Voices From Chernobyl Quotes

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

Is there anything more frightening than people?

I'm not afraid of God. I'm afraid of man.

Yo tengo miedo. Tengo miedo de una cosa, de que en nuestra vida el miedo ocupe el lugar del amor.

Come get your apples! Chernobyl apples!’ Someone told her not to advertise that, no one will buy them. ‘Don’t worry!’ she says. ‘They buy them anyway. Some need them for their mother-in-law, some for their boss.

Chernobyl is like the war of all wars. There’s nowhere to hide. Not underground, not underwater, not in the air.

Show me a fantasy novel about Chernobyl--there isn't one! Because reality is more fantastic.

Man lives with death, but he doesn’t understand what it is.

En la vida las cosas más terribles ocurren en silencio y de manera natural.

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

Everyone found a justification for themselves, an explanation. I experimented on myself. And basically I found out that the frightening things in life happen quietly and naturally. Zoya

People ask me: “Why don’t you take photos in color? In color!” But Chernobyl: literally it means black event. There are no other colors there.

Reality has always attracted me like a magnet, tortured and hypnotized me, and I wanted to capture it on paper. So I immediately appropriated this genre of actual human voices and confessions, witness evidences and documents. This is how I hear and see the world—as a chorus of individual voices and a collage of everyday details. In this way all my mental and emotional potential is realized to the full. In this way I can be simultaneously a writer, reporter, sociologist, psychologist and preacher.

We're often silent. We don't yell and we don't complain. We're patient, as always. Because we don't have the words yet. We're afraid to talk about it. We don't know how. It's not an ordinary experience, and the questions it raises are not ordinary. The world has been split in two: there's us, the Chernobylites, and then there's you, the others. Have you noticed? No one here points out that they're Russian or Belarussian or Ukrainian. We all call ourselves Chernobylites. "We're from Chernobyl." "I'm a Chernobylite." As if this is a separate people. A new nation.

The only righteous thing on the face of the earth is death. No one has ever bribed their way out of that. The earth takes us all: the good, the evil and the sinners. And that's all the justice you'll find in this world.

Morirse no es difícil, solo da miedo.

We were told that we had to win. Against whom? The atom? Physics? The universe? Victory is not an event for us, but a process.

Así es como vivo. Vivo a la vez en un mundo real y en otro irreal. Y no sé dónde estoy mejor.

That’s how it was in the beginning. We didn’t just lose a town, we lost our whole lives.

We’ll die, and then we’ll become science,

I'm a product of my time. I'm not a criminal.

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

قالوا لنا يجب أن ننتصر، على من؟ على الذرة، الفيزياء، الفضاء!!!! النصر عندنا ليس حدث، بل عملية مستمرة

The mechanism of evil will work under conditions of apocalypse, also. That's what I understood. Man will gossip, and kiss up to the bosses, and save his television and ugly fur coat. And people will be the same until the end of time. Always.

At that time my notions of nuclear power were utterly idyllic. At school and at the university we'd been taught that this was a magical factory that made "energy out of nothing," where people in white robes sat and pushed buttons. Chernobyl blew up when we weren't prepared.

لا يمكن لفنان ان يكون علي مستوي الواقع ، لن يستطيع تحمُله

The doctors said that I got sick because my father worked at Chernobyl. And after that I was born. I love my father.

I often thought that the simples fact, the mechanical fact, is no closer to the truth than a vague feeling, rumor, vision. Why repeat the facts - they cover up our feelings. The development of these feelings, the spilling of these feelings past the facts, is what fascinantes me. I try to find them, collect them, protect them.

I told you. There’s nothing heroic here, nothing for the writer’s pen. I had thoughts like, It’s not wartime, why should I have to risk myself while someone else is sleeping with my wife? Why me again, and not him? To be honest, I didn’t see any heroes there. I saw nutcases, who didn’t care about their own lives, and I had enough craziness myself, but it wasn’t necessary. I also have medals and awards—but that’s because I wasn’t afraid of dying. I didn’t care! It was even something of an out. They’d have buried me with honors. And the government would have paid for it.

There’s a fragment of some conversation, I’m remembering it. Someone is saying: “You have to understand: this is not your husband anymore, not a beloved person, but a radioactive object with a strong density of poisoning. You’re not suicidal. Get ahold of yourself.” And I’m like someone who’s lost her mind: “But I love him! I love him!” He’s sleeping, and I’m whispering: “I love you!” Walking in the hospital courtyard, “I love you.” Carrying his sanitary tray, “I love you.

Back then everyone was saying: "We're going to die, we're going to die. By the year 2000, there won't be any Belarussians left.

These people had already seen what for everyone else is still unknown. I felt like I was recording the future. Svetlana

هل هناك ما يبعث على الخوف أكثر من الإنسان؟

Lo que ha pasado es algo desconocido. Es otro miedo. No se oye, no se ve, no huele, no tiene color; en cambio nosotros cambiamos física y psíquicamente.

It's certainly true that Chernobyl, while an accident in the sense that no one intentionally set it off, was also the deliberate product of a culture of cronyism, laziness, and a deep-seated indifference toward the general population. The literature on the subject is pretty unanimous in its opinion that the Soviet system had taken a poorly designed reactor and then staffed it with a group of incompetents. It then proceeded, as the interviews in this book attest, to lie about the disaster in the most criminal way. In the crucial first ten days, when the reactor core was burning and releasing a steady stream of highly radioactive material into the surrounding areas, the authorities repeatedly claimed that the situation was under control. . . In the week after the accident, while refusing to admit to the world that anything really serious had gone wrong, the Soviets poured thousands of men into the breach. . . The machines they brought broke down because of the radiation. The humans wouldn't break down until weeks or months later, at which point they'd die horribly.

We all live through it by ourselves, we don't know what else to do. I can't understand it with my mind. My mother especially has felt confused. She teaches Russian literature, and she always taught me to live with books. But there are no books about this. She became confused. She doesn't know how to do without books. Without Chekhov and Tolstoy.

They die, but no one’s really asked us. No one’s asked what we’ve been through. What we saw. No one wants to hear about death. About what scares them. But I was telling you about love. About my love . . . Lyudmilla

He’s going to die.” I understood later on that you can’t think that way. I cried in the bathroom. None of the mothers cry in the hospital rooms. They cry in the toilets, the baths. I come back cheerful: “Your cheeks are red. You’re getting better.” “Mom, take me out of the hospital. I’m going to die here. Everyone here dies.” Now where am I going to cry? In the bathroom? There’s a line for the bathroom—everyone like me is in that line.

¿Cómo elegir entre el amor y la muerte? ¿Entre el pasado y el ignorado presente? ¿Y quién se creerá con derecho a echar en cara a otras esposas y madres que no se quedaran junto a sus maridos e hijos? Junto a esos elementos radiactivos. En su mundo se vio alterado incluso el amor. Hasta la muerte. Ha cambiado todo. Todo menos nosotros.

And we lived through everything, survived everything . . .

Sometimes I get strange thoughts, sometimes I think Chernobyl saved me, forced me to think. My soul expanded. He

إليكم صلاة عامل درء آثار الإشعاعات في تشيرنوبل: يا إلهي، اذا كنت قد فعلت مايجعلني لا أستطيع، فافعل مايجعلني لا أرغب

مسقط الرأس كالجنة، أما في الأماكن الأخرى فالشمس لاتضيء كما ينبغي

تشيرنوبل كان حربًا فوق الحروب، لا يوجد مكان لنجاة الإنسان. لا في الأرض ولا في الماء ولا في السماء

Do you know that it can be a sin to give birth? I’d never heard those words before. Katya

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

Si hemos de morir, que sea con música.

There are many of us here. A whole street. That's what it's called--Chernobylskaya. These people worked at the station their whole lives. A lot of them still go there to work on a provisional basis, that's how they work there now, no one lives there anymore. They have bad diseases, they're invalids, but they don't leave their jobs, they're scared to even think of the reactor closing down. Who needs them now anywhere else? Often they die. In an instant. They just drop--someone will be walking, he falls down, goes to sleep, never wakes up. He was carrying flowers for his nurse and his heart stopped. They die, but no one's really asked us. No one's asked what we've been through. What we saw. No one wants to hear about death. About what scares them. But I was telling you about love. About my love... -- Lyudmila, Ignatenko, wife of deceased fireman, Vasily Ignatenko

They call the souls down from heaven. Those who had people die this year cry, and those whose people died earlier, don’t. They talk, they remember. Everyone prays. And those who don’t know how to pray, also pray.

I hear about death so often that I don’t even notice anymore. Have you ever heard kids talk about death? My seventh-graders argue about it: is it scary or not? Kids used to ask: where do we come from? How are babies made? Now they’re worried about what’ll happen after the nuclear war.

If you don’t play, you lose. There was a Ukrainian woman at the market selling big red apples. ‘Come get your apples! Chernobyl apples!’ Someone told her not to advertise that, no one will buy them. ‘Don’t worry!’ she says. ‘They buy them anyway. Some need them for their mother-in-law, some for their boss.’

One of the poets says somewhere that animals are a different people. I killed them by the ten, by the hundred, thousand, not even knowing what they were called. I destroyed their houses, their secrets. And buried them. Buried them. Leonid

I met this one man, he was saying that this is because we place a low value on human life. That it’s an Asiatic fatalism. A person who sacrifices himself doesn’t feel himself to be a unique individual. He experiences a longing for his role in life. Earlier he was a person without a text, a statistic. He had no theme, he served as the background. And now suddenly he’s the main protagonist. It’s a longing for meaning.

I can’t count money. My memory’s not right. The doctors can’t understand it. I go from hospital to hospital. But this sticks in my head: you’re walking up to the house, thinking the house is empty, and you open the door and there’s this cat. That, and those kids’ notes.

Yo sé qué carga es una persona vieja; los hijos te aguantan, te aguantan y, al final, acaban por herirte. Los hijos te dan alegrías mientras son chicos.

often thought that the simple fact, the mechanical fact, is no closer to the truth than a vague feeling, rumor, vision. Why repeat the facts—they cover up our feelings.

At first, the question was, Who’s to blame? But then, when we learned more, we started thinking, What should we do?

خليط من السجن ورياض الأطفال هذه هي الإشتراكية. اشتراكية الإتحاد السوفيتي

Question: Is the world as it’s depicted in words the real world? Words stand between the person and his soul. And

Even if it's poisoned with radiation, it's still my home. There's no place else they need us. Even a bird loves its nest.

Man saved only himself: everything else he betrayed.

But I’m never lonely, a man who believes can never be lonely. I ride around the villages—I used to find spaghetti, flour—even vegetable oil. Canned fruit. Now I go to the cemeteries—people leave food and drink for the dead. But the dead don’t need it. They don’t mind. In the fields there’s wild grain, and in the forest there are mushrooms and berries. Freedom is here. I

You can talk to the dead just like you can talk to the living. Makes no difference to me. I can hear the one and the other. When you're alone ... And when you're sad. When you're very sad.

There’s no television. No movies. There’s one thing to do—look out the window. Well, and to pray, of course. There used to be Communism instead of God, but now there’s just God. So we pray.

You’re young. Why are you doing this? That’s not a person anymore, that’s a nuclear reactor. You’ll just burn together.” I was like a dog, running after them. I’d stand for hours at their doors, begging and pleading. And then they’d say: “All right! The hell with you! You’re not normal!

The war—that’s the only thing I can talk about. Why did we come here? To Chernobyl? Because no one’s going to chase us out of here. No one will kick us off this land. It’s not anyone’s land now.

Any little knot, that was already a wound on him. I clipped my nails down till they bled so I wouldn’t accidentally cut him. None of the nurses could approach him; if they needed anything they’d call me. And

During the war, one out of every four Belarussians was killed; today, one out of every five Belarussians lives on contaminated land. This amounts to 2.1 million people, of whom 700,000 are children. Among the demographic factors responsible for the depopulation of Belarus, radiation is number one. In the Gomel and Mogilev regions, which suffered the most from Chernobyl, mortality rates exceed birth rates by 20%. As

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

I remembered some lines from the papers: our nuclear stations are absolutely safe, we could build one on Red Square, they're safer than samovars. They're like stars and we'll "light" the whole earth with them.

Hubo un tiempo en que envidiaba a los héroes. A los que habían participado en los grandes acontecimientos. A los que habían vivido épocas de ruptura, momentos cruciales de la historia. Soñaba [...] Pero ahora pienso de otro modo; no quiero convertirme en historia, no quiero vivir una época histórica como la de ahora.

You’re all like black boxes here,” he said. He meant the black boxes that record information on airplanes. We think that we’re living, talking, walking, eating. Loving one another. But we’re just recording information!

If anyone got indignant and wanted to take the coffin back home, they were told that the dead were now, you know, heroes, and that they no longer belonged to their families. They were heroes of the State. They belonged to the State. We

Веднага спряха радиото. Никакви новини нямаме, затова живеем спокойно. Не се разстройваме. Идват хора, казват ни, че навсякъде има войни. И че сякаш социализмът се е свършил, че живеем при капитализма, че царят ще се върне. Вярно ли е?

They, our parents, lived through a great catastrophe, and we needed to live through it, too. Otherwise we’d never become real people. That’s how we’re made. If we just work each day and eat well—that would be strange and intolerable! We

There’s a note on the door: “Dear kind person, Please don’t look for valuables here. We never had any. Use whatever you want, but don’t trash the place. We’ll be back.” I saw signs on other houses in different colors—“Dear house, forgive us!

They asked all sorts of questions, but one really cut into my memory. This boy, stammering and blushing, you could tell he was one of the quiet ones, asked: "Why couldn't anyone help the animals?" This was already a person from the future. I couldn't answer that question. Our art is all about the sufferings and loves of people, but not of everything living. We don't descend to their level: animals, plants, that other world. And with Chernobyl man just waved his hand at everything.

Don’t write about the wonders of Soviet heroism. They existed—and they really were wonders. But first there had to be incompetence, negligence, and only after those did you get wonders: covering the embrasure, throwing yourself in front of a machine gun. But that those orders should never have been given, that there shouldn’t have been any need, no one writes about that.

Тешахме се с вицове. Ето например: изпращат американския робот на покрива, работи пет минути – стоп. Японският робот работи девет минути – стоп. Руският робот работи два чáса. Дават му команда: „Редник Иванов, можете да слезете долу за по цигара.“. Ха-ха!

We still have our television and our books, our imagination. Children grow up in their houses, without the forest and the river. They can only look at them. These are completely different children. And I go to them and recite Pushkin, who I thought was eternal. And then I have this terrible thought: what if our entire culture is just an old trunk with a bunch of stale manuscripts? Everything I love . . . He:

We’re going to die, we’re going to die. By the year 2000, there won’t be any Belarussians left.” My daughter was six years old. I’m putting her to bed, and she whispers in my ear: “Daddy, I want to live, I’m still little.” And I had thought she didn’t understand anything. Can

We were expecting our first child. My husband wanted a boy and I wanted a girl. The doctors tried to convince me: “You need to get an abortion. Your husband was at Chernobyl.” He was a truck driver; they called him in during the first days. He drove sand. But I didn’t believe anyone. The baby was born dead. She was missing two fingers. A girl. I cried. “She should at least have fingers,” I thought. “She’s a girl.

Искам да свидетелствам, че дъщеря ми умря от Чернобил. А от нас искат да мълчим. Казват, че науката не е доказала, че няма база данни. Трябва да чакаме стотици години. Но човешкият ми живот… Той е по-кратък… Няма да дочакам. Запишете го. Поне напишете, че дъщеря ми се казваше Катя…. Катюшенка…

The sarcophagus is a corpse which still has breath. It is breathing death. How much longer does it have? Nobody really knows: it remains impossible to access many of the structural components to assess their soundness. What everybody does know is that, should the Shelter Object fail, it would unleash consequences even more devastating than in 1986.

The commentator says: The West is trying to spread panic, telling lies about the accident. And then they show the dosimeter again, measuring some fish on a plate, or a chocolate bar, or some pancakes at an open pancake stand. It was all a lie. The military dosimeters then in use by our armed forces were designed to measure the radioactive background, not individual products. This level of lying, this incredible level, with which Chernobyl is connected in our minds, was comparable only to the level of lies during the big war.

Thinking about money was bourgeois, thinking about your own life was unpatriotic. The normal state of life was hunger. They, our parents, lived through a great catastrophe, and we needed to live through it, too. Otherwise we’d never become real people. That’s how we’re made. If we just work each day and eat well—that would be strange and intolerable! We

There you are: a normal person. A little person. You’re just like everyone else—you go to work, you return from work. You get an average salary. Once a year you go on vacation. You’re a normal person! And then one day you’re suddenly turned into a Chernobyl person. Into an animal, something that everyone’s interested in, and that no one knows anything about.

I'm twelve years old and I'm an invalid. The mailman brings two pension checks to our house - for me and my grandad. When the girls in my class found out that I had cancer of the blood, they were afraid to sit next to me. They didn't want to touch me. The doctors said that I got sick because my father worked at Chernobyl. And after that I was born. I love my father.

They’re all Tajiks, they have the same Koran, the same faith, but the Kulyabs kill the Pamirs, and the Pamirs kill the Kulyabs. First they’d go out into the city square, yelling, praying. I wanted to understand what was happening, so I went too. I asked one of the old men: “What are you protesting against?” They said: “Against the Parliament. They told us this was a very bad person, this Parliament.

You’re going to say that you’re a tractor specialist,” I said to Slyunkov, he’d been a director of a tractor factory, “and that you didn’t understand what radiation could do, but I’m a physicist, I know what the consequences are.” But from his point of view, what was this? Some professor, a bunch of physicists, were going to tell the Central Committee what to do? No, they weren’t a gang of criminals. It was more like a conspiracy of ignorance and obedience.

My husband, a man with a university degree, an engineer, seriously tried to convince me that it was an act of terrorism. An enemy diversion. A lot of people at the time thought that. But I remembered how I’d once been on a train with a man who worked in construction who told me about the building of the Smolensk nuclear plant: how much cement, boards, nails, and sand was stolen from the construction site and sold to neighboring villages. In exchange for money, for a bottle of vodka. People

Do you remember how it was in Tolstoy? Pierre Bezukhov is so shocked by the war, he thinks that he and the whole world have changed forever. But then some time passes, and he says to himself: “I’m going to keep yelling at the coach-driver just like before, I’m going to keep growling like before.” Then why do people remember? So that they can determine the truth? For fairness? So they can free themselves and forget? Is it because they understand they’re part of a grand event? Or are they looking into the past for cover? And all this despite the fact that memories are very fragile things, ephemeral things, this is not exact knowledge, but a guess that a person makes about himself. It isn’t even knowledge, it’s more like a set of emotions

Don’t call these the “wonders of Soviet heroism" when you write about it. Those wonders really did exist. But first there had to be incompetence, negligence, and only after those did you get wonders: covering the embrasure, throwing yourself in front of a machine gun. But that those orders should never have been given, that there shouldn’t have been any need, no one writes about that. They flung us there, like sand onto the reactor. Every day they’d put out a new “Action Update": “men are working courageously and selflessly," “we will survive and triumph.

When I was a kid, the neighbor woman, she'd been a partisan during the war, she told me a story about how their unit was surrounded but they escaped. She had her little baby with her, he was one month old, they were moving along a swamp, and there were Germans everywhere. The baby was crying. He might have given them away, they would have been discovered, the entire unit. And she suffocated him. She talked about this distantly, as if it hadn’t been her, and the child wasn’t hers. I can’t remember now why she told me this. What I remember very clearly is my horror. What had she done? How could she? I thought the whole unit was getting out from the encirclement for that little baby, to save him. Whereas here, in order to save the life of strong healthy men, they choked this child. Then what's the point of life? I didn’t want to live after that.

There’s a note on the door: “Dear kind person, Please don’t look for valuables here. We never had any. Use whatever you want, but don’t trash the place. We’ll be back.” I saw signs on other houses in different colors—“Dear house, forgive us!” People said goodbye to their homes like they were people. Or they’d written: “we’re leaving in the morning,” or, “we’re leaving at night,” and they’d put the date and even the time. There were notes written on school notebook paper: “Don’t beat the cat. Otherwise the rats will eat everything.” And then in a child’s handwriting: “Don’t kill our Zhulka. She’s a good cat.” [Closes his eyes.]

Сред онези, които са работели в Чернобилската централа, има много селски хора. През деня са на реактора, вечер отиват по градинките си или при родителите си, които още сеят картофите с лопатата, още разхвърлят тора с вили… Събират реколтата също на ръка… Съзнанието им съществува в този разлом, в тези две времена – каменното и атомното. В две епохи. Човекът винаги се е мятал като махало. […] Съдбата на Русия е да пътешества в две култури. Между атома и лопатата. А технологичната дисциплина? За нашия народ тя е част от насилието... Окови, вериги. Народът е стихиен, свободен. Винаги е мечтал не са свобода, а за свободия. За нас дисциплината е репресивен инструмент. Има нещо особено в невежеството ни, нещо близко до източното невежество… Александър Ревалски историк

Селският живот течеше просто: нещо садиш, отглеждаш, събираш, а всичко останало си върви и без теб. Не се интересуваш нито от царя, нито от властта… Първия секретар на ЦК или президента… От космическите кораби и атомните централни, от митингите в столицата. И не можеха да повярват, че светът се е преобърнал за един ден и вече живеят в друг свят… В чернобилски… Никъде не отиваха. Хората се разболяваха от потрес. Не се примиряваха, искаха да живеят както досега. Вземаха си тайно дървата, беряха зелените домати, затваряха ги… Бурканите се пукаха, още веднъж ги варяха. Как да унищожим това, да го закопаем, да го превърнем в боклук? А ние точно с това се занимавахме. Убивахме труда им, извечния смисъл на живота им. За тях бяхме врагове. Александър Кудрягин, ликвидатор

Everything we know of horror and dread is connected primarily with war. Stalin's Gulags and Auschwitz were recent gains for evil. History has always been the story of wars and military commanders, and war was, we could say, the yardstick of horror. This is why people muddle the concepts of war and disaster. In Chernobyl, we see all the hallmarks of war: hordes of soldiers, evacuation, abandoned houses. The course of life disrupted. Reports on Chernobyl in the newspapers are thick with the language of war: 'nuclear', 'explosion', 'heroes'. And this makes it harder to appreciate that we now find ourselves on a new page of history. The history of disasters has begun. But people do not want to reflect on that, because they have never thought about it before, preferring to take refuge in the familiar. And in the past. Even the monuments to the Chernobyl heroes look like war memorials.

Казаха, че пет години не трябва да имаме деца… Ако не умрем за пет години.. Ха-ха! (Смее се.) Шегички… Но без шум, без паника. Пет години.. Аз вече десет съм жив… Ха-ха! (Смее се.) Връчваха ни грамоти. Имам две... С всичките онези картинки – Маркс, Енгелс, Ленин… Червените знамена… Едно момче изчезна, помислихме, че е избягал. След два дни го намерихме в храстите. Беше се обесил. Чувствахме се зле, сами разбирате… Заместникът по политическата част каза, че е получил писмо от вкъщи – жена му му изневерила. Кой го знае? След седмица ще ни уволняват. А него го намериха в храстите… Имахме един готвач, толкова се страхуваше, че не живееше в палатката, а в склада, където си беше изровил дупка под щайгите с масло и варено месо. Пренесе си там матрака, възглавницата... Живееше под земята... Дадоха специално нареждане: да се сформира нова бригада и всички да се качат на покрива. А всички вече сме били там. Да се намерят хора! Зачислиха него. Само един път отиде… Втора група инвалидност... Често ми се обажда. Не губим връзка, държим се един за друг… За спомените ми, те ще живеят толкова дълго, колкото и ние. Така напишете… Александър Кудрягин, ликвидатор

HISTORICAL NOTE There are no nuclear power stations in Belarus. Of the functioning stations in the territory of the former USSR, the ones closest to Belarus are of the old Soviet-designed RBMK type. To the north, the Ignalinsk station, to the east, the Smolensk station, and to the south, Chernobyl. On April 26, 1986, at 1:23:58, a series of explosions destroyed the reactor in the building that housed Energy Block #4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station. The catastrophe at Chernobyl became the largest technological disaster of the twentieth century. For tiny Belarus (population: 10 million), it was a national disaster. During the Second World War, the Nazis destroyed 619 Belarussian villages along with their inhabitants. As a result of Chernobyl, the country lost 485 villages and settlements. Of these, 70 have been forever buried underground. During the war, one out of every four Belarussians was killed; today, one out of every five Belarussians lives on contaminated land. This amounts to 2.1 million people, of whom 700,000 are children. Among the demographic factors responsible for the depopulation of Belarus, radiation is number one. In the Gomel and Mogilev regions, which suffered the most from Chernobyl, mortality rates exceed birth rates by 20%. As a result of the accident, 50 million Ci of radionuclides were released into the atmosphere. Seventy percent of these descended on Belarus; fully 23% of its territory is contaminated by cesium-137 radionuclides with a density of over 1 Ci/km2. Ukraine on the other hand has 4.8% of its territory contaminated, and Russia, 0.5%. The area of arable land with a density of more than 1 Ci/km2 is over 18 million hectares; 2.4 thousand hectares have been taken out of the agricultural economy. Belarus is a land of forests. But 26% of all forests and a large part of all marshes near the rivers Pripyat, Dniepr, and Sozh are considered part of the radioactive zone. As a result of the perpetual presence of small doses of radiation, the number of people with cancer, mental retardation, neurological disorders, and genetic mutations increases with each year. —“Chernobyl.” Belaruskaya entsiklopedia On April 29, 1986, instruments recorded high levels of radiation in Poland, Germany, Austria, and Romania. On April 30, in Switzerland and northern Italy. On May 1 and 2, in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and northern Greece. On May 3, in Israel, Kuwait, and Turkey. . . . Gaseous airborne particles traveled around the globe: on May 2 they were registered in Japan, on May 5 in India, on May 5 and 6 in the U.S. and Canada. It took less than a week for Chernobyl to become a problem for the entire world. —“The Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident in Belarus.” Minsk, Sakharov International College on Radioecology The fourth reactor, now known as the Cover, still holds about twenty tons of nuclear fuel in its lead-and-metal core. No one knows what is happening with it. The sarcophagus was well made, uniquely constructed, and the design engineers from St. Petersburg should probably be proud. But it was constructed in absentia, the plates were put together with the aid of robots and helicopters, and as a result there are fissures. According to some figures, there are now over 200 square meters of spaces and cracks, and radioactive particles continue to escape through them . . . Might the sarcophagus collapse? No one can answer that question, since it’s still impossible to reach many of the connections and constructions in order to see if they’re sturdy. But everyone knows that if the Cover were to collapse, the consequences would be even more dire than they were in 1986. —Ogonyok magazine, No. 17, April 1996