Voices from Chernobyl

by Svetlana Alexievich After watching the series, one has to read the book, right? This is a translation of Tchernobylskaia Molitiva (1997) done by Keith Gessen (2005). It is made of the answers given to interview questions (usually not quoted) by a variety of people: some who never left the exclusion zone, some who have fled to it from war zones, widows, engineers who were set to shoveling, defenders of the establishment, and children.

Don't expect happy endings. If there were some, they probably wouldn't have been included. Most of the people telling their stories don't have clear understandings of the physics or biology of radiation, and neither the author nor the translator interrupts their narration to correct them. If you want details about radiation then and now, look here.

One of the things brought out in the book, though not the movie, is the amount of theft--both of the aid and of the contaminated durable goods. I had forgotten that alcohol was alleged to be prophylactic against radiation poisoning (it is only at a trivial level, and the slowdown in your decision-making would tend to increase your dose). "Liquidators" show up among the dead and sickened more often than I would have expected--maybe a sampling issue. (UPDATE: actually, there were a lot of them) Most of the workers recruited from the army seem not to have been kept track of--I'd expect higher cancer rates for many of them.

At the end of one tour, a man burned the clothes he wore, except for his cap, which his son dearly wanted, and then wore every day. Two years later the son needed surgery for a brain tumor.

Not a happy book, but worth reading.