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Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

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Svetlana Alexievich

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“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.”

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Book:Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
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“The antinuclear sentiments of both leaders were soon strengthened by a man-made nuclear catastrophe that seemed to fit right in with the biblical prophecy of Armageddon that had impressed Reagan so much: 'A great star fell from the sky, flaming like a torch; and it fell on a third of the rivers and springs. The name of the star was Wormwood; and a third of the water turned to wormwood, and men in great numbers died of the water because it was poisoned' [Revelation 8:10]. The Ukrainian word for 'wormwood' is Chernobyl.”

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“To write about that now, when only ten years have gone by. Write about it? I think it's senseless. You can't explain it, you can't understand it. We’ll still try to imagine something that looks like our own lives now. I've tried it and it doesn’t work. The Chernobyl explosion gave us the mythology of Chernobyl. The papers and magazines compete to see who can write the most frightening article. People who weren't there love to be frightened. Everyone read about mushrooms the size of human heads, but no one actually found them. So instead of writing, you should record. Document. Show me a fantasy novel about Chernobyl—there isn't one! Because reality is more fantastic.”

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Book:Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
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“What is it like, radiation? Maybe they show it in the movies? Have you seen it? Is it white, or what? Some people say it has no color and no smell, and other people say that it’s black. Like earth. But if it’s colorless, then it’s like God. God is everywhere but you can’t see Him. They scare us! The apples are hanging in the garden, the leaves are on the trees, the potatoes are in the fields. I don’t think there was any Chernobyl, they made it up. They tricked people. My sister left with her husband. Not far from here, twenty kilometers. They lived there two months, and the neighbor comes running: ‘Your cow sent radiation to my cow! She’s falling down.’ ‘How’d she send it?’ 'Through the air, that’s how, like dust. It flies.’ 'Just fairy tales! Stories and more stories.”

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Book:Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
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“We came home. I took off all the clothes that I wore in there and threw them down the trash chute. I gave my hat to my little son. He really wanted it. And he wore it all the time. Two years later they gave him a diagnosis: a tumor in his brain… You can write the rest of this yourself. I don’t want to talk anymore.”

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Book:Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
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