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DAVID Ft. MARPLES T H E T R A G E D Y O F C H E R N O B Y L For three years, I had been studying the Chernobyl disaster, which took place on April 26, 1986. Last summer, I was given an opportunity to visit not only the station and environs, but also the Center for Radiation Medicine, based in Kiev, where the first patients of the nuclear accident were being monitored. No longer would it be necessary to view the situation from the distant academic confines of the University of Alberta. How ever, the visit was to provide far more revelations than I had anticipated. In fact, it changed permanently my whole attitude toward Chernobyl and made me realize that the tragedy — for such it can now be justifiably called — was just beginning. Before I left for the Soviet Union, I was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of a Ukrainian doctor and writer called Yurii Shcherbak, who had come to Canada as the guest of the Canadian Institute of Ukrai nian Studies. Yurii had spent three months at Chernobyl in the summer of 1986, and had occupied much of that time with interviewing eyewitnesses. Yurii is in his mid fifties, a member of the USSR Supreme Soviet, who is also the chairman of the Ukrainian ecological associa tion called Green World. He is an articulate spokesman for the ecological lobby and believes that Chernobyl occurred partly as a result of centralized control over the Ukrainian industry. In particular, he has little time for either the Soviet ministry of nuclear power or minis try of health, and believes that they have systematically and deliberately concealed the health effects of the dis aster, which arose as a result of radioactive fallout. I had read of this interpretation in several Soviet accounts. More seriously, Shcherbak alleged that hun dreds of children were already sick in parts of northern Ukraine, with tumors of the thyroid and cataracts of the eyes. These children lived just beyond the region that was evacuated in the summer of 1986 and has not been subjected to close medical inspection in the first years after the explosion. This explanation of recent events and the sudden antagonism toward nuclear power generally in Ukraine only made me more determined to take a closer look at the situation. I had published two books about Chernobyl. In 1984 and 1985, I had made a study of nuclear power in the Ukrainian republic so that when the Chernobyl explosion occurred, I already had an almost complete manuscript on a related topic. For my first book, I appended two brief chapters about the consequences of the accident, insofar as they were known. However, so much more information was forthcoming over the next two years, partly as a result of Mikhail Gorbachev’s pol icy of glasnost, that I was able to write a much more thorough, and more popular second book on the social impact of the accident. Chernobyl, from the Soviet perspective, is a tragedy of such enormity that is very difficult for the Western observer to comprehend it. It was regarded even at the outset as something much more than an unfortunate accident or, as Gorbachev first commented, a warning of the dangers of nuclear war. Rather, it was seen by some locals as an act of God and Baptists found refer ences to the world “Chornobyl” (the Ukrainian form) in the Book of Revelation in the New Testament. It signi fies an apocalyptic event, a catastrophe. Intellectuals, on the other hand, perceived the accident as the definite sign that the old system, created by Stalin and pro moted by Brezhnev, had failed. It was a system of cen tralized bureaucracy, where Moscow planners dictated industrial plans to the Soviet republics. In short, it acted as a sport for local patriotism and nationalist feeling. During an Aeroflot flight from Paris to Moscow, I reflected on some of these notions. Upon arrival, Mos cow was sticky and hot, and I was relieved to alight from the Intourist car that had taken me from Shere- myetovo to Vnukovo airport, for the short flight to Kiev. It was 4pm, but at 1am I was still waiting in the feature less departure lounge, while the numbers of flights were displayed on a crude board. The name “Kiev” finally appeared, and, along with a large party of irate West Germans, I began the last leg of a long journey. Kiev, when we arrived, looked something like a bat tle zone. Evidently a tornado had struck around the time that we were supposed to be leaving from Moscow. It was an inauspicious beginning. Indeed, I had to delay my visit to Chernobyl for two days, such was my fatigue. However, my host for the stay in Ukraine had arrived. His name was Valery, a portly man in his forties, a chain smoker with an air of authority. ’’Where do you want to go to?” he asked, ’’With whom do you wish to speak? Make me a list.” I duly complied, and asked to see some of the more radical journalists and politicians. I was to schedule these appointments around the visit to Cher nobyl. On this, my second evening in sultry Kiev, Shcher bak phoned me at my hotel and suggested that I go to his apartment, about a half mile walk. There, he showed me a new documentary film made in the settlement of Narodichi, sixty miles west of Chernobyl. Called ’’Beyond the Limits,” it depicted malformed livestok and sick children. It interviewed tearful local residents who des cribed themselves as ’’hostages.” They were suffering from radiation-related illnesses, but had no money to leave the area. Geiger counters used by visiting scien tists revealed that radiation levels were more than 200 times the natural background. The next morning, a senior engineer from Cher nobyl, Yuri Risovanny, met me at my hotel and escorted 22 ’’НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, КВІТЕНЬ 1990 Видання C оюзу Українок A мерики - перевидано в електронному форматі в 2012 році . A рхів C У A - Ню Йорк , Н . Й . C Ш A.
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