution: during the
12 CHERNOBYL

Jacobin dictatorship: on 30 June 1794, a native of Cherno-

byl, the 26-year-old Polish beauty Rozalia Lubomirska-
Chodkiewicz was guillotined in Paris, sentenced by the Rev-
olutionary Tribunal, accused of links with Marie-Antoinette
and other members of the royal family. Under the name
'Rozalia of Chernobyl' this blue-eyed blonde was immortal-
ized in the writings of contemporaries ...
Ancient Chernobyl gave its bitter name (chernobyl is the
common wormwood) to the powerful nuclear power station
whose construction began in 1971. In 1983 four power
blocks, delivering four million kilowatts, were working.
Many a person not only abroad, but even in our country and
until now, after llUmerous publications and television pro-
grammes, had a more or less vague idea that Chernobyl,
which had remained a rural regional centre, had, in the
years preceding the accident, hardly had any contact with
the nuclear power station. The 'capital' for the power work-
ers was the young and rapidly growing town of Prypiat, eigh-
teen kilometres north-west of Chernobyl.
In the album Prypiat (photographs and text by Iu. Iev-
siukiv) brought out by the Kiev publishing house Mystetstvo
in 1986 we read:
'It was called Prypiat after the full-flooded beauty of a
river which, capriciously winding its way in a blue ribbon,
unites Belorussian and Ukrainian Polissia and carries its
waters to the grey Dnieper. The town owes its appearance to
the construction here of the v.I. Lenin Chernobyl Nuclear
Power Station.
'The first page in the chronicle of the biography of work-
ing Prypiat was written on 4 February 1970, when the first
wooden picket was hammered in and the first scoop of earth
was taken out. The average age of the" inhabitants of the
young town is TWENTY-SIX YEARS. Every year over a
thousand babies are born here. It is only in Prypiat that you
can see a pram parade, when of an evening the mothers and
fathers walk out with their youngsters ... Prypiat is confi-
dently stepping out into the future. Industrial enterprises are
increasing their productive capacities. In the next few years a
 Thai Bitter Word 'Chernobyl' 13

power-industry technical college, another secondary school,

a pioneers' palace, a young people's club, a business centre,
a covered market, hotel, new coach and railway stations, a
stomatological clinic, two-screen cinema, 'Children's WorId,'
department store and other things will be built. The drive
into the town will be adorned by an amusement park. Ac-
cording to the general plan Prypiat will have a population of
around eighty thousand. The Polissia atom-city will be one
of the most beautiful towns in Ukraine.'
This colourful album was presented to me in the empty
main administrative building of Prypiat, its 'White House,'
by Aleksandr Iurievich Esaulov, the deputy president of the
Prypiat Town Executive Committee and one of the heroes of
our story. I walked with hirn along dead corridors, looked
into empty offices: furniture pushed aside, papers scattered
on the floor, safes unlocked, piles of empty Pepsi-Cola
bottles in the pI aces where the Government Commission
held its meetings (from off the doors I took as souvenirs the
hastily inscribed slips of paper-who worked where), news-
paper files opened at 25 April, withered flowers in vases ...
And over it all the overpowering smell of disinfectant spread
to stop rats breeding.
That day Esaulov and I were the only inhabitants of this
forsaken handsome town. There were only we two and a few
security policemen, guarding the buildings left by the
townsfolk. The drive into the town was adorned not by an
amusement park but by a fine-mesh fence made from
barbed wire, rigged with an alarm, so that uninvited looters
might not take a fancy to getting through, into the Zone, to
extract some profit from the radioactive things left behind in
thousands of apartments. There were such people.
 3
Before the Accident

PreCiSely a month before the accident, on 27 March 1986,

in the newspaper Literatuma Ukraina, the organ of the
Union of Ukrainian Writers, there appeared L. Kovalevska's
article 'Not a Private Affair.' It should be recalled that for
several years the newspaper had already had a permanent
column 'The Literaturna Ukraina Eye on the Chernobyl
Power Station,' clarifying the various events in the life of the
power station. This article, which was fated to create such a
sensation all over the world (after Chernobyl the western
mass media vied with each other to quote it), at first at-
tracted no attention: at that time Kiev writers were getting
ready for their general meeting and most of them were far
more interested in the coming personnel changes in the or-
ganization than in the affairs of the power station.
L. Kovalevska's article had no relevance to the operation
of the fourth block of the Chernobyl power station; but many
people, hearing of her article through rumours, have re-
mained until now convinced of the opposite. The author
concentrated the fire of her criticism-very professional and
uncompromising criticism-on the construction of the fifth
block, whose completion target had been reduced from three
to two years. L. Kovalevska cited blatant facts of ir-
responsibility and shoddy work: for example, in 1985 sup-
16 CHERNOBYL

pliers had fallen short by 2,358 tonnes of metal components.

And wh at they supplied had most often been defective ...
Furthermore, 326 tonnes of defective fine-mesh sheathing
for the spent nuclear fuel depository came from the Volga
Metal Components Works. And around 220 tonnes of defec-
tive pillars were sent for constructing the depository from the
Kashin Metal Components Works.
'It's quite inadmissible to work like that!' was how L.
Kovalevska ended her article. 'The prompt inauguration of
the next power block is not the private affair of the builders
of the Chernobyl power station. After all , "acceleration" is
our activity too, our initiative, our perseverance, our aware-
ness, and our attitude to everything which is done in our
country.'
Quite honestly, when I read this article (and I read it, like
many others, after the accident), it appeared to me that an
experienced engineer had written it, some grey woman in
eyeglasses, an expert in all those insipid construction terms
and norms. How surprised I was when Liubov Kovalevska
turned out to be a young woman, a journalist on the Prypiat
newspaper Trybuna enerhetyka, and a talented poetess.
She has striking eyes-clear, with severe dots for pupils;
now and then it seems that her expression reaches out some-
where far ~way, perhaps into the past or into the future, and
then her expression is very sad. Her voice is a little hoarse,
she smokes heavily.
And so, Liubov Oleksandrivna Kovalevska:
'I was accused of everything under the sun after the ap-
pearance of that article in Literatuma Ukraina: that I was in-
competent, half-educated (the expressions they chose were,
it's true, milder, but that's what they amounted to), that I
had washed our dirty linen in public, that I was writing to
Kiev newspapers to make my name.
'It's only when something incredible happens that people
will believe and understand.
'In our newspaper Trybuna enerhetyka we wrote primarily
about construction problems, but the Pryplat Town Com-
mittee of the party wanted us to do the impossible, to write
 Be/ore the Accident 17

about everything, about the town-after all, this was the only
newspaper in the town. But there were three of us, we didn't
have our own transport, and was it really possible for three
poor women to run around that gigantic construction site?
And not just run around, but then return to the office.
Heaven help us if someone phoned and there was no one
there, that would mean we weren't working.
'At first 1 was the editor, but when the conflict heated up 1
became a correspondent again; on the Town Committee they
breathed a sigh of relief. You see, 1 always stood up for the
newspaper's right to independence of thought, analysis,
arguments and conclusions.
'I wrote the article for Literatuma Ukraina in one evening.'
'Tell me, was this a case of a journalist struggling for the
truth being harassed by those in charge?'
'As far as the construction work was concerned it would be
unfair to say that. But as regards the Town Committee or the
power station administration, yes, it would have been like
that. 1 didn't go to the Town Committee, didn't find out their
opinion of the article, but rumours spread. Reliable ones. 1
found out they were going to summon me to the office. They
could expel me from the party.
'But then the accident occurred ...
'I consider that one of the reasons far the Chernobyl power
station accident was the abnormal situation which developed
there. A "casual" person could not get in there. Even an ex-
ceptionally intelligent person or a first-dass specialist. You
see, in the management there were whole dynasties,
nepotism flourished. The wages were high, they got them
through unhealthy conditions of work and this was done via
a 'dirty network.' Even the workers wrote about the utter
nepotism there. They were friends, acquaintances. If you
criticized one, they would an rush to his defence without
trying to get to the bottom of the affair.
'When an ardinary worker makes amistake, he is
punished. But when it's the administration, the people at the
top, then they get away with it. It got to the point where the
administration could avoid exchanging greetings with the
18 CHERNOBYL

workers, could talk to them in a condescending manner,

could wrong them and offend them. Ambitions grew out of
a11 proportion. It was like astate within astate. They didn't
take into account that people couldn't help but see a11 this ...
And people came to our editorial office and begged us: ".lust
don't name me, you understand, 1'11 be kicked out of work,
they'11 destroy me, but you, you journalists, you can write
about this." Could we refuse? A journalist hasn't the right to
be a coward. But you couldn't do anything because it was
impossible to name the person.
'When 1 was editor, 1 didn't take material to get approval. I
don't know whether that was right or not, 1 just didn't do it.
I'm the one responsible for my articles. 1 bear the responsi-
bility myself, both as a communist and as a journalist.
'I conceived the idea of aseries of articles for Literaturna
Ukraina. The first one was to be about problems connected
with the construction work. And the second, weIl, the second
just had to be about the people running the place. About the
moral climate in the Chernobyl power station. Let's be
honest about this: the best of the construction workers went
into management. For the sake of the wages. The manage-
ment even made overtures to the good specialists. If you
make an experienced construction worker a supervisor, then
he'knows'the construction side from 'A' to 'Z.' He's a valu-
able member of staff. A supervisor is the one who checks
how the building is going. But at that time there was a
shortage of money far the construction work. Like it or not,
many a worker let his standards fall, even the qualified con-
struction workers. But how did these construction workers
cope when it came to eliminating the accident? In the news-
paper I read that they achieved their annual plan in one
month. They're invaluahle, those people. They can work,
and they want to.
'So, lots of people went into management. And later they
came to me in the editorial office and complained: "My
goodness, how honestly people work on the construction site
and wh at a difficult moral climate there is in the power sta-
tion. It's as if you taken someone else's place... It's
 Before the Accident 19

careerism, fighting for a job, a position".'

'And did they earn high wages?'
'Of course. Three hundred roubles and more. They always
over-achieved the plan, "progress" ... And if they were in a
"dirty" zone, then there would be coupons far food here, ra-
tions there, there would be places on holidays, all the privi-
leges you for some reason, I don't know why, don't get on
the construction site. And if you were at the power station
you received an apartment more quickly than if you were at
the construction site, even though it's the construction work-
ers who do the building; I suppose the power station was
"important," and the ratio came out (I don't remember ex-
actly) around seventy per cent to the management and thirty
to the construction workers.'
'What would have been the main problem you touched on
in your article? Wh at would you have said in it?'
'I would have said that people have a duty to believe. I'm a
subordinate and have a duty to believe my editor. To believe.
So that I feel at one with hirn. To believe in his authority and
his qualifications. In his competence. It's the same with the
workers. If the people in the administration are honest,
decent and guided by principle, then, naturally, the workers
strive to be like them. But if one person has everything per-
mitted hirn, and another one nothing, then envy rears its
head, a psychological discomfort. People wonder: "What's
the point of living the life of a fool, when next door people
are living well, just as they like. They exhort us to honest
work and enthusiasm, while all the while they themßelves ...
acquire Czech lavatory pans from the hotel. The leave their
own ones there and take the Czech ones." You see, this town
is small, and the slightest mi stake, the slightest moral·flaw in
a manager gets known very quickly. And all this gets dis-
cussed, turned over and over, rumours and gossip spread
around, all the more as the suppression of criticism was
rigorous.
'Seen from the outside the discipline seemed ok. Everyone
was afraid, really afraid, to go off horne first. But off he went
if no one saw hirn. He was afraid of arriving late, hut he
20 CHERNOBYL

would arrive late if no one saw hirn. There was a loosening

of people's strong inner core, it all became rickety. And so,
when the accident occurred, it tumed out that it wasn't just
the management which was at fault, but also those operators
who ...
'And so that article I thought of would have shown the
connection between discipline and the violation of the
elementary mIes of security. Just imagine, you could see a
man sitting at the control panel. There where you have the
buttons and levers.'
'How do you mean, sitting at the control panel?'
'Well, this fellow just went and sat there. He can go and sit
at the control panel. Just like that. And wh at do people say?
"It operated in such a way that the systems duplicated each
other. They protected people." Everyone believed in the sys-
tems. But they didn't protect people. And they didn't protect
people because we got to the state-we, not just anyone, I
don't even blame the administration, but just us, the
people-we got to the state where we split into two. One half
said it's necessary to do things one way, it's necessary to
work honestly, while the second wonders: "But what if the
other person doesn't do it?"
'At the Chemobyl nuclear power station centre there was a
nuclear power engineering commission. I was at its meetings
and often visited the power station. There wasn't a perman-
ent pass even for our newspaper. The management wouldn't
give one for fear that, God forbid, you wrote critical articles.
But if you had the intention to write something good, then
they' d show you everything. You just had to say in advance
to the Party Committee where you wanted to go and with
what objective.
'There were stops there caused by the personnel too:
"whistling" in the steam pipes. How twisted the psychology
of our personnel is! If a foreign delegation comes, then
they're afraid. They understand that it's not possible to do
things like that. Among ourselves we had the attitude, "It
whistles, weH, let it whistle!"
'Mter the article people said that I had prophesied the ac-
 Before the Accident 21

cident. I didn't prophesy anything, God preserve me from

being a Cassandra, a prophetess of such calamities. .. But
deep down, if I'm honest, I did always fear this. I wasn't
easy. I was afraid because people said one thing, but really
the situation was quite different. People talked about this,
they talked about this in the safety section. When did I start
to be afraid? People once came to me and brought docu-
ments, they showed me facts and figures, and wh at not,
things I simply did not know, but at the time I just hadn't the
courage to write ab out it. I knew it had no chance at all of
being published.
'And I was afraid. And all the time Iwanted to leave,
honestly, to take my child away from here. I have a ten-year-
old daughter and she is not in the best of health.'
 4
The Accident

In May 1986 in one Kiev hospital I made the acquaintance

of the following young people: Serhii Mykolaiovych Hazin, a
twenty-eight-year-old senior turbine engineer, Mykola Ser-
hiiovych Bondarenko, twenty-nine years old, an air-fraction-
ing worker in the nitrogen-oxygen station, and Iurii Iurievich
Badaev, a thirty-four-year-old engineer. They were united
only by the fact that they were in the one ward, gradually
emerging from that grievous condition in which they had
been when they entered the clinic, and by something more
essential, which had separated their lives into two parts: be-
fore and after the accident. That fateful night they had been
working at the power station, in the immediate proximity of
the affected block.
Calmly and clearly they recounted how it had all hap-
pened, how two strong shocks had shaken the station build-
ing, how the light had 'cut out' and everything had collapsed
in clouds of dust and steam. The hall, where the block's con-
trol panel was located~the control centre of the whole
power block~was lit up only by the sparking of short cir-
cuits. Only now and then their outwardly calm story was
buried by a deep sigh or a painful pause, when recollections
of that night re-emerged.
Iurii Iurievich Badaev that night had been working at
24 CHERNOBYL

the infonnation processing complex SKALA:

'SKALA is the brain, the eyes and the ears of the station.
A computer does essential operations and calculations and
presents it all to the block's control panel. If SKALA stops,
they're like blind kittens.
'My position there is as an "electrician-fitter." Surprising?
But that's how it iso By training I'm an electronic engineer.
Usually in computer centres you have electronic engineers,
but among us for some reason we're called "electrician-
fitters. "
'Wh at happened was very simple. There was an explosion.
I was on shift forty metres from the reactor. We knew there
were experiments going on. The experiments were according
to a previously planned programme and we were following
this programme. Our computer registers all deviations and
records them on a special tape. We were watching over how
the reactor was working. Everything was fine. Then a signal
came which meant that the senior reactor engineer had
pressed the button to switch the reactor totally off.
'Literally fifteen seconds later there was a sudden shock,
and a few seconds later a stronger shock. The light went out
and our machine cut out. But some sort of emergency supply
came on and from that moment we tried to save the equip-
ment, because everyone needs our infonnation. Moreover,
this is the most important thing, this is the diagnosis of the
development of the accident. As soon as we had the emer-
gency supply, we started the struggle to keep our machine
going.
'Immediately after the explosion we feit nothing at aIl. The
fact is that hothouse conditions are created for our computer;
a temperature of 22°C-25°C is maintained, with a constant
pressure ventilation. We managed to get the machine going
and to protect the "racks" (Le., the computer-lu.S.) from
water, which by then was beginning to pour through the ceil-
ing. The machine was working, and the diagnostic system
was continuing. It was difficuIt to understand what it was
registering. It was only then that we asked ourselves: wh at on
earth has happened? We needed to take a look. And when
 The Accident 25

we opened the doors, we could see no thing but steam and

dust and the like. But then somewhere the "racks" which
controlled the reactor were shut off. WeIl, where we were is
the holy of holies; we have to do everything possible to
maintain the monitoring. And I had to go to the twenty-
seventh level, where the "racks" were. A level, that's a sort of
storey. I rushed off along the usual route, but it was im-
possible to get to the level. The elevator was crumpled,
crushed tight shut, and there were blocks of reinforced con-
crete on the steps and some sort of tubs; but the main thing
was that there was no light. We still didn't know the scale of
the accident, nothing at a11. Nonetheless, Iwanted to get
there and even ran off for a flashlight. And when I came
back with the flashlight, I realized that I wouldn't get
through ... Water was pouring from the ninth floor, it rea11y
was pouring. We took emergency shields and covered our
computers, to protect them, so that SKALA would continue
to work.
'Then we learned the extent of the accident. I really had to
convince mys elf of this. Litera11y a few minutes before the
accident Shashenok had ca11ed on uso He was one of those
two fellows who died. We chatted with hirn just as we are
talking with you; he had come to get something clear: "Do
you have a direct link to the room on the twenty-fourth
level?" We said that we had. They had to do some work
there and after all, this was one of the colleagues who were
carrying out the programme of experiments, noting down the
reactor's performance. They had their own apparatus in that
room. He said: "Lads, if I need a line, 1'11 come through
you." "Fine," we said.
'And when we had already saved our equipment, a ca11
came from that room where Shashenok had been working. A
continuous call. We took the receiver: no one answered. As it
later turned out, he couldn't reply. He had been crushed: he
had broken ribs and his spine was twisted. Nevertheless, I
tried to break through to hirn, I thought that he perhaps
needed help. But they had already got hirn out. I saw them
carrying hirn out on a stretch er. '
26 CHERNOBYL

And the town siept.

It was a warm April night, one of the best nights in the
year, when the leaves were just appearing in a green haze on
the trees.
The town of Prypiat was sleeping, Ukraine was sleeping,
the whole country was sleeping, still unaware of the massive
misfortune which had come upon our land.
 5
The Entire Guard
Followed Pravyk

Firemen heard the first alarm signals.

Leonid Petrovich Teliatnikov, Hero of the Soviet
Union, thirty-six-years old, chief of militarized fire brigade
No. 2 of the Chernobyl power station, internal service major
(now lieutenant-colonel):
'In Lieutenant Pravyk's guard there were seventeen
people. That night he was on duty. If we are to speak about
this guard as a whole, in contradistinction to what they write
in the newspapers, then the third guard was not so ideal.
And if it hadn't been for this incident, of course, no one
would ever have written about it. It was a very original
guard. It was a guard made up of personalities, one might
say. Because each member was his own man. There were a
lot of veterans there, a lot of original fellows.
'Volodia Pravyk, I think, was the youngest, he was twenty-
four. By nature he was kind and gentle, and they sometimes
let hirn down. He never refused anyone who made any kind
of request. He considered that he had to make concessions.
There was, perhaps, a certain weakness here on his part-
there were conflicts, and he ended up at fault, because there
were violations in the guard ... but he kept to his line.
'He was a great enthusiast, Volodia Pravyk. He was a
radio amateur, and a photographer. He was one of our active
28 CHERNOBYL

workers, the chief of staff of the Komsomol 'searchlight

squad.' The 'searchlight squad' was probably the most effec-
tive means of struggling with shortcomings, and it came
down hard on even the slightest ones. He wrote poetry too,
and drew, and did this work with pleasure. His wife was a
great help to hirn. They complemented each other perfectly.
His wife graduated from a music academy and taught music
in a kindergarten. Even to look at they were alike, both
gentle, and their outlook on life and their attitude to work-
all this was closely intertwined, was as one. A month before
the accident their daughter had been born. Recently he had
asked to be made inspector, and everyone agreed, but there
was simply no one to replace hirn ...
'Probably the most senior in the guard in age and length
of service was Ivan Oleksiiovych Butrymenko. He was forty-
two. He was one of those people who hold everything to-
gether. Everyone measured hirnself by hirn. Even the chief
of the guard and the secretaries of the Party and Komsomol
organization. Ivan Oleksiiovych was a representative on the
Town Council, and as such did a great deal of work ...
'In our brigade there also worked the three Shavrei broth-
ers, Belorussians. The youngest, Petro, worked as a brigade
inspector, and Leonid, the eldest, and Ivan, the one in be-
tween, worked in the third guard. Leonid was thirty-five,
Ivan was two or three years younger, and Petro was thirty.
Their attitude to work was: if you have to, you do it.
'Is it like that in life? Until you crack the whip, no one
even moves. It's not only here that it's like that, but every-
where. In one's business, in one's teaching-one person tries
to keep out of the limelight, to take a little rest, to take on
some lighter work. .. There was none of that here. When
the accident occurred, in spite of whatever dis cord there was
in the guard, in spite of everything, the whole guard followed
Pravyk, followed him without looking back... There
bitumen was burning. The roof of the machine room was
burning, and in terms of roubles the most valuable thing was
the machine room.
'Everyone feit the tension, sensed the responsibility. I only
 The Entire Guard 29

had to call a name and up he'd run: "Understood!" And

even without listening to the end, because he'd understood
what he had to do. He was only waiting for the order.
'And no one held back. They sensed the danger, but they
all understood: it had to be done. I only had to say the word,
and they' d relieve one another. At a run. Wh at was it like
before the accident? "Why am I going? WeIl, why?" But now
neither a word nor a murmur, and everything really was
done at a run. That really was the main thing. Otherwise the
fire would have taken far longer to extinguish and the con-
sequences would have been far worse.
'When the fire began, I was on leave. I had thirty-eight
days' leave. I was phoned at night, the transport controller
phoned me. There was no transport, all the cars were out. I
phoned the town militia division which was on duty, ex-
plained the situation, this and that, they always have cars. I
said: "There's a fire at the station, on the machine room
roof, pie ase help me get one." He asked me my address
again and said: "There'll be a car immediately."
'Up on top the roof was burning in one pi ace, a second,
and a third. When I got up there, I saw that it was burning in
five pi aces on the third block. At that time I still did not
know that the third block was working; but since the block
was burning, the fire had to be put out. This did not require
any great firefighting effort. I took a look in the machine
room: there were no traces of the fire. Fine. In the "stack"
on the tenth level, where the central block control panel was
situated, there was no fire. But what about the cable rooms?
For us that was the most important thing. We had to go all
the way round and get a good look. So all this time I was
running around, I examined the fifth and eighth leve~s, I
looked at the tenth, and at the same time c1arified some
things with the deputy chief engineer and the operational
staff: what was more important, what and how ... They said:
"Yes, indeed, you have to put out the fire on the roof, be-
cause the third block is still working, but if the roof collapses
and just one slab of concrete falls on a working reactor, there
could be an additional depressurization." I had to know all
30 CHERNOBYL

this, because there were many places, the station was very
big, and I needed to get everywhere.
'At the time I didn't manage to speak to Pravyk. It was
only when he was being sent to the hospital, and only for
that second literally a few words. At 0225 he had already
been taken off to hospital. They had spent 15-20 minutes up
there.
'Somewhere around 0345 I began to feel bad. I lit a
cigarette, kept panting as before, and had a persistent cough.
My legs feit weak, Iwanted to have abrief sit down ...
There was nowhere to sit. We drove off to look around our
positions and I showed them where to park the engines. We
went to the director, I needed to telephone, to report on the
situation. But at the station there was nowhere to phone
from. Many rooms were closed, there was no one there, and
though the director had several telephones, they were all be-
ing used. The director was speaking. Just then he was going
off full blast on his telephones. We couldn't phone from
there. So we went out to the brigade.'

And the alarm was growing.

At this point one important detail has to be clarified. Apart
from the guard of Lieutenant Pravyk of Militarized Fire
Brigade No. 2, the guard of Lieutenant V. Kibenok of Inde-
pendent Militarized Fire Brigade No. 6 had also been
alerted. Few people know that V. Kibenok's guard belonged
to quite another sub-department of the fire service-Brigade
No. 6, located in Prypiat. Even now the sub-department
stands-it's a littie building on the outskirts of Prypiat-and
behind the glass doors the powerful fire engine has fallen
silent for ever, as a monument to the achievement of
Kibenok's guard.
L Teliatnikov: 'Dur Brigade No. 2, and in it V. Pravyk's
guard, protected the nuclear power station. It was a site sta-
tion. The town brigade, in which V. Kibenok worked, looked
after the town. They Iearned of the fire at once. In the event
of a fire we automatically receive a high call number, and
this is immediately passed on to the central fire-brigade
 The Entire Guard 31

liaison unit. It is eommunieated by radio or telephone via the

Town Brigade. In relation to us the Town Brigade is the
main one. So, onee they know that a fire has broken out,
they automatieally know that they have to turn out.
'As I have noted, Pravyk's guard was at first in the ma-
ehine room. They got the fire out there, and the unit was left
on duty under his direetion, beeause the maehine room was
still at risk. And the Town Brigade, when it arrived a Httle
later, was sent to the reaetor seetion. At first the machine
room had been the foeal point, and then the reaetor seetion.
And so Pravyk then even went and left his guard and offered
his help to the Town Brigade. Out of our guard only Pravyk
died. The other five men who died were fellows from Town
Brigade No. 6. It turned out that they were the first to start
putting the fire out in the reactor. It was there that it was the
most dangerous. From the point of view of the danger from
radiation, of course. But from the point of view of the danger
from fire, it was in the maehine room, beeause it was there
that our guard operated at the start of the aeeident.'
And the alarm was growing.
At the very outset of the accident V. Pravyk gave the alarm
signal to aB the Kiev area fire brigades. In response to this
signal the fire sub-brigades of neighbouringpopulated areas
were sent to the nuclear power station. The reserve was
placed on emergency stand-by.
Hryhorii Matviiovych Khmel, fifty years old, fire engine
driver of the Chernobyl regional fire brigade:
'I like playing draughts. That night I was on duty. I was
playing with our chauffeur. I said to hirn: "No, Myshko,
you're doing it wrong, you're making mistakes." He was
losing. Our chat stretched out till somewhere around mid-
night, then I said: "Myshko, I think I'U be going to bed."
And he said: "I'U go off for a walk with Borys." "Fine, do."
'We have trestle beds there, and I set one up, took a mat-
tress and a clean quilt, a quilt from the little cupboard, and I
put it under my head and lay down. I don't know whether I
dozed for a long time or not, but then I heard something:
"Yes, yes, we're on our way!" I opened my eyes wide and
32 CHERNOBYL

saw Myshko, Borys and Hryts standing there. "Let's go!"

"Where?" "Volodia will get the infonnation this instant."
Then as soon as he had got the infonnation, the siren
whined. The alann. "Where to?" "To the Chemobyl power
station."
'Myshko Holovnenko, the driver, set off without a pause,
and 1 set out second. There are two engines in our brigade. 1
was in one and he in the other. WeIl, you know, if often hap-
pens that when we set out we don't elose the doors, and the
doors are glass, and often the wind breaks them. So,
nonnally, the one who comes out last must elose them.
Pryshchepa and 1 elosed the garage. 1 thought to mys elf: I'll
catch up with Myshko, I've got a ZIL-30. So off we went,
and 1 chased hirn at around 80 kilometres an hour. Above
my head the walkie-talkie was crackling, he was calling
Ivankiv and Poliske out, the traffk controller was calling us
out. 1 could hear that this was areal alann call. 1 thought
that it was really something serious ...
'Then 1 caught up with Holovnenko's engine just before
the power station, so that there'd be no confusion over the
building, so that it'd be two engines together at once. When 1
caught up with hirn, 1 stuck with hirn. We drove up. As soon
as we were there, at the power station administration build-
ing, we could immediately see the flames. It was like a
cloud, with red flames. It struck me there was going to be
work to do. Pryshchepa said: "WeIl, grandad Hrysho, there'll
be lots of work." We arrived there ten or fifteen minutes be-
fore two o'elock. We looked-there were none of our
engines, neither from Brigade No. 2 nor from Brigade No. 6.
What did this mean? It tumed out they'd parked on the
north side of the block. We got out-where now, then? We
surveyed the area. Graphite was scattered all around.
Myshko said: "Graphite, what's all this?" 1 kicked it away.
But a fireman on the other engine picked it up. "It's hot," he
said. Graphite. There were various pieces, big and small,
pieces you could take in your hands. They had fallen all over
the road and we were all tramping over them. Then 1 saw
Pravyk run up, the lieutenant who died. 1 knew hirn. 1
 The Entire Guard 33

worked two years with hirn. And my son, Petro Hryhorovych

Khmel, is a guard chief, just like Pravyk was. Pravyk was
chief of No. 3 guard, and Petro of No. 1. They finished their
education together... And my second son, Ivan Khmel, is
the fire-brigade inspection chief for the Chemobyl region.
'Yes, so Pravyk ran up. I asked hirn: "What now,
Volodia?" And he said: "Let's get the engines on the
'sukhotruby.' Over here." And now the engines from
brigades No. 2 and No. 6 came up and tumed toward uso We
had two and they had three tank-trucks and a mechanical
ladder. Five engines on this side. All together! We moved the
engines up to the wall onto the 'sukhotruby'. Do you know
what 'sukhotruby' are? No! They're empty hoses to which
you have to connect the water and then drag them up there,
onto the roof; and we had to take hoses, and join the hoses
and put out the flames.
'We set the engine on the 'sukhotruby,' really dose up, we
had a very powerful engine, Petro Pyvovar's from No. 6 on
the hydrant next to it; there's no longer any room for mine
there. Then Borys and Mykola Titenok and I said: "Let's
have a hydrant!" WeIl, they found us one, and that was diffi-
cult at night. During training we knew that our hydrant was
on that side according to the plan, but it tumed out that it
was on this side. We found the hydrant, drove the engine up
dose, quickly threw the hose out, and they-Titenok and, I
think, Borys, I can't remember-rushed forward to Myshko's
engine. Three hoses twenty metres each, that makes sixty
metres.
'We didn't have much idea about radiation. Whoever was
working didn't have any idea. The engines delivered the
water, Myshko filled the tank with water, the water went up,
and then those lads who died went up, Mykola Vashchuk,
and others, and Volodia Pravyk hirnself. At the time it was
only Kibenok I didn't see. They scrambled up there using a
step-Iadder. I helped them set it up, it was aIl done very
quickly, all this was done, and I didn't see them again.
'So, to work. We could see the flames, they were buming
hot, and making such a doud. Then there was a chimney
34 CHERNOBYL

there-I don't know the layout, something square-and fur-

ther off from there it was burning too.When we looked, it
wasn't flames burning, but sparks were already beginning to
fly. I said: "Lads, this is already going out."
'Leonenko, the deputy chief of Brigade No. 2, came up.
WeIl, we knew that Pravyk and Teliatnikov had already been
taken away, so we began to understand what radiation was.
They told to us to come into the refectory and take some
powders. As soon as I came in, I asked: "Isn't Petro
around?" Petro was due to replace Pravyk at eight in the
morning. They said: "No. " But he's been put on alert. Just
as I went out, the lads said: "Grandad, Petro Khmel's been
taken there as substitute. I thought: that's that, a screw-up.
'At this point lots of engines drove up, and our bosses
came. A Volga came from the administration, and cars ar-
rived and drove up from Rozvazhiv and Dymer. I saw Iakub-
chyk from Dymer, we know each other, he's a driver. "Is that
you, Pavlo?" "Yes, it's me." We got into the engine and
drove off to the first building; there we were taken into into a
room and checked for radiation. Everyone walked up and he
wrote: "Dirty, dirty, dirty, dirty." And they just didn't say
anything. It was at night. They took us off to a shower room,
to get washed. They said: "Get undressed ten at a time, and
leave your clothes here."
'I had leather boots and pants, no waterproof because I
was a driver, and an underjacket, robe and protective shirt.
He said: Take your documents with you, and your keys, and
go straight into the shower. " Fine. We got washed, went out
through another door, and there they gave us clothes and
slippers. It was all serious. I went out into the street and I
could see, it was all visible and clear, I could see. My Petro
was coming along, in his uniform, in a cape, with his fire-
man's belt, cap and leather boots. "It's you, son, are you go-
ing there too?" At this people thundered toward hirn, be-
cause he was going where we had got washed; they grabbed
hirn and led hirn off, not letting hirn in, to put it briefly. He
just said: "You here, dad?," and off they took hirn.
'Then we were taken to a civil defence cellar. There it was
 The Entire Guard 35
quiet and there were beds, it was seven o'clock. Then it was
eight o'clock, and nine o'clock, when 1 saw Petro coming.
He'd changed clothes. WeIl, my son came, he sat down,
chatted with me, ordinary domestic questions, nothing about
this at all. He said: "I don't know what to do at home, Dad, 1
feel sort of siek." Then: "Dad, 1 think 1'11 go to the medical
unit." "Go on, then." And he went.
'I didn't even ask him what he'd been doing on the roof,
there hadn't been time to ask.
'And Ivan, my second son, had also been called out by the
alarm. He belonged to the Chemobyl regional section. They
had got hirn up around 6am. They had sent hirn on watch or
somewhere. He had a litde truck Urals car, and he just drove
around.
'At first it was as if 1 feit nothing. Then, at first, not sleep-
ing, then we got agitated, then 1 got scared, 1 shook so much,
you know, all this ... '
Hero of the Soviet Union Lieutenant Volodymyr Pav-
lovych Pravyk.
Hero of the Soviet Union Lieutenant Viktor Mykolaiovych
Kibenok.
Sergeant Mykola Vasyliovych Vashchuk.
Senior Sergeant Vasyl Ivanovych Ihnatenko.
Senior Sergeant Mykola Ivanovych Titenok.
Sergeant Volodymyr Ivanovych Tyshchura.
Six portraits in black frames, six fine young men look at us
from the wall of the Chemobyl fire station; their expressions
seem to be sorrowful, and bittemess, reproach and the dumb
question: "How could this happen?" have become fixed in
them. It's what we think we see. But that April night, in the
chaos and alarm of the fire, their expressions held no SOl:row
or reproach. There wasn't the time. They were working.
They saved the nuclear power station, they saved Prypiat,
Chernobyl, Kiev, all of uso
It was June 1986 when I came here, to the holy of holies of
the Internal Affairs Ministry of the UkrSSR-the Chernobyl
Fire Station-which had become the centre for all the work
in the Zone to control the fire. An extraordinaily scorehing
36 CHERNOBYL

June, with the sun shining fiercely in the sky and not the
slightest hint of a cloud. And all this happened not by God's
will but by man's: pilots were pitilessly destroying the clouds
in the zone of the nuclear power station, using special meth-
ods to control the sky from the air.
The fire station is a fin~ building, almost like a dacha. I
looked at those doors which 'grandad' Khmel closed after
hirn as he set off to the fire. The glass hadn't broken. Two
firemen with ho ses in their hands were was hing down the
yard, over which a sultry wave of hot air was slowly rising.
Ready to set out, cleaned until they shone, the red-and-white
fire engines with the Cherkasy, Dnipropetrovsk and Poltava
region registrations stood there. Near the reactor there was a
round-the-clock rotation of firemen: you could expect any-
thing. Apart from that, the united fire detachment on duty
during those hot days in Chernobyl was fated to participate
in the struggle with 'ordinary' fires, which were no rare event
in the local wooded and swampy places, especially in years
of drought: in the Zone the peatbogs were burning. And, like
everything in the Zone, these 'ordinary' fires were also ex-
traordinary: together with the smoke radioactive aerosols
flew up into the air, something which just could not be al-
lowed ...
Here I met the chief of the administration of the UkrSSR
Internal Affairs Ministry's fire defence Major-General Pylyp
Mykolaiovych Desiatnykiv and the chief of the firemen's
detachment Colonel Evgenii lukhimovich Kiriukhantsev.
Colonel Kiriukhantsev is a Muscovite, the standard type of
military intellectual: disciplined, handsome and precise. He
told me that at the beginning of June in their brigade there
took place a most strange, but very significant 'friendly' trial.
The trial was about the fact that two firemen. .. 'pinched'
two roentgens more that they had the 'right' to, during areal
operation (all operations before being carried out were care-
fully planned and more than once rehearsed with a
chronometer).
Just think!
In May they would probably have praised them and
 The Entire Guard 37

declared them heroes. In June they punished them. The

times changed so swiftly in the Zone, and the very attitude to
this capacious concept 'heroism' changed.
Only the attitude to the men whose portraits hung in black
frames on the wall of the Chemobyl fire station has not
changed and never will change.
 6
Bilokin From The
Ambulance Seroice

Va.entyn Petrovych Bilokin, twenty-eight years old,

doctor in the emergency medical unit of the town of Prypiat.
'On 25 April I came on duty. In Prypiat there is one emer-
gency brigade: a doctor and a medical assistant. And
altogether we have only six ambulances.
'As there were a lot of calls, we split up: the medical as-
sistant looked after the calls to 'chronics' -if injections were
needed-and the doctor after the complex cases and chil-
dren. During this duty period we worked separately, like two
brigades: the medical assistant Sasha Skachok, and 1. Mas-
netsova was the controller. From eight o'c1ock that evening
everything seemed to take off, to hurtle with amazing
rapidity. No, at first everything was calm at the nuclear
power station, but not calm in the town. I was driving around
all the time, not even getting out of the car. At first there was
some drunkenness, someone went and threw himself out of
a window, no, he didn't kill himself, he was fine, just "totally
soused" ... Then there were calls for children and we went
to one old dear, and then sometime in the evening, just be-
fore midnight, I could remember it weIl as the night was very
chaotic, there came a call: a thirteen-year-old boy with bron-
chial asthma, the attack had become serious. And it had be-
come serious because a neighbour phoned and didn't give
40 CHERNOBYL

the number of the apartment. I drove out onto Construction

Workers' Avenue, but it was already midnight and the house
was big. I looked, walked around and around-no one.
What could I do? I couldn't wake everyone up. So off I went.
'When I got back, Masnetsova said: "They've phoned with
the number of the apartment. Back I went and, on arriving,
the neighbour began to swear at me because I had arrived
late. I said: "Ok, but I didn't know the number." And he
retorted: "You ought to have." But I honestly didn't know, it
was the first time I'd been to that boy. In the house the
neighbour shoved me around and was elose to getting into a
fight, so I took the boy down to the Riga ambulance and
gave hirn an intravenous injection of euphilline. And the
neighbour was still threatening to lay a complaint against
me ...
'So when we were returning to the hospital-I was with
the driver Anatolii Gumarov, an Ossete, about thirty years
old, we saw that. What was it like? We were driving along at
night, the town was empty, asleep, and I was siuing next to
the driver. I saw two flashes to the side of Prypiat; at first we
didn't realize that they came from the nuelear power station.
We were driving along Kurchativ Street when we saw the
flashes. vye thought they were shooting stars. Since there
were buildings all around, we could not see the nuelear
power station. Just flashes. Like lightning, perhaps, a little
bigger than lightning. We didn't hear any thunder. The
motor was running. Later at the block they told us that it
had really boomed. And our controller heard the explosion.
One, then a second one straight afterward. And Anatolii
said: "Shooting stars or not shooting stars, I just don't under-
stand. " He is a hunter hirnself, so it astonished hirn some-
what. The night was peaceful and starry, nothing special ...
When we arrived at the medical unit, the controller said that
there had been a call. We arrived at 0135. The call had come
to go to the power station, and the medical assistant Sasha
Skachok had gone off there. I asked the controller: "Who
phoned, what sort of a fire is it?" She didn't say anything to
the point, whether I needed to go or not. Well, I decided to
 Bilokin From the Ambulance Seroice 41

wait for information from Sasha. At 0140-0142 Sasha

phoned me and said that it was a fire, with people bumed,
and that a doctor was needed. He was very excited, gave no
details, and hung up. I took my bag and drugs because of the
bums, and told the controller to get in touch with the medi-
cal unit chief. I took two empty ambulances and myself went
with Gumarov.
'Going straight to the power station in a Riga ambulance
takes around seven to ten minutes.
'We left town by the Kiev road, then tumed left to the
power station. It's there that I met Sasha Skachok; he was
coming to meet us in the medical unit, but their emergency
light was on, so I did not stop them since, if that light is on,
then it's somethiog serious. We carried on to the power sta-
tion.
'The guard was standing at the gates and asked us:
"Where are you going?" "To the fire." "Why haven't you
any special clothing on?" "But how was I to have known that
special clothing was necessary?" I had no information. I was
wearing my doctor's smock, it was an April evening, a warm
night, I didn't have a cap, nothing. We drove in and I met
Kibenok.
'During my conversation with Kibenok I asked hirn: "Are
there any cases with bums?" He said: "No. But the situation
isn't very clear. My lads are feeling a bit nauseous."
'In fact, the fire was no longer visible, it had somehow
crawled down the chimney. The covering, the roof, had fal-
len in ...
'We talked with Kibenok near the power block itself, there
where the fir.emen were standing. Pravyk, Kibenok, by then
they had drawn up in two engines. Pravyk had jumped out,
but he didn't come to me; Kibenok was rather excited, ner-
vous.
'Sasha Skachok had already taken Shashenok from the
power station. The lads had dragged hirn out. A beam had
fallen on hirn, and he was bumed. He died in the resus-
citator on the moming of 26 April.
'We had no dosimeters. We were told there were gas
42 CHERNOBYL

masks and protective suits, but there wasn't anything of the

sort, it didn't work ...
'I needed to make a telephone call. Kibenok said that he
too needed to call his bosses; 1 went to the administration
and social building, about eighty metres from the block. And
1 told the lads: "If you need any help, I'm staying around."
'I had had a real sense of alarm when 1 saw Kibenok and
then, by the administration building, the operation lads.
They were jumping from the third block and running to the
administration building. You couldn't get any sense out of
anyone.
'The door of the health centre was blocked ...
'I phoned the central control panel. 1 asked: "Wh at is the
situation?" "The situation is unclear, stay around, give as-
sistance if it is necessary." Later 1 phoned the medical unit.
The deputy chief, Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Pecherytsia,
was already there.
'I told Pecherytsia that 1 had seen the fire and that 1 had
seen the fourth power block's collapsed roof. This was some-
where around 2am. I told hirn 1 was getting worried. I had
come here but had so far done no work, and all the while the
town depended on me. There might be urgent calls. I also
told Pecherytsia that there were still no victims, but the fire-
men said' that they were feeling nauseous. 1 began to re-
member my wartime hygiene, my time at the institute. Some
knowledge filtered out, although it seemed that I had forgot-
ten everything. Wh at was the point of it for us? Who needed
radiation hygiene? Hiroshima, Nagasaki, all that was so re-
mote from uso
'Pecherytsia said: "Stay around there for the moment, ring
again in 15-20 minutes, we'll tell you what to do. Don't get
worried, here in the town we'll call out our own doctor. At
this very moment three people came together to me. I think
they had been dispatched with a young man of around eigh-
teen. He was complaining of nausea, an acute headache,
and was beginning to vomit. They had been w(Hking on the
third block and, it seems, had gone over t6 the fourth ... I
asked hirn wh at he had heen eating, when, how he had spent
 Bilokin From the Ambulance Seroice 43

the evening, did he have a tendency to feel nauseous? 1 took

his pressure, it was around 140 to 150 over 90, a liule high
and unstable, and the lad wasn't hirns elf, he feit peculiar ...
1 took hirn to the ambulance. There was nothing in the
vestibule, nothing even to sit on, just two machines dispens-
ing fizzy water, and the heaIth centre was closed. 1 took hirn
into the ambulance. And he "floated away" before my eyes,
although he was awake, and at the same time such symp-
toms: confused, unable to speak. beginning to stumble, as if
he'd downed a good dose of spirit, but no smell, nothing ...
Pale. And those who had been running out of the block had
just kept clamouring "It's horrible, horrible," their minds
were affected too. Then the lads said that that the apparatus
needles were jumping off the scale. But that was later.
'I gave the lad injections of relanium, aminazine, and
something else, and immediately I had done this three more
arrived. Three or four from the operations section. It was all
according to the textbook: headache with the same
symptoms-a tight throat, dryness, nausea and vomiting. 1
gave them a relanium injection. I was alone, there was no
medical assistant, and I immediately packed them into the
car and sent them off to Prypiat with Anatolii Gumarov.
'I phoned Pecherytsia again, said how it was, what the
symptoms were.
"Didn't he say that he would be sending you help straight
away?"
"No, he didn't. .. I had just sent those off, when the lads
brought me some firemen. Wearing capes. Several .of them.
They simply couldn't remain standing. 1 applied a purely
"symptomatic" treatment: relanium, aminazine, to 'reduce'
their mental problem and the pain . .. "
'When Tolia Gumarov returned from the medical unit he
brought me a pile of drugs. I phoned back and said that I
would not use them. After all, there were no burns cases. For
some reason they loaded me with drugs. Later, when in the
morning I came to the medical unit, no one wanted to take
them off me. They had already started to measure me, and
the background radiation was really high. I tried to give the
44 CHERNOBYL

drugs back, but they wouldn't take them. So I got them out,
put them down and said: "Do wh at you want with them."
'Having sent the firemen off, I asked them to send potas-
sium iodide, tab lets, aIthough there probably was iodine in
the power station heaIth centre. At first Pecherytsia asked:
"Why, what far?," and then, apparently, when they saw the
victims, they stopped asking questions. They got the potas-
sillm iodide and sent it. I began giving it to people.
'The building was open, but people went out. They were
vomiting and feeling uncomfortable. They feIt ashamed. I
chased them all back into the building, but they just came
out again. I explained to them that they had to get into the
ambulance and go to the medical unit for observation. And
they said: "But I must have smoked a little too much, I've
just got too excited, there's been this explosion, and... "
And they ran away from me. People just didn't fully realize
what had happened.
'Later, in Moscow, in Clinic No. 6, I lay in a ward with a
dosimeter operator. He told me that immediately after the
explosion the needles on the power station apparatus had
gone straight over the top. They had phoned the chief
engineer and the security engineer, and the latter had
replied: "What's all the panic? Where is the duty chief?
When he arrives, tell hirn to phone me. But don't panic. The
report is not in order," he answered and replaced the re-
ceiver. He was in Prypiat, at horne. And later they jumped
out with these "depeshky" (dosimeters-Iu.S.), and you
couldn't get to the fourth block with them.
'My three ambulances were circulating all the time. There
were already numerous fire engines; ours started to use their
headlamps and sound their horns so they cleared the way for
uso
'I didn't take Pravyk and Kibenok out. I remember, Petro
Khmet was there, a dark-haired lad. I was in hospital with
Petro for a while in Prypiat, our beds side by side, and then
in Moscow.
'At six o'clock I too began to feel my throat hurting and
my head aching. I understood. I was afraid. But when people
 Bilokin From the Ambulance Seroice 45

see that elose by there's a man in a white smock, they calm

down. I had been standing there like everyone else, without
agas mask, without any protective gear.'
'But why without agas mask?'
'Where would I have got one? I' d have rushed off to get
one, but there was nothing anywhere. I phoned the medical
unit: "Do we have any gauze?" "No." But that's enough.
Working in agauze mask? It does nothing at all. In this situ-
ation it was simply impossible to abandon people.
'At the block, when dawn broke, there was no longer any
blaze. There was black smoke and black soot. The reactor
was spitting, not all the time, but just like this: smoke,
smoke, then an explosion. Fallout. It smoked, but there were
no flames.
'The firemen had come down by then, and one fellow said:
"Let it burn with blue flames, we won't go up there again. "
It was already elear to everyone that all was not weIl with the
reactor, although the control panel simply did not give any
concrete data. Just after five o'elock a dosimeter operator
came in a fire engine. I don't remember who and where he
was from. He came with firemen, they carried axes and
broke down some door in the administration and social
building, taking something away in boxes. I don't know
whether it was protective clothing or equipment, but they
loaded it into the fire engine. The dosimeter operator had a
fixed appliance.
'He said: "How come you are standing there without pro-
tection? The level is very high here, what are you c;loing?" I
said: "I'm working here."
'I came out of the administration and sodal building, and
my ambulances were no longer there. I asked that dosimeter
operator: "Where did that cloud go? To the town?" "No," he
said, "toward laniv, it just barely touched our area in pass-
ing." He was about fifty, he drove off in a fire engine. And 1
feIt ill.
'Then Tolia Humariv came agaiIi, something I'm grateful
to him for. By then 1 was already making my way out, think-
ing I would ask the firemen for a lift so long as 1 could still
46 CHERNOBYL

move. My initial euphoria had passed, and weakness in my

legs had taken its pi ace. So long as I had been working, I
had not noticed this, but now it began. Astate of collapse,
pressing on me, bursting, I was oppressed, with only one
thought: to crawl somewhere into a corner. I thought neither
of my family nor of anything, I somehow wanted to be left
alone, just that. To get away from everything.
'Tolia Humariv and I stood there for five to seven minutes
more, waiting to see if anyone would ask for help, but no one
turned to uso I told the firemen that I was going to the centre,
to the medical unit. If they needed me they should call me.
There were more than ten fire engines there.
'When I came to the medical unit, there were a lot of
people there. The lads had brought a bottle of spirits; drink,
they said, you have to, it helps. But I couldn't, everything up-
set me. I asked the lads to take potassium iodide to my fam-
ily in the hosteI. But some were drunk, and others were run-
ning around constantly washing themselves. So I took a
Moskvich-the driver wasn't ours-and went horne. First,
though, I washed and changed. I took potassium iodide to
my family in the hosteI. I told them to elose the windows and
not to let the children out; I told them all I could. I distrib-
uted tablets to my neighbours. And Oiakonov, our doctor,
came and took me away. I was given treatment at once, and
placed on a drip. I began to "float away." I began to feel
worse, and I remember everything rather hazily. Later I re-
membered nothing at all. .. '
That summer I received a letter from Oonetsk from an old
friend of mine, the dean of the Pediatric Faculty of the M.
Gorky Oonetsk Medical Institute, Volodymyr Vasyliovych
Hazhiiev. Ünce, in the fifties, Hazhiiev and I had produced
the Kiev Medical Institute satirical magazine A Crocodile in a
Smock. It was popular among the students and teachers, and
we drew caricatures and wrote witty captions ... In his letter
v.v. Hazhiiev told me about Valentyn Bilokin, a graduate of
the Pediatric Faculty: 'Ouring his years of study in the in-
stitute he was on the whole an average, ordinary student. ..
He never tried to produce a favourable impression on his
 Bilokin From the Ambulance Seroice 47

surroundings-teachers, administration and the like. He did

the things he was charged with modestly, worthily and weIl.
'You feIt he was reliable. In his studies he overcame his
difficuIties on his own, with no crises. He went worthily to-
ward his set aim (he wanted to be a consultant pediatrician),
doing all that was necessary. His natural decency, his kind-
ness evoked asolid and deep respect particularly on the part
of his group and course colleagues, and also his teachers.
When in June we learned of his worthy conduct on 26 April
in Chernobyl, the first thing we said was that he, Valyk,
could have done nothing else. He is a genuine person, relia-
ble and decent, a person to whom people reach out.
I met Valentyn Bilokin in Kiev in the autumn, when sev-
eral things were already behind hirn: the hospital, a stay in a
sanatorium, all sorts of fussing about getting an apartment
and arranging work in Donetsk, every type of problem (the
effort he had to make to receive the salary due hirn. .. for
April, not to mention his getting the material compensation
due to every inhabitant evacuated from Prypiat!).
Before me sat alean, broad-shouldered, modest fellow, in
whose every word and movement were restraint and a
profound sense of dignity, both as a doctor and as aperson.
Only on the third day I learned by chance that he suffered
from shortness of breath, although before the accident he
went in for sport-weight-lifting-and could lift consider-
able weights. He and I went to Professor L.P. Kindzelsky for
a consuItation ...
Valentyn told me about his children (he is the father of
two Httle girls, the five-year-old Tetianka and tiny Katia,
who was one-and-a-haIf months old at the time of the acci-
dent), and showed delight that at last he would work in the
speciality which he had consciously chosen for hirnself in
life: as a consuItant pediatrician. And I thought how, that
night, he had been the first doctor in the world to work on
the scene of an accident of such a great scale, he had saved
casualties gripped by fear, people stricken by radiation, how
he had given them hope, because that night those had been
his only medicines, stronger than relanium, aminazine and
all the drugs in the world.
 7
The Extraordinary Convay

Aleksandr luriievich Esaulov, 34 years old, deputy

president of the Prypiat Town Executive Committee:
'They got me out on the night of 26 April, just after 3
o'clock. Mariia Hryhorivna, our secretary, phoned me and
said: "There's been an accident at the nuclear power sta-
tion." An acquaintance of hers worked at the station and
he'd called during the night, woken her up and told her.
'At 3.50am I was in the Executive Committee. The presi-
dent had already been told, and he had left for the nuclear
power station. I immediately phoned the head of staff of our
civil defence, getting hirn up as it was an emergency. He
lived in a hostel. He rushed over at once. Then the president
of the Town Executive Committee drove up. Volodymyr Pav-
lovych Voloshko. We all got together and started to work out
what to do.
'Of course, we had no idea what to do. As you say, it's only
when the thunder bangs over your head.
'In the Town Executive Committee I'm president of the
planning commission, I look after transport, medicine, com-
munications, roads, works, building materials and
pensioners. On the whole I'm young as deputy presidents go,
I was chosen as recently as 18 November 1985. On my
birthday. I lived in a two-Toom apartment. At the time of the
50 CHERNOBYL

accident my wife and two children weren't in Prypiat-she

had gone off to her parents, because she was on post-natal
leave. My son was born in November 1985. My daughter is
SIX.
'So, 1 went to our Motor Transport Regiment and decided
to organize the cleaning of the town. 1 phoned Kononykhin
in the Executive Committee and asked hirn to send a street-
cleaning truck. It came. What a situation! You won't believe
this, but for our entire town there were four street-cleaning
trucks! For fifty thousand inhabitants! In spite of the fact that
the Executive and Town Committees were both on the whole
aggressive, and had been to the Ministry and asked for
trucks. Not because they foresaw the accident, but simply to
keep the town clean.
'A truck with a tank drove up, where they'd dug it up, I
don't know. The driver wasn't the usual one and didn't know
how to work the pump. The water just flowed haphazardly
from the hose. 1 packed hirn off, and he came back twenty
minu,tes later, having learned how to work the pump. We
started to clean the town by the filling station. By hindsight 1
now understand that this was one of the first procedures to
follow to get the dust to settle. The water flowed in a soap
solution. Later it turned out that this was a very polluted part
of the town.
'At ten o'clock there was a meeting in the Town Com-
mittee building, a very short one, about 10-20 minutes.
People weren't ready for a long talk. After the meeting 1
went straight over to the medical unit.
'I sat there in the medical unit. Suddenly I remembered:
the block is c1early visible. It's right there, really close by.
Three kilometres away. Smoke was coming from the block.
Not exactly black ... A sort of plume of smoke. Like a bon-
fire that had gone out, but from a bonfire like that the smoke
is grey, and this was so dark. WeIl, and later the graphite
started to burn. This was already nearer evening, there was a
glow in the sky, just what we didn't need. There was so
much graphite there ... It was no joke.
'In the afternoon the second secrctary of the Kiev Regional
 The Extraordinary Convay 51

Committee V. Malomuzh called me in and gave me the task

of organizing the evacuation of the most seriously ill people
to Kiev, to the airport, to send them to Moscow.
'From the headquarters of the national civil defence came
Hero of the Soviet Union Major-General Ivanov. He flew in
by plane.
'He handed over the plane far the transportation of
people.
'All this took place sometime after 5pm on Saturday, 26
April.
'It turned out to be not so simple to set up a convoy. It's no
easy matter loading up people. We had to prepare docu-
ments for everyone: medical histories, results of analyses.
The main delay was precisely in processing these personal
details. There were even moments like when a seal was
needed, but the seal was at the power station. We crossed
this bit out, and sent the person off without a seal.
'We took twenty-six people-that was one bus, a red inter-
urban Icarus. But 1 had told them to give us two buses. Any-
thing can happen. Heaven help us if there was some sort of
delay and. .. And we needed an ambulance because there
were two gravely ill people, stretcher cases, with thirty per
cent burns.
'I asked them not to go through the centre of Kiev. These
lads in the bus, they were all wearing pyjamas. Something of
an extraordinary spectacle, of course. But for some reason
they went along the Khreshchatyk, then left along Petrivska
Avenue, and rushed off to Boryspil. They arrived. The gates
were closed. It was night, around three o'clock, or just after.
We sounded the horn and, finally, a spectacle worthy of the
gods. Someone in slippers, riding breeches, and witho\lt a
belt came out and opened the gates. We went straight out
onto the airfield, to the plane. There the crew was already
warming up the engines.
'And there was another episode that went straight to my
heart. The pilot came up to me. And he said: "How much a
dose have these lads had?" 1 asked: "What do you mean?"
"Roentgens." I said: "Enough. But so what?" And he said to
52 CHERNOBYL

me: "WeIl, I want to live too, I don't want any excess roent-
gens, I've got a wife and children."
'Can you imagine?
'Off they flew. I said farewell and wished them a speedy
recovery.
'We rushed back to Prypiat. It was the second day I hadn't
siept, but I just couldn't. During the night, when we had
been driving to Boryspil, I saw the convoys of buses going
directly to Prypiat. To meet uso They were already preparing
the evacuation of the town.
'It was the morning of 27 April, a Sunday.
'We arrived, I got some breakfast and went to see
Malomuzh. I reported. He said: "Everyone who's been hos-
pitalized has to be evacuated." The first time I' d got the most
seriously ill out, now I had to get themall out. During the
time I had been away, more people had turned up.
Malomuzh told me to be at Boryspil at 12 o'clock. And our
conversation took pi ace around ten in the morning. It was
simply unrealistic. All those people had to be got ready, all
their documents had to be processed. And the first time I
had taken twenty-six people, now I had to get 106 out,
quickly.
'We got all this "delegation" together, processed them all
and drove off at 12 o'clock. There were three buses, with a
fourth in reserve. Icaruses. There were women standing
there, saying goodbye, weeping, and the lads, all of them
walking around, wearing pyjamas, and I was begging them:
"Lads, don't get separated, I don't want to have to come
looking for you." One bus was filIed, then the second and
the third, they were all in, and I ran off to the accompanying
car, got in and waited five minutes, ten, fifteen; where was
the third bus?
'It turned out that three more casualties had arrived, then
more ...
'Finally they arrived. There was a halt in Zalissia. We had
agreed that if anything happened we would flash our head-
lamps. Going through Zalissia, there they flashed! The
driver braked harshly. The buses stopped. The last bus was
 The Extraordinary Convay 53

about eighty or ninety metres from the first. It stopped. A

nurse flew out and ran with all her might to the first bus. It
turned out that all the buses had their medics, but the medi-
eines were in the first bus. She ran up: "There's a patient in
a bad way!" And I saw Bilokin for the only time. True, at the
time I didn't know his surname. They told me later that it
was Bilokin. He was in pyjamas too, and he ran up with his
bag to give assistance.'
V. Bilokin: 'The first group of casualties set off on the
26th in the evening, around 11 pm and made straight for
Kiev. They took the operators, Pravyk, Kibenok, Teliatnikov.
We stayed behind for the night. On the 27th in the morning
my doctor said: "Don't worry, you'll fly to Moscow. There's
been an order to get you out before lunch." When they were
taking us out in the buses, I feit bad. We even stopped some-
where just after Chernobyl, someone was getting worse, and
I ran out and tried to help the nurse. '
A. Esaulov: 'Bilokin ran, and they tried to catch hirn.
"Where are you going, you're ill." He was a casualty too ...
Off he rushed with his bag. And the most interesting thing
was that when they started to rummage in that sack, they
just couldn't find any ammonium hydroxide. So I asked the
traffic officials who were accompanying us: "Have you any
ammonium hydroxide in your first-aid kit?" "Yes." We
swung round and drove up to the bus. Bilokin immediately
put an ampoule under the lad's nose. The trouble eased.
'And another incident in Zalissia comes to mind. The sick
people had got out of the buses, some for a smoke, others to
stretcH themselves walking here and there, and suddenly a
woman ran up shouting, creating areal uproar. Her son was
in this bus. That was all we needed! What a coincidence!
Can you imagine? Where she had appeared from I simply
could not understand. He called her, "Mother! Mother!"
and calmed her.
'At Boryspil airport a plane was already waiting for uso
Polivanov, the airport chief, was there. We drove out onto
the fjeld to get up e10se to the plane-the lads were all in
pyjamas, it was April and not hot. We drove through the
54 CHERNOBYL

gates, onto the field and a little yellow Riga truck rushed out,
its driver swearing that we had gone out without permission.
We had first of all gone to the wrong plane, anyway. The
Riga truck accompanied uso
'And there was another incident. I was sitting calmly with
Polivanov, there was a pile of telephones, we were process-
ing documents for the transportation of the casualties. I gave
them a Chernobyl nuclear power station receipt and a letter
of guarantee that the station would pay for the flight, it was a
TU-154. A good-Iooking woman came up and offered us
coffee. Her eyes were like Christ's, and she clearly knew
what was going on. She looked at me as if I was someone
come out of Dante's inferno. It was already the second day I
hadn't slept and I was terribly exhausted ... She brought the
coffee. Such a little cup. I drank this mouthful in one go.
She brought me a second. Wonderful coffee. We got every-
thing done, I stood up, and she said: "That'll be fifty-six
kopecks." I looked at her, I just couldn't understand. She
said: "I'm sorry, but here such things are done for money." I
was so far away from thinking about money, from all that ...
It was as if I'd come from another world.
'We washed the buses again, took a shower, and off we
went back to Prypiat. We drove out of Boryspil around four
o'clock in the afternoon. Along the road we met buses ...
'They were bringing the people of Prypiat out.
'We arrived in Prypiat. It was already an empty town.
'That was on 27 April 1986, a Sunday.'
 8
Before the Evacuation

L. Kovalevska: 'I lived in the third microraion. I often

had insomnia and took things to help me sleep. On 25 April,
Friday, I had just finished my narrative poem "Paganini." I
had been working on it every night for three months. And
that night I decided to take a rest. So 1 took something to
help me sleep. And 1 slept the sleep of the dead. I didn't he ar
the explosion. And yet where we live, if an exhaust baekfires,
you he ar it. Even the windows rattle. In the morning my
mother said: "Either there was something that made a noise
like thunder at the power station last night, or jets were fly-
ing a11 night." I didn't ascribe any significanee to this. It was
Saturday. I began getting ready to go to our literary club. I
onee ran it, it's ea11ed "Prometheus." Power workers from
the station and construction workers went to it ... 1 went out
and 100ked-a11 the roads were flooded with water and there
was some white solution, everything was white, foaming, a11
the roadsides. And 1 know how it is when there is an acci-
dent with an accidental spill. 1 began somehow to feel un-
easy. 1 walked on. 1 looked: policemen he re and there, never
had 1 seen so many policemen in the town before.. They
were not doing anything, just standing around near strategie
buildings: the post office, the Palace of Culture. It was like a
war situation. It suddenly hit me. People were out walking,
56 CHERNOBYL

there were children everywhere, it was so hot. People were

going to the beach, to their dachas, fishing, many people
were already at their dachas, sitting by the river, near the
cooling pond (that was a sort of artificial reservoir near the
nuclear power station)... 1 didn't get to the literary club.
lana, my daughter, had gone to schooI. 1 returned horne and
said: "Mother, 1 don't know wh at has happened, but don't
let Natalochka (that's my niece) out, and when lana gets
horne from school, make her stay at horne immediately." But
1 didn't tell her to close the fortochka. 1 didn't think of that.
And it was so hot. 1 said: "And don't you go out, and don't
let the girls out today." "But what's happened?" she said. "I
don't know anything exactly, 1 just have a feeling." 1 made
off there again, to the central square. Our literature students
were there, and 1 went to meet them. You could see the reac-
tor weIl, you could see it was burning and that a wall had
split open. There were flames rising over the hole. the chim-
ney between the third and fourth blocks was red hot, like a
fiery pillar. Flames can't stand like that, without swinging to
and fro, but there stood a fiery pillar. Whether or not it was
flames coming from the opening, 1 don't know.
'The whole day we knew nothing, and no one said any-
thing. WeIl, it was a fire. But as for the radiation, that there
were radioactive emissions, nothing was said about that.
'And lana came from school and said: "Mom, we had
physical training for alm ost an hour in the street." Mad-
ness ... '
Aneliia Romanlvna Perkovska, secretary of the Prypiat
Komsomol Town Committee:
'Already in the morning there were fellows coming into
the Town Committee with offers of help. But we didn't know
what to do ourselves. There was no information at all. There
were just rumours ...
'They had put the fire out. But what about the reactor?
'They even argued about whether the reactor had been ex-
posed or not. Nobody could believe that the reactor had been
exposed. We chatted with people who had studied these
reactors. Surely the reactor in itself was so weIl conceived
 Before the Evacuation 57

that even if you had wanted to blow it up, you couldn't have.
It was difficult to believe that it had been exposed.'
Iurii Vitaliiovych Dobrenko, 27 years old, instructor at
the Prypiat Komsomol Town Committee:
'Next door to me in the "Jupiter" works hosteI lived a doc-
tor, Valentyn Bilokin. He worked on the ambulance service. I
used to go fis hing with hirn, he was a fine fellow, we both
went in for spinning. When that accident happened, he was
on duty, and later he came to the hosteI, undressed, just
wearing his white doctor's smock; he came somewhere
around six in the morning, he had been in the neighbouring
block, distributing iodine and pills. He said: "Take them just
in case." Then the ambulance came for hirn, and they took
hirn away. They didn't wake me up. They told me aB this in
the morning.
'There was a sort of vagueness in our Town Committee
the whole day. But after six in the evening we a1l got to-
gether again-we now had a concrete job to do. .. '
A. Perkovska: 'About four in the afternoon on Saturday,
26 April, the members of the Government Commission be-
gan to gather. The idea had been proposed of loading sand
onto helicopters and scattering it over the reactor. Whose
idea it was, I can't say. The debates there lasted a long time.
Was lead necessary? Was sand necessary? Commands were
very quickly given and then countermanded. It was obvious
why, there had never been a situation like it before. Some-
thing fundamentaBy new had to be found.
'Finally it was decided to load sand. We have a cafe, the
"Prypiat," near the river station. They washed sand there for
the sixth and seventh microraions. Really good-quality sand,
clean, unadulterated. The sand was loaded into sacks. There
were many people who had been posted to the town. Lads
ran up from Ivano-Frankivsk. And they said: "We need a
propagandist!" That sounded really military. "We need a
propagandist, the guys there are already exhausted." The
guys there had already worked very hard ...
'Rope was needed to tie the sacks. There was none left. I
remember we took some red material, red calico, which was
58 CHERNOBYL

lying around for festivals, and we began to tear it up into

strips.'
Ia Dobrenko: 'So in the evening we all met in the Town
Committee, and 1 was given the first task: spades were to be
brought to the "Prypiat" cafe; we had to go and get those
spades, around 150 of them, and the others went to the
hostels to collect young people. The young people came.
Around eleven in the evening a truck came with empty
sacks, and we started to fill the sacks with sand.
'One of the first to come was Serhii Umansky, the secre-
tary of the Komsomol organization of the Prypiat assembly-
plant administration. He worked without a dosimeter, with-
out anything; 1 now remember they gave hirn a white suit,
and he worked through the night; later they let hirn off to get
some sleep, and in the morning 1 saw hirn again in the Kom-
somol Town Committee: "What's this, is it you, Serhii?"
"Yes," he said, "I'm working, we're filling sacks".'
Ia Badaev: 'We spent the whole night shift of the 26th at
the power station. Around eight o'clock there came the com-
mand: everyone to leave their pi aces of work. We went in the
civil defence premises. Later they let us go horne.
'I told my wife that something really bad had happened,
from our window you could see the ruined block. 1 said: "It's
advisable not to let the children out anywhere. And the
windows should be c1osed." My wife, unfortunately, didn't
do as 1 asked, she feit sorry that 1 had endured such a lot. 1
went to bed and she let the children out, so there'd be less
noise. She gave me a chance to rest. .. It would have been
better if 1 hadn't slept. On Saturday there was no instruction
not to let children out, That came on Sunday. At around ten
o'c1ock a woman came and told us not to let the children
out, not to go out of the house, and to listen to the radio. At
two o'clock the evacuation began.
'And a few months after that, very early in the morning,
while it was still dark, when infernal mist hung over all the
world, Sashko Esaulov and 1 drove out into the Zone. We
went in a Zhiguli-008. Esaulov is an excellent driver, and
our incursion was like being on a rally. The headlamps full
 Before the Evacuation 59

on pushed obstinately into the impenetrable clouds of mist

and blinded us! Dipped, almost nothing was visible, espe-
cially where there were no road markings, and from time to
time the road went away from us, and then somehow came
back. The car handled really weIl. ("That's wh at comes of
having a front-wheel drive!" Sashko, a dark-eyed and ruddy
sturdy lad, said ecstatically). In my lap I had a casseUe recor-
der, and all along that tense and dangerous road, buoying us
up and giving us confidence, the lads from Liverpool, the
famous "Beatles," sang in the car. Their music blended
somewhat strangely with the difficult journey through the
Zone. There were no normal number plates on our car; just
on the hood and the sides you could see the large numbers:
002, like on racing cars. Occasionally we came across
armoured troop carriers on the road, their headlamps on,
and here and there chemical defence sub-detachments were
working: soldiers in black suits and special vivid green slip-
pers.
'Near the entrance to Prypiat we suddenly saw, on both
sides of the road, piles of sand cut through by bulldozers,
uprooted stumps, and further on a rust-coloured, as it were
burnt, pine wood. This is the sadly famous wood which has
already entered the legend of the Zone under the name of
"Red Forest." It was here that apart of the debris from the
fourth reactor was deposited. Behind this wood the town
started, and by its side stretched the area of the so-called
"Nakhabivka," dachas put up without any planning,
miserable wooden hovels, with meagre !ittle gardens. That
Sunday people were taking a rest there.'
A. Perkovska: 'On Saturday in school No. 3 an assembly
of the school team was fixed; it's a big school, 2,500 pupils,
so their team has 1,500 children. The meeting was to be held
in the Palace of Culture. WeIl, at the meeting on the morn-
ing of the 26th they pul this question to this assembly, and
the Second Secretary of the Regional Committee of the
Party, V. Malomuzh, told us to carry on as we had planned.
When we left after this meeting, the headteacher said to me:
"WeIl, what am I to do?" I said: "Hold it in the schooI.
60 CHERNOBYL

There's no need for all the children to be there." And the as-
sembly did take place, only in the school's sports hall.
'On Saturday all the lessons took place, nothing was can-
celled. But there were no outside activities, races and the
like.
'In schools No. 1 and 2, wherever I went the windows were
closed. There were wet cloths on the floor, people on duty by
the doors, and no one was let in or out.
'I don't know about other schools.
'A run, "Health," had been planned for Sunday. The
teachers didn't know whether it would take pi ace or not. One
teacher phoned the Town Committee: "I'm assembling all
the children in the school in the moming." And when they
told her that everyone was already shouting about an
evacuation, she blurted out: "What evacuation, you lot? But
today we've got our 'Health' run!.."
'Just imagine: ninety. minutes remained to go to the
evacuation. Our children's cafe, in the big shopping centre,
is brimming with parents and their children, who are eating
ice-cream. It's a day off, everything's fine, everything's calm.
People are walking about the town with their dogs. And
when we go up to people and explain, the reaction is stormy
and suspicious: "What business is it of yours that I'm taking
a walk? If I want to take a walk, then I will do." And that
was that. That's how people understood it.
'I remember how Sasha Serhiienko, our second secretary,
flew into arage: "What have I just seen? A child sitting in
the sand, and the father is a senior power engineer. How
could he, knowing there has been an accident at the nuclear
power station, let his child sit scratching around in the sand?
And the street is right next to that wood." He had "Red
Forest" in mind.'
 9
The Evacuation

Forty-five years after the beginning of the Great Father-

land War that terrible word 'evacuation' rang out again in
our country.
I can remember Kiev in forty-one, possessed. by anxiety,
the hubbub at the rail station-we lived near the station.
Some people were leaving, others were staying, still others
couldn't believe that the Germans would come to Kiev (on
the first day of the war my father said that in two weeks we
would be in Berlin), and even others had already laid in pro-
visions, getting ready for the occupation. No one really knew,
and so the uncertainty just increased. And German planes
were flying over Kiev, and under the plexiglass bubbles you
could see the heads of the radio operators-gunners, vic-
toriously looking down on the ancient capital of Rus', on its
cathedrals' cupolas resplendent with gold. Ominous rumours
went around· the town: that we were surrounded, that there
were saboteurs, that there had been parachute drops and
that German tanks had broken through; and we, doomed,
sat there at horne, going nowhere, because father had gone
to the front zone and we had heard nothing of hirn. My fa-
ther was a roads engineer: he worked in the highways ad-
ministration of the NKVD, he was a member of the Party,
and we could only guess what awaited the family of a mem-
62 CHERNOBYL

ber of the NKVD and a Bolshevik during an occupation. Bu"t

on one anxious scorehing day in July 1941 a one-and-a-half
ton. truck drove up to our building on Solomianka, father
jumped down from it and gave us thirty minutes to get
ready. Mother ran ab out the apartment, not knowing what to
take. My father said that it wouldn't be for long, just a
month, two at the most, until autumn, and so we didn't take
any warm things, and in the rushing about we forgot the
most indispensable things. Later, in the severe Russian cold
of Saratov we recalled father's optimism, an optimism edu-
cated by newspapers, radio programmes and films: before
the war there had been a marvellous film: 'If There is War
Tomorrow.'
From that time I have perceived an evacuation-whatever
its scale-as a great calamity, always unexpected, which al-
ways causes shock and perplexity irrespective of whether it
has been weIl or badly organized. Some sort of historical
hurricane tears people from their roots in their native soil,
and it is very difficult to start life anew along its accustomed
tracks.
A. Perkovska: 'The first talk about the possibility of an
evacuation came on Saturday evening, around eleven
o'clock. And at one o'clock in the morning we had already
been given the task: in two hours the documents for transfer
out were to have been processed, They left me, telling me to
get the documents ready to be handed over. It was like a
whiplash across my nerves, just like the war.
'Every one of us in the Town Committee, has kept till now
this sense of a boundary: before the war and after the war.
We simply say: that was before the war, We know very weIl
that this was before 26 April and that was after, if we need
mentaIly to locate something.
'I began to think: what did we need to take out? Clearly:
banners, seals, stock cards. But what else? In our instructions
the word "evacuation" just does not figure. Nothing had
been foreseen for such an incident. But we had three other
committees subordinated to the Regional Committee. What
would happen to their documentation? The Komsomol con-
 The Evacuation 63

struction committee of the nuclear power station is situated

opposite the fourth block in the administration building. And
the power station committee is a little further away. You
couldn't get there.
'I summoned the ac counts section deputy, and a statisti-
cian. This happened at night. They came quickly and we be-
gan to wonder what to do.
'We got all the documentation together. There was no
time to make any calculations. We put it all in sacks and
sealed them. In the section Svitlana and Masha worked, and
some young men helped them. And we helped in the Town
Committee of the Party. The Government Commission was
working there, and they had certain questions which they
couldn't solve, and they needed a local person. Whom
should we summ on, whom should we telephone? Later we
went to the Executive Committee and I was given the plan
for the fifth microraion. I had to carry out the evacuation
there.'
L Kovalevska: 'During the night of Saturday to Sunday
we had gone to bed when the doorbell suddenly rang. It was
about three o'clock. The neighbours' girl: "Auntie Liuba,
wake everyone up, get ready, there's going to be an evacua-
tion." I switched the light on and listened; people in the
entrance to the building were weeping, bustling ab out, our
neighbours were getting up. My mother got dressed. She was
shaking. I said: "You see, I turned on the radio, and it's
silent. If there was anything going on, they would announce
it on the radio." "No, 1'11 wait a little." She waited for thirty
minutes. Nothing. An hour. Still nothing. . .. "Mama," I
said, "go and lie down. You can see there's nothing happen-
ing." Then people got up, there were te ars, someone had
gone off during the night to Chernihiv, by the Chernihiv
train at four o'clock in the morning, from the laniv station.'
A. Perkovska: 'At 5am on 27 April they let us go to pack
our things. I arrived horne. My brother was sitting in an arm-
chair, he wasn't asleep. I told my brother to pack something
at least. WeIl, he packed his papers. You see, I' d known
about the evacuation earlier and let my brother know. But
64 CHERNOBYL

look, he just took his papers and a spare shirt and jacket,
That's all.
'And I did the same. lieft with such a Hule bag. I took my
papers, and that was all. And later it turned out. .. When the
dosimeter operators checked our clothes, they had to be
changed, and it turned out that we had nothing to wear.
Girls in the Ivankiv regional commiUe gave me some clothes.
Overall, in the rush people took nothing with them. All the
more as people had got used to "believing." They told us it
would be for three days. Although they knew full weIl it
would not be for three days, but for longer.
'I think it was quite proper that they said what they said.
Otherwise the evacuation would not have been carried out so
quickly.
'When I had arrived horne in the morning, the neighbours
started to call after half an hour. I calmed them as best I
could. I didn't say there wouldn't be an evacuation. And I
didn't start to say that there would. I said: "Get ready and
wait for news." I managed to drink some coffee and around
six in the morning went back to work. There the word
"evacuation" resounded in a more real way. There was con-
sultation among us on the text to notify the people of
Prypiat. I can more or less recite it from memory:
'''Comrades, in connection with the accident at the Cher-
nobyl Nuclear Power Station we announce the evacuation of
the town. Have your papers, indispensable things and, if pos-
sible, rations for three days, with you. The evacuation will
begin at 1400 hours."
'It was broadcast four times. '
L. Kovalevska: 'I said to my mother: "If there's going to
be an evacuation, it means it's not for three days. there's no
such thing." I took all the warm things for the children. Two
bags, products. And the refrigerators were crammed full, so
much money gone to waste, my mother's pension, my wages.
After all, it was nearly May Day, and then 9 May. I scraped
together all I could: threw some things into the garbage, all
the products, switched off the refrigerator, covered every-
thing, put what I had cooked for the children into bags. We
 The Evacuation 65

still had 150 roubles, 1 took them. 1 took a warm shawl for
mother, for myself a jacket, pants, nothing else.
'While mother was sitting weeping, 1 said: "Wait, don't
bother me, I'll get all the papers together." And 1 took my
poetry. The rough work, in notebooks, 1 took it all and
packed it. 1 had The Diplomat among my things.
"'And now," 1 said, "I need nothing".'
A. Perkovska: 'We rushed into the fifth microraion to see
the evacuation through. There was Oleksandr Fedorovych
Marynych from the Town Committee of the Party, and my-
self from the Komsomol Town Committee.
'Here I'd like to single out one interesting girl. Maryna
Berezina, a student of the biological faculty, worked with me
as a senior group leader. Her husband had been working in
the fourth block precisely on that shift. On Saturday she had
no idea where her husband was and what had happened to
hirn. His surname was Berezin too. And on Sunday 1 met
her. She ran up, and 1 said: "WelI, Maryna, have you any
news ~f your husband?" She said: "I know he's alive, but 1
don't know any details."
'And she said: "Should 1 help you?" She didn't live in my
microraion. I told what there was to do, and this girl passed
the whole main evacuation with us, she didn't even leave
herself. She said: "Nelia Romanivna, if you need help, I'll be
at horne and will come to you in the Town Committee."
'Later, when we carried out the main evacuation, they be-
gan to find and take away the people who were hiding and
didn't want to leave. Well, Maryna phoned me and said:
"They've come for me! Can 1 go now or not? What a girl!'"
I\L Dobrenko: 'I was responsible for the evacuation of a
microraion. 1 co-ordinated the work of the police, housing
and maintenance, and transport. What were we afraid of?
Well, that there'd suddenly be a jam somewhere or panic.
Let me tell you: the evacuation went through in a very orga-
nized way.
'People calmly came out with liule bags, according to the
radio instructions; they assembled near the entrances and
buses quickly began to come up to each entrance; a poli-
66 CHERNOBYL

ceman took a register, the people got into the bus, and off
they went. In my district there were approximately 15,000
inhabitants, and we finished the evacuation in an hour and
fifteen minutes. What problems were there? We tried to per-
suade, to beg people not to take prams, but they took the
prams, because they had little children, no one would listen
to uso No one tried to take any big and heavy things. On
average there were two bags per person.
'The young people also conducted themselves in an orga-
nized way.
'What other problem did I have? Three hours before the
evacuation a man died in my microraion. He was old and
had been ill for a long time. It was a young family, with two
children, and this grandad lived with them. But they had to
be evacuated. WeIl, we solved the problem: he was taken to
the mortuary. Some people had remained on duty at the
medical unit and they helped, and buried hirn.'
A. Perkovska: 'We evacuated our microraion, No. 5, last.
The people were in the street for such a long time ... It was
so scorching. And the radiation level was rising. So you ask:
"Comrades, take your children into the entrances. " They
listened and took their children in. I went off, and from two
houses away looked back-the children were back outside.
They said to me: "It's stifling in the entrance. You try and
stand in an entrance for hours on end".'
The evacuation.
That sunny Sunday, 27 April, thousands of Kiev people
were getting ready to go to the countryside, some to their
dacha, others to go fishing, and others to visit relatives or
friends in suburban villages. But something, clearly, had
gone wrong in the ordered transport system of the town, be-
cause some of the routes had been canceIled and only one or
two buses were guaranteeing others. Crowds built up at the
stops, people swore and rebuked the remiss controllers in the
bus garages.
In Kiev that day hardly anyone knew of the calamity which
had occurred 148 kilometres to the north. The majority of
the people of Kiev did not know that on Saturday the buses
 The Evacuation 67

had been put on alert and during the night convoys of buses
had moved from Kiev and the Kiev area toward Prypiat.
These were ordinary buses used on town or suburban routes,
a lot of yellow Icaruses with a trailer and an 'accordeon. '
The evacuation
Imagine a convoy of a thousand buses with headlamps on,
going two abreast along the highway and taking the many
thousands of the population of Prypiat out of the afflicted
zone: women, old folk, adults and newly-born babies, those
sick from common ailments and those who had suffered
from radiation.
Imagine the people who were leaving their clean, young,
wonderful town, of which they were proud, in which they
had already put down roots and brought children into life.
They were given a cruelly limited amount of time to get
ready, they were leaving their hornes (as became clear later,
for ever) and they were leaving just as they were, dressed in
summer clothes, holding on to the most indispensable
things. But it turned out that the most indispensable things
were more often left behind. A comprehension of what was
most necessary, most important for a person came later. And
later, when it became possible to return to their apartments
and collect certain things, which were then subjected to the
harsh dosimeter check, people, as it were more mature now,
rushed not to take their 'prestigious' rugs (the pile in carpets
took up a great deal of radiation), not to their crystal
glassware, but to those things which presented a spiritual
value: photographs of people close to them, favourite books,
old letters, certain ridiculous but memorable trinkets, things
which constituted the deeply personal and very fragile world
of aperson, who lives not only for the present, but also far
the past and the future.
Everyone unanimously, both those evacuated and the doc-
tors whom I met shortly after the evacuation, asserted that
there had been no panic. People were silent, their minds
were concentrated, sometimes they were in astate of shock
and, as it were, a slowed-down state, still not understanding
what had happened and because of that feeling strangely
68 CHERNOBYL

carefree. I met such people. There were hardly any tears or

petty conflicts, no one tried to impose their rights. It was only
in the eyes that you caught pain and anxiety.
The convoys of evacuated people moved to the west, to the
villages of the Polissia and Ivankiv areas, which adjoin the
Chemobyl area. The Chemobyl area itself was evacuated
later, on 4 and 5 May.
The evacuation.
The mass exodus of thousands of people from their pi aces
of settlement created numerous complex problems-organi-
zational, social, moral. Nothing was simple, and it is quite
wrong to paint these events in rosy colours alone. Of course,
the newspapers those days, describing the benevolence with
which local people received those evacuated, were not trying
to deceive anyone. It was like that, it was a fact. Ukrainian
Polissia, whose inhabitants are called Polishchuky,
manifested their etemal traditional national features: gentle-
ness and kindness, hospitality and sensitivity, adesire to help
people who had fallen into misfortune. But this is only half
of the truth. Because it must be clear to everyone that a cer-
tain disorder and confusion reigned in the Polissia and
Ivankiv areas at the beginning of May. Parents were looking
for children, wives for husbands who had been working at
the power station on the day of the accident, and from all the
ends of the Soviet Union anxious telegrams from relatives
and friends flew into the now non-existent post office in
Prypiat. ..
I remember how during those days I went to the Ivankiv
cultural centre, and again my heart ached, again the days of
the war came back to my mind: in the rooms there lay
mountains of overalls-white and grey-people were crowd-
ing around the notice board, queuing up in the information
centre, asking each other about acquaintances, eagerly
listening to the local radio announcements. Information was
worth its weight in gold. Such a prosperous, calm and appar-
ently immutable life had been tom loose from its anchor and
now followed the current in an unknown direction... The
same happened in Poliske too. The wall of the Regional
 The Evacuation 69

Cornrnittee of the Party becarne a new type of information

office: here you could find the addresses of organizations
evacuated frorn Prypiat, the addresses of acquaintances, and
learn the latest news.
L Kovalevska: 'Our bus didn't get to Poliske. We were
found places in Maksymovychi. Later, when we arrived in
Maksymovychi, the dosimeter operators took measurernents:
the radiation level had risen there. Let's get thern out of
there quickly. There echoed the watchword: first pregnant
wornen and children. Just imagine the state of a woman who
carne to a dosimeter operator, and who measured the child's
shoes: "Dirty." Pants: "Dirty." Hair: "Dirty" ... When I had
sent rny rnother to Siberia with the children, I feIt better.
'And on 8 May, when I arrived in Kiev and Sergei Kiselev,
the Literaturnaia gazeta correspondent in Ukraine invited
rne to spend the night at his pi ace, I took a bath, Iran the
water and 1 relieved myself by weeping. And 1 wept at the
table. 1 feIt so much pain for people, for the lack of truth.
The newspapers were writing lies. Perhaps it was the first
time 1 had come dose up against this ... To know the real
essence of things and to read such bravura artides. It was a
terrible shock and deeply upset me ... '
A. Perkovska: 'After the evacuation 1 remained behind in
Prypiat. That night, when everyone had already gone, 1 came
out of the Town Committee. The town was in darkness. It
was really dark, you understand. There were no lights any-
where, no lights in the windows ... At every step there was
the military police, checking documents. Once out of the
Town Committee, 1 got a certificate, and went to the
entrance to my building. I arrived; in the entrance there was
no light either, 1 went in, into the dark night, and up to the
fourth floor. 1 have a cosy apartment, but it was, as it were,
no longer rny own. That was a terrible shock.
'On Monday, the 28th, we went out to Varovychi, to have
the party assembly. We spent the whole night there. Hardly
had I arrived than we began to register people for Village
Councils. So much was undear. At last they assembled the
communists and then the Komsomol members. The next day
70 CHERNOBYL

I went to Poliske, returned to Varovychi, and later was taken

to Ivankiv. There they were organizing a headquarters, and
there were people I knew: from the Town Committee of the
party Trianova, Antropov, Horbatenko, from the Executive
Committee Esaulov, and from the Town Komsomol Com-
mittee, mys elf.
'I worked, there from 8am to 9pm, both in the head-
quarters and going around the villages. There were crowds
of people, some looking for their children, others for their
grandchildren ...
'The fact is that there was no evacuation scheme, and we
did not know in which viBages were which Prypiat buildings
or microraions. Even now I don't understand: according to
what scheme were people evacuated, who went where? In
Poliske we had a list of children. So I would phone the Vil-
lage Council and ask: "00 you have such and such parents?
Their children are looking for them." And they could say to
me: "We have such and such children who are without
parents. Generally, we do not know where these children are
from." You sit and phone aB the Village Councils. Some-
times it would turn out that in some village a dear old grand-
mother was sitting with someone else's child and had said
nothing to anyone ...
'It was necessary to take to children off to Pioneer Camps,
and later women with pre-school children and pregnant
women. You had to note their numbers and where they were
to be taken. We had our Komsomol assembly, appointed
Komsomol organizers, so that at least there was a person on
whom people could rely and with whom they could be in
contact.
'It was different in those days. One man comes to mind. I
would like that man to read these words of mine, to arouse
his conscience. It was 1 May. I arrived at the information
centre early. None of our people were there yet. A man of
about forty-eight was standing there and he said: "Ah, so are
you from the Prypiat Town Committee of the party?" "Yes, I
am." "Give me a list of those who have died." I said: "Two
people died: Shashenok and Khodemchuk." "That's a lie." I
 The Evacuation 71

said: "Wh at basis have you for talking to me like that?" And
he shouted: "Of course, you're beautiful, you're in fuH
bloom (I was standing there in someone else's clothes),
you're so calm, because you've taken everything away from
Prypiat. Do you think we don't know? We know everything!"
'At that moment there was only one thing Iwanted: to
plonk that man in a car, take hirn to my apartment, and give
hirn a good talking to ...
'His son had been working at the power station. So I said:
"As far as I know, he is in the Pioneer Camp Kazkovy." And
again he shouted: "How can you talk to me like that, I am a
miner, a person of distinction." I asked hirn: "Where have
you come from?" He replied: "Odessa."
'We gave hirn a car and he went to "Kazkovy," he found
his son there, just as I had told hirn; then there were sincere
thanks, but he still hadn't really understood. I remembered
this for a long time. His conduct so upset me that I couldn't
recover my wits for several hours.
'Of course, there was much discord and many difficulties,
but I would say that our people, from Prypiat, behaved in a
worthy fashion.'
The evacuation ...
It is true that it was carried out in an organized and clear
way. It is true that courage and steadfastness were displayed
by most of those evacuated. All this was so. But are the les-
sons to be learned from the evacuation really limited to this?
Surely we will not begin to gratify and calm ourselves with
half-truths, closing our eyes to the horne truths which were
revealed during those days? Will we really succeed in quell-
ing, in muffling the bitter questions of thousands of people
through our being organized and disciplined? These are
questions directed to those who had a duty to be dir]ected
not by the cold and indifferent calculations of a cowardly bu-
reaucrat, but by the ardent he art of a citizen, a patriot, a
communist, who takes responsibility for the life and health
of his people, for his future-the children.
Mter the publication of my one 'Chernobyl' article in Lit-
eratumaia gazeta the editors sent me a letter. Here it is:
72 CHERNOBYL

'This is a letter from workers from the town of Prypiat (we

now live in Kiev). This letter is not a complaint, but just iso-
lated facts from which we ask you to draw conclusions. We
adduce examples of the criminal irresponsibility of officials
from Prypiat and Kiev. First of a11 this irresponsibility was
demonstrated as regards a11 the children (in the thirty-
kilometre zone), when for a whole twenty-four hours before
the evacuation nothing was announced, children were not
forbidden to run around and play outside. We, knowing the
level of radiation because of our work duties, telephoned the
civil defence headquarters of the town and asked: "Why are
there no instructions regarding the conduct of children in
the street, regarding the absolute need for them to stay in-
doors and so on?"
'They replied: "This is not your affair ... The decision will
be taken by Moscow ... " And only later (7 May 1986) did
everyone leam that the decision to evacuate and dispatch
their children to the Crimea (their grandchildren and their
grandmothers) had been taken by the "High er Leadership"
without delay, and "selected" children had been sent to
Crimean sanatoria on 1 May.
'Here is a second example of irresponsibility, when at a
difficult moment it was necessary to make urgent use of in-
dispensable property, apparatus to check the situation. The
indispensable property tumed out to be unusable. How does
one evaluate this? Why did the leaders, occupying high posi-
tions and several years in a row receiving (unearned) wages,
not know the real state of affairs-regarding the same prop-
erty of the civil defence and with other outrages? Why did
they not check, why were they satisfied with bits of paper
about "complete prosperity"?
'We ask you to check everything with the State Commis-
sion and to take the necessary measures, particularly as re-
gards those sore questions where dishonesty and official in-
eptitude on the part of the "great leaders" are at fault.
'Our address: Kiev, Main Post Office, general delivery.
(The letter was written in June 1986, when the people
evacuated from Prypiat had still no fixed address-Iu.S.).
 The Evacuation 73

'Signatures: Nikulnykov, S.V, Kolesnyk, nv, Pavlenko,

A.M., Radehuk, N.N.'
The authors of the letter touehed, among others, on one of
the sorest questions of the Chernobyl epie: the timeliness
and quality of the measures taken to proteet people from the
effeets of the aeeident. This question eontinues to worry
many thousands of people, until now it resounds in
eredulous eonversations within the narrow eircle, within the
family, but for some reason a shameful silenee has been
drawn over it in the publie statements of leaders at the town,
area and republiean levels. lt seemS to me that the interests
of glasnost-this very important faetor in the restrueturing of
our soeiety in the spirit of the deeisions of the XXVII Con-
gress of the Party-require a fundamental and open review
of this problem. The time has eome to remove the cloak of
secrecy. If the authors of the letter and those who agree with
them (and there are tens of thousands of them) are wrong
about something, if everything was done perfeetly, then this
needs to be eonvineingly proved and explained. I fear, how-
ever, that it is diffieult, perhaps even impossible, to do this.
I do not take upon myself the role of judge or aeeuser.
Now, many months after the aeeident, it is easy to shake
one's fist. I don't want to assume the pose of an omniseient
publie proseeutor. But I want somehow to understand: what
exaetly did happen? Many people from Prypiat (let us recall
A. Perkovska's story) will never forget the meeting whieh
was eondueted during the morning of 26 April in Prypiat by
the seeond seeretary of the Kiev Oblast Committee of the
Party, V Malomuzh, who gave the instruction to do every-
thing to eontinue the normal life of the town, as if nothing
had happened: sehoolchildren had to study, shops to be
open, and the weddings of young people, seheduled for the
evening, had to take plaee. To all the perplexed questions
there was one answer: that's how it has to be.
For whom? And in whose name? Let's diseuss this ealmly.
From whom did the ealamity have to be hidden? By what
legal or ethieal eonsiderations were the people guided who
took these more than doubtful decisions? Were they aware of
74 CHERNOBYL

the r€al dimensions of the catastrophe? H they were, then

how could they give such instructions? And if they weren't,
then why did they hasten to take upon themselves such a se-
rious responsibility? Surely, in the moming of 26 April, the
radiation levels were known, levels which had risen steeply
in consequence of the expulsion of fuel from the power sta-
tion? I can remember how during those May days in one of
the Kiev hospitals one could see a woman, an inhabitant of
Prypiat, who on that fateful Saturday, like thousands of
other townsfolk, had been working on her personal plot near
'Red Forest,' I have already recounted its story. She had
radiation bums diagnosed on her legs. Who will explain to
her in whose name she endured these torments?
And the schoolchildren who, knowing nothing, were let
outside on Saturday during the breaks. Surely it was possible
to look after them, to forbid them to be outside? Would any-
one really have condemned the leaders for such 'over-
insurance,' even if it had been superfluous? But these
measures weren't superfluous, they were absolutely indis-
pensable. There is an irony of fate: three days before the ac-
cident civil defence exercises were done in the Prypiat
schools. They taught the children how to use the protective
equipment for individuals: cotton-gauze masks, gas masks,
how to decontaminate. On the day of the accident none of
these measures, even the simplest, were applied.
On account of the situation of secrecy which reigned in
Prypiat immediately after the accident, things got to the
point where even the responsible workers in the Town Exec-
utive Committee and Town Komsomol Committee did not
know the real levels of radiation for two whole days. They
had to make do with the rumours which went round the
town, with the vague hints of acquaintances, with the mean-
ingful expressions of dosimeter operators... Are you sur-
prised that in such a situation of total 'suppression' of infor-
mation numerous people gave in to the rumours and rushed
from the town along the road which led through 'Red
Forest'? Witnesses relate that along that road, which was al-
 The Evacuation 75

ready 'glowing' from the fun blast of radiation, women went

pushing prams ...
Perhaps, bearing in mind the extraordinary arid unex-
pected nature of the situation, it was impossible to do other-
wise? No. Specialists assure us that it was possible and nec-
essary to do otherwise: it only took the local radio to an-
nounce the possible danger, to mobilize the town's emer-
gency services to take containment measures, not to let out
into the street those who were not working to eliminate the
consequences of the accident, to close the windows, to apply
immediate iodine prophylaxis to the population. Why was
this not done?
Clearly, because the doctrine of universal prosperity and
obligatory and immutable victories, joys and successes,
which entered, over the last decades, the heart and soul of
many leaders, here played a fateful role, stifling in them the
voice of doubt and the orders of professional, party and civic
duty: to save people, to do everything humanly possible to
prevent the calamity.
In this situation an unattractive role was played by the
then director of the nuclear power station, Briukhanov who,
earlier than others and better than others, understood what
had really happened at the station and around it. The extent
of his guilt will be established by the organs of justice. But
one cannot simply transfer to Briukhanov the sins of other
officials.
After an, there is moral justice: how could it happen that
the Prypiat doctors, the directors of the medical unit
V. Leonenko and V. Pecherytsia, who were among the first
to find out about the extremely unfavourable radiation situ-
ation (by the morning dozens of people with a serious form
of radiation illness had been brought in to the hospital), how
come they did not sound the alarm, shout out loud at the as-
sembly that Saturday morning about the calamity that was
drawing near? Surely the falsely understood consideration of
subordination, of unconditional and unthinking execution of
'instructions from above,' the adherence to imperfect and
76 CHERNOBYL

pitiable official instruction did not stifle in their hearts their

loyalty to the Hippocratic oath, the oath which for a doctor is
the highest moral law? Moreover, this applies not only to
these, on the whole ordinary doctors, but also to many more
senior doctors: let us at least remember E. Vorobev, the for-
mer Deputy Minister of Health of the USSR. However it
may be, today it is clear that the mechanism for taking re-
sponsible decisions, connected with the protection of
people's health, has not withstood serious test. It is cumber-
some, many-Iayered, too centralized, slow, bureaucratic and
ineffective when events are developing swiftly. Innumerable
agreements and co-ordinations led to almost twenty-four
hours being spent taking an entirely obvious decision on the
evacuation of Prypiat.
The evacuation of Chernobyl and the local villages was
spread out over an even longer period: eight days. Until 2
May not one of the most senior leaders of the republic had
been to the site of the accident.
Why did people, people entrusted with great power, with
great privileges, but with a still greater moral responsibility,
people who on solemn days of festivals and jubilees have be-
come accustomed to being in view of everyone, why did they
not share with their people its misfortune, why did those few
kilometres that separate Kiev from Chernobyl prove so in-
superable? Where does this moral harshness toward one's
own countrymen come from?
A long time after Chernobyl there was a catastrophe in
one of the Donbass mines. And the republican leader who
went there, appearing on television, could not bring hirnself
to utter any simple, human, sympathetic words about the
great grief; he just announced that the mine was working at
its 'normal work rhythm'"... What has happened to us?
When will we become people again?
Whatever the situation may have been, they learned faster
in Moscow than in the capital of Ukraine that something
very alarming and extraordinary was happening in Cherno-
byl, and they took the decisive and so necessary measures.
Only the visit to the Chernobyl area on 2 June by E. K.
 The Evacuation 77

Ligachev and N.I. Ryzhkov played a decisive role in the

deployment of additional measures to contain and counter
the scale of the accident.
Today we speak a great deal about the new thinking. It is
not only the elected people, those who create international
policy and so on, who must be convinced of it, but also those
who are in the thick of everyday national life: the powers
that be at all levels, and the ordinary citizens. This new
thinking has to be educated from the school bench. And in
its foundations we must place both profound specialist
knowledge, the ability quickly to evaluate a situation and ef-
ficiently react to the changes it brings, and firm moral prin-
ciples, the ability to defend our views without fear of those
'hi~her placed.'
 10
One From the 'Little
Football Team'

'In the photograph our team "All Stars" looks like an il-
lustration of the growth of humanity from the times of
Malthus up to our days. We are standing on a wooden plat-
form over the sea, holding each other by the hand-the
whole team, from the smallest to the biggest. The first is
Maksym, the second Bondi, the third lurek, the fourth
Slavko, the fifth Ilko, the sixth Lionia, the seventh Lionia's
father, who somehow wormed his way into our company,
and the eighth is me (180 centimetres, 95 kilos). We are
holding tight onto each other's hands, as if we are a living
chain of generations and, it seems, no power will be able to
tear us apart and separate uso The first one standing there is
Maksym, and I am amazed why in the photograph he has no
angel's wings. With my own eyes I could see those white
wings edged with gold, hanging on the wall in his horne;
perhaps his father, afraid he might get entangled in wires-
there were so many in the town-prohibited Maksym from
using them. And perhaps there was some reason unknown to
me. In any case, conceming Maksym' s angelic origin I have
no doubts at all. His thin body and fine neck are crowned by
a large, high-browed head, with his hair trimmed under a
flowerpot. In his face two great grey eyes shine, always shin-
ing, with benevolence for everything which surrounds hirn.'
80 CHERNOBYL

I beg the reader's forgiveness for the quotation from my

own work, but it was simply indispensable; it is an extract
from my story The Little Football Team, written in 1970. The
story was dedicated to the memory of the young Kiev poet
Leonid KyseHov, who died from acute leukemia, Almost all
the heroes of this story are real people, although it was writ-
ten in a grotesque-fantastic manner. And the Httle football
team existed, Iurek, Bondi, Slavko, Ilko and, of course, Mak-
sym.
Maksym Drach. The son of the distinguished Ukrainian
poet Ivan Drach.
I have long known and loved Maksym and dare to assure
the reader that I was in no way exaggerating when I de-
scribed his angeHe appearance and the features of his char-
acter. I must say that Maksym remained the same, in spite of
all the changes in his voice and the fact that he grew up into
a lean and lanky fellow, like a pole; he remained a very kind
and very radiant fellow, although what sort of fellow is he
now?
In 1974 Ivan Drach published a book, The Root and the
Crown, containing a cycle of poems dedicated to the builders
of the Chemobyl nuclear power station and the town of
Prypiat. The main tone of these poems was optimistic, and
quite naturally so: after all, Ivan Drach himself entered, no,
not entered, but tore like a rocket into Ukrainian poetry as
the prophet of new times, the powerful new rhythms of the
epoch of the scientific and technical revolution. He has
poems on genetics, cybemetics, and on nuclear physicists:
the folkloric, profound songs which are the origins of
Ukrainian poetry in some wonderful way join in him with a
sharpened conception of that 'strange world' to which
twentieth-century civilization rushed headlong. In the poem
'The Polissia Legend' the river ·Prypiat conducted a dialogue
with the birds and the fish, fighting in alarm at their atomic
neighbour. The river explained that for the Atom 'people
build a castle of steel, and in some ten years throughout the
world people will construct for it unshakeable atomic
thrones.' Already in this, rather romantic conception of the
 One From the 'Little Football Team' 81

construction of the Chernobyl nuelear power station there

arose, through the lively tonality of the poem, a scarcely con-
cealed alarm at the fate of Polissia nature, which had struck
the poet with its primeval purity. Even more alarming and
intuitively prophetie was another poem by Drach from this
selfsame cyele: 'Mariia from Ukraine-No. 62276: From
Auschwitz to the Chernobyl Power Station,' in which the
poet told of Mariia Iaremivna Serdiuk, a builder of Prypiat, a
person with a strange fate, a simple Ukrainian woman who
went through the hell of Auschwitz and remained unshake-
able in her kindness and love for people. 'Little woman's
fate, you flew up like a phoenix over Auschwitz and flared
up to illuminate the Atom-city over the Prypiat'-that is how
the poet finished this poem. What vague, anxious sounds
were born in his soul in those days, when in the land of
rivers, sands and pine-trees the first contours of the nuelear
station, hanging over the Kiev Sea and Kiev, were only
hinted at? Could Ivan Drach have thought that his son,
Maksym, would be forced to enter a struggle with the
nuelear calamity of Chernobyl?
Maksym Ivanovych Drach, twenty-two years old, sixth-
year student in the me die al faculty of the Kiev Medical In-
stitute:
'I first heard about the accident on Sunday morning, 27
April. 1 work in the resuscitation block of the cardiological
centre in the October Revolution Hospital. 1 work as a medi-
cal assistant. A senior one, wherever they send you. 1 came
on duty at nine in the morning. At half past nine one woman
(her husband is an internal service major) said: "They've
taken my husband off somewhere, like some nuclear station
has blown up, but I think it's a joke." Hut at midday we were
telephoned and told, in connection with the accident at the
Chemobyl nuclear power station, to prepare, together with
the general resuscitation department, forty beds on the
fourth floor. Our block is on the second floor. I went up to
the fourth to prepare the department. The patients were
transferred to other departments, the beds were changed, all
the medicines were prepared, blood substitutes and so on.
82 CHERNOBYL

No one knew what we were going to have to deal with.

'At 6pm we were told that the first patients from Prypiat
were already at the disinfection centre. We went to receive
them: our duty doctors, from the department of radioactive
isotopes diagnostics and general resuscitation. We looked at
them. They were primarily young fellows: firemen and work-
ers at the nuclear power plant. At first they went upstairs
with their things, but then a frightened dosimeter operator-
doctor rushed in and shouted: "What are you doing? You're
'glowing'!"
'They were all taken down, measured and led off to wash
not in the disinfection centre but in the radioactive isotopes
diagnostics department, where all the water was collected in
containers and taken out. That was sensible, because that
way the disinfection centre wasn't polluted. They were given
our work pyjamas and, dressed like that, they were led up-
stairs.
'There were twenty-six in the first group. I went upstairs to
them.
'We didn't ask them many questions; it wasn't the right
moment. They· were all complaining of headaches and
feebleness. The headaches were such that one fine two-
metre fellow was standing there banging his head against
the wall and saying: "That's better, that way my head hurts
less. "
'Well, we at once began blood disinfection procedures on
them, giving glucose transfusions. We put them all immedi-
ately nn a drip, organizing it all weIl. Iran about between the
block and the department. Since I've been working in the
hospital three years I know everyone and where to get things,
I've worked on the diffE'rent systems, the different technical
equipment, this and that. A student in the same year as me,
Andrii Savryn, was there. He was also working in resuscita-
tion, but general resuscitation. Normally he would not have
been working that day, but he had just called in to pick up
his photographic equipment. And he remained at work. If
you have to, you have to. There were many doctors and staff
there.
 One From the 'Little Football Team' 83

'The patients told us that the reactor was burning and had
exploded, that they were loading sand, but wh at exactly was
happening, there was no time to say, and the situation was
such that conversation was not permitted.
'I was on duty till morning.
'The next day 1 went off, as usual, to lectures in the medi-
cal institute. On 1 May 1 was on duty again, but now in the
cardioblock. 1 knew there were already more patients and
that they were getting ready to free another floor for them.
The eighth.
'On 2 May we were informed on television that E.K.
Ligachev and N.!. Ryzhkov had come to the Chernobyl area,
and 1 thought that since things were at such a level they just
wouldn't be able to do without us, the medical students. 1
calculated purely analytically that it was far easier to get or-
ganized groups of students together in the hospitals than
doctors. But on 4 May, in the morning, during the first lec-
ture, our vice-deah came and told the lads to get ready-we
were leaving at eleven o'clock. 1 went horne, took a jacket,
sweater, trousers, sneakers, cap and something to eat ...
They put us in a fancy bus, the Intourist type. The journey
there was fine. But forty came back in a bus with eighteen
pi aces. Ok. We'lI survive.
'We assembled in the medical institute in front of the exit
by the radiology department. There they measured us all. At
first we did not know what our work was to involve. They
talked about work in permanent and field hospitals-to the
extent of loading earth and digging trenches. 1 took two op-
erating suits and masks just in case.
'We got into the bus, the mood was happy, we joked. Be-
fore leaving we were given potassium iodide. There one
friend bawled at us: "Just when will these idlers be leaving?"
The fact is, someone had poured that potassium iodide from
a measuring glass out of the window onto his head, when the
bus moved off. We really laughed.
'We came to Borodianka, the area hospital. We were dis-
tributed among villages and hospitals. One very dis-
tinguished medical chief from Moscow, a little tipsy, came
84 CHERNOBYL

up to USo He said wh at we would be doing, that today the

evacuation of a thirty-kilometre zone was beginning. One of
ours asked: "And what about the dry law?" He said: "Lads!
There's no dry law in the adjoining areas. Drink as much as
you can. Just so long as you can work. But remember that
you are medical students and don't fall on your face in the
mud. It's radioactive."
'They took us to the villages. From village to village, leav-
ing us to reinforce the medical personnel. 1 ended up in
Klavdiievo. 1 settled in in the hospital, in a ward. There were
two of us, me and my friend Mykola Mykhalevych from
Drohobych. We put our things down, it was already night,
and set off. We stopped to check cars leaving the Chernobyl
area. We had one fixed dosimeter, with a cable attached to
the car, and two DP-5s working on batteries. We stayed
there till about 2am, then the head doctor collected us and 1
slept till 6am. But at six he said: "Lads, one of you come
with me." At work I've got used to getting up suddenly, so 1
said: "I'H come." We went off somewhere far away, on the
road. 1 can remember a field, and in the field there were dis-
infection chambers, a fire engine, a table, and glasses and
bread on the table. And ambulances, from Poltava and
Zhytomyr.
'There we conducted a dosimeter check; we checked the
background radiation in buses and on people's clothes.
'I worked there from 7 am on 5 May till 10am on 6 May. A
little over twenty-four hours.
'At first there wasn't much movement. Big military
helicopters, in camouflage, flew over us; they flew very
quickly. They flew low overhead; the noise filled my ears.
The traffic on the road somehow throbbed. It was a long
while from 10am to 1pm. Kiev buses were on the road, par-
ticularly "Icaruses," seventeen to twenty per convoy, and
there were buses from Obukhiv and Novoukraiinka; all the
places were familiar, that's why 1 remembered them.
'There were people in the bus es. Basically from the village
of Zalissia. It was twenty kilometres from Chernobyl. At that
time not everyone left, because some of the people remained
 One From the 'Little Football Team' 85

in the village, to load the cattle and domestic animals.'

I can remember how in those days, in asolid stream to-
ward those who were going into the accident area, there
came trucks loaded with cows. The animals stood there in-
differently in the backs, sadly looking at the trees in blossom,
the houses and plank fences whitewashed for the festival, the
dazzling green grass and the springtime flood of the rivers.
There were very complex problems connected with the
decontamination of the cattle, insofar as the coat "took up"
quite a lot of radioactive dust. And those cows that managed
to get into meadow and feast on fresh grass also took in
radioactive iodine and cesium. Animals like that were
slaughtered at the meat-processing plants and their meat
was put away in specially prepared refrigeration depositories,
where it would gradually lose its radioactivity, designated
iodine-131, an isotope with a short half-life.
M. Drach: 'In our brigades there were also female
laboratory workers, they at once took blood from people for
leucocytes. There were a lot of things in the buses, and we
measured these things with the dosimeters.
'At first there were jams, then we adapted it so that the
buses were let through in three rows, so there wasn't any dis-
order. One of us measured the bus itself, and two the people.
The people got out of the bus, stood in a line and they came
to me one at a time. Up to a certain level we were still letting
people through. Where the level was high er, we sent them to
get washed, to shake the dust off their things. There was one
case where one grandad's boots were "radiating" a great
deal. "But I washed my boots, lads," he said .. "Off you go,
grandad, you've got to shake some more off." He went,
washed his boots, and his level was much lower. We sent
hirn to wash three or four times.
'There was almost no one aged twenty to fifty. Why? It was
said they had either run off (there were those who aban-
doned either their children or their parents), or they had
stayed behind to work. So they were primarily old people,
hunched old men and women, and little children. We
measured the children's thyroid glands too. We had an order
86 CHERNOBYL

that when the thyroid gland radiated twice as much as the

background, then the child had to be hospitalized. I didn't
see any.
'Once they were through the check, the people got back in
the bus. It was considered that they had been washed. They
really did wash them. It's true, I did come across buses with
a high level. Our lads caught a KamAZ bus-it was terrible
the radiation it had. It was from Prypiat. That KamAZ was
rushed straight into the field, six hundred metres away, and
abandoned.
'So the whole day the convoys passed by. Toward evening
they began to bring people's prope~. They brought the big
bulky things separately. On Kovrovets tractors with trailers.
We caught a dozen really dirty trailers, with dust-covered
things. They were sent off to be washed.
'During the night we put a lamp on the table and sat there
in our smocks. Isolated buses came by with people, catching
up with their convoys. I remembered a Belarus tractor. In the
cabin next to the driver was an old man, his father perhaps.
The old man was carrying a hen and a dog. And he said:
"Measure my dog.:' I said: "Grandad, shake your dog's hair
well when you get to your destination."
'There was also one policeman, a young fellow in a !ittle
truck. He said: "Friend, measure me for radiation." I said:
"Get out then, friend." And he said: "I can't get out, friend.
I've done so much driving, picked up so much of that radia-
tion that I can't get out of the cabin. I'll just get my feet out
for you. .. " He hung his feet out, I measured-there was a
lot! I said: "Friend, you must shake your boots."
'Later, when the evacuation was over, we did medical ex-
aminations and compared the data of blood analyses with
other data. We took those who feit ill to the hospital for ob-
servation. I transferred these people.
'On 6 May we were brought protective clothing: black
suits, caps, boots, gas masks. We were told that correspond-
ents were on their way.
'But on 8 May we were sent to Kiev. Areplacement came
for us, men from the stomatological faculty.
 One From the 'Little Football Team' 87

'WeH, on 10 May I went to leetures, as usual, and retumed

to work in the Oetober Hospital. In May there were a lot of
my type of patients, he art eases: obviously, the stress was
making things diffieult, we had a lot of work in the block.
'Around 11-12 May I notieed that I was sleeping a great
deal but not feeling refreshed. I usually sleep five to six
hours and feel fuHy refreshed. Now I was sleeping eight to
twelve, even fourteen hours and not feeling rested. And I
had become sort of "soft," lazy. A blood analysis was done
and I was put on the eighth floor in our department.'
I can remember that ward and the eighth floor of the car-
diological block, where the students of the Kiev Medical In-
stitute who had been working on the effeets of the aceident
were: Maksym Drach, Dima Piatak, Kost Lisovy, Kost
Dakhno and Volodia Bulda. Professor Leonid Petrovych
Kindzelsky and I came to the department. The professor
consulted the students, examined their medical histories and
studied the results of their blood analyses. Later Maksym
Drach was to meet Doctor Gale, who visited Kiev at the be-
ginning of June.
Now Maksym Drach and his friends are healthy, nothing
threatens them. Their final examinations are ahead.
In my story The Little Football Team I foresaw for Maksym
Drach the foHowing future: 'I think that he will become a
wandering philosopher, the Skovoroda of the twentieth cen-
tury.'
I made amistake.
Maksym, without doubt, will become a marvellous heart
surgeon, considerate and sensitive, who, just like Skovoroda,
will bring good to people, but a good strengthened by the
new technical aehievements of twentieth-century medicine.
And, at the very beginning of his medical life, Maksym will
have been trained by a unique experience, acquired in t~e
days of the great national calamity, when he saw how com-
plicated and conflietual everything is, how the high and the
low are neighbours in the current of anxious events.
After the consultation we went out with Maksym to the
spacious terrace-balcony of the cardiological block, which
88 CHERNOBYL

stands on a hilI. From here there opened out an epic view

over Kiev-the eternal city-spread out on the Dnieper-side
springtime hills.
We stood, we looke.d, we thought.
What was happening in Kiev during those days?
 11
The Vzew Over Kiev

T he scorching May of 1986 laid its new marks on Kiev: in

those days the city, already a clean pI ace, was washed and
'licked' to an incredible cleanliness. Incessantly, every day
street-cleaning trucks prowled around the city, directing
their watery whiskers and washing, from the hot asphalt, the
dust in which radioactive nuclides lurked. At every entrance
to a building, office, shop or even church there were wet
cloths, and the endless cleaning of footwear became an un-
failing sign of good form. The city streets were just as busy,
but if you looked really closely you could notice that there
were far fewer children: during the first days of May the city
had rushed to get its children out, by whatever means-
organized, disorganized, by train, by plane, by bus and by
Zhiguli. To the west, south and east stretched out long con-
voys of cars with belongings on the roofs. Parents drove, tak-
ing the children, grandfathers and grandmothers out, taking
them to relatives and acquaintances, and many to just any-
where, so long as it was as far as possible from the radiation.
In the press anouncements those days it was emphasized
that Kiev and the Kiev area were living their normallife. Yes,
people did not cower before the calamity, people struggled
with the accident and its effects, and the outward ap-
pearance of the city hardly changed, and its inner, really
90 CHERNOBYL

tough essence was preserved, because there the businesses,

transport, shops, institutes and offices all went on working,
communication (true, with some interruptions) functioned,
and the newspapers came out.
.. , It seemed to me in those days that I had never met so
many pretty girls in the city, that until now there had never
been such an enchanting spring there. I shall never forget
how, arriving back from Chernobyl, I found myself in the
evening twilight which had come down over Kiev. Every-
thing was so normal: above the underground station
'Livoberezhna' the silhouette of an unfinished hotel sky-
scraper showed out dark. Opposite, at the taxi rank, cars'
hoods sparkled, like a school of many-coloured fish which
had come for the night to these sandy lands. An un-
derground train hurtled toward the bridge and plunged into
the thick of the Kiev hills and to rumble to the Khreshchatyk.
Below the underground bridge the Dnieper overflowed and
its expanses, hidden in the haze, had a Gogolian vastness
and pathos about them. On the embankment courting
couples kissed, and exhausted people headed for home-and
all these simple, ordinary pictures of life suddenly got
through to the depths of my soul, as if some illumination had
reached me, the comprehension of some very important shift
which had taken place in my consciousness over the last
days. This peaceful evening seemed penetratingly beautiful
to me, as if I had for ever bidden fareweIl to the spring, the
city and life itself, and unfamiliar people had become dose
to me, and the everyday life of Kiev stood before me in a new
light.
In the anxious light of the accident which had occurred so
nearby-only two hours away by car-these were the days
when a sense of danger had been sharpened to its limit.
Later this vanished.
The Dnieper, the hills, the buildings and the people: all
that was so everyday then seemed to me so unusual, as if it
had come from the screen of some science-fiction film. In
particular, Stanley Kramer's film 'On the Beach' frequently
came to my mind in those days. It teIls how, after the third
 The Vzew Over Kiev 91

and last atomic war in the history of humanity, Australia

fatalistically awaits the appearance of the radioactive cloud.
What seemed most strange and improbable in the film was
that, in this critical situation, people just carried on living as
they had always lived, without changing their habits and
pleasures, maintaining their outer calm, existing as it were
by inertia. It turned out that this was true. The habits of the
people of Kiev remained those of earlier days.
However, the patriarchal, ancient city with its gold-topped
cathedrals, preserving the memory of the ages, in about two
weeks had changed unrecognizably, becoming closely united
with" the image of a new, atomic age. From being aresonant
metaphor, in vain repeated by us before the accident, this
word combination ('atomic age') was transformed into a
severe reality. The words 'dosimeter check,' 'radiation,'
'decontamination,' all those 'millirems,' 'bers,' 'rads' and so
on firmly entered the vocabulary of the people of Kiev, and
the appearance of a man in a special suit, with agas mask
on his face and a Geiger counter in his hands flashed every-
where, became usual, just like the jams of cars at the exits
from Kiev: at all the control points there were dosimeter
checks for cars.
Milk and milk products disappeared from the stalls at the
Kiev markets; the sale of salad, sorrel and spin ach was
prohibited. Other gifts of the Ukrainian earth: radishes and
strawberries, new potatoes and onions, they were subject to
dosimeter check. 'Honest, there's none of that radiation,' the
peasant women" vowed at the Bessarabka, as they sold straw-
berries at a knock-down price. But hardly anyone bought
any.
And, as always happens, the children began to copy the in-
comprehensible life of the adults. On Rusanivka I had al-
ready seen children running thtough the bushes with a stick,
as if they were measuring the background radiation with a
dosimeter. They were playing 'radiation.' And one girl,
wrapped up in a bedsheet, walked around the entrance to
her building and, making 'terrifying' eyes, prophesies in a
voice from beyond the grave: "00-00, I am radiation, hide
92 CHERNOBYL

from me. I am evil and terrifying. .. "

'In Kiev there is a business-like, working atmosphere,' the
newspapers, radio and television assured us, and it was true.
Ancient Kiev had preserved its appearance, its distinction
both for its own sake, and for the country's sake, for the
whole world's sake; visitors to the capital of Ukraine, sur-
prised and respectful, would emphasize this.
It was all like that.
But in those days there existed another Kiev, hidden from
the gaze of outsiders, a Kiev which did not attract the atten-
tion of the newspapers and television, and not to mention it
would be to conceal apart of the truth, to distort the complex
picture of events. It was a city of excited crowds around rail-
way and airline ticket windows. There were days when even
people who had tickets could not get through into the rail-
way station. You had to get the police's assistance. The trains
left with eight to ten people in four-seat compartments;
speculators were charging up to a hundred roubles for a
fifteen-rouble ticket to Moscow. I was almost moved to tears,
although I'm not a very sentimental person, by levhen
Lvovych lerusalymsky, a candidate of medical sciences and
senior scientific collaborator in the Kiev Oncological In-
stitute, whom I had made the acquaintance of only three
days before all this story. He came to me and offered me a
ticket to Moscow for my daughter. And although the ticket
was not needed, such a thought was in those days a sign of
the most sincere friendship. .. Then, as during the war, a
whole series of our usual conceptions changed in a trice.
Such eternal notions as loyalty, decency and duty again ac-
quired particular significance and value. In many Kiev apart-
ments the telephone rang out in May from different parts of
the Soviet Union. Friends, relatives, acquaintances phoned
and invited people to come and stay. But there were people
who did not phone, although it would have seemed, accord-
ing to aB the pre-Chernobyl laws of friendship, that they had
a duty to do this.
For a long time, a whole month, I waited for a phone caB
from Moscow from one person whom I considered areal
 The View Over Kiev 93

friend and who, over rather a long time, would come and
stay with me. It didn't come. Then, quite unexpectedly, the
Armenian writer Gevorg Mikhailovich Agadzhanian, whom I
had only met once in my life in Kiev, telephoned from Baku.
He was inviting my daughter for the summer ...
We came to learn many strange and unexpected things in
those days. What do you think, what were those long line-
ups for in the department store at the beginning of May? For
Finnish suits, for West German 'Salamander' shoes, or for
Yugoslav leather jackets? No way. For suitcases and bags.
In those days Kiev apartments were literally bursting with
conversations and rumours, arguments and prejudices, fic-
tions and real facts. Decisions were taken and immediately
withdrawn, fantastic projects were put forward, anecdotes
and true stories were told over and over again. Stories spread
persistently around the city about black Volgas driving up to
the station square, about long lines for plane tickets in the
ticket kiosks set up in some of the most notable buildings of
the capital ...
Yes, there was no panic in Kiev. But there was real con-
cern for the health both of children and of adults, and it was
worthwhile paying attention to this unease too.
Everyone remembers the photographs of the ruined reac-
tor which spread around our newspapers. Even people who
had no skill in atomic power engineering were stunned by
the unnatural appearance of the reactor. It was clear to the
specialists that something unprecedented in its sheer scale
had happened. 'The first fallout went to the north-west and
west. On 30 April the wind changed direction a:nd blew to-
ward Kiev. Radioactive aerosols were drawn toward the city
with its many millions of inhabitants. I remember that day
weIl; I was in the Ukrainian Health Ministry. I remember
how anxiety and tension grew among the doctors, how in the
ministry's offices and corridors there was talk of taking
urgent preventive measures. Proposals rang out to turn to
the population with a special appeal regarding security
measures. Until 6 May no one paid any attention to these
proposals.
94 CHERNOBYL

Many people now blame the medical personnei: why

didn't they warn us, why didn't they act earlier? I am not go-
ing to protect my colleagues, they have many sins on their
conscience. But for the sake of fairness I want to stress that it
is not the medical personnel who control the media chan-
nels. And the most important decisions are not taken by my
medical personnel either. But decisions were very necessary.
Already at the end of April it was really necessary to think
seriously about the expediency of holding the May Day dem-
onstrations in Kiev and the areas adjoining the Zone, partic-
ularly as regards the participation of children. I am certain
that the love of Soviet people for May Day and their patriotic
feelings would in no way have diminished because the dem-
onstrations had been cancelled. I was told how in Belorussia
they cancelled one of the first post-war May Day demonstra-
tion because of. .. rain. And what happened? And in 1986
too the people would have correctly understood the necessity
of containing the accident and keeping children temporarily
off the streets. And the people would have been grateful for
this. Because photographs of the stricken reactor and of
smiling children with flowers standing in holiday columns
just do not bear any comparison. Was it really not possible to
ask the people who filled the parks, beaches, suburban
woods and went out to dachas on holidays temporarily to re-
sist the charms of spring? People would have understood.
You can shake your head: the radiation level in Kiev didn't
exceed the limits of acceptability. What, you say, is the pur-
pose of cordoning off the city? But there are also limits of ac-
ceptability of alarm and worry, and those days they had ex-
ceeded all credible levels.
It was impossible and incorrect to ignore in those days the
dread engendered by the radiation, and t6 struggle with it ei-
ther with the help of silence or by means of lively and opti-
mistic declarations. After all, for dozens of years the news-
papers, radio, television and popular science magazines had
themselves implanted, educated this dread, describing the
horror of nuclear war, all its effects on the body and our
genes. And although the scale of the Chernobyl accident and
 The View Over Kiev 95

a nuclear explosion are simply incomparable, the dread of

radiation turned out to be very great. And it would have been
possible to play it down and to soften the psychological ef-
fects of the accident only in a situation where there had been
a timely announcement of normal prophylactic measures-
not on 6 May, but earlier. As the popular adage goes, 'God
helps those who help themselves.'
As I wrote then and can now repeat even more sharply and
persuasively: one of the most strict lessons of the first month
(and of the following ones as weIl) of the 'Chernobyl era' was
given to our mass media, which did not manage to restruc-
ture themselves in the spirit of the XVII Party Congress. The
stormy development of events acutely shortened the time
necessary for a shake-up, for all mann er of agreements and
liaising. Several of the most difficult days in our life come to
mind: from 26 April to 6 May, when it was plain to see that
there was a shortage of information in the country, and for-
eign radio stations were on the air, tormenting the souls of
those who could receive them. Don't let us mitigate our
shortcomings with lies. There were many people like that,
because nature does not suffer emptiness, including an emp-
tiness of information. And this inflicted not only an ideologi-
cal but also an purely medical loss. Today it is already diffi-
cult to calculate how many people were, in those days, in a
state of acute stress, in ignorance and in fear for the lives of
their children and loved ones, for their health.
In Kiev 'catastrophists' made their appearance too, broad-
casting an sorts of panicky false interpretations, and lively
'optimists' who could only repeat one message: all is fine and
couldn't be better. In the city, in the heat of April, you could
come across strange people wrapped up from tip to toe in old
clothes, in caps, hats or head scarves, concealing almost half
their faces, wearing gloves and stockings. .. These were the
'catastrophists,' who were mobilizing aB means of individual
defence. I don't condemn them, but after the Zone with its
problems aB the Kievan fears seemed simply ludicrous.
Mter the first days of silen ce, when information was very
thin, there finally appeared numerous articles in the news-
96 CHERNOBYL

papers, and specialists began to appear on television ...

But. ..
In some publications and television programmes one per-
ceived sort of falsely lively and frivolous intonations, as if this
wasn't a great universal human tragedy, not one of the most
awful events of the twentieth century, but a practice alert or
firemen's competitions on models ...
The habit of working according to the old schemes had
had its effect, old schemes inherited from the times of uni-
versal equability, adesire to publish only lulling, joyous in-
formation; you feit there was a fear of extending glasnost to
some very delicate and unacceptable questions, one of which
was Chernobyl. Of course, it would be unfair not to notice
what was new in those days in the work of the mass media.
Let us take at least the interesting experiment undertaken by
Ukrainian television: every day, beginning in May, the edi-
tors and operators of the popular information programme
Camera Today, people who were not only talented but also
daring (you have to agree, it was not simple to take pictures
of things in the Zone, at risk from the radiation), gave the
Ukrainian viewers details of what was happening at the
nuclear power station and around it.
But this was already later.
And between 3 and 6 May dark rumours spread through
Kiev: people said that an explosion at the station was im-
minent, because the temperature in the reactor had risen to
the highest limits and the burning core of the reactor, if it
went through the concrete casing, could come into contact
with the water which had accumulated under the fourth
block, and then... Some assured us (these were the
'catastrophists') that there would be a hydrogen explosion,
others (the 'optimists') only an explosion of steam. There was
nothing to be happy about in either ca se. People said that
the evacuation of Kiev was being prepared, and they said a
lot more too ...
 12
"The Danger 01 an Explo-
sion Ras Been Eliminated"

S trangest of all is that on this occasion the rumours were

not without foundation.
From the press:
'Academiciall E. Velikhov said:
"The reactor has been damaged. Its heart is a red-hot ac-
tive zone, it is, as it were, "on the brink." The reactor has
been covered over with a layer of sand, lead, boron, day, and
this increases the weight pressing down on the structure. Be-
low, in a special reservoir, there maybe water. .. How will
the red-hot core of the reactor behave? Will we manage to
hold it or will it penetrate the earth? Never was anyone in
the world in such a complex situation; it must be evaluated
very precisely and no mistakes can be permitted . .. "
'The subsequent development of events showed that the
direction chosen to confront the ruined reactor was correct'
(Pravda, 13 May 1986).
From the article by V.F. Arapov, lieutenant-general,
member of the MilitaryCouncil, chief of the Political Ad-
ministration of the Red Banner Kiev Military District:
, ... The chairman of the Govemment Commission set a
task for the commander of the special militarized company,
communist and captain Petro Pavlovych Zborovsky:
'A critical situation has developed at the damaged reactor.
98 CHERNOBYL

There is possibly water in a special reservoir underneath it. If

the concrete base does not hold, irreparable damage may re-
sult. All must as quickly as possible find a correct solution
and organize the pumping out of the water.
, . .. An armoured troop carrier took Captain Zborovsky
and two volunteers, Junior Sergeant P. Avdeev and Corporal
Iu. Korshunov, to the place from where it was necessary to
penetrate the rooms leading to the reservoir. Radiation sur-
vey equipment showed the one could safely remain near the
concrete wall only for twenty minutes. These daring fellows
set to work in rotation. Then an opening was made, and
Captain Zborovsky stepped into the unknown. Shortly after
he proposed to the Government Commission a reliable
means of pumping out the water, which was approved.'
(Raduga, No. 10, 1986).
Mykola Mykhailovych Akimov, 30 years old, captain:
'It turned out that we had to work in a zone where there
was very high radiation. So together with Captain Zborovsky
(and with hirn there was Lieutenant Zlobin too) we decided
first of all to take volunteers. When it was announced that
eight volunteers were needed, all the personnel standing in
the ranks took a step forward. Among them were Senior
Sergeants Nanava and Oliinyk.
'We worked at night, by the light of lamps. We worked in
protective suits. You have seen those suits-such a green
colour, they're called 'ZZKs' (Zahalnoviiskovyi zakhysnyi
kostium, protective suit common to a1l ranks-JIP). The situ-
ation which had developed at the station made it absolutely
clear that we had to act quickly and decisiveIy. The person-
nel understood the task we had been set, as is onIy proper,
and at the station there were no superfluous instructions or
clarifications. Just work.
'We worked in the Zone for just twenty-four minutes. In
that time we had Iaid nearIy 1.5 kilometres of pipe, set up a
pumping station and begun to pump the water out. Every-
thing seemed fine, we were pumping out the water. But, as
peopie say, "misfortune doesn't walk alone."
 "The Danger of an Explosion Has Been Eliminated" 99

'Hardly had we laid the pipe and begun the pumping than
in the öarkness of night someone's vehicle with caterpillar
tracks crushed our hoses. They had been measuring some-
thing and in the darkness had not noticed the ho ses. It was a
lack of co-ordination. All this happened in a zone of high
radiation levels. There was nothing for it. We got dressed
and went back there. We went with another set of volunteers
from our company. Water was streaming out under pressure,
and the ho ses couldn't take high pressure on them, so they
leaked. And the water was radioactive. This flooding created
an additional danger. We had to stop the flow immediately,
and. tighten the hoses where the water was gushing out.
Altogether we plugged a lot of leaks in the hoses.
'What do I want to say about the lads? There are all sorts
of things in our lives. As they say, there's no work without
emotions. And when we got there and looked ... No, at first
we didn't feel any fear; weIl, we went in, and still ok. There
were even birds flying around. But later, when the radiation
readings began (each of us had his own individual
dosimeter), when we understood that our organism had
begun to take in roentgens, then the soldiers had a quite dif-
ferent attitude. I won't conceal anything: when the
dosimeters started giving readings, then fear appeared. But
none of the soldiers at the station showed weakness, they all
carried out their tasks courageously, with high professional
competence. There were no cowards among uso
'The task was set up outside the Zone. When we went into
the Zone, there was no time to give orders: first, it was in-
convenient, we were wearing gas masks, and secondly,
giving commands just won't work, you have to do the job
quickly. The lads didn't hesitate, I didn't notice them. They
all knew they'd already taken up roentgens, but each one
carried out his task.
'Apart from that, technical equipment is technical equip-
ment. The pumping station was in a high radiation zone,
working in a closed room, and it was practically impossible
to stay there. But because of the shortage of air and the
100 CHERNOBYL

amount of gas the machine would stall. So from time to

time-and this time amounted to approximately 25-30 min-
utes-we entered the Zone, ventilated the room, got the ma-
chine going again, and everything started off again.
'And this continued for twenty-four hours. We carried out
this work during the night of 6-7 May. Mter that the pump-
ing station was replaced.'
'Did you understand that this was one of the most impor-
tant operations in the entire Chernobyl epic?'
'Yes, we understood that. Particularly the officers. We un-
derstood that if the water came into contact with that boiling
mass, then there would either be an explosion or, in the ex-
treme case, a vaporization... We understood everything.
Everything we did we were fully aware of, we knew what we
were in for.'
'Don't you regret choosing the profession of fireman?'
'No. I was born in Rostov area, in the village of Orlovske.
It's the native land of Budenny. The steppes of the Salsk
region. I graduated from the Kharkiv Firefighting Technical
Academy of the Ministry of Internal Mfairs, I was a "star
pupil." I joined the army and I've been serving in Kiev for six
years already. So you can consider me a Kievan. I don't
regret my choice of profession, I made it consciously.'
'In those days all Kiev lived on dreadful rumours. Did you
have the feeling that you had achieved something extraordi-
nary?'
'You know, there was a feeling of relief that we had done
our job. When we could report: "The danger of an explosion
has been eliminated." We just didn't think that later we'd be
interviewed. What we thought of was: "This soldier has
taken up so many roentgens. He's got to rest. These will go
first. They've taken up less."
'We looked after each other.
'And then it suddenly turned that we were sort of heroes.
What I think is that everyone who was in Chernobyl did a
job that had to be done. Everyone without exception. If it
hadn't been us, then some other person would have been
there in our place. We just went there as specialists.'
 "The Danger 0/ an Explosion Has Been Eliminated" 101

Besik Davldovich Nanava, 19 years old, senior

sergeant:
'I was born in Georgia, in the town of Tskhakaia, and I
grew up there. My father was an engineer, my mother an ac-
countant. I've been serving for one-and-a-half years.
'What was it like? We were sitting in the club, watching a
movie. The command suddenly came: "Firefighting com-
panyon alert!" We all immediately assembled and the com-
pany commander, Captain Akimov, said: "Lads, get ready,
prepare yourselves for work." He gave us a briefing on
security measures. When I heard all this, I thought of my
horne, of everything. But, you know, I feIt it was necessary,
that it was indispensable to do this. They've called us out,
that means they need uso
'On the morning of 5 May we arrived in Chernobyl. We
stayed there a whole day. On 6 May Major-General O.F.
Suiatinov arrived, and the command came: our special oper-
ations group had to be at the power station. The company
was fully prepared, and Captain Akimov said: "Volunteers,
one step forward." WeIl, we don't need that. .. Every man
took one clear step forward. WeIl, the healthiest, those best
physically prepared, were chosen. I went in for sport, judo.
We got the vehicles ready, checked the hoses, and on 6 May
at 9pm we arrived at the power station. We arrived in
armoured troop carriers. There were five officers there: Cap-
tain Zborovsky, Lieutenant Zlobin, Captain Akimov, Major
Kotin and Major-General Suiatinov. And the eight of us-:-
sergeants and soldiers.
'When we arrived, the major-general asked: "ShaIl we
start at once or shaIl we have a smoke break?" WeIl, we
talked this over: "We'Il start right away." We didn't get out
of the vehicles, but made our way to the work area. We ar-
rived. We set up the pump and started to lay the hoses. At
2.30am we finished the work, came back, went through
decontamination, had a wash and lay down to rest in the
bunker. And at 5am the order came to go back. It looked like
some reconnaissance vehicle with caterpillar tracks had cut
through the hoses. There was contaminated water
102 CHERNOBYL

everywhere. .. All that work. .. We got up, got changed,

and went to the accident area, changed the hoses, and back
we came. All this took about twenty-five minutes. Three
hours passed and all the time there was a helicopter on duty
overhead, and from the helicopter they notified us that water
was gushing out, there was a hole in the hose. It had to be
dealt with immediately. So they got us up again. We went off
there right away. Tightened it, fine. We were replaced at
once and sent to the hospital for observation.
'Now I feel fine. I didn't write to my parents about this.
But do you know wh at happened? They gave me leave, I ar-
rived there, and my father looked at my military ticket, there
where the radiation dose had been noted down. He asked
me: "Son, where've you been, what's this?" WeIl, I didn't
give any concrete explanation, but he knows about these
things and guessed right away. He said: "Tell me what it was
like." WeIl, I tried to soften it up a bit. I didn't want to give
any natural picture, what it was really like. But they found it
all out for themselves.'
The night of 6-7 May 1986 will enter history for ever as
one of the most important victories over the stricken reactor.
I don't want to seek out any agreeable symbols and get
carried away by solemn comparisons. I've already got suffi-
ciently carried away, and that'Il do. But the symbols impose
themselves: it happened on the eve of Victory Day. And now
for me those two dates have become tightly bound in one
knot. As long as I live, I always, during 'short May nights'
will recall May 1945, ruined, burned, but triumphant Kiev:
the Studebakers in the streets, the anti-aircraft guns in Shev-
chenko Park, being prepared for the holiday salute, the tears
in the eyes of the adults. And alongside-May 1986: the
armoured troop carriers rushing to the Zone, and the words
of one officer who came to see us in the hospital: 'Lads, con-
gratulations on your victory! There'll be no explosion!'
In the collective which carried out this responsible task for
the Government Commission, I found myself together with
veterans of the Great Fatherland War. The meeting had
been organized by Stanislav Antonovych Shalatsky, an ex-
 "The Danger of an Explosion Has Been Eliminated" 103

tremely interesting person, an experienced journalist, a

colonel in the Soviet army and at the same time in the Polish
army. At the end of 1944 he was editor of the newspaper of
the First tank division of the Polish forces 'The Panzers,'
precisely the one in which those such popular heroes of the
TV film Four Members of a Tank Crew and a Dog had served.
Two Heroes of the Soviet Union came to this meeting.
They were the ace pilot, Colonel Georgii Gordeevich
Golubev, who during the war had served with the legendary
Pokryshkin, and the illustrious intelligence operator, who
saved ancient Cracow from destruction by the Hitlerites, Iev-
hen Stepanovych Berezniak, known to the whole country as
'Major Whirlwind.'
Colonel Golubev gave us a vivid and honest ac count of the
difficult work of a fighter pilot, notably about the real work,
not about the 'heroic exploits': the physical strain which
weighed on the aces' shoulders, the various technical 'short-
cuts' which pilots resorted to in war. If you don't shoot the
enemy down, he'll shoot you down. And Berezniak told us of
the intelligence operator's work behind enemy lines, when a
man is in a constant state of tension, all the time carrying
within hirnself an oppressive feeling of danger. In such cir-
cumstances the most daring, the most calm and ingenious
are the ones who survive.
I looked at the young, 18 to 19-year-old shaven lads with
red epaulettes on their shoulders and I saw how attentively
they listened to the veterans' stories. I thought: in forty years
these lads, with their grey hair, will recount in just the same
way their burning days in Chernobyl and, in precisely the
same way, with bated breath, the children of the twenty-first
century will listen to them.
But if I had said this to the soldiers, they wouldn't have
believed me, they would have laughed. For today they can-
not imagine themselves as old men.
 13
The Flight Over the Reactor

From the first days of the accident the situation around

the stricken reactor was monitored. To achieve this all pos-
sible means were exploited, on the ground and in the air.
Nikolai Andreevieh Volkozub, fifty-four years old,
senior inspector, Air Force pilot of the Kiev Military District,
pilot-gunner, colonel, Master of Helicopter Sport of the
USSR:
'On the moming of 27 April 1 was told by telephone to go
to headquarters with all my personal defence gear. It was a
Sunday. A carcame, 1 quickly got ready, arrived at head-
quarters and there found out what had happened.
'I received the order to fly to the town of Prypiat. When 1
flew past the power station, 1 involuntarily went to one side
and saw the whole picture. Those places were familiar to me,
1 often flew there. We switched the helicopter's on-board
dosimeter and straight away as we approached the nuclear
power station we noticed that the radiation levels were
rising. 1 saw the ventilation chimney, the ruined fourth
power block. There was smoke, and in the middle you could
see flames, in the ruins of the reactor. The smoke was grey.
'I arrived over Prypiat and heard the voice of our leader.
So our leader was already there, Major-General Mykola
Trokhymovych Antoshkin. 1 landed at the stadium. A car
106 CHERNOBYL

came Up to me. I asked: "And where's the pad?" They

replied: "Near the flower-bed, by the Town Executive Com-
mittee." I took off and landed near the flower-bed. I arrived
in Prypiat around 4pm. The town had already been
evacuated. Except for the cars parked by the Town Executive
Committee, the town was empty. This was very unusual.
'They were loading sacks ne ar the river station and taking
them straight to the central square. From there helicopters
went to the reactor. At first they didn't hang the sacks out-
side, but put them inside the helicopter. On the approach to
the reactor they opened the doors and simply shoved the
sacks out.
'On 27 April our helicopters threw out sacks until dark-
ness fell. At the Government Commission they reported that
they threw out-I can't remember precisely just now-I
think it was a little over eighty sacks. The chairman of the
Commission Borys levdokymovych Shcherbyna said that this
was nothing, a drop in the ocean. It was very little, they
needed tonnes.
'We flew to the base and thought: what could we do? The
question was put to everyone for discussion: flight officers
and technicians. Throwing sacks out by hand was unproduc-
tive and dangerous. One flight technician: weIl, how much
can he throw out? And during the night of 27-28 April
everyone thought: how can we do this better? As you know,
in theory the extern al attachments of an MI-8 can take two-
and-a-half tonnes. And that night an idea took shape: the
load should be hung on the extern al attachments. The sacks
would be put in the brake parachutes of fighter planes-
they're very strong-and then hung underneath. On helicop-
ters there are special attachments to suspend loads. You
press a button, and it releases the load. And that's that. At
first we worked on MI -8s, then we got more powerful ma-
chines.
'Our command point had been set up on the roof of the
Hotel 'Polissia' in the centre of Prypiat. From there the
power station was clearly visible. You could see how the
helicopters, having left the pad, set a combat course to
 The Flight Over the &actor 107

release the load, and you could direct them. A complication

was that we did not have a special aiming device for releas-
ing something hanging outside, that mass of sacks dangling
under the machine. In working out a methodology for the
flights, we established that the crew had to maintain a flight
altitude of 200 metres. It couldn't be lower because of the
radiation, and besides, the ventilation chimney was 140-150
metres high. This was very elose. We had to aim for the
chimney. That was our main reference point. I can see it all
the time ... It'1I remain in my memory all my life, perhaps. I
even know where which fragments lay on it, no one else saw
them, but I had made them out. On the chimney there were
platforms.
'We maintained a speed of eighty kilometres an hour. And
our leader followed the flights with a theodolite. They desig-
nated a point, and when the helicopter came to a halt at that
point, the command came: "Drop!" We worked it out that
everything would fall directly into the ruins of the reactor.
Later they placed another helicopter a little higher, and it
checked how good the aim was. They took a photograph and
at the end of the day we could see how precise we had been.
'Later we thought up another improvement: we fixed it so
that the parachute stayed behind and only the sacks went
down. We unhooked two ends of the parachute. And after
that, when we worked in more powerful helicopters and
dropped lead pigs, we dropped them using freight
parachutes, designed to take down military equipment.
'A few days later we set up a pad in the village of Kopachi.
It was also near the nuelear power station, but the radiation
levels were lower.
'The fact that radiation has neither taste nor colour nor
smell at first dulled our sense of danger. No one paid any at-
tention, either to the dust, or to anything. We worked as
much as we could. There were gas masks, but, you see, the
soldiers, when they were loading the sacks, they pushed the
gas masks up onto their foreheads, so they were like eye-
glasses, and they worked ...
'Later, when this came out, there were briefings and
108 CHERNOBYL

medicine went to war, they began to punish people.

Afterward, when the wind tumed toward Kopachi and the
radiation levels rose steeply, we changed pad and went to
Chemobyl.
'On these flights I trained crews, explained to them how to
drop the load. To help us crews began to come from other
units. We already had some experience, and every fresh crew
received very detailed instructions from uso We elaborated
diagrams of how to suspend the load, how to make the flight,
and how to do the drop. Everything, absolutely everything.
You do a briefing, a readiness check, you do a flight as co-
pilot, do one more mission, and then you're ready to fly.
'Mter the flights there was a health check and a
decontamination of the helicopters.
'On 7 May we stopped filling in the reactor. As soon as we
had stopped, at one of the meetings of the Govemment
Commission the scientists and specialists decided that in or-
der to work out the next steps in eliminating the accident,
they had to know the temperature in the reactor and the
composition of the gases being emitted. At that moment it
was impossible to get near the reactor on foot or in a vehicle
because of the high radiation levels. One of the scientists,
academician Legasov, proposed doing it from a helicopter.
'No one had ever before carried out such a task. What
made it complicated? A helicopter, through its aerodynamic
properties, can hover over the land either at a height of
around ten metres (this is called hovering in the danger
zone) or high er than 500 metres. From ten to 200 metres is a
prohibited zone. Why? The helicopter is in general a reliable
machine. I've been flying them since 1960. For me it's like a
bicycle. Whatever the situation, even if an engine refuses, I
will always land. But if thehelicopter is hovering at a height
of up to 200 metres and an engine refuses, the pilot, however
high his qualifications, will not land the helicopter, because
he won't be ahle to get the rotor into the autorotation, that is,
gliding, mode. But this is only when he's hovering. If, how-
ever, he's flying horizontally, then everything's fine. The
helicopter can go into the auto rotation mode only above a
height of 500 metres.
 The Flight Over the Reactor 109

'So one of the dangers is hovering higher than ten metres.

This is prohibited. Only in extreme situations can it be per-
mitted. Secondly, the emission of heat from the reactor. No
one knew its thermal characteristics. And in a zone of in-
creased heat the power of engines decreases. WeH, there
were increased radiation levels too. And one more thing: the
crew cannot see what is happening undemeath.
'Everyone understood these complications. But there was
no other solution. Everything was measured by wartime
standards. But the measurement had to be made. The task
consisted in lowering the active part of the equipment, that
which indicated the temperature, what is known as a
thermocouple, into the reactor.
'An Air Force commander flew in and set us the task. He
said: "It's a very complex task. But it has to be done. How
can we do it?"
'He asked me. I said: "Yes, it's complex, but we have to
try. We'H do some training." I have a good deal of experi-
ence, I've flown aH types of helicopter, so, clearly, they had
the idea of charging me with this.
'The training started. I immediately outlined a plan of how
to do it. At that time I had switched myself off completely
from everything else, concentrating my attention only on this
flight. Apart from the co-pilot and the flight technician, the
doctor of technical sciences Evgenii Petrovich Riazantsev
had to fly with me. He was deputy director of the I.V. Kur-
chatov Atomic Energy Institute. Evgenii Petrovich explained
to me that a thermocouple was a metallic tube on a cable.
Oleksandr Stepanovych Tsykalo, relief chief of the dosimeter
operators, was to fly with us too. These people, together with
whom I had to work in complex circumstances, will. be re-
membered.
'We had to think of how to lower it, this thermocouple,
into the reactor. I went off to our engineers and said: "Put
your engineers' thinking caps on and let's think." Although I
had some ideas too.
'We took a 300-metre cable. You know, it's a bad
stimulus, an accident, but if we always lived and worked like
then, with such efficiency, without fuss, when everyone gave
110 CHERNOBYL

all his strength to the job, we would have a completely differ-

ent life ... In literally half an hour the cable was ready.
'The wire from the thermocouple was twisted around the
cable. A weight was hung onto the end of it. The cable was
laid out at the airfield. I chose the helicopter mys elf, so that
it was a powerful one, and I tried the engines. I set the task
out to the crew. I didn't notice any excitement, but it just had
to be done. I calculated how much fuel to take. I didn't need
any extra, so they just gave me a little bit over wh at I needed.
I took off and flew up to the cable. I hooked it on and flew
directly off. I raised it. On the ground they had made a circle
of about the radius of the reactor, twelve to fourteen metres,
using parachutes. I started to imitate the flight. A load of
around 200 kilos hung below me. I came in smoothly,
hovered, reduced speed, and slowly approached the circle.
Our leader corrected my bearings. I hovered. And he gave
the command: "Stay right here." I picked out a reference
point for mys elf so that I hovered just right, and locked my-
self on, hut I knew intuitivelythat I was hovering in the exact
spot. I held it there. But he said: "You're hovering just right,
but the load is swinging like a pendulum." I was hovering at
a height of 350 metres, but the load was swaying.
'I hovered there for five minutes, it swayed; I hovered for
ten minutes, still swaying. It wouldn't settle down. I hovered
there and the thought came: "What can I do?" This training
too is quite dangerous, even if morally easier: there's no
radiation and raised temperature. But from the point of view
of aerodynamics, it's dangerous. But you don't think of this
when you're flying.
'I could see there was nothing doing. I came to the landing
place and lowered the cable onto the pad. I unhooked it.
Then I landed.
'And an idea came to me: what if, along the whole length
of the cable weights are hung at certain intervals? It should
stabilize. We strung lead bars onto the cable. Our engineers
did it all efficiently.
'This was all done on 7 May, at night.
'On the next day I flew out to train with this cable. The
 The Flight Over the Reactor 111

cable took the strain weH. I began to descend. I just barely

touched the ground with the cable (I heard the command:
"Touching!"). I moved off and the cable stood there like a
pillar ... In these situations piloting needs the technique of a
jeweller. .. I did it once more to convince myself that it was
possible. If only you could have seen our expressions after
that flight. In general a flight with something suspended out-
side is considered one of the most complex. .. After that I
did a few more practices.
'On 8 May we were brought the thermocouple. It was like
a wire. The end is a sensor. We connected everything up and
laid the cable out on the pad in Chemobyl.
'On 9 May Evgenii Petrovich Riazantsev and Oleksandr
Stepanovych Tsykalo came. They set up the apparatus in the
helicopter. Just before the flight we ourselves, the crew,
using lead sheets, made a protective shield: we laid it on the
seats and the floor. But not there where the pedals and feet
were, that was impossible. We covered everything up weIl.
We were given lead waistcoats. We explained to our pas-
sengers how the flight would go, and we covered them too
with sheets and agreed on how everything would be co-
ordinated. My colleague Colonel Liubomyr Volodymyrovych
Mymka, positioned on the Hotel "Polissia," was going to
watch over the flight.
'WeIl, we got into the helicopter and took off from Cher-
nobyl without any problems. The end of the cable had been
marked with an orange ring to make it more visible.
'I approached at a height of 350 metres. 1 had to find out
what the situation was there with the temperature and the
power of the engines. The helicopter hovered solidly.
'The flight leader said to me: "Fifty metres to the
building ... Forty ... Twenty ... " He prompted me with the
height and the distance. Hut when 1 was right over the reac-
tor, neither 1 nor the leader could see any more whether 1
had hit the mark or not. So they sent me another MI-26. It
was piloted by Colonel Chichkov. He hovered at a distance
of two to three kilometres behind me and could see every-
thing. 1 had to hover to the side of the chimney ...
112 CHERNOBYL

'And Evgenii Petrovich Riazantsev was hirnself looking

through the hatch and telling me where I was with gestures:
"Over the reactor." We made temperature measurements at
a height of fifty metres, forty, twenty and in the reactor itself.
Evgenii Petrovich saw everything. And the equipment was
noting it down. When it had all been done, I came away.
'Behind Prypiat a special place had been designated, and I
dropped the cable in some sand. The cable was radioactive.
'Six minutes and twenty seconds had passed from the mo-
ment we had been hovering. It had seemed an etemity.
'It was a victory.
'On the following day, 10 May, we were given another
task: to determine the composition of the gases being
emitted. Again the same thing, the same cable, but not a
thermocouple, this time a container on the end. This task
was easier: we didn't have to hover, but just pass smoothly
over the reactor. On 12 May it all had to be repeated with
the thermocouple. By then we had experience, and some
calm. But in spite of the fact that we had, it would have
seemed, some experience, there was no way we could hover
for less than six minutes.
'You have to approach, stabilize the cable, then you begin
to come down and take the measurements. How did I feel?
From 27 April we hadn't had a single peaceful night, we
slept for two or three hours. And we flew from dawn until
dusk. People often ask me: "Wh at effect does radiation
have?" I don't know what it does, but the exhaustion was
dreadful, and where did it come from? Was it from the
radiation or from the lack of sleep, from the physical exhaus-
tion or from the moral and psychological tension? There
really was tension, it was a great responsibility.
'After these three flights I continued flying, carrying out
radiation reconnaissance.
'Altogether I hovered for nineteen minutes and forty sec-
onds over the reactor.'

From the press:

'With the aim of reducing the radioactive fallout, a pro-
 The Flight Over the Reactor 113

tective shield of sand, clay, boron, dolomite, limestone and

lead is being created over the active zone. The upper part of
the reactor has been covered by a layer which is composed of
more than four thousand tonnes of these protective materi-
als.' (From a statement by the chairman of the Government
Commission, deputy president of the Council of Ministers of
the USSR B.le. Shcherbyna at a press conference for Soviet
and foreign journalists, 6 May 1986, Pravda, 7 May 1986.)
'Professor M. Rosen (director of the nuclear safety depart-
ment of the International Atomic Energy Agency) responded
positively to the methods applied by Soviet specialists to ab-
sorb the radiation, using a shield made up of sand, boron,
clay, dolomite and lead ... Work continues under the dam-
aged block, in order completely to neutralize the radiation
fire and, as the physicists say, "bury" it in a thick concrete
case.' (Pravda, 10 May 1986.)
'From the Council of Ministers of the USSR. On 10 May
at the Chernobyl nuclear power station work continued to
eliminate the effects of the accident. As a result of the
measures taken, the temperature within the reactor has fal-
len significantly. In the opinion of scientists and specialists,
this testifies to the virtual halt in the combustion process in
the reactor's graphite.'
 14
Dr. Hammer and Dr. Gale

Rom the press:

'On 15 May M.S. Gorbachev received in the Kremlin the
eminent American entrepreneur and public figure A. Ham-
mer and Dr. Gale. He expressed deep gratitude for the
sympathy offered by them, for their understanding and rapid
concrete assistance in connection with the calamity which
had afflicted the Soviet people, the accident at the Chernobyl
nucIear power station ... In A. Hammer's and R. Gale's act,
emphasized M.S. Gorbachev, Soviet people note an example
of how relations between the two great peoples should be
built at a time of the existence of political wisdom and good-
will in the leadership of both countries.' (Pravda, 16 May
1986.)
On the morning of 23 July there landed, at Kiev's Boryspil
airport, a white Boeing-727 with the flag of the United
States on the fuselage and a blue and red inscription' on the
fin: 'N10XY,' which denotes number one in the company
'Occidental Petroleum Corporation,' whose president is
Armand Hammer. On this aircraft, which is provided with
every indispensable item, from a study to a bathroom, the in-
defatigable 88-year-old businessman 'cIocks up' hundreds of
thousands of kilometres, directing the complex and many-
sided operations of the Occidental company.
116 CHERNOBYL

Armand Hammer, with his wife and also Dr. Robert Gale
with his wife and three children, had arrived in Kiev.
And immediately after their arrival Hammer and his
retinue set off for the cardiological block of the Kiev October
Revolution Clinical Hospital No. 14. The very hospital where
Maksym Drach works in the resuscitation block. Putting on
a white smock and recalling his medical youth (after all, by
education he is a doctor), Dr. Hammer went around the sec-
tions in which, after the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear
power station, over 200 people, who had been in the danger
zone, were kept for observation. That day in the department
there were only five people, called in for planned repeat ob-
servation.
Dr. Hammer took a sympathetic interest in the general
state of each of them. He was assisted by Dr. Gale, who,
having been in Kiev before, had already examined these
patients.
On that very same day Hammer and Gale flew over the
fourth reactor in a helicopter. I flew with them, and now,
wh ether asleep or awake, what I saw gives me no peace: the
flight over the fourth reactor, hovering over the massive,
white and dead structure of the nuclear power station, swal-
lowed up by the half-shade, over the white and red striped
chimney, over the mirror-like surface of the dead cooling
pond, over the winding riverbed of the Prypiat, over the ec-
centric interlacing of wires, supports, over the heap of auxil-
iary structures, and over the abandoned technical equip-
ment. As in every memory, hidden in the depths of time, the
real forms progressively wear away, many things lose their
clear outlines, hut the feeling of anxiety and pain remains
immutahle, just as it was during that summer as evening ap-
proached. Pressing against the windows, we, the passengers
in an MI -8, studiously peered into a magical picture, which
attracted our eyes: the black nozzle of the fourth reactor, the
ruined structures, the debris around the base.
Mter the flight around the fourth reactor, standing hefore
movie and television cameras, Armand Hammer said:
 Dr. Hammer and Dr. GaZe 117

'I have just retumed from Chemobyl. What 1 saw made

such an impression on me that it is difficult for me to speak.
1 saw a whole town-fifty thousand inhabitants-and there
was not a single person around. Empty. Buildings, big build-
ings, all empty. Here and there even washing hangs out, the
people didn't have time to take it in. 1 observed the work be-
ing done to save the reactor, so that there would be no more
problems with it. I would like every human being to visit
here, to see what I have seen. Then no one would talk about
nuclear weapons. Then everyone would know that that is
suicide for the whole world, and everyone would understand
that we have a duty to destroy nuclear weapons. I hope that
when Mr. Gorbachev meets Mr. Reagan, he will tell hirn
everything and show hirn a film about Chemobyl. And later,
in the future, when Mr. Reagan comes to Russia, I would
like hirn to visit Kiev and Chemobyl. Let hirn see wh at 1
have seen. Then, I think, he will never speak of nuclear
weapons.'
He is a surprising man, Armand Hammer. Perhaps the
secret of his imperishable alertness is that he knows how to
relax. After our helicopter rose above Kiev, he immediately
fell into a doze. Dr. Gale considerately covered hirn with a
white cape. But no sooner did the word Chemobyl re sound
than this wise old man was transformed, as it were, sharp-
sightedly looking into the green landscape beneath us, over
which the shadow of our helicopter peacefully crawled, like a
ghostly mowing machine. He noticed everything, even the
sixteen-storeyed buildings in Prypiat, even the washing on
the baIconies; all of it stiffened and unnatural. And on the
way back he fell asleep again.
In the evening of that same day Armand Hammer flew out
from Kiev for Los Angeles.
But Dr. Gale stayed behind with his family for several
days, to meet Kiev colleagues, to rest in our city, and to fa-
miliarize hirnself with its monuments and museums. After
all, during his first visit to Kiev on 3 June Dr. Gale had no
time for that: he was to consult with a group of patients who
118 CHERNOBYL

had been under treatment in the Kiev X-ray-radiological and

Oncological Institute, in Professor L.P. Kindzelsky's depart-
ment.
I accompanied Dr. Gale during his first visit to this in-
stitute. Dr. Robert Peter Gale looks younger than his forty
years (every moming an hour of obligatory jogging); he is
tanned, concentrated and tacitum, and the look of his grey
eyes carefully and searchingly fixes on the person to whom
he is talking. In spite of his outward coldness and his typi-
cally American businesslike manner, he is a very likeable
person and it is pleasant to have dealings with hirn; he
replies so considerately and patiently, and in such an in-
formed mann er, to the numerous questions put to hirn by
correspondents. And he is elegant too. He invariably wears a
dark-blue blazer with gold-like buttons, a dark-red tie, and
grey trousers. And his bare heels at first look somehow very
ridiculous and moving: he wears shoes without he eI-pie ces.
It appears that this is a Los Angeles habit, walking
'barefoot': in Gale's native land it is always warm.
Just before we entered, we all-the guest and his
companions-put on white smocks, caps and masks, and
tied protective slippers on our feet. And suddenly we became
surprisingly similar to one another; you couldn't make out
who was the American, who the Muscovite and who the
Kievan. A family of doctors, united by the common interest
in saving humanity.
I saw how considerately Gale examined the patients, how
he asked the casualties and the doctors questions, thought-
fully studied the charts with the data of analyses, inter-
rogated on the finer points of the methods applied by the
Kiev doctors. He was particularly interested in the cases of
bone-marrow transplant.
And in this there is nothing surprising. After all, Gale is a
well known specialist in the field of bone-marrow trans-
plants, a professor of the University of Califomia, the direc-
tor of a clinic, the president of the International Bone
Marrow Transplant Organization. Kiev professor lu.O.
 Dr. Hammer and Dr. GaZe 119

Hrynevych reminded Gale that he had visited his Califor-

nian clinic. Gale, on that occasion having heard out the as-
sistants, who had just showed hirn a patient, after some
thoughts clearly and confidently dictated a course of treat-
ment and, raising his hands, said: 'God help us.' Gale
smiled, remembering that meeting, and his severe face sud-
denly became childishly animated. Looking at the Kiev
patients, saved from their serious situation, he superstitiously
touched wood: even if it doesn't help, it won't do any harm.
Later, to my question: 'What do you believe in?, Dr. Gale
gave a very senous answer:
'In God. And in science.'
Then, in those anxious June days, his visit to Kiev had
been very short, and precious minutes ticked by in conversa-
tions with the press. In July Dr. Gale feit far freer: on the day
after the departure of Hammer, the American doctor to-
gether with his wife Tamar, his three-year-old son Elan and
his daughters-seven-year-old Shir and nine-year-old Tal-
went to the Kiev Pediatrics, Midwifery and Gynecology In-
stitute, where the director of the institute, Academician of
the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR O.M.
Lukianova, president of the Ukrainian section of the interna-
tional organization 'World Physicians for the Prevention of
Nuclear War,' met hirn.
Here, in this, perhaps, most sacred pi ace in the world, the
place where new life comes into being, where the struggle
for the survival of humankind is waged, Dr. Gale's children
very quickly made friends with the little patients, without
feeling any linguistic or ideological obstacles. They ex-
changed presents and together sang the song 'Let there al-
ways be sunlight.' Then little Tal played the violin, and blue-
eyed Shir regretted there was no piano; she too would have
demonstrated her skill ...
And Dr. Gale in the meantime held a professional
dialogue with the pediatricians, midwives and heart
surgeons. In the resuscitation department we stood for a long
time near the plastic incubation units, plugged in to complex
120 CHERNOBYL

equipment: here tiny creatures lay, the future people of the

twenty-first century, still unaware of the nuclear alerts wor-
rying us today.
The Museum of the Great Patriotic War, the Museum of
the National Architecture and Life of the UkrSSR in the vil-
lage of Pyrohovo, the V.I. Lenin Museum-all were on
Gale's schedule. The different stages in our history, the dif-
ferent sides of our life ...
In the V.I. Lenin Museum a symbolic sculpture attracted
Dr. Gale's attention: a little monkey, sitting on Darwin's On
the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, examines
a human skulI. The story of this sculpture is interesting.
During his second visit to Moscow Armand Hammer gave
Lenin this sculpture, which he had acquired in London.
People relate that Vladimir Ilich, taking the gift, said: 'Here
is what can happen to mankind if it continues to perfect and
increase instruments of destruction. There will only be
monkeys left on Earth.'
That was the prophetic warning of our Leader.
I retain many recordings of cOllversations with Dr. Gale,
who, in fact, was very interested in literature and is himself
the author of a publicistic book. I have tried to select the
main ones from among these recordings:
'Dr. Gale, what led you to medicine? Was it chance or a
conscious choice?'
'I made a conscious decision. In our society the profession
of doctor is one of the most respected. Iwanted to become a
doctor.'
'How old were you when you made that decision?'
'I entered college when I was sixteen.'
'Was medicine a traditional profession for your family?'
'No, in my family there were no medical people. My father
is a businessman.'
'Are you satisfied with your choice of profession?'
'A lot of people ask me: "Now that you have achieved in-
ternational prominence, what do you intend to change in
your life?" I always answer that I was entirely satisfied with
my life even before I became weIl known and that I don't in-
 Dr. Hammer and Dr. GaZe 121

tend to change anything in my life.'

'Dr. Gale, I know many oncologists and many
hematologists and I know that psychologically this is a very
difficult profession. After all, a doctor constantly sees death
and misfortune. Wh at is your attitude to that?'
'You 're partly right, Dr. Shcherbak. Psychologically this is
a difficult profession. But, on the other hand, that increases
its attraction. After all, it's a vocation. The oncologist and the
hematologist must very often solve extremely complex prob-
lems and be in difficult situations, often because our knowl-
edge in this field is limited. So it seems to me that oncology
really gives a great deal of space for medical creativity. In
college we often argued: which is better, writing music or
playing music? If you are a cardiologist, you "play music."
But in oncology "music is written." There everything is new
and everything is unknown.
'Moreover, I have been trained both as a scientific worker
and as a doctor. It is precisely in oncology and hematology
that it is very easy to tie the results of laboratory research
with work in hospitals, with the real treatment of the patient.
After all, it is not a coincidence that the first illnesses for
which their genetic nature was known were precisely
illnesses of the blood: the destruction of the synthesis of
hemoglobin, let's say. And, you know, the majority of Nobel
Prizes in the field of medicine have recently been awarded
precisely for the examination of these problems.'
'In connection with what we have just been saying: what
do you feel more like, a doctor or a scientist? Are you in fa-
vour of a synthesis?'
'Being a good doctor, curing people, that is work which
must take up all one's time. Even more. Being areal
scientist, that too is for more than all your life. Sometimes it
seems to me that no one can do the two in parallel. Particu-
larly in our age, when both medicine and science have be-
come so technological, let's say "technicapacious." And I am
aware that there really just aren't enough people who could
unite these two occupations. This is extraordinarily impor-
tant. In my opinion, there has to be a synthesis. It's precisely
122 CHERNOBYL

in this that I see my duty: to unite in myself the doctor and

the scientist.'
'How do you divide up your time during anormal work
situation in your California dinic?'
'As director of a dinic I spend the greater part of my time
on the rounds, examining patients, talking to them. My
patients often have quite common forms of cancer, for ex-
ample, lung cancer. And I am anxious for them, like any or-
dinary doctor. Some time goes on directing a sm all research
institution which collects statistical data on the results of the
application of new methods of the treatment of leukemias,
the transplant of bone marrow and other information. And,
finally, the most important thing I'm occupied with: my own
laboratory, where fundamental research is done on the study
of the molecular mechanisms involved in the development of
leukemias.
'I realize that this sounds as if I'm dissipating my atten-
tion, but I don't think this is the case. I have concentrated on
three directions, because before us there is a very important
objective; we want an effective cure for leukemia. And we
think that the first result will be obtained in a laboratory.
'Where are we going? What is the fundamental idea of our
research? No child should die of leukemia. To achieve this
we must do everything in our power.'
'Are there cases of cures in your dinic? Do you succeed in
transforming acute leukemia into chronic leukemia?'
'In 1986 we succeeded in curing approximately seventy
per cent of the children who had developed leukemia. And
nearly thirty per cent of adults. If we do a general calcula-
tion, then we succeed in curing exactly half the patients.'
'That's a phenomenal result!'
'Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of the popula-
tion does not fully realize how far we have got in the treat-
ment of leukemias. However, one half of our patients just
isn't enough. Mter all, the other half die. For example, this
year 200,000 Americans will die of cancer. .. '
'In the press it was stated that you have a Ph.D. What
problem did you examine in your thesis?'
 Dr. Hammer and Dr. GaZe 123

'My theme was life and death. The unity of life and death
on the philosophical level. In my autobiography, which came
out in the USA, I touch on this theme.'
'Dr. Gale, what do you say to your patients when you have
made a diagnosis?'
'I always tell my patients the tmth, I give them all the
facts. I don't know if this is good or bad, but we subscribe to
the philosophy according to which a person must have all the
information. The fact is that the most important decisions re-
garding treatment are taken by the patient himself. And to
do this he must have tme information. This doesn't always
work out in the best way, but we simply don't have a better
wayout.'
'Did you have anything to do with radiation sickness be-
fore you came to Moscow and began to treat the casualties of
the Chernobyl nuclear power station accident?'
'Yes, we had a certain experience. Some cases of leukemia
require bone-marrow transplants. And in such cases we give
patients heavy doses of radiation, sometimes almost lethai
doses. We have considerable experience in the treatment of
patients radiated by massive doses of radiation, nearly sev-
eral thousand bers (biological equivalent of roentgen).'
'Did your prognosis regarding the treatment of the
patients in Moscow meet with the actual results?'
'On the wh oie, yes, if you me an the general pattern, the
statistical prognoses. But it is very difficult to make a precise
diagnosis in every individual ca se. In general, making a
prognosis is a difficult ethical problem and a heavy burden.
In the first place I have in mind the treatment of patients
with leukemias in my clinic, not the treatment of the Cher-
nobyl patients. We assume, I know, that out of a hundred
patients who need a bone-marrow transplant, fifty per cent
will survive and be cured. But this is no comfort for those
fifty per cent who will die. Our treatment shortens their life.
And so every time that a patient dies, a patient whose life
was shortened by our treatment, I feel personally responsi-
ble. I have to be responsible for their death, but I have no
other advice to give.
124 CHERNOBYL

'On the whole it would be simplest not to do any trans-

plants. But in that case we will deny the great majority of our
patients the right to life.'
'Dr. Gale, whom do you remember best of your Moscow
patients?'
'I must say directly that I remember every one of them. I
remember each one as aperson, as an individual. And some
people left a very profound trace. I particularly remember
three patients.
'The first is the doctor who worked near the reactor, giving
assistance to the casualties. As a doctor, he was aware of the
whole danger of the situation, he understood everything, but
he conducted hirns elf courageously. The second patient is a
fireman. When I first left Moscow for Kiev-do you remem-
ber, at the beginning of June?-I was away from the clinic
for three days. When I came back, he was very angry and
asked me: "Where were you? Why did you go away?" And
the third is also a fireman. It's possible he didn't realize what
danger hung over hirn; it's possible he understood, but per-
haps did everything particularly so as not to pay attention to
the threat to his life. His behaviour was very moving; during
the rounds he would always ask: "Howare things, doctor,
how do you feei?"
'Two of those patients died, the other survived. .. '
'What feelings guided you when you decided to come to
the Soviet Union?'
'In the first pI ace I am a doctor and I was aware of the pos-
sible effects of such an accident. So I considered it necessary
to offer my assistance. As a representative of the medical
profession, political rivalries do not concern me. Our first
duty is to save people, to help them. Moreover, similar acci-
dents can happen not only in the USSR, but in the USA and
other countries. And it's natural that we shall expect the
same sympathy and the same help on the part of Soviet
people.'
'Do you think it is possible to draw an analogy between
Dr. Hammer's visit to our country in 1921 and your present
journey?'
 Dr. Hammer and Dr. GaZe 125

'In.a sense, yes. It's true thatHammer was then concemed

with the problems of combating typhus, and we are combat-
ing the nuclear threat. The circumstances are quite different,
but the essence is one and the same. In this sense nothing
has changed. But the situations, categorically, are absolutely
incomparable. Just think: just as the very idea of a nuclear
reactor accident in 1921 was absolutely impossible, so today
it is impossible to imagine a typhus epidemic on the same
scale as in 1921. Humanity has leamed to conquer all the
difficulties on its path. .. '
'But this creates new problems.'
'It will always be like that,' laughs Dr. Gale. 'And today it
is difficult for us to imagine what problems will worry
humanity in sixty years.'
'This time you brought your children. Does this me an that
nothing threatens their stay here?'
'Many people in the world think that Kiev has been totally
abandoned by its inhabitants or that every single child has
been evacuated. And one of the reasons which forced me to
come here with my family was a wish to emphasize once
more that the situation is perfectly under control and that the
patients have been given the necessary assistance. I had no
doubts about the safety of my stay in Kiev. And not at any
price would I have brought my children if there had been
even the slightest potential danger. I think that such an ac-
tion is easier to understand than a whole series of medical
statements and complex generalizations.'
'Do you consider that the situation in Kiev is getting bet-
ter?'
'Of course. The radiation levels are going firmly down. But
there are some things which require particular attention. For
example, the problem of protecting the water. But all
measures are being taken to protect the city of Kiev. For ex-
ample, artesian wells have been bored, and alternative
sources of water supply have been designated. I consider that
the situation is under full control. In these questions I have
full confidence in my Soviet colleagues. I am sure that they
would not expose their children and themselves to levels of
126 CHERNOBYL

radiation which they considered dangerous.'

'Were you satisfied with the information you were given?'
'During my first visit to the Soviet Union, in particular to
Kiev, 1 was always struck how sincerely and openly we
worked together with our Soviet colleagues. 1 want in partic-
ular to emphasize that the communication of the Politburo
of the USSR on the investigation of the causes of the acci-
dent at the Chernobyl nuclear power station made a great
impression on many of uso 1 consider that the evaluation of
the accident was surprisingly sincere. Probably even more
sincere and open than we thought, and that pleases me
greatly. 1 hope, indeed, 1 am convinced, that your analysis of
the medical information will be as complete and open as the
analysis of the physical causes of the accident.'
'Would you like to come to Kiev again?'
'Not only do 1 want to come, but 1 definitely will come. 1
shall return to your city in October, when the exhibition of
works from Dr. Hammer's collection opens.'
Robert Gale kept his word. It was autumn, it was the same
airport, it was an American airplane, only it was a liule
sm aller than the 'Boeing,' and on its fin was the number
'20XY.' Together with Dr. Gale came the the popular Amer-
ican singer and composer John Denver, who performs his
ballads in the 'country' style. On behalf of Dr. Hammer, Dr.
Gale opened the exhibition 'Five Centuries of Masterpieces.'
At the opening ceremony he said:
'Chernobyl has become for all of us areminder of the fact
that the world must for ever put an end to any possibility of
the outbreak of a nuclear war.'
. .. That same evening there was a concert in the palace
'Ukraina,' all the money from which went into the fund to
help Chernobyl. John Denver's words on his visit to the Pis-
karev Cemetery in Leningrad rang out sincerely and
touchingly; after his visit he wrote a song about the power of
spirit, the courage of the Soviet people, their love for their
land. With great emotion the hall listened to the pure voice
of this red-haired lad from Colorado. 'I want you all to know
that 1 respect and love the Soviet people,' said John Denver.
 Dr. Hammer and Dr. GaZe 127

'For me it's very important to be here, in the Soviet Union,

and to sing for you. And not just to sing, but to share my
music with you.. I want you all to know that I deeply respect
the inhabitants of Kiev and the inhabitants of Chemobyl, I
respect their bravery, their courage.' John Denver was ap-
plauded not only by thousands of Kievans, but also by Dr.
Gale and his wife. And later there was a farewell party, a
little sad, as always when you part from good friends. And
when night fell over the city, we all went out together onto
the bank of the Dnieper and sang to our American friends
our national song, 'The wide Dnieper roars and moans.'
Both Gale and Denver listened attentively, and then Denver
thoughfully asked: 'And where is Chemobyl?'
We pointed to the north, into the darkness, there from
where the Dnieper brought its autumn waters.
 15
By What Are People Tested?

A s I listened to the melodious and very compassionate

songs of John Denver, I thought of Vladimir Vysotsky. An
autumn day in Kiev in 1968 came to mind. The leaves were
falling from the apple trees in the famous garden of Olek-
sandr Dovzhenko, in the film studio bearing his name. I was
walking around near the 'Shchors' pavilion, waiting for
Vysotsky. I had seenhim in the film Vertical and it had
seemed to me that I would certainly recognize him straight
away. But when this small, skinny chestnut-haired fellow
without a beard and wearing a leather jacket turned up,
looking far younger than the hero of Vertical, I only realized
at the last moment that it was him. And I realized this be-
cause a guitar was hanging over his shoulder. Those days the
film Quarantine was being shot with my script; it told of how
a group of doctors in a scientific research laboratory became
infected with a dangerously contagious virus; in the film we
strove to investigate the characteristics of the people, to
model their behaviour in an extreme situation. To a signifi-
cant extent the film's subject was contrived, even fantastic,
but the doctors' characters were taken from nature. Vysotsky
had agreed to write a song for our film, and the director,
S. Tsybulnyk, who was not in Kiev at that time, had charged
me with this song.
130 CHERNOBYL

We exchanged a few words and went to the pavilion,

where everything was already prepared for the recording.
And when Vysotsky began to sing his song, I suddenly un-
derstood why, in ordinary life, it was difficult to recognize
hirn: the feeling of watehing someone 'monumental,' which
you feel from his screen heroes, was created by his in-
imitable hoarsish voice and by his pow;erful temperament. A
miracle of transformation took pi ace simply before my eyes,
as soon as the the first chords rang out on the guitar. I really
liked the song, and we immediately took it into the film. It
was performed by the fine actor and singer Iurii Kamomy,
who later died tragically... But the recording made by
Vysotsky remains in my cassette. Here is that song:

The volleys of arms have long since grown silent,

Above us, just the light of the sun.
By what are people tested,
If there is no longer any war?
And you often happen to hear
Now, as then:
'Would you go reconnoitre with hirn,
No or yes?'

The armour-piercing gun will rumble no more,

There'll be no funeral note pushed under the door.
And it seems-it's all so calm.
And there's nowhere to show yourself now.
And you often happen to hear
Now, as then:
'Would you go reconnoitre with hirn,
No or yes?'

The ca Im is only a dream, I know.

Get ready, steady, and fight.
There's a leader on peace,
Misfortune, danger, and risk.
And you often happen to hear
Now, as then:
 By What Are People Tested? 131

'Would you go reconnoitre with hirn,

No or yes?'

In the fields the mines have been defused,

But we're not in a field full of flowers.
The search for the stars and the depths,
Watch you don't rule it out of the game.
And so we often hear,
If misfortune comes:
'Would you go reconnoitre with hirn,
No or yes?'

During the events in Chernobyl I often recalled this

courageous song and the question asked in it: 'By what are
people tested, if there is no longer any war?'
L Kovalevska: 'On 8 May we left the village in Polissia
for Kiev, to Boryspil airport. I had sent my mother and chil-
dren off to Tiumen. I had little money left, and what I had I
distributed to our people of Prypiat at the airport. Three
roubles to some, two to others. The women with children
were crying, I was sad for them. I kept a rouble for myself, to
get to Kiev. The ticket from Boryspil to Kiev costs eighty
kopecks, so twenty kopecks were left in my pocket. I was all
'dirty,' my pants were contaminated. I stood at the taxi rank
and telephoned acquaintances: one was not at horne, an-
other had gone off somewhere. There was one address left. I
thought: I'll take a taxi, get there, and I'll tell the taxi driver
my friends will pay for me. And if they're not at horne, I'll
note down his details and settle up later. I stood there. Some
man comes up, stands in line behind me and asks: 'What
time is it?' You know the situation, men come up and ask,
just to get acquainted. I stood there angry, unwashed, my
hair a mess. I looked at his arm: was there a watch there or
not? There wasn't. Then I told hirn wh at time it was. I don't
know why, but everyone immediately guessed when you
were from Chernobyl. Because people hardly know Prypiat,
everybody would say: 'Chernobyl.' Whether it was the eyes
or the clothes, I don't know. But they unfailingly guessed.
132 CHERNOBYL

And so that fellow standing behind me in the line asked me:

"You, are you from Chernobyl?" And 1 said angrily to hirn:
"What, can you tell?" "Yes, 1 can tell. Where are you go-
ing?" 1 answered: "I don't know, I'm afraid it's a waste of
time my going there." And he asked: "WeIl, have you got
somewhere to spend the night or not?" "No." He took me by
the arm and said: "Let's go." "I'm not going anywhere with
you," 1 answered. You know, I thought: this man will take
me to his pI ace and all the rest ... I know these things. No.
He sat with me in the taxi and took me to the hotel
'Moscow.' He paid for the taxi, he paid for the hotel. Then
he took me to his pI ace of work, an old dear was on duty, he
gave me a good feed and brought me back. I got washed,
straightened myself up, and then 1 found out his name:
Oleksandr Serhiiovych Slavuta. He worked in the republican
society of bibliophiles.'
A. Perkovska: 'At the beginning of May we began to take
children out to the pioneer camps. The things I saw! People
knew there would be pI aces in 'Artek' and 'Moloda gvardiia.'
The parents began to come along. They put pressure on me
so that their child went without fail to 'Artek.' WeIl, I gave
these parents a good talking to, 1 won't hide the fact. But I
often had to take a risk and its consequences. Our instruc-
tions were to send to the camps those children who had fin-
ished the second to the ninth grades inclusive. So people
came up to me and said: 'Wh at about those in the tenth
grade, aren't they children too? And what are we to do with
children in the first grade?' Just imagine: a mother comes
up, she's alone, has no husband, has shift work' and a six-
year-old child. What's the child to do, wait till it's finished
the second grade? What's the mother to do with it? WeH, I
just wrote in another date of birth without any twinge of con-
science. Then, when 1 got to the pioneer camps, I was reaHy
rebuked. But look, what else could 1 do?
'So we drew up the lists and then it began. Kievans
phoned in and asked me to take their children to the camp.
And the like. When I began to look through the lists, I found
all manner of forgery there. We had to have it announced on
 Br What Are People Tested? 133

the radio that parents should come with their passports and
show their Prypiat residence permit ...
'In August I went out to 'Artek' and 'Moloda gvardiia'; I
took some children. And can you imagine: I found an almost
grown-up girl from another town. She hadn't the slightest
connection with Prypiat. I even found a child from the
Poltava area. How these children ended up in 'Artek' and
'Moloda gvardiia' I don't know. But they, like a11 the chil-
dren, were there for two periods ...
'When at the beginning" of May I took some pregnant
women to Bila Tserkva, a grandee-the third secretary of the
Town Committee of the Party-came out and said: 'One
must think like the state.' And they themselves met our
women wearing anti-plague suits, gas masks and taking a
dosimeter along the streets. And here in this very same Bila
Tserkva they wouldn't receive the children until evening, be-
cause there was no dosimeter operator.
'And when I was resting in Alushta after the hospital, a
friend of mine warned me: "Don't say where you're from.
Say you're from Stavropol. It'l1 be better that way." I didn't
believe her. Moreover, it's degrading to conceal who you are
and where you're from. Two girls, from Tula an<J Kharkiv,
sat down at my table. The asked me: "Where are you from?"
"Prypiat." They immediately ran off. Then some "friends in
misfortune" came and sat with me-women from Cherni-
hiv.'
A. Esaulov: 'In our town, in the communications centre,
on 29 April our telephonist Nadiia Myskevych fainted with
exhaustion. She had been on the lines a11 the time. Our
centre head Liudmyla Petrivna Sirenko was a fine person
too, she was the first in the town to organize special work
units. On one occasion, a lunatic cut off the power at a sub-
station. He said: "I have symptoms of radiation sickness. Get
me out, or else 1'11 switch off the power supply." He went
and switched it off. So Liudmyla Petrivna immediately went
over to the emergency power supply. That's a Woman with a
capital "w."
'Here's another case. The deputy director of the nuclear
134 CHERNOBYL

station dealing with social questions came to me and said:

"Help me, Aleksandr lurievich, 1 need to bury Shashenok,
the operator who died in the fourth block. He needs to be
put in a coffin and buried, but Varyvoda from construction
administration won't supply a bus. It's the only one he's
got." It's difficult to say in such a case who's right and who's
wrong. He only has a single bus and he needs it for the
living to solve some questions of life and death.
'We went to Varyvoda. 1 said: "Look, why are acting the
fool? You've got to accord a man our last respects. Let's have
the bus." And he said: "You can't have it." 1 said: "What are
you, a parasite, you don't obey Soviet authority?" And he
continued: 'All the same you can't have it. You can do what
you like to me, but you can't have it."
'So 1 went out into the road, stopped the first bus 1 saw,
handed it over to Varyvoda, and took his. bus for the
funeral ... '
Ja Dobrenko: 'Mter the evacuation nearly 5,000 in-
habitants remained behind in Prypiat: people who remained
on the instructions of various organizations to see some work
through. But there were those who didn't accept the evacua-
tion and stayed in the town, so to speak, illegally. They were
primarily pensioners. It was difficult for them, for a long
time we were still getting them out. 1 took one pensioner out
on 20 May. It was an old grandad who had lots of awards, a
participant in the Battle of Stalingrad. How had he lived? He
went to the military, took a few gas masks off them, and
even slept with them on. He didn't put the light on, so it
wasn't noticed at night. He had biscuits and he saved water.
When 1 took hirn out, the water in the town had already
been cut off, it was necessary for the decontamination work.
There was power, and he'd been watehing the television.
'This is how we found hirn. His evacuated son came and
said: "My father's stayed behind in the town. I said nothing
for a long time, but I know that there's no longer any water
in the town and that he's just sitting there. Let's go and get
hirn." We got there and he said: "Ok, there's no water, I'll
come." He put on agas mask and took some buckwheat to
 Ey What Are People Tested? 135

make some soup or other. In the villages there were also a

lot of old men and women like hirn, who for nothing in the
world would leave their hornes. We called them "partisans. "
It's true, they weren't all in the same situation. There were
those whom their children had simply left behind. They just
didn't take them. But they didn't make a song and dance
about it, it was just "Stay on here and look after the house
and property".'
Sofiia Fedorivna Horska, headteacher of school No. 5 in
the town of Prypiat: 'Not all the teachers stood the test that
fell to our lot. Not all of them. Because not every one turned
out to be a pedagogue, a professional. When we had been
evacuated, some left their classes and abandoned their chil-
dren. The children reacted very badly to this. Especially the
older children, those who were finishing school this year.·
The teachers who fled, abandoning their children, explain
this by the fact that they had no experience, they didn't know
how to act in such a situation, what to do. After they heard
on the television that everything was back to normal, they
reappeared. For us this was an instructive lesson for the
training of future teachers. Those whom we select from
among the pupils and for two years train to enter the peda-
gogical institute. Among the teachers there 'were "activists"
who spoke louder than others but then fled. Yes, there were
people like that.'
Valerii Vukolovych Holubenko, military director of
secondary school No. 4 in the town of Prypiat: 'When the
evacuation was carried out, we took neither the school jour-
nals nor anything. Mter all, we were to be gone for a short
time, we hoped to return soon to the town. But the academic
year was coming to an end and we had to write school-
leaving certificates for the tenth-graders. There were no
journals, so we proposed to them that they could put down
their own marks. We said: you can remember your marks.
When we were able to check, no one had raised their marks,
and some had even lowered them.'
Mariia Kyrylivna Holubenko, headteacher of secondary
school No. 4 in the town of Prypiat: 'When we had aB been
136 CHERNOBYL

evacuated here, to Poliske, I was appointed a member of the

parcels commission attached to our Prypiat Town Executive
Committee. What really struck me was the kindness of our
people, a kindness we feit just physically, when we opened
parcels, sorted presents and read letters. Some of the things
we hand over to old people's hornes, there where the lonely
old people of Prypiat now live, others go to mother and child
buildings, and others to pioneer camps, particularly clothes
for the smallest children. We get a lot of books-we hand
them over to the libraries for the special construction and op-
erational units of the nuclear power station. And here, in the
next room, are nearly two hundred parcels and another three
hundred are lying in the central Kiev post office. Many let-
ters come from children. Leningrad children sent a lot of
parcels with books, children's clothes, dolls and stationery,
and in every parcel there is a letter, and in every letter there
is anxiety and care. Although these children are third- or
second-graders and live far from the place where the acci-
dent occurred, they have understood that this is a calamity.
There are many parcels from Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan;
they give dried figs, dried fruit, peanuts, sugar and tea;
pensioners send soap, towels and bedclothes, and the chil-
dren most often send books, dolls and games.'
But I ask the reader not to be too taken up by the gentle
and moving emotions which welled up, perhaps, under the
influence of the story about the parcels and letters sent by
kind, decent and sincere people. We mustn't feel cosy. Be-
cause the events in Chemobyl engendered other things: the
traditional masterpieces of our dimwittedness and red tape
ridiculed by Saltykov~Shchedrin.
Here is one of them:
'The YaIta Town Council of National Delegates of the
Crimean Area. 16.10.86. To the President of the Executive
Committee of the Prypiat Town Council of National
Delegates comrade Voloshko v.1.
'In accordance with the directive of the USSR Ministry of
Health No. 110 of 6 September 1986 the Executive Com-
mittee of the YaIta Town Council of National Delegates
 By What Are People Tested? 137

decreed on 26.09.86 No. 362 (1) to grant an apartment in

the Crimean Area to citizen Miroshnychenko M.M., a family
of four people (self, wife, two children), evacuated from the
zone of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station. We ask you to
send to us certification of the surrender by citizen Mirosh-
nychenko M.M. of a three-room apartment No. 68 with all
conveniences and living space of 41.4 square metres in
building No. 7 on Heroes of Stalingrad Street, the town of
Prypiat, to the town authorities.
'Deputy President of the Town Executive Committee P.H.
Roman.'
Witty, aren't they? All the country knows how and to
whom the inhabitants of Prypiat (see 'The Evacuation')
'surrendered' their apartments with all conveniences. And
only in sunny Yalta do they think that some ill-intentioned
people or some relatives of the above-mentioned citizen im-
mediately settled in the apartment abandoned on 27 April
1986 by comrade Miroshnychenko, with its 41.4 square
metres of living space and, against established order, existing
conditions and high levels of radiation.
Indeed, 'By what are people tested?'
The flash over the Chernobyl nuclear station with its
blinding glow lit up good and evil, reason and folly, sincerity
and pharisaism, sympathy and schadenfreude, truth and lies,
disinterestedness and covetousness-all the human virtues
and vices which lurked in the souls both of our countrymen
and of those who lived far beyond the frontiers of our coun-
try.
I recall the May issues of the popular American magazines
US News and World Report and Newsweek: ominous purple
colours on the covers, the hammer and sickle, the symbol of
the atom, and black smoke over the whole world. Bawling
headlines: 'Nightmare in Russia,' 'Deadly Fallout from
Chernobyl,' 'The Chemobyl Cloud. How the Kremlin De-
scribed it and the Actual Risk,' 'Chernobyl: New Health
'Vorries. Perilous guided tour of Kiev.' And the first
apocalyptically triumphant words of the articles: 'This was
the unseen dread of the twentieth century. .. ' ladmit that
138 CHERNOBYL

these sensational headlines and hysterical tone are in the

tradition of the American press, which strives to get through
to the reader and attract his attention at all costs. All this is
normal. But, even bearing all this in mind, it was impossible
to see in all this material the slightest human sympathy for
those who had suffered in the accident, and behind the
ominous medico-genetic prophesies one could sense not a
shadow of anxiety for the lives and health of the children of
Prypiat and Chernobyl. I was particularly struck by the cold
politicking tone of Felicity Barringer's article in the New
York Times (5 June 1986); this woman (woman!), with the
sensitivity of a robot manipulating a pen, as if it were a scal-
pel cutting through living flesh, had areport from the pio-
neer camp 'Artek,' where the children from Prypiat were
then holidaying. In her words there was no real female,
matern al charity, just a hateful propagandistic incomprehen-
sion of what the eleven- and twelve-year-old children were
saying to her, children stunned by what had happened, long-
ing for the hornes to which they would never return ...
Later, in the foreign editing room of Radio Kiev I was
shown dozens of letters which had come during those days
from the USA and Great Britain. And I thought how much
higher the ordinary people of these countries, and of our
country, stood above these primitive propagandistic
stereotypes.
In July 1986 an unusual present from the USA arrived at
the Chernobyl fire station, where 'grandad' Khmel and his
comrades had been working in Apri~: a plaque with a mes-
sage from the 28th Fire Unit of the town of Schenectady in
the state of New York, on behalf of 170,000 members of the
association of firemen of the USA and Canada. Here is the
message:
'The fireman. He is often the first to arrive where there is
danger. So it was also in Chernobyl on 26 April 1986. We,
the firemen of the town of Schenectady, New York state, are
moved by the courage of our brothers in Chernobyl and are
deeply grieved by the losses which they have suffered. A par-
ticular comradeship exists betweenn the firemen of the
 By What Are People Tested? 139

whole world, people who respond to the call of duty with ex-
traordinary courage and bravery.'
The vice-president of the International Association of
Firemen James MacGovern from New York, and Captain
Armand Capulo from the town of Schenectady handed this
message on behalf of all decent Americans-and they
stressed, that is the majority-to the Soviet representatives in
New York. They spoke of our people with great respect. They
recalled the principle professed by the decent people of the
whole world: they sympathize with and help those who have
fallen into misfortune, and they do everything they can to
save them as quickly as possible from their misfortune .
. .. To Vladimir Vysotsky's question, 'By what are people
tested if there is no longer any war?,' it was possible to give a
unanimous answer in 1986: people are tested by their atti-
tude to Chernobyl.
It is a pity that Vladimir Vysotsky was no longer among us,
that his sorrowful and courageous songs about Chernobyl
were not born. About those who went into the fire. Vysotsky
was really needed by us, in the Zone.
 16
The Last Waming

Exactly one hundred years ago, on 2 June 1887, staying

in the Roslavl district of Smolensk province, approximately
three hundred kilometres from Chemobyl, Vladimir
Ivanovich Vemadsky, later an eminent Soviet scientist and
academician, and the first president of the Ukrainian Acad-
emy of Sciences, wrote to his wife:
'The observations of 0rsted, Ampere and Lents gave im-
petus to the study of electromagnetism, which has in-
comparably increased the power of man and in the future
promises radically to change the whole shape of his life. All
this has its origin in observation of the particular properties
of magnetite. And the question occurs to me: do other
minerals not have similar properties. .. and if they do, then
will they not reveal to us a whole series of new powers, will
they not give us opportunities to apply them in new ways and
to increase tenfold the power of mankind? Is it not possible
to arouse unknown, terrible powers in various sub-
stances ... ?'
This quotation was taken from 1.1. Mochalov's very inter-
esting article 'The first wamings of the threat of nuclear om-
nicide: Pierre Curie and V.I. Vemadsky,' published in the
third issue of the journal Questions on the History 0/ the Natu-
ral Sciences and Engineering for 1983. Omnicicle is a com-
142 CHERNOBYL

paratively new term, denoting the universal destruction of

people.
In the letter written by a young, 24-year-old graduate of
the physics and mathematics faculty of St. Petersburg Uni-
versity ten years before the discovery of radioactivity by
H. Becquerel we have, perhaps, the first warning in the his-
tory of humanity of the approach of a new era, that era
which has affected us so painfully in Chernobyl, proclaiming
a complete destruction of humanity (omnicide) in the event
of the wartime use of nuclear power.
v.1.
All his life Vernadsky was concerned by an at first
vague, and later more and more explicit vision of the use of
this terrible power:
'We, the children of the twentieth century, have grown ac-
customed, with every step, to the power of steam and of elec-
tri city, we know how profoundly they have changed and con-
tinue to change the whole social structure of human society.
And now before us are discovered in the phenomenon of
radioactivity the sources of atomic energy, which exceed by a
million times all those sources of powers which human
imagination depicted to itself. Slowly, trembling and ex-
pectant, we turn our eyes to the new power being revealed to
human consciousness. What does it announce to us in its fu-
ture development?. With hope and dread we peer at the new
defender and ally.' (1910)
'Radium is the source of energy. It is powerful and in a
way which we do not yet understand acts on the organism,
creating around us and in us ourselves some changes which
are incomprehensible, but wonderful in their effects. .. You
feel somehow strange when you see these new forms of mat-
ter, obtained by the genius of man from the bowels of the
Earth. These are the first small seeds of the future. What will
happen when we are able to ob ta in them in any quantity?'
(1911)
And so in those days, when dosimeter operators still went
around Kiev and when the question of the appropriateness of
total defoliation of the famous Kiev chestnut trees and
poplars was being seriously discussed, I arrived at the build-
 The Last Waming 143

ing where Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky worked in 1919-

1921. On the facade of the presidium of the UkrSSR Acad-
emy of Sciences there hangs a plaque commemorating this
man of genius. It seemed that he came to the window of the
president's study and carefully looked at us from the depths
of the Kievan past, when drivers clattered past this building
over the paved road and still few were those in the world
who had heard the word 'radiation.' And no one took
seriously the prophesies of the scientists.
I had come to see the vice-president of the UkrSSR Acad-
emy of Sciences, the eminent Soviet botanist and ecologist,
academician Kostiantyn Merkuriiovych Sytnyk. Here is
wh at he said:
'It is a tragedy, a great tragedy of nations, which has
directly affected hundreds of thousands of people. A new
ecological factor has appeared. I would not exaggerate it, but
it would be far worse to underestimate it. Of course, it can-
not be accepted that we, carried away by discussion of the
Chernobyl problem, forget that the factories of Ukraine con-
tinue this very day to smoke, that the pollution of the
Dnieper water basin by chemical and metallurgical works
continues. However, this new factor, linked to the accident,
exists, and it is a negative factor.
'People are very worried by its existence, and that is natu-
ral. The overwhelming majority of the population was never
interested in what the maximum permitted norms of oxide of
nitrogen and sulphuric anhydride were. But they are very in-
terested today by the level of gamma-, beta-, and alpha-
radiation. This may be explained by the fact that for years we
talked of the tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and were
told in detail of the massive danger for humanity connected
with radiation. People gradually built all this up in their con-
sciousness and now see radioactivity as a high-risk factor.
We have here a certain psychological phenomenon, a certain
split between emotions and knowledge. Everyone knows that
as a result of industrial waste entering the environment there
is an incidence of carcinogenic substances, but this does not
create any particular excitement.
144 CHERNOBYL

'Radioaetivity is another thing. The people's mood is very

anxious, after an, they fear for their ehildren and their
grandehildren, beeause we have said a great deal about the
genetie, far-off effeets. Both seientists and the mass media
have a duty to pay attention to this.
'We must objeetively and judiciously explain the existing
situation, without evading people's anxious questions. We
must not be afraid that this will ereate panie, beeause the
reason for panie is preeisely in a shortage of information ...
And we, like parrots, repeat one and the same thing, that
produets are unadulterated, that they have been eheeked,
and so on. But I myself am not sure of this, and if I myself
for several months do not drink milk, then how ean Iassure
people of the opposite? Go to the station and look what the
people are bringing from Moseow? Bags fun of produee.
Most of them do not trust wh at we write.
'Let us say: medieal personnel in their over-optimistie
eommunieations in June and July repeated one and the
same thing: that it was possible to bathe in the Dnieper
around Kiev. At that time I eonsidered that it was not at an
possible to bathe. Beeause by the shore, in the silt, there had
at that time aeeumulated a eertain quantity of radionuclides,
which have now settled on the bottom. Nothing would have
happened to the people of Kiev if they had restrained them-
selves from bathing for one year or had not gone to the
woods for mushrooms.
'At the same time, clearly, we must not exaggerate this
problem. Why? WeIl, beeause in nature there is a powerful
proeess of. diluting and scattering radionuclides, and this
saves uso Onee again, for the nth time, Mother-Nature has
beeome our saviour. I have in mind the trees, the earth and
the waters of the Kiev Reservoir, which reeeived and took up
the basic radioactive fallout. We may have cursed the Kiev
Reservoir many times, its threat hanging over our city, but in
the present situation it has turned out to be a useful ac-
cumulator, taking into the silt apart of the radionuclides,
whieh then settled on the bottom. The Rese'rvoir turned out
to be capable of taking a great deal of the radioaetivity, it
 The Last Waming 145

swallowed up a certain quantity of the radionuclides, and we

hope that finally there will be a dilution of the radionuclides
to tiny concentrations ...
'The water problem is closer to me, because I head a
working group on monitoring the state of the water in the
Dnieper basin. The Dnieper is an important element in all
our worries, perhaps the most important. After all, the water
of the Dnieper basin is used by the thirty-five million people
of Ukraine. Immediately after the accident aseries of urgent
measures were taken to protect the sources of the water sup-
ply, and I can say that the population of Ukraine receives
drinking water of good quality. I can say that with a full
sense of responsibility.
'At the same time we had to be ready for the unexpected.
With this objective, we, together with the V.M. Hlushkov In-
stitute of Cybemetics, made a mathematical model to study
and make prognoses about the state of the water in the
Dnieper basin. In this model we foresaw the various-even
the most extreme-possible situations, and elaborated, in
case of their arising, a whole complex of special measures.
But so far no extreme situations have arisen.
'What are the lessons to be leamed from Chemobyl? Not
so very long ago we had a typical scientific conference on the
problems of Chemobyl and its effects. No less than one hun-
dred people assembled, with figures, charts and communica-
tions. Physicists, biologists, geneticists. There were interest-
ing reports, some very interesting ones among them. This
was not that optimism of which Chingiz Aitmatov writes in
"The Block": "How long will we assure people that even our
catastrophes are the best?" No, in our circle we are very
open. Nonetheless, some objective data do give us grounds
for optimism. But you need to be able to talk about this in
such a way that people believe you. You need to find
scientists who speak persuasively, with facts and figures, to
arouse the faith of readers and viewers.
'And, of course, one of the main lessons is the moralles-
son. As a result of the Chemobyl accident a feeling of bitter-
ness and of disenchantment with science has grown much
146 CHERNOBYL

stronger. After all, you also spoke of this at the congress of

Ukrainian writers, didn't you?'
'Yes, I did.'
'It isn't so much a question of science as of the moral qual-
ities of individual scientists. You can very often observe the
following situation: there are two or three scientists of ap-
proximately the same rank and title. One of them gives a
categorical 'no,' and the two others 'yes.' What are those
who decide to do? Naturally, they choose the answer whieh
appeals to them more. Unfortunately, not even the scientist
who says 'no' tries later to defend his view, to struggle for the
truth, to talk in important forums, and so on. Even he avoids
spiritual diseomfort, does not want to enter into eonfliet with
influential people and departments.'
Probably the main lesson of Chemobyl is that any, even
the slightest blunder made by a scientist, any eompromises
with one's conscience must be severely punished. Beeause
we have forgotten that onee we did not offer our hand to a
dishonest man. Onee. And today the responsibility of
seientists for their own diseoveries and for the reliability of
huge new eonstruetions has inereased a thousandfold. The
scientist has a duty to fight tooth and naH for his jdeas and
eonvietion~. But do you often see that?
Conversations like that were held in the rooms honoured
by the name of V.1. Vemadsky, who said in 1922:
'The seientist is not a maehine and not a soldier in the
army, who earries out eommands without thinking and with-
out understanding to what they will lead and why they are
given ... To work on atomic energy it is indispensable to be
aware of one's responsibility for what is diseovered. I would
like this moral element in scientifie work, whieh, it seems, is
so far from the spiritual elements of the human personality,
like the question of atoms, to be a eonscious element.'
The paths opened by Chemobyl brought me to Moseow
too, where, forty years ago, on 25 December 1946, the first
uranium-graphite atomie reaetor F -1 'Physics l' began its
work. Then this was the outskirts of Moseow, Pokrovsko-
 The Last Warning 147

Streshnevo, and a dense pine-wood stood here. And the

pines are still here. Now we have here the territory of the LV.
Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy.
I had come to see Valerii Alekseevich Legasov, academ-
ician, member of the presidium of the USSR Academy of
Sciences, first deputy director and director of the department
of the Institute, laureate of the Lenin and State prizes of the
USSR. The principal scientific interests of Valerii Alek-
seevich are connected with nuclear technology and hydrogen
power engineering, the chemistry of plasma and the
synthesis of compounds of noble gases. But in 1986 the
name of Academician Legasov resounded in the wh oie
world in connection with the elimination of the accident at
the Chemobyl nuclear power station. Valerii Alekseevich
came to Prypiat on the first day after the accident and was
appointed a member of the Govemment Commission.
I became acquainted with Academician Legasov shortly
before I met hirn. While working on the popular science film
The Introduction (from the 'Kievnaukfilm' studios), I, sitting
in the clipping room, dozens of times ran through the film of
the interview which Valerii Alekseevich had given to our
filming group. I was particularly affected by the following
words: 'I would like to draw attention to the fact that over
many years this illness-insufficient attention. to wh at is
new-the inability to show wh at is new-was neglected, and
it is not not all that simple to cure it. It has been neglected
because, from our childhood, we are not seriously taught to
evaluate wh at is new and to distinguis~ the old and. the new.
If you go into any old class and listen to the lesson, then,
whether it is a humanities or a scientific class, as a rule you
will find a situation where the pupils are being told what a
fine book this is, wh at a precise equation this is, what a
wonderful experiment this iso Never will you hear the ques-
tion: How would you do it better, what is bad about this ex-
periment, or how is this book unsuccessful?
'And by denying wh at seems good and ideal, creativity be-
gins, the striving to do everything somehow better. Our
148 CHERNOBYL

school teaches us quickly to use what is available, rather

than to throw out what has been achieved and create some-
thing new.'
This opinion seemed very interesting to me, but it revealed
one of the reasons behind much of our confusion, particu-
larly that at Chernobyl. Because our school directs all its ef-
forts to educating obedient, well-behaved and industrious
boys and girls, little 'yes-people,' and does not educate in
them a spirit of criticism and an objective, with a 'for' and an
'against' approach to natural phenomena and social reality.
It implants a normative way of thinking, and the child learns
criticism (more often, despair and cynicism) from the street,
sometimes relatives, acquaintances and books. Dften the
schoolchild has to break through to this on his own.
It was very interesting talking with Valerii Alekseevich
Legasov'about the lessons of the accident at the Chemobyl
nuclear power station:
'It so happened that even before the Chernobyl accident I
had to deal with questions of industrial safety, and particu-
larly safety at nuclear power stations. In connection with Is-
rael's bombing of an Iraqi nuclear research centre there was
discussion of the effects of a possible attack on a nuclear
power station not only in scientific, but also in the broadest
circles. Dur article published in the journal Nature (V.A.
Legasov, L.P. Feoktistov, 1.1. Kuzmin, 'Nuclear Power
Engineering and International Safety,' (No. 6, 1985) was
dedicated to this. Already then, examining this problem, we
came to the conclusion that waging war when there was a
high concentration of nuclear power stations was madness.
Massive regions would have remained contaminated with
radiation for a long time.
'But another question appeared to every sound-thinking
person: what if we dispensed with nuclear power stations
altogether? And in their pi ace put their equivalents using
gas, coal or oil? And so we started to think, and I repeat that
this was before the Chernobyl events: suppose that a bomb
hits a nuclear power station. That is bad. And what if it hits
not a nuclear power station but athermal one which has
 The Last Waming 149

been built instead. And we saw that that too was bad. Explo-
sions, fires, the formation of poisonous compounds will de-
stroy a great number of people and render significant
regions useless, even if for a shorter period.
'And after this you arrive at the opinion: it's not a question
of the variety of power systems, but of their scale and con-
centration. The level of concentration of power of industrial
sites is today such that the destruction of these sites, acciden-
tal or intentional, would lead to very serious consequences.
In its development humanity has created such a compact
network of different power sources, and different potentially
dangerous component parts-biological, chemical or nuclear
-that their conscious or accidental destruction would cause
considerable trouble.
'The problem today is the proliferation of all sorts of sites
and the concentration of vast power. At one time a restricted
quantity of nuclear sites was brought into operation, and
their safety was guaranteed by the high level of qualifications
of the staff and the assiduous adherence to all the tech-
nological rules. Just outside this window works our first
Soviet reactor, and it works weIl. But later, when reliable
technical decisions yielded good results, they began to be ap-
plied on a large scale, and the productive capacity of the sites
was increased as weIl. But the approach to [policy on] a large
number of such sites, with a large productive capacity,
should be completely different from the approach to [policy
on] a small number of such sites.
'A certain quantitative leap took place: there wer~ more of
these sites, and they became much more powerful, but the
attitude to how they were run deteriorated.'
'Why did this happen?'
'I think that a very strong element of inertia was responsi-
ble for this. The need for electrical power is great. It was
necessary quickly to introduce and master new scales of
power. And quickly: that means, not making any fundamen -
tal changes to projects which had already been agreed. The
number of people busy with the preparation of installations
and their running increased sharply. But the teaching and
150 CHERNOBYL

training methods could not keep up with the rate of develop-

ment.
'It would be comparatively simple, if it was possible to
imagine the enemy, let us say, in the shape of the nuclear
reactor or in the shape of nuclear power engineering. But
this isn't the case. And even if we reject this technical
method and replace it with another, it still won't be ok. It
will be worse. You see, the enemy isn't technology. It isn't a
question of the type of airplane, of nuclear reactor, it isn't
the variety of power engineering. If you look at this problem
from a broad perspective, then the main enemy is the very
means of creating and running power or technical processes,
and the means is dependent on man. The human factor is
the most important thing. If earlier we looked at safety tech-
nology as a means of protecting man from the possible influ-
ence on hirn of machines or some sort of harmful factors,
then today we have another situation.
'Today technology must be protected from man. Yes, from
man, in whose hands colossal forces are concentrated.
'Protected from man in any sense: from the construction
engineer's mistakes, from the designer's mistakes, from the
operator's mistakes, he who leads this process. And this is a
completely new philosophy.
'Now wh at world tendencies can be traced? The number
of accidents if we take the specific gravity per thousand men
or another indicator is going down. But if it happens anyway
with less prob ability, then its scale increases.'
'It's like an airplane: once fourteen p~ople died in an air-
plane accident, now it's three hundred.'
'Quite correct. And here's the first conclusion: Chernobyl
showed that humanity did not really rush with its change of
approach to safety, to a philosophy of safety. We must bear
in mind that not only the Soviet Union is lagging behind.
This is a worldwide phenomenon. Consider the Bhopal,
Chernobyl and Basel tragedies.
'It would be impossible, incorrect and foolish to deny the
achievements of human genius. To deny the development of
atomic power engineering or the chemical industry. But we
 The Last Waming 151

must do two things: first, understand correctly the influence

of such serious new machines and aspects of technology on
the environment and, s.econdly, elaborate a system of inter-
action of man and machine. This is the problem not just of
the man who works with such a machine, this is a far more
general and important problem. After all, at times of such
interaction serious catastrophes can occur, problems through
oversights, stupidity, through incorrect actions. It isn't im-
portant who made the mistake: the head of the station or the
operator.
'Today we must look for what is best in a system. The opti-
mum in automation, the optimum in man's involvement in
the processes, the optimum in solving all organizational and
technical problems connected with such complex technologi-
cal systems. At the same time we must create protective bar-
riers, so far as this is possible, in case it is man who makes a
mi stake, and the machines become unreliable.
'Now I want, for the first time, probably, to express to you
one, perhaps, unusual thought. So far we have discussed
weIl-known things. WeIl, we a1l see, so to speak, with the
naked eye, that there is at all stages of the creation of tech-
nology a certain incompleteness, even slovenliness in our
work. At a11 stages-from the creation to the running. These
are generally known facts, they are expounded in the deci-
sion of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU
regarding the causes of the accident at the Chernobyl
nuclear power station. And all the time I thought: why does
this happen?
'And, do you know, I come to a paradoxical conclusion. I
don't know if my colleagues will agree with me or throw
stones at me, but I draw the conclusion that this happens be-
cause we have got too carried away with technology. We
have become too pragmatic. With naked technology. This
embraces many questions, not only of safety. Let us think for
amoment: why, when we were far poorer, and the interna-
tional situation was far more complex, why in a historically
short period, during the thirties to the fifties, did we manage
to astonish the whole world with the rate of creation of new
152 CHERNOBYL

types of teehnology and be admired for its quality? Mter all,

the TU-104, when it appeared, that was a quality plane. The
nuclear station whieh Igor Vasilevieh Kurehatov and his
eompanions ereated, that was both a pioneering and a fine
deeision.
'What happened, and why?
'The first test is to explain this by, let's say, subjeetive and
organizational faetors. But this isn't very serious. We are a
powerful people and we have great potential. And every
direetor, every organizational system at a eertain historie al
stage applied various methods-some sueeessful, others less
so-but they eouldn't have exerted sueh a great influenee.
'And I eame, roughly, to the following paradoxieal eonclu-
sion: that teehnology of whieh our people is proud, whieh
ended with Gagarin's flight, was created by people who
stood ,on the shoulders of Toistoi and Dostoevsky. .. .'
'That's a shattering eonclusion in the mouth of a teeh-
nologieal speeialist.'
'But it seems to me that it is the eorreet eonclusion. The
ereators of the teehnology of that time were edueated in the
spirit of the greatest humanitarian ideas. In the spirit of a
beautiful literature. In the spirit of great art. In the spirit of a
beautiful and eorreet moral sense. And in the spirit of a clear
politieal idea of the strueture of the new soeiety, the idea that
this society was the most advaneed in the world. This high
moral sense was there in everything: in the attitude of one
person to another, in the attitude to man, to teehnology, to
one's duties. All this was there in the edueation of these
people. And teehnology for them was simply a means of ex-
pression of moral qualitites, plaeed in them.
'They expressed their moral attitude in teehnology. Their
attitude to the ereation' and use of teehnology was the one
whieh Pushkin, Toistoi and Chekhov taught them to have
toward everything in the world.
'And already in the generations that sueeeeded them,
many of the engineers stood on the shoulders of the teeh-
nocrats and saw only the teehnieal side of things. But if
someone is edueated only in teehnieal ideas, he ean only re-
 The Last Waming 153

produce technology and perfect it, but he cannot create any-

thing qualitatively new, for which he can be responsible.
'It seems to me that the general key to everything which is
happening is the fact that we have for a prolonged period
been ignoring the role of the moral principle: the role of our
history and of our culture; and this is one uninterrupted
chain. All this has led, strictly speaking, to the fact that some
of the people, in their positions, could have acted without
due responsibility. And even one person, working badly, cre-
ates a weak link in the chain, and it breaks.
'In fact, if one listens to those directly guilty of the acci-
dent, then their objective was only the general good. To
carry out their mission, to carry out their task.'
'Valerii Alekseevich, did they on the whole realize wh at
they were doing?'
'They considered that they were doing everything weIl and
correctly. And they were breaking the rules for the sake of
doing it even better. That's how it seems to me.'
'But did they realize that they were breaking the rules con-
cerning the running of the reactor?'
'They couldn't help but realize this. They had to. Because
they were breaking fundamental, so to speak, orders. And
some considered that this was safe, others that doing it like
that was even better than in the instructions, because their
objective, you see, was entirely honourable: to get themselves
ready and without fail do what they had been charged to do,
that very night, whatever the cost. Whatever the cost.
'It is true that this does not apply to those people who ex-
tremely irresponsibly permitted the tests and approved the
programme to carry them out. The sense of the experiment
was precisely in this. If the supply of steam to the turbo-unit
stopped-that was an emergency situation-then the diesel
generators at the stations had to be brought into play. They
take up the necessary parameters to supply the block with
electrical power not immediately, but after a few dozen sec-
onds. In this case, the generation of electrical power has to
be provided by the turbine, which has lost steam, but still
turns by inertia. It was necessary to check if there was
154 CHERNOBYL

enough time for the spinning turbines to provide the needed

power before the diesel generators started up. The pro-
gramme to check this had been put together very carelessly,
without any agreement either with the station physicists for
the reactor builders, or the designer, or the representatives of
the State Nuclear Power Inspectorate. But it had been ap-
proved by the Chief Engineer, and then was not controlled
by hirn personally, but was changed and interfered with as it
was carried out.
'The low technical level and the low level of responsibility
of these people is not a cause, but an effect. The effect of
their low moral level.
'Usually people understand as folIows: an immoral person
is one who allows hirnself to take bribes, for ex am pie. But
that's an extreme case. Can you really caIl a person moral
who does not wish to do his sketch better, does not wish to
sit up at night, tormenting hirnself, looking for the most per-
feet solution? The person who says: "Why should I make a
great effort when I can find a solution which seems satisfac-
tory professionaIly, but isn't optimal, isn't the best?" And
this is where the process of a spread of technical backward-
ness began. We will not cope with anything if we do not
renew our moral attitude to the work that is being done,
whatever sort of work it is: medical or chemical, biologicalor
to do with reactors.'
'But how can this moral attitude be renewed?'
A sigh, and after a long pause:
'WeIl ... I can't be a prophet.'
'And yet, Valerii Alekseevich. Imagine that you are Min-
ister of Education or a person who decides the fate of school-
children. What would you do?'
'I've already answered this question in part: one must
renew the sense of responsibility, of criticism, of a sense of
the new. There was a time when certain external circum-
stances prevented this. But today we have a much more fa-
vourable period. Fortunately, nothing prevents us from
renewing the best Soviet and national traditions in our mul-
tinational country. And no one prevents us either. But how
 The Last Warning 155

can we do this? By increasing or decreasing the quantity of

these or those things? 1 don't know, but 1 am sure that you
should invite interesting people to the school. After all, our
country has always been famous for the fact that the teacher
is a person who from the moral point of view is most often
his pupils' ideal.
'I also want to talk of the indivisibility of general and tech-
nical culture. These are indivisible things. If you have ex-
cluded some part connected with the history of our father-
land or our literature, if you have relaxed the attention you
pay to something, this will without fail return like a
boomerang because of the indivisibility of culture. Likewise,
you can't devote everything to literature and art and forget
technology. Because then we shall become an inept society.
It is a natural problem-the problem of harmony.'
'Let us return to Chernobyl. How did you live this event as
a person and as a specialist? Did you not have a guilt com-
plex, not a personal one, but a physicist's guilt complex for
what happened?'
'I would say that there was a feeling of anger. And dis-
pleasure that here, in our institute, where specialists ex-
pressed all the possible apprehensions and proposals, we
turned out to be insufficiently strong and equipped to put the
necessary point of view into practice. We wrote reports, we
gave talks, we had apresentiment of the danger of a com-
plication of technological systems if there was no change in
the philosophy of 'their construction. There were recom-
mendations prepared too. For example: the most iJnportant
safety element would have been the creation of diagnostic
systems. Among us were people who fought for these diag-
nostie systems, some of them were tested, we demanded that
they be developed, everywhere we explained the danger of
the fact that we did not have the computing power to build
the necessary models and to evaluate the situation, or to
train staff on simulators. But it turns out that they asked for
little and explained badly. So in this sense there was a feel-
ing of anger, or something similar. To get angry with
physicists or all the more with physics, it's like beating a
156 CHERNOBYL

gutta percha copy of a boss with a stick, as they used to do in

Japan. Physics is the leading edge of our science, it can't be
guilty of anything. It is the people who exploit it who are
guilty.
'How did I live through this as a person? On Saturday 26
April they took me off active duty. I simply flew there with-
out prior preparation. None of us had expected an accident
on such ascale. The station provided those of us in Moscow
with the wrang information. We had contradictory informa-
tion. According to one piece of information it was as if every-
thing had gone wrong there: a nuclear accident, the threat of
radiation, and a fire, every type of danger. Later we received
notification that they were trying to cool things down, that is,
they were making an attempt to control the reactor: that
meant that the reactor existed and that at that time there
were no particular problems. But when we' arrived-that was
on Saturday evening-1 saw the purple glow. That, of
course, astonished me and immediately showed me that the
problem was serious. And later there was no time for emo-
tions, you had to think on the spot, what, with what and how
to make measurements, what measures to take, etc. That
evening we only evaluated the radiation situation, for which
the most active "dosimeter operator" was Professor Armen
Artavazdovich Abagian. On the following day, when I went
to the ruins of the reactor in an armoured troop carrier, then
I had that sense of anger that I've talked about. And that
feeling that we were unprepared for such a situation. There
were no solutions and technical remedies worked out in ad-
vance. Mter all, what had happened? It had always been said
that the prob ability of a nuclear accident was very in-
significant. And the projects for the stations really took this
insignificant prob ability into aceount. But then, it wasn't a
zero prob ability. 1t followed from that that such an aeeident
eould happen onee in a thousand years. But who said that
this "onee" eould fall in our year, 1986? However, the possi-
bility of emergency events before this unlikely event took
place was not foreseen.
'And it is true that some time later, in Vienna at the lAEA
 The Last Warning 157

meeting, I was convinced that the whole world's science and

technology, as the reality showed, was not very prepared ei-
ther for such accidents ...
'Moreover-perhaps this sounds paradoxical-hardly had
the sharpness of the alert slackened, than I began to feel
satisified at the work that had been done. In my opinion I
am not alone, not at all alone in these feelings. Because con-
ditions had been created in which real work was done-no
bits of paper, no fuss, no conciliation. The Government
Commission bore a very great responsibility. Particularly in
those first days. It was later, when the situation returned
somewhat to normal, that aB sorts of conciliation appeared.
And then it was as foBows: everyone helped us, everything
was under our control, but aB the responsibility for the deci-
sions taken lay on the shoulders of people who came there,
and particularly on the shoulders of B.E. Shcherbyna. And
this turned out to be very useful. The situation was dramatic,
but in the circumstances of the independence which had
been granted us, linked with the responsibility, a large num-
ber of people managed through their organized efforts both
to limit the number of casualties and comparatively quickly
to localize the scale of the accident.
'We had to solve scientific tasks there too. The first was
the localization of the accident. We did not have algorithm
for what happened in such situations. And the single field of
action was in the sky, at a height of no less than 200 metres
above the reactor. What could we do? The first thing we con-
vinced ourselves of was that the reactor was not ~orking.
Neutron sensors in these.gamma-fields did not work, all the
neutron channels were incapable of action. So it was neces-
sary to determine, through the correlation of short-life
isotopes and their rate of emission, that there was no new
production of rapidly decaying isotopes. We convinced our-
selves that this was the case. The reactor was not working.
But the graphite was burning and heat was being emitted. If
the graphite was burning, that meant that down below there
was some suckiiig through of air and that a certain cooling
was taking place. And so the process could be stabilized in
158 CHERNOBYL

its natural state, nothing need be done and we could wait

while the natural cooling of the reactor took place. True, we
would have to wait a long time. What was good about this?
The good thing was that the threat of a penetration of the
lower soil layers of the Zone, the danger of a melting of the
base,the pollution of the waters below the soil, all this would
be eliminated automatically. And there would be no prob-
lems.
'But then, through the air basin with its aerosol combus-
tion products, and with the raised temperature, the activity of
the reactor would penetrate much further and the scale and
intensity of the pollution would be more significant. Cover-
ing the remains of the reactor from above meant a reduced
danger of pollution through the air, but it would worsen the
escape of heat, and so create a threat of warming up again
and of a slipping of the fuel mass back down. It was neces-
sary to take adecision. And what we decided was as follows:
we would cover the reactor with materials which would both
filter and at the same time stabilize the temperature. Con-
sequently, metals with low melting points (as they melt, the
temperature does not rise), which protect from radiation, and
carbonate, which recover the reactor's heat for their own
decomposition and in this way release carbonic acid gas: all
helps to stop the burning of the graphite.
'A problem without precedent in the history of the world
had been solved.
'Traditional appliances, as a rule, were useless either be-
cause the places where the measurements had to be made
were inaccessible, or because of the high temperatures and
the radiation fields. Many specialists and organizations had
to find, in the shortest possible time, both new methods and
new technical means to measure and to keep the active ele-
ments in place, so that they were not carried away by the
wind, for· construction and deactivization. A great deal was
done and, as we can now see, the objective was attained.
Western experts will later call these methods innovatory and
effective. One can simply regret that all this was not effi-
ciently done before the accident, but after it. But during
 The Last Waming 159

those ·first days one had to work intuitively.

'And the last thing I want to say is about the young people.
Of course, we had to observe different situations, sometimes
not very pleasant ones. But among the young people there
were those who evoked nothing but enthusiasm. Among us a
lot was written about the heroism of the firemen. Some
people, when they read that, argued that they had, for in-
stance, spent far too long, and in vain, in the conflagration
and that they had exposed themselves to more radiation than
they need have. But this was real heroism, and it was
justified, because in the machine room there was hydrogen
and oils ... They did not permit the fire to spread; if it had, it
could have led to the destruction of the neighbouring block.
The first localizing step was done correctly.
'And what about the military airmen! That really was an
exploit. They worked faultlessly both from the professional
point of view and from every other one. There were also
many young fellows in the chemical subdivisions. The recon-
naissance work lay on their shoulders, and they carried it out
fearlessly and precisely.
'You know, there was such harmony there. I cannot say
that the young people worked more than the others, but it is
a fact that they worked in an entirely worthy fashion. The
physicists, both those from Moscow and those from Kiev,
climbed into the same hell. I would say that the young
people showed, in their work, high human and professional
qualities. '
Vladimir Stepanovich Gubarev, writer, journalist,
laureate of the State Prize of the USSR, author of the play
The Sarcophagus:
'Everything that happened in Chernobyl and around it
was for me very unpleasant. I consider that in the history of
our country this is, in its significance, the third event.
'The first was the Tatar-Mongoi yoke. We defended
Europe from the hordes and from barbarism. The second
was fascism. We saved Europe from fascism. And today we
are securing the future of humanity at a very great price.
'The tragedy of Chernobyl, and in this is its peculiarity, is
160 CHERNOBYL

that we met the manifestation of nuclear energy precisely in

the form of the so-called "peaceful atom." There will be no
more such catastrophes. 1 can say that with absolute cer-
tainty. And the future of civilization is unthinkable without
nuclear energy. But Chernobyl happened. So, when we build
this future, we must bear in mind the lessons of Chernobyl.
Before Chernobyl we moved toward this too lightly. And so,
truly, we are paving the way to the future at a very high cost.
'I would be a very primitive person if 1 described in an art-
istic form the documentary events. It is clear that a great deal
of what forms the basis of the play was born in Chernobyl,
where 1 was a correspondent of the newspaper Pravda. But 1
can say with absolute certainty that 1 had no concrete person
in mind. 1 strove to create images of types.'
From the play The Sarcophagus (Znamia, No. 9,
1986):
Sergeev: There we couldn't imagine for a long time wh at
had happened; so, just in case, we didn't notify Moscow. We
waited for something ...
Bessmertny: 1 think it's a very serious accident. For some
reason they're not saying anything on the radio.
Sergeev: An explosion though?
Ptitsyna: Of course. It's just that this was the last thing that
some people wanted, and so they are trying to prove that the
reactor collapsed without an explosion. A fire. Just a fire.
V. Gubarev:
'When 1 set to to write The Sarcophagus, it was a natural
wish to make some philosophical sense of this event. 1
wanted to show that we live at a completely different time
than we imagine. That we live in the atomic-space age, that
it has its laws, its philosophy, its responsibility for the actions
of men and their effects.'
From the play The Sarcophagus:
Bessmertny: But what swine, excuse the unliterary word,
what swine switched off the emergency system?! 1 wanted to
say that this is murder. Not suicide, but murder! ...
The Physicist: ... The main thing for you is to clarify who
took off the emergency protection.
 The Last Waming 161

Bessmertny: Who took it off? Who took it off? It was the

system that switched off the emergency cooling. A system of
irresponsibility.
The Operator: And we're all hurrying, all rushing, taking
on obligations, you'd say, three months earlier than the time
limit, two full days, and he asked four times for a counter,
and no one hurried up there. And we're carrying out the
bosses' requests... Why? They ask-silence, and we
cheer!-and forward we goL. And all for the sake of the re-
port, the bonuses ... Who needs this acceleration? It just the
same as letting 100 kilometre an hour cars loose around the
town, let them squash everyone, the main thing is to go as
quickly as possible. They promised to let it go on full capac-
ity immediately after the holidays. Two days earlier than the
time limit. Taking on obligations in all directions. .. What
are we, clowns?
The Physicist: So they took off the protection.
V. Gubarev:
'In The Sarcophagus there are three basic ideas. The first: if
a man acts according to his convictions and views, if he
avoids responsibility, then that man will live in a sar-
cophagus.
'The second idea: if people-both individuals and society
as a whole-do not draw conclusions from the tragedy, then
they end up in the sarcophagus.
'And the third idea: constantly in the play, like arefrain,
words from the civil defence instructions are repeated, as a
model of a nuclear war. Iwanted to say: if humanity does
not ponder on the lessons of the tragedy, it will be in the sar-
cophagus.
'This play was written in a week. It was in July, from 19 to
26 July. When I began to write it, I could no longer sleep, I
could not talk, I slept for three hours out of twenty-four.
There was no other way. You understand, now I value these
people, wherever they live, whatever they do, whatever jobs
they have, for their attitude to Chernobyl. If a man is in-
different, if this tragedy did not touch hirn, then such a man,
in my opinion, is lost. For there are national tragedies, and
162 CHERNOBYL

this is anational tragedy, when every man must declare his

attitude to that event. I want to look those people in the eyes
who say that the play isn't necessary, that it's premature. Be-
cause if we do not pay attention to the terrible, if we do not
give voice to a warning, then there will be no one to look at,
there will be no one to read our plays and our literary works.'
From the play The Sarcophagus:
The Physicist: The main thing in this tragedy is its lessons.
We have no right not to learn them... The history of
humanity has not yet had such an experience. The explosion
of the reactor and its effects. It is not excluded that this is an
isolated case. More precisely-the first. It has to be the last.
For this, study along all parameters. Scientific, technical,
psychological. '
v. Gubarev:
'And most important is that these lessons were not in vain
for our young people. After all, those who were born after
1961, after lurii Gagarin's flight, naturally perceive that they
were born in the atomic-space age. They are used to rockets
being launched. But they must understand one thing: if they
live in this age, the level of their knowledge and culture must
be far higher than their parents'. For they assurne the con-
trol of a fundamentally new technology. And tomorrow they
will create it themselves. And they sometimes perceive all
this as their due, as somehow given. Like a car in the street.
Or like a television. But this is the most complex technology.
And very dangerous. It demands from man a new level of
thought and of knowledge, and, most importantly, a new at-
titude toward it.'
Robert Gale:
'Chernobyl has provided us with many lessons to learn. One
of them is the need to learn to co-exist with nuclear energy.
There is no alternative. We live in the nuclear age and must
make peace with it. In the USA we receive almost 17 per
cent of our electrical power from nuclear power stations. In
some Western European countries this figure has reached 60
and 65 per cent. By 1990 on the Earth there will be nearly
500 nuclear reactors. In other words, there can be no ques-
 The Last Warning 163

tion as to whether we should enter the nuclear age or not.

We are already in it. And so, in the use of nuclear energy, a
high degree of responsibility, precision and caution is neces-
sary. If we analyze the causes of all the accidents that have
occurred in the USA and the USSR, we can see that they
had their origin not in nuclear energy itself, but in mistakes
made by man.
'One more lesson is that accidents like that at Chernobyl
touch not only that country in which they occur, but several
neighbouring countries. So in the case of such accidents help
must be given not only on anational level, but also on an in-
ternational level. We must understand that we depend upon
each other and that nuclear energy and nuclear arms expand
the geographical frontiers.
'And, finally, the last, most important lesson. If we com-
pare it with the conscious application of nuclear weapons,
Chernobyl can be termed a minor incident. But if a com-
paratively little accident has cost the lives of many people,
the extensive joint efforts of doctors and two billion roubles,
then what can be said of the wartime application of nuclear
weapons? We, the doctors, will then be powerless to help
people.
'This must never be forgotten.
'Chernobyl is humanity's last warning.'
One cold November morning, when the wet snow was fall-
ing on the clayey earth, I arrived at the suburban Moscow
cemetery of Mitino. Not far from the entrance, to the left of
the main avenue, stretched neat rows of similar graves.
White marble headstones, golden inscriptions. Different
dates of birth, almost all the dates of death in May 1986.
The heroes of Chernobyl. The victims of Chernobyl. It is
possible that among them are also those guilty of Chernobyl.
Death made them equal and gave us, the lhing, the right
only to one feeling: a feeling of deep sorrow at the loss of
these young human lives.
I bowed to their ashes (in the meantime I had, it is true, to
show my writer's card to the duty policeman, as if there was
something suspicious in what I was doing) and I drove off
164 CHERNOBYL

with heavy thoughts about the time lived by us after Cherno-

byl. This accident with its pitiless X-ray radiation had in a
second lit up our national, state mechanism. More clearly
than ever there appeared, on the severe screen of Chernobyl,
both our great internal forces and reserves (after all, we can,
when we want, solve any problem!) and our serious, long-
established ailments, which can in no way be packed away in
the placid formula of the past year: 'isolated atypical short-
. ,
commgs.
Dr. Gale is right! Chernobyl has struck us as the last warn-
ing: to humanity, to the country, to every one of us-young
and old, chief or subordinate, scientist or worker.
All of uso
The last warning.
I do not want to comment any more on anyone, I do not
want to prove, to explain, to persuade, to shout and to ob-
serve, because they beseech us and warn us, these people so
different and unknown to each other: the Russians, Ukrain-
ians, Belorussians, Georgians, Poles, Americans, and the
golden-haired, gentle Aneliia Perkovska, who, having dis-
patched the children of Prypiat to the pioneer camps on 11
May, lost consciousness and fell and was taken to hospital in
a serious condition; and Leonid Petrovich Teliatnikov, with
whom I had the chance to speak in one of the Kiev
hospitals-at that time he was feeling better already, his
head was covered with fine, dark-red hair but all the same
he acknowledged that he slept badly at nights and was
pursued by visions of the fire; and the 'Man of the United
States of 1986,' the brilliant Doctor Robert Gale, who
touched our life and our misfortune; and the future heart
surgeon Maksym Drach, who grew up by so many years in
May 1986; and Academician Valerii Alekseevich Legasov,
who spoke such bitter and pitiless words ab out the moral
causes of all our misfortunes.
They have said everything, and their words do not require
extensive commentary.
And if their voices and their truth are not heard, if every-
thing remains as it was, if we learn 'anything and anyhow,' if
 The Last Warning 165

we work as we used to work-anyhow, very slowly-if those

who get on in life are the blindly loyal, cynical and illiterate
'yes-men' and not sensible and decent people with their own
views and convictions, and if only total subordination to or-
ders and not the creative comparison of different, freely ex-
pressed opinions are the highest virtue on the various hierar-
chical steps of the state, then all this will mean that we have
learned nothing and that the lessons of Chernobyl have
passed in vain.
And then there will be new Chernobyls, new Admiral
Nakhimovs [a tragedy that occurred on the Black Sea in late
1986], new bitter shocks in our life.
The warning of Chernobyl. It happened that I was watch-
ing the TV film The Wa rn ing, shown in February 1987 on
central television, in one of the Kiev hospitals together with
those who had been working in the Zone, and now were un-
der observation. All the department came together for the
television, and although they were all different, people who
did not know each other, that evening they were all united
by the TV screen and by heavy memories of what they had
lived through. I recollected my childhood, how, in an un-
heated cinema auditorium in 1942 in Saratov, the hungry,
weary people had watched the documentary film The Rout of
the German Fascist Forces near Moscow. They watched with
pain and hope, sorrow and faith.
The times have changed, the historical circumstances have
changed, the people have changed, only the expressions on
the faces have remained unchanged: the same pain and
hope. Beside me there sat young fellows in hospital pyjamas,
the Ukrainian TV operators lurii Koliada, Serhii Losiev,
Mykhailo Lebediev, the director Ihor Kobrin, the com-
mentator Hennadii Dusheiko. They looked intently at the
frames of the chronicle of the events at Chernobyl. Already a
bit like a 'Who's Who?,' but they knew at wh at cost those
frames had been obtained. lurii Koliada was the first televi-
sion operator in the world who in April 1986 managed to
film the ruins of the reactor. Every step closer to the site in
those days cost dozens of rays. The people around me knew
166 CHERNOBYL

the cost of Chernobyl: over fifty workers of Ukrainian

teleradio alone-television camera operators, radio journal-
ists, commentators, sound engineers, drivers-were forced to
go through a medical examination and some had to go for
treatment in sanatoria. One of the leading and most fearless
operators of Ukrainian television, 49-year-old Valentyn Iur-
chenko, suddenly died in the autumn of 1986. And although
the cause of death (a he art attack) was not directly connected
with the Chernobyl radioactivity, who can deny the role of
stress and nervous hypertension which this courageous man
went through in the hot summer days of 1986? That is the
price which paid for the truth about Chernobyl, a truth
which in itself had become the most serious warning to aIl of
uso
Chernobyl began a special countdown for humanity.
. . . In empty Prypiat we went to the town's central defence
point. The duty militia officer was sitting at a signals desk. In
the adjoining room the patrol leader was rebuking the
sergeant for something. It was all so normal. On a plywood
panel in front of the duty officer hung bunches of keys. The
name of the street, and a yellow bunch of entrance keys for
the buildings. By their quantity you could see on which street
there were more houses, and on which less.
WeIl, I would not like, at the central point of the Martian
guard of the Earth (militia or police, it doesn't matter), there
to be bunches of keys to empty and forever abandoned coun-
tries. I don't want, somewhere in a common bunch with the
name 'Europe,' there to glitter the Httle key to my land,
Ukraine.
As a symbol of that terrible world, in which we were last
year, there hangs in my garage a white suit, given to me in
Chernobyl. According to the rules, probably, I should have
thrown it away, after all, I wore it in the Zone; but I can't. It
is dear to me like a memory and ominous like a warning.
And when, in the evening, I turn on the headlamps and drive
into the garage, there appears before me a blindingly white
spectre, a spectre which today wanders Chemobyl's fields
and Kiev's apartments ...
 The Last Waming 167

Enough of that!
So 1 want to end my story with one idyllic memory: after
everything that 1 saw in the Zone and around it, after the
dead silen ce of the abandoned villages (I don't know why,
but the village cemeteries, those 'shadows of forgotten an-
cestors,' where the living will no longer ever return, moved
me more than anything), after the hospital wards and the ex-
pressions of those who lay on a drip, after the leaps of the
needles on the dosimeters, after the danger which lurked in
the grass, in the water, in the trees, at the end of May 1 drove
out of Kiev for two days. 1 drove at high speed eastward
along the empty Kiev-Kharkiv highway, stopping only at the
barriers, for the dosimeter check.
1 was driving to Myrhorod, to see my daughter and grand-
daughter. That same Myrhorod of which Nikolai Vasilievich
Gogol wrote:
'That wonderful town of Myrhorod! What buildings there
are here! Straw roofs, reed roofs, and even wooden roofs; a
street to the right, a street to the left, everywhere a fine
fence; hops twine along it, pots hang on it, behind it the sun-
flower shows its sun-like head, the poppy shows red, the fat
melons peep out. .. Luxury!'
How long ago that was! From what a naive and serene
past those words came. But even in May 1986 Myrhorod was
wonderful. Wonderful in that there was no radiation-weIl,
perhaps a little higher than usual. And no one advised
people to elose their windows.
The early May evening approached, when the air in Myr-
horod is full of the lazy fragrances of the earth which has
grown languid over the day. 1 went down to the bank of the
little river Khorol, lay down in the grass, and half-elosed my
eyes. 1 heard nearby the croaking of mating frogs, 1 feIt the
freshness of the grass and the eloseness of the water. On the
opposite bank cows mooed, waiting to give their hot milk to
the tin buckets. And suddenly 1 understood what happiness
was.
It is grass in which one can lie down without fear of radia-
tion. It is a warm river in which it is possible to bathe. It is
168 CHERNOBYL

cows whose milk can be drunk witllOut worry. And it is the

little provincial town, living its measured life. And the
sanatorium, along whose avenues those who are resting
slowly walk, buying tickets for the summer cinema and mak-
ing friends-this is happiness. But not everyone understands
this.
I feit myself to be an astronaut who had returned to Earth
from a distant and dangerous journey into the anti-world.
At this moment an acquaintance of mine called me and
handed me a plant, tom up by its roots. Nothing
remarkable-coarse dark-green leaves and a thick stem, and
as it were painted a little with violet ink. This plant was
called chemobyl. It had a bitter taste.