Voices From Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

“… Just thinking of all your days to come, the bitterness, the life that rough mankind will thrust upon you. Where are the public gatherings you can join, the banquets of the clans? Home you’ll come, in tears, cut off from the sight of it all, the brilliant rites unfinished. And when you reach perfection, ripe for marriage, who will he be, my dear ones? Risking all to shoulder the curse that weighs down my parents, yes and you too - that wounds us all together.” - Oedipus in Oedipus Rex by SophoclesI was a freshman in college when Chernobyl disaster occurred on April 26, 1986.I vaguely remember being terrified about the scope of the incident; however, the Soviets were our enemies, so except for being concerned for how it would impact my life, I gave it little thought.When Svetlana Alexievich won the Nobel Prize in Literature last year, Chernobyl was brought back into my life. And for that I will forever be grateful.Ms. Alexievich’s Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster is one of the hardest books I’ve read due to the graphic descriptions of the impact on human life, but it is a book that must be read due to the immense amount of truth it contains.By truth, I don’t mean that it correctly represents the events of the disaster and its aftermath, which it does, but rather, that in the book’s monologues, we as readers are exposed to many of life’s truths. For example:“Only in evil is man clever and refined. But how simple and sympathetic he is when speaking honest words of love. Even when the philosophers use words they are only approximations of the thoughts they have felt” (66).And“… That all our humanistic ideas are relative. In an extreme situation, people don’t behave the way you read about in books. Sooner the other way around. People aren’t heroes” (111).It goes on and on. There is much more to this book than an oral history or a glimpse into the worst industrial disaster of our time.I thought when I read the book, I would be horrified by the accounts of the survivors, but I was more horrified at how I saw in these stories the cost of human behavior and ideologies. Lest you think, however, that these behaviors and ideologies are exclusive to the Soviets, and that their kind have faded into history, think again, as there are many moments in the work that reminded me of current arguments, events, and propaganda in our own time and country.After reading the book, one also must admire the courage of the author! Ms. Alexievich’s work on this project itself was an act of heroism, as she was interviewing people that oftentimes didn’t wish to speak, in a country that still was trying to cover-up what had occurred. Written ten years after the event, Ms. Alexievich solicits the personal reflections of a wide range of those that were witnesses to Chernobyl - villagers, soldiers, scientists, liquidators (those responsible for the clean up), Communist Party officials, mothers, children, widows, and re-settlers.The words in the book are those of the interviewed, but the organization of these “monologues” into a coherent whole is what makes the book much more than a telling of the event and its aftermath. It is this organization and focus that Ms. Alexievich provides, which takes the project to the realm of truth.For me, the moment that I’ll never forget is when I realized how those that survived, whether or not they became sick and died, would never be the same. And I don’t mean they are forever haunted by the events, as no doubt they are, but rather that they could never truly return to society. They were shunned, set apart, and labeled:“I got home, I’d go dancing. I’d meet a girl I liked and say, ‘Let’s get to know one another.’‘What for? You’re a Chernobylite now. I’d be scared to have your kids.’” - Soldier stationed at Chernobyl (46).“Now I look at my kids: wherever they go, they’ll feel like strangers. My daughter spent a summer at pioneer camp, the other kids were afraid to touch her. ‘She’s a Chernobyl rabbit. She glows in the dark.’ They made her to into the yard at night so they could see if she was glowing” - resident of the village of Khoyniki (195).It was this last excerpt that made me think of Oedipus’ speech to his children. Even those that survive will pay for the disaster that was Chernobyl until their deaths.People often say, “I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy,” and now that I think about my reaction to Chernobyl all those years ago, I feel ashamed. For even though the Cold War was still a reality in 1986, making the Soviets our enemies, this devastation is exactly that … something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.All of this might tend to push you away from reading the book, but I promise you that there is much more here than shame, horror, and tragedy. For this book, more than any other I’ve read recently, made me think more about “truth” and how I live my own life each and every day.For more of my reviews, visit https://readingwritingreacting.wordpress.com

-- I'll get down on my knees to beg you--please, find our Anna Sushko. She lived in our village. In Kozhushki. Her name is Anna Sushko. I'll tell you how she looked, and you'll type it up. She has a hump, and she was mute from birth. She lived by herself. She was sixty. During the time of the transfer they put her in an ambulance and drove her off somewhere. She never learned to read, so we never got any letters from her. The lonely and the sick were put in special places. They hid them. But no one knows where…. The whole village took care of her, like she was a little girl.Unlike most recent Nobel Prize winners, Svetlana Alexievich writes simply and directly, without any tricks of style, and the emotion she distills is heartbreaking. For these words are not her own, but those of survivors of the 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, faithfully transcribed by her down to the silences, tears, and hesitations, and lucidly translated by Keith Gessen. Start at the beginning, or open to any page, and you will find yourself drawn into these poor people's lives: townspeople who go out on their balconies to watch the unusual colors of the reactor fire, farmers forced to leave their crops and cattle, soldiers and firemen drafted in with inadequate protection to clean up the mess. It is very easy to read, and unbearably human. Or starkly human and eventually unbearable to read, because the stories of stolen lives are told in their raw form and never let up.The book is framed by two longish sections headed "A Solitary Human Voice," the accounts of widows, newlyweds and very much in love, seeing their husbands come back and basically rot before their eyes. It continues with monologues, dialogues, choruses, the voices of soldiers, resettlers, children, all meticulously attributed with their real names. There is tragedy, of course, and even more pathos. One returning soldier burns all his clothing except for his army cap which is coveted by his little boy; two years later, the child is dead of a brain tumor. One woman smuggles out her radioactive cat in a suitcase. Another goes to see her doctor:-- "Sweety," I say, "my legs don't move. The joints hurt." "You need to give up your cow, grandma. The milk's poisoned." "Oh, no," I say, "my legs hurt, my knees hurt, but I won't give up the cow. She feeds me."There is rumor and superstition here, but much genuine faith; ignorance and a strange kind of poetry. Bewilderment is only the other side of the coin to a previous belief in the stability of the simple life; sorrow is the obverse of love. The light of the disaster illuminates the lives of ordinary people; I could well believe that this is a better portrait of the Russian soul than any number of novels. There are even touches of characteristic black humor:-- There was a Ukrainian woman at the market selling big red apples. "Come get your apples! Chernobyl apples!" Someone told her not to advertise that, no one will buy them. "Don't worry," she says. "They buy them anyway. Some need them for their mother-in-law, some for their boss."One man tried to write about his experiences. "I sent the story to a journal. They wrote back saying that this wasn't a work of literature, but the description of a nightmare." Which makes me ask the question of Alexievich herself: a nighmare certainly, but is this literature as we know it? It felt more like the raw materials waiting to be made into literature by someone else. Being a theatrical person myself, I kept on wondering how I might select from those monologues and choruses to put them on the stage, set them to music perhaps, at any rate do something to give them shape and overall meaning. The author divides her book into three major sections: The Land of the Dead, The Land of the Living, and Amazed by Sadness. But the texture of the narratives is much the same in each; there is no obvious structural arc, no particular reason why you should continue to subject yourself to such a succession of tales of woe. But perhaps I would be wrong to try to force these stories into a shape that has some meaning. They HAVE no meaning, no larger redemptive purpose. And that is her point.Keith Gessen, the translator, opens with an introduction giving some of the facts and dates of the disaster. But with the exception of a brief preface, Alexievich herself does not. In her equally brief closing section, In Place of an Epilogue, she explains why, and also why she feels the subject is so urgent: because living in a country with 350 atomic bombs, the threat of nuclear holocaust is all too real. Let me end my review, therefore, with her own voice after reading so many others:-- I often thought that the simple fact, the mechanical fact, is no closer to the truth than a vague feeling, rumor, vision. Why repeat the facts--they cover up our feelings. The development of these feelings, the spilling of these feelings past the facts, is what fascinated me. I try to find them, collect them, protect them. These people had already seen what for everyone else is still unknown. I felt like I was recording the future.

Me encantó el diseño de este libro, muy buen libro y muy buena editorial. Solo que llegó sin plástico de protección, pero por la parte de la contaminación creo que estuvo bien, como sea, no llego maltratado

A ganhadora do Nobel de Literatura do ano passado, Svetlana Alexievich, faz em VOICES FROM CHERNOBYL um retrato oral de um desastre de proporções gigantescas e duradouras. Pouco depois do acidente, em 26 de abril de 1986, ela começou a realizar entrevistas com mais de 500 pessoas que envolvidas direta ou indiretamente com a tragédia. O resultado é uma espécie de livro-reportagem, obviamente, muito triste, e muito bem escrito.Ao longo dos depoimentos em primeira pessoa dos mais de 500 entrevistados, vemos, entre outras coisas, uma sociedade em colapso. Estão entre os depoentes liquidadores (pessoas que foram à usina logo depois para fazer a limpeza), bombeiros, políticos, físicos, e pessoas comuns, cujos relatos foram colhidos ao longo de uma década. Originalmente, o livro foi publicado em russo em 1997.O que mais marca as falas são o medo e a incompreensão – talvez mais que a indignação. As histórias pessoais sintetizam em si um momento histórico que beira o colapso social, e Chernobyl emerge como uma espécie de evento simbólico que marca a reta final da União Soviética. O que muito se vê nas falas é o descaso do Estado, preocupado em inventar mentiras para que o ocidente não saiba o que aconteceu. Como diz um dos entrevistados: “não foi apenas um reator que explodiu, mas todo um sistema de valores”.As consequências – fora as físicas e emocionais que já sabemos muito bem – há outras sociais. A região dos arredores (também contaminada e desabitada) servia (serve ainda?) como um dos alvos preferidos para refugiados de guerra procurarem abrigo. Encontram casas vazias, e não ha ninguém que os importune, pois poucas pessoas ousam ir até lá.Voices from Chernobyl é sobre um mundo perplexo, e a forma fragmentada da narrativa é um espelho do desmantelamento da URSS enquanto Alexievch realizava as entrevistas e escrevia esse livro. No fundo, mais do que relatar o desastre atômico, ela revela o triste fracasso de um projeto.

まさに"women and children first"の実践と言える文を読み泣きました。"Get out of here! Go! You have our child."But how can I leave him?He's telling me:"Go! Leave! Save the baby."あってはならない事態に直面した時には、優先順位が生死を分かちます。そんな時に生き残るべきは女（おんな）子どもで、死んでも守らなければならないと分かっていてもなかなか実践できるものではないでしょう。そんな話しも載っています。

Me hizo llorar más de una vez. Un libro que mezcla el horror de una tragedia con un trabajo periodístico de primera calidad y nos deja ver un poco de la cultura eslava, dejando que cada protagonista cuente su historia. Estremecedor.

baseado em entrevistas que a autora fez com sobreviventes que estavam/moravam/trabalhavam em Chernobyl na hora da explosao. Incrivel como a informacao correta nao era divulgada, como pessoas comuns sofreram e sofrem sem saber direito o que ocorreu. Livro pesado, triste, real. Porém, necessário. Um pouco de realidade de vez em quando faz bem para cairmos em n[os mesmos...