MoldovAnn

I am reading the book “Ablaze: The Story of the Heroes and Victims of Chernobyl“, and I can’t put it down. I’ve read quite a few books, stacks of reports, and loads of websites about the Chornobyl accident and the subsequent consequences. This is the book I wish I had found 18 months ago when I first came to Ukraine to work with the Chornobyl Recovery and Development Programme.

As it was written in 1991, I was at first quite skeptical of the accuracy of the reporting and the author’s purported claim to have gained access to previously classified documents and secret reports, especially as a foreign writer who doesn’t speak Russian. Yet he seems to have gained confidences with key players in the Chornobyl saga, as well as access to at least some of the previously unpublished materials. I don’t think this book has all the truth in it, but it is an impressive attempt to bring more of the truth to light than had been up to that time.

The blow-by-blow account of the first minutes and hours after the accident are fascinating, presenting a real human side to the men and women who heretofore were only generic “plant workers” to me. Their heroism, their ignorance, their blind faith in the System (Soviet Union) and the system (the engineering of the nuclear power plant)… it is, plain and simple, tragic.

I was very surprised to realize that I have visited many of the towns mentioned in the book. Ivankiv, less than 60 km (<40 miles) from the Chornobyl station, is one of our partner communities, but I hadn’t realized what an important role it had played in the evacuation and clean-up activities – it served as a base of operations outside the Exclusion Zone, through which many refugees passed, and from which soldiers, other workers, and supplies were dispatched to the nuclear power station.

Our regional coordinator in Ivankiv, Valentina, was in the office this week, and I mentioned to her that I am reading this book and told her some of what it says about Ivankiv. “Oh, Ann, it was such a terrible time,” she said to me. “There was a base in Ivankiv. I remember it was beautiful spring weather, and I was outside walking with my young son for hours every day for the first three days after it happened. We didn’t know, no one said it was dangerous. Outside!” She held her hand to her chest as she recalled those memories, as if the horror of it still brings her a physical pain. “Then we learned what had happened, and I took my son to Moldova.”

Sometimes I forget what my colleagues lived through, that they themselves are first-hand witnesses to the Chornobyl catastrophe.

Igor, having been just 9 at the time of the accident, mostly remembers what a great summer he had that year because he got to go a bunch of camps all over the Soviet Union. He had some great experiences, and I think it instilled in him a love of travel, but it is a bizarre twist of circumstances that he remembers that time as so much fun.

In “Ablaze”, Read mentions some of the morbid jokes that started amongst the clean-up workers. In our office, we sometimes jokingly “toast” Chornobyl; without it, none of us would be here (at CRDP). Igor and I often joke that something weird and unexplained is because of “Chornobyl”. And I always refer to a dish with mushrooms as coming with a big dose of radiation. It’s perverse, but I guess that’s what we do when we are faced with something overwhelmingly horrifying. If we focused only on what we don’t know and what we can’t change, I think we would go insane. Joking about it eases the tension, I guess.