Candi's Reviews > Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

"Chernobyl is like the war of all wars. There’s nowhere to hide. Not underground, not underwater, not in the air."

While cheerful carols played, holiday lights sparkled, and countless dollars were being spent on mostly unnecessary gadgets and superfluous luxuries, I read this account of one of the worst disasters ever to afflict our planet. I sunk further into the funk that threatened the existence of my Christmas tree and that brought my own holiday shopping to a screeching halt. It seemed absurd to parade around with bags in hand while the voices of the survivors of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion echoed incessantly within my head.

Svetlana Alexievich, Ukrainian journalist and winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature, has compiled a most remarkable narrative of the catastrophe from the people who witnessed the horror firsthand. Moms, dads, wives, husbands, children, scientists, liquidators, politicians, and even refugees to the area were interviewed and asked to speak candidly. The stories are full of sorrow, shock, bewilderment, anger, and occasionally stoical humor. All were straightforward and unembellished. I sensed that each carried the weight of genuine feeling.

I can’t write anything more meaningful than what the sufferers themselves have already said. Please listen to their voices:

"I killed her. I. She. Saved. My little girl saved me, she took the whole radioactive shock into herself, she was like the lightning rod for it. She was so small."

"The future is destroying me, not the past."

"You’re a normal person! And then one day you’re suddenly turned into a Chernobyl person. Into an animal, something that everyone’s interested in, and that no one knows anything about. You want to be like everyone else, and now you can’t."

"I want to bear witness: my daughter died from Chernobyl. And they want us to forget about it."

"I suddenly started wondering about what’s better—to remember or to forget?"

"If we’d beaten Chernobyl, people would talk about it and write about it more. Or if we’d understood Chernobyl. But we don’t know how to capture any meaning from it. We’re not capable of it. We can’t place it in our human experience or our human time-frame."

"We’re all—peddlers of the apocalypse. Big and small. I have these images in my mind, these pictures."

"There are ten million Belarussians, and two million of us live on poisoned land. It’s a huge devil’s laboratory."

"This level of lying, this incredible level, with which Chernobyl is connected in our minds, was comparable only to the level of lies during the big war."

"Chernobyl is the catastrophe of the Russian mind-set… it wasn’t just the reactor that exploded, but an entire system of values."

"The kids draw Chernobyl. The trees in the pictures grow upside-down. The water in the rivers is red or yellow. They’ll draw it and then cry."

"… everyone was raised to think that the peaceful Soviet atom was as safe as peat or coal. We were people chained by fear and prejudices. We had the superstition of our faith."

"I used to write poems. I was in love with a girl. In fifth grade. In seventh grade I found out about death."

It’s not difficult to be shocked by the statistics of the disaster. You can look those up anywhere and your jaw will drop. But to understand what ordinary people like me and you went through is absolutely heart-rending. Reading their words, commiserating with their feelings of misery and fear, and knowing that the suffering for many of these people still continues – that is what makes this so impactful. Naturally, I began to think “What if…” But that’s just too painful to ponder any further right now. When I’m feeling braver, I will watch the miniseries I’ve heard so much about. I suspect it will be more frightening than any Stephen King adaptation could ever be.

"What should I tell you? Death is the fairest thing in the world. No one’s ever gotten out of it. The earth takes everyone—the kind, the cruel, the sinners. Aside from that, there’s no fairness on earth."