The Crime of Chernobyl
The nuclear gulag
by Wladimir Tchertkoff
Translated by Susie Greaves
Layout Design by Dmytro Podolyanchuck
Publishers:
Max Mendor and Maxim Hodak
Edited by Susie Greaves and David Greaves
Copyrights:
I, Wladimir Tchertkoff, give all rights as author to the association
ASSOCIATION “ENFANTS DE TCHERNOBYL BELARUS”
Résidence “les Clairières” Appartement D11,
3 Avenue Pierre Poivre
49 240 AVRILLE
France
© 2016, Glagoslav Publications, United Kingdom
Glagoslav Publications Ltd
88-90 Hatton Garden
EC1N 8PN London
United Kingdom
www.glagoslav.com
ISBN: 978-1-78437-933-9 (Ebook)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This book is in copyright. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means
withoutthe prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise
circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which
it is published without a similar condition, including this condition,
being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Dedication
In Memory of Alla Tipiakova,
Anatoli Saragovets
and Vassili Nesterenko.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the real authors, friends and victims of Chernobyl, whose testimony forms the basis of this book. They are numberless. The whole world needs to know the tragic truth about their destiny, so that the crime, which threatens humanity, is not perpetuated into infinity. The book was published in French, Russian and Japanese, but seemed not to interest publishers in the English-speaking world. I would like to thank Susie Greaves for having made the decision on her own, and without any prospect of finding a publisher, to translate the book into her native language, with rigour and passion. I am also indebted to Glagoslav who offered to publish the translation some years later.
The door is open to our adversaries, the deaf and the blind, to join us on the side of truth. We are all in the same boat.
Note from Translator
I read Wladimir Tchertkoff’s book in 2008 when it was published by Actes Sud and I was certain that it should be translated in order to reach a wider audience. I am very grateful to Glagoslav for their publication of the book, both in English and in Russian. This book is the most comprehensive account of the tragedy of Chernobyl, encompassing the historical, political and medical aspects of the events. I would like to acknowledge the help and support of my sister Alison Katz, and of my husband David Greaves, who shared my dedication to its translation and publication.
Preface
Hundreds of books, long and short, have been written about the Chernobyl tragedy. Few people are left indifferent once they understand a little about the biggest technological catastrophe in history. Wladimir Tchertkoff’s book “The crime of Chernobyl—the nuclear gulag” occupies a central place in this library about Chernobyl.
Many journalists, like Wladimir Tchertkoff, a documentary film maker for Swiss television”, were shocked by what they saw in the areas affected by the radioactive emissions following the explosion at Reactor 4 of the “Lenin” nuclear power plant in Chernobyl (Ukraine). Many witnesses, like Tchertkoff, were revolted by the events that followed in the scientific and political world after the Catastrophe. But very few were able to gather together all the facts to back up these feelings of indignation in a formidable work of documentation.
Tchertkoff’s book does not limit itself to remembering the events, it demands of each of us that we grasp the consequences of the fact that following the Chernobyl catastrophe, the damage to human health and to the natural environment will be felt for hundreds of years over immense areas of the northern hemisphere contaminated by strontium-90 and caesium-137, and for tens of thousands of years by plutonium in a number of areas of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.
Tchertkoff’s book is reminiscent of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s famous book “The Gulag Archipelago”, not simply in its title but in the method used to select and reveal the facts: it is a documentary (supplying names, titles and dates), it is encyclopaedic (the destinies and actions of individuals are accompanied by medical, historical, physical, biological, legal and political documentation) and it is passionate (the author is not а foreign observer but an active participant in events).
The bringing together of all this information, combined with the author’s obvious talent as a writer, makes the publication of Wladimir Tchertkoff’s book an important event for thousands and thousands of people in different countries. For those living in the contaminated territories, or those who have been exposed in any way to dangerous levels of artificial radionuclides, this book will help them towards a better understanding of how to deal with the dangers posed by radiation to themselves and to those closest to them. For those who are trying, in spite of the reaction to the consequences of Chernobyl from governments and international organisations, which was muted, to say the least, to understand more fully and to reduce to a minimum the uncontrolled effects of “atoms for peace”—the chronic exposure to low level ionising radiation, the effects of artificial radiation on health—this book will provide great moral support.
This is an important book for the history of contemporary society: it documents the way in which, during the last quarter of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, political statements diverged, sometimes diametrically, from the real action taken. The corporate interests of the nuclear industry and short-term “political expediency” took precedence over safety considerations and over the lives of millions of people. Finally, the book contains many striking descriptions of human behaviour: cowardice and heroism, baseness and self sacrifice, selflessness and villainy, a sense of duty and irresponsibility.
This book is a revised and fuller version of the 2006 French edition. It is based on documents from the hundreds of hours of film footage used in the seven documentary films made about the Chernobyl catastrophe by the inseparable team, Wladimir Tchertkoff—Emanuela Andreoli.
I am certain that no-one who reads Tchertkoff’s book will remain indifferent. The first French edition resulted in the setting up of the international organisation “For the independence of the World Health Organisation” (IndependentWHO—Health and Nuclear Power), and the daily (!) picket, still taking place today, in front of the World Health Organisation headquarters in Geneva: for more than eight years the Hippocratic Vigil has demanded that the WHO tell the truth about the consequences of Chernobyl and now of Fukushima. The WHO, linked by an agreement signed in 1959 to the International Atomic Energy Agency does not have the courage to do so. I am convinced that the publication of this book will mobilise more people to take part in the struggle for the truth against the nuclear deceit for the sake of this generation’s health and the health of future generations.
Professor Alexey Yablokov
Director of Programme for Nuclear and Radiation Safety at the International Social Ecological Union, Member of the European Commission on Radiation Risk,Corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
11 Jul
y 2013
Petruchovo village (Ryazan region, Russia)
PROLOGUE
Who in this world is able to answer the terrible obstinacy of the crime if not the obstinacy of the witness?
ALBERT CAMUS, Actuelles II
“The future belongs to those with the longest memory”.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
The authors of this book are the victims of the Chernobyl disaster that took place on 26 April 1986, the peasant communities whose voices I recorded in the north of the Ukraine and in the forests in the south of Belarus. They are the millions of people who eat caesium-137 every day in their food. They are the young mothers, contaminated themselves, who unknowingly are a source of poison for the new confident life forming inside them. They are the children who, even if they appear healthy when they are born, are condemned to become ill as they grow up, because they eat radionuclides morning, noon and night… They are the “liquidators”, the unsung heroes of Europe, who suffer all the unknown illnesses of the atom. Hundreds of thousands of people are ill, tens of thousands have died young and continue to die in unimaginable suffering… And they are the doctors and scientists, the few who have not submitted to the nuclear lobby, who, fortified by their knowledge, are engaged in a battle for the truth. As an Italian journalist, a Russian speaker, educated in France, it was by chance that I began to pass on these forbidden truths, as part of a fragile human chain made up, in the East, of activists in a country trapped in radioactive contamination and in the West, by activists who support them against scientific lies. It is with the help and the contribution of these men, women and children that I, wishing only to bring clarity and truth, am able to present the documents and testimonies that are in my possession thanks to them. Because lies and secrecy surround the worst technological catastrophe in History and threaten the future of humanity.
This book also recounts the struggle of two Belarusian scientists who risked their careers, their health, their own personal safety and that of their families to come to the aid of the population that had been contaminated. The physicist, Vassili Nesterenko, and the doctor and anatomopathologist, Yury Bandazhevsky, forced into the role of dissidents because the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna prohibits the recognition of the harmful effects of low dose ionising radiation on health, were persecuted for their opposition to the official dogma. The first was a member of the Academy of Sciences in Belarus, but with his career in ruins, he continued to fight independently to protect children from radiation in the contaminated villages1. The second was condemned to eight years in prison by a military tribunal, after he revealed the pathogenic effects on vital organs of low doses of radioactive caesium incorporated through food. Amnesty International recognised him as a prisoner of conscience.
1 Fate did not decree that the scientist V.B. Nesterenko should live to see the book appear in English. He died on 25th August 2008. “One can only marvel at the unbelievable determination, energy, talent for organisation, and indomitability of this great man who created Belrad under conditions of unprecedented tyranny and repression from those in power who fear the truth about the terrible consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. Today, we can say that Vassili Nesterenko has entered the ranks of the great humanists of our time: Schweitzer, Ghandi, Sakharov…” Words spoken at the funeral oration by A.V. Yablokov
The international organisations still refuse to verify the validity of the research findings of these two scientists and will not even consider the radioprotection measures that they recommend that might, at least, save the lives of the 500,000 children living in the contaminated villages in Belarus.
PART ONE
IGNORANCE
Chapter I
MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE
On the morning of Thursday 29th November 1990, four and a half years after the accident, we had a meeting with Alla Tipiakova at the school in Poliske, 68 kilometres west of the nuclear power station at Chernobyl. We had come to film a conversation with the pupils in her class. When we arrived, she was waiting for us outside in the drizzling rain. She got into our bus and made it quite clear that the step she was taking would probably end her career as a teacher. Then she asked us to film what she had to say.
A. Tipiakova.—I’ve been a primary school teacher for thirty five years. I know everything about the lives of the children in my class. There are 22 pupils in the class. Half the class is always absent. One little girl is in hospital permanently. Over the last two years her diabetes has got so bad that she needs two injections of insulin every day. She has been given every available treatment, but there is no real hope. I have a boy who, over the last year, has had such violent asthma attacks that he almost suffocates and spits blood. All of the children, one hundred per cent, have got abnormal blood chemistry. We have seen their clinical records. Nearly all the children, about 80% of them, have diseases of the thyroid. Hyperplasia of the first or second degree. All of them have dizzy spells. All of them experience nausea. Fainting is very common. Nosebleeds have become an everyday occurrence. Yesterday, when I spoke to them to prepare them for the meeting with you, they had tears in their eyes and told me that they faint in the street. They all know where their heart is. Children who know where their heart is! Because they experience stabbing pains in the heart. One little girl told me: “I feel as if my head is blowing up like a balloon. Then it tightens up, everything creaks and I feel as if I’m going to die”. Another girl told me that her blood pressure is either too high or it’s too low and she has to lie down. There is a little boy, Seriozha, who has started to stammer. He is already so sickly, so weak. He is one of twins and one of them already thinks of himself as being older. The children wanted to tell you all about it. Because they know…
Q.—Why can’t we meet them?
—That’s what I wanted to explain… I had told the children, very calmly, that some people from another country were coming: “A television company. You can talk to them about your family, your situation, your thoughts, your troubles, and about your health. You can confide in them”. The children agreed. They were very pleased about it, especially as it was something new, something they had never done before. This morning I went to talk to the head teacher about it. I told her that someone was coming to see us, and I asked permission to meet you. She categorically refused: “How could you invite foreigners in to hear about the children’s health without my authorisation?” I replied, “They aren’t foreigners. They’re people who have come to help us!”
—But that’s exactly what you were doing, weren’t you, asking for permission?
—Yes. I told her about it straight away. Before I’d even taken my coat off, I went into the staffroom and gaily announced: “Today, we’re going to have a little show…”. “What! We’re working and you’re having fun?” After a telephone call to someone, I don’t know who it was, she called me into the staffroom a second time. And then she told me categorically no. So there had been a “no” from the regional office of the education authority. They told me there was to be no direct contact between you and the children. That upset me beyond all measure. I know my children, they weren’t going to complain about anything… And even if they had, why shouldn’t they? We can’t keep on with this slave-like mentality, it time to break free. We told the children it was cancelled and they went home very disappointed.
But I want to talk to you about something else. For a long time, we’ve been living here hoping that we were going to be evacuated, hoping to escape this circle of death. And at the beginning we were promised the earth. Pretty soon we noticed that nearly all the local managers had got themselves housed elsewhere while we were being lulled to sleep with fairy tales. We were told everything was normal, everything was fine and that there was no reason in theory not to live here. The adults will manage somehow. We have our roots here, this is our land… we will die here and be buried here… But we have to save the children. And now the children know, because they hea
r their families talking about it, that it is very unlikely that Poliske will be evacuated. They don’t trust us any more because they’ve been told lies. Today one of my children said to me: “If I had to write an essay today about a happy childhood based on the last four years, I couldn’t do it”. There is no happy childhood round here. They have forgotten how to smile, they have forgotten joy. They aren’t the same, they have become aggressive, disobedient. They don’t do their homework like they should. All of this is so hard for them that even we don’t understand our own children any more.
We really need help to save our children, get them out of here. We need to appeal to international opinion. We are deeply grateful for the gifts that they send us. Our children have been to France, Italy, Germany, Cuba, Bulgaria. The United States also has sent us food, vitamins for the children. But these are crumbs to keep us quiet. The reality is that if we stay here, we are condemned to death, we are hostages and we will all die here, our children with us.
Thank you. Send our good wishes to everyone who is helping us. We know that most people on earth are generous and understanding. In spite of borders, political ambitions and obstacles, they’ve opened up their hearts to us. But these are emotional gestures, heart felt…. But it’s as if the policies, that might actually resolve our problems, are being blocked somewhere and at the political level no-one’s interested in us.
I want to tell you a little bit about my grandson. He is one year and nine months old. He knows all about health centres. He has chronic amygdalitis, chronic rhinitis, chronic pharyngitis, all sorts of bacterial infections. He’s so young and he already has all these illnesses. When you ask him “Where does it hurt?” he opens his mouth: “My throat hurts”. He’s less than two years old. Sometimes he doesn’t speak for a couple of days and then on the third day, he speaks in a baritone voice, and the next day he makes little cries like a mouse. His parents are so worried about him. We are doing everything we can to save his life. And what about families with lots of children? In my class, I have families of five, six children. Three or four, is the norm. What about families where the father and the mother are terrified for each one of them? Their lives are condemned...I want to tell the whole world. I want to tell anyone who has a heart. We no longer believe our children can be saved if they stay here. You have to help us. Maybe there are centres in Europe that could look after them properly. They could invite the mothers and their little children. Here, no-one will have them. This is the most vulnerable group in society, young children and babies. They need medicines and special care.
The Crime of Chernobyl- The Nuclear Gulag Page 1