When
the reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station exploded on the
26th April 1986, I was living in Sweden. From the moment
the Swedish authorities realized what had happened at Chernobyl, we
were informed as to what had happened, what was likely to happen and,
most importantly, the precautions that would have to be taken should
the nuclear cloud move towards Scandinavia. In Soviet Russia there
was evidently no such information; the people in charge did not want
anyone to panic – there had been a small accident, an incident, but
it was being taken care of; there was definitely nothing to worry
about.
The
men sent to the station to clean up were not given proper protective
clothing (otherwise they would have suspected that something was
wrong); people were not given the necessary medications nor were they
told that they could not to eat the produce from their farms (for the
same reason). Evacuations were eventually undertaken, but the
uninformed evacuees took belongings and food with them, and only a
handful of people were aware of the enormity of the situation. The
tragedy of Chernobyl was a mixture of both ignorance and obedience to
the Party. No one could see the radiation - the crops looked the same
as they always had – and no one could understand what all the fuss
was about, not until they began to get sick and die, but by then it
was already too late.
Voices
from Chernobyl is a series of monologues by survivors of the
catastrophe. Many of them are dying; most of them have at least one close
relative who has already died. Svetlana Alexievich's
presentation is both beautiful and heart-wrenching without descending
into sentimentality. While the voices describe what happened, they
also, almost unintentionally, contain a warning as to what can happen
when technology goes drastically wrong and people are kept completely
in the dark.
Written
by the winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature, Voices from
Chernobyl is definitely worth reading.