Voices From Chernobyl

A Wretched Recommendation!

Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
By Svetlana Alexievich

I originally read this book because I thought it would be incredibly morbid – containing many tales of  horribly painful deaths from radiation poisoning.  I was surprised to find that it wasn’t that morbid at all, really (by my standards anyway) and that there was only one tale of radiation poisoning (and a gruesome one it is).  What really surprised me was how I didn’t mind that it wasn’t particularly morbid – because what I found instead was a compelling, heartbreaking collection of tales of loss, pain, and ultimate resilience told with poetry and passion.  

As an American born in the 60’s, I was subjected to constant anti-Soviet propaganda during the first couple of decades of my life.  Americans were taught about the “evil empire” and the horrors of communism but we were never taught about what Soviet life was like for the citizens.  This book is a fascinating glimpse into the pros and cons of the Soviet brand of communism and to the horrifying suffering that the Russian people have endured over the years – horrors that Americans could not even *begin* to fathom.  Like seeing your streets filled with dead townspeople, gunned down by the invading German army.  Like seeing the women of your town having to tie their prolapsed uteruses up into their bodies because they have to sow and reap the fields and carry all the loads themselves since the men and the horses and the vehicles are all off fighting a war (from which many of them will never return).  Like seeing a baby tossed out a hospital window because the invading soldiers believe it was born of the “wrong” ethnicity.  Like seeing a young fireman who battled the graphite fire at Chernobyl choking on pieces of his deteriorating internal organs. 

Chernobyl, of course, dominates the subject matter, and it is illuminating to read of the impact of the disaster on the common people.  The government (as they do) kept people in the dark, evacuating them quickly and promising them they’d be able to come back in a couple weeks, thus tricking them into leaving their entire lives and most of their possessions behind.  All pets were forced to be abandoned because their fur was radioactive, and soldiers recount the disgusting and depressing job of having to hunt down and shoot domestic dogs that came running to them for help.  Other soldiers told of impossible orders they received to remove the radioactive topsoil and bury it in waste dumps.  Removing the soil, the bugs, the plants, the roots – removing entire ecosystems – only to have the remaining land contaminated by the next week. 

Folklore built up around the disaster. Many of the victims talk of drinking vodka as medication against the radiation. One man working at the site said he would drink vodka before he would pick up his son, to try and alleviate the impact of the radiation. The survivors discuss how the townspeople in their new homes treated them like lepers, whispering to their children to stay away from the Chernobylites – they were contaminated.  It’s no wonder than many defied the orders to stay out of their homes and returned to live lonely lives in the exclusion zone.  They may be living in a poisoned land, but at least it’s a familiar poisoned land.  It’s home.

Tales of selfless sacrifice of the individual for the good of the country also dominate the book. Like the helicopter pilot who flew way too many missions dropping debris on the flaming reactor, sticking his head of out the helicopter to precisely drop the load and enduring 140°+ f. temperatures rising from raging atomic fire below. Or the men who swam to the bottom of a contaminated pool of water to release a bolt so that the water could be drained safely instead of potentially causing a nuclear explosion. Or the miners who dug beneath the reactor to place dry ice to prevent the nuclear core from leaking into the ground. Or the men who took 6 minute shifts removing highly radioactive debris from the reactor roof. In the plain-spoken words of one of the people in the book: “Those people don’t exist anymore.” Or at least, most of them don’t. And the ones that do still exist are missing thyroid glands or other body parts, and have left a legacy of deformed or prematurely deceased children behind them.

This book has made me have an enormous amount of respect for the Soviet people, and has piqued my interest on reading more about them.  To suffer as much hardship as they have and to weather it despite intense despair and hopelessness – that takes character.  And even though it’s been 25 years since the reactor exploded, the pain of Chernobyl lingers in the memories, and the DNA, of thousands of people. (5/5)