Kat Gale’s Reviews > Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster > Status Update

The commander says: “Only volunteers go up on the roof. The rest can step aside, you’ll have a talk with the military prosecutor.” Well, those guys stood around, talked about it a little, and then agreed. If you took the oath, then you should do what you have to. I don’t think any of us doubted that they’d put us in jail for insubordination. They’d put out a rumor that it would be two to three years.

These were people who worked at the reactor—engineers, workers, physics instructors. They stood in the black dust, talking, breathing, wondering at it. 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.

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.

I used to lie in the forest and stare up at the sky, I’d feel so good I’d forget my own name.

just four days after the catastrophe the red flag was already flying over the fourth reactor. It blazed forth. In a month the radiation had devoured it. So they put up another flag. And in another month they put up another one. I tried to imagine how the soldiers felt going up on the roof to replace that flag. These were suicide missions. What would you call this? Soviet paganism? Live sacrifice?

One kolkhoz chairman would bring a case of vodka to the radiation specialists so they’d cross his village off the lists for evacuation; another would bring the same case so that they’d put his village on the list—he’s already been promised a three-room apartment in Minsk. No one checked the radiation reports. It was just your average Russian chaos.

Here’s what I remember. In the first days after the accident, all the books at the library about radiation, about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even about X-rays, disappeared. Some people said it was an order from above, so people wouldn’t panic.

Oh, God, where do you find the strength to meet the things that the next day is going to bring?

I looked him in the eye and I said: “Why are you chasing one another? Why are you killing?” And he looked like he felt ashamed. “All right, ma’am, not so loud.” But when they’re together, they’re different. If there’d been three of them, or even two, they’d have put me up against the wall. When you’re one-on-one you can still talk to a person.

There’s only one government there—the man with the gun. In the morning I put the kids on the train to Astrakhan, I told the conductors to transport them like they do watermelons, to not open the door. [Silent. Then cries for a long time.] Is there anything more frightening than people?