3. A FAMILY IN KRASNOPOLIE
The housewife.—The food they give us has improved. We get clean milk. Before, they always brought the milk in large cans. Now we get milk from Mogilev in cartons, crème fraîche too. Everything’s packaged. It’s the same with the meat. It has to be said that from the point of view of food provisions, we have almost been too well served, apart from this year when supply was a bit irregular. But it’s the same everywhere. Even in the shops, there are shortages everywhere… What’s going on in the Soviet Union? I can tell you, as a woman, I am worried about the future. My husband and I would like to have another child but we’ve decided to… not to have one… It’s terrible, ultimately, when a child dies before your very eyes. It’s unthinkable.
Q.—Has anyone explained clearly to you the degree of danger here?
The husband.—No
The housewife.—That’s the worst thing about it… When the accident happened, if someone had told us straight away that we mustn’t go outdoors, that we should do this or that…Up to now, there has only been the odd short newspaper article here or there. At the moment I couldn’t tell you what levels of radioactivity there are in Krasnopolie. We haven’t got any machines to measure it with. They gave three dosimeters to the Town Hall, that’s all. Where I work, there are none. Why? Everyone should have one. We live with uncertainty.
Q.—You don’t trust the news?
The housewife.—They contradict each other all the time. To make things simple, I just go with the flow. This year, in our region we have changed president three times. 90% of the politicians have changed. They’ve left. You want to know why? Who would want to live in the middle of this radiation? Anyone who could leave has left. They make a lot of promises and then they leave. The local politicians take advantage of the situation to improve their standard of life. Why would they bother with anyone else? When our children visit uncontaminated areas of the country, even in Belarus, near here, they are treated like lepers. People are afraid to touch them; they make them take their clothes off. They won’t let them come in the house, they take away their sweets.
The husband.—At school the children refuse to sit on the same bench with them. They call them “glow worms” or “fireflies” Often they have to return home.
Q.—Have you had any health problems following the disaster?
The wife.—For the first two years, I had absolutely no energy. I just wanted to sleep all the time. Terrible headaches. Then gradually, it seems that you get used to it; you learn to live with it. But if I ever go away for a month or more to a clean area, when I return to the Krasnopolie zone, I start to feel the same way again. The terrible headaches come back. Then it passes. Maybe the organism adapts.
Where I work, everyone complains of aching bones, in their arms, and in their legs, in their joints. Maybe we are just imagining it, I don’t know. But then why does everyone ache in the same places? What causes it, I don’t know.
Q.—Have your ideas about life, about the future, changed?
The wife.—I don’t feel we have a future at all. I’m frightened. And not just because of the radiation. If it was only the radiation, I would have just abandoned everything, Krasnopolie, the house… I would have gone to another area. And I would have lived there happily. I’ve got family all over the place in the Soviet Union. But in the present situation, where would I go? What would I find?
Q.—The same conditions everywhere in the country.
The wife.—Of course, of course… I’m frightened. I am so indignant about the position Russian women find themselves in. How humiliated they are. They are supposed to provide everything when everything is in short supply. Apart from that, women really want to look nice sometimes, to wear nice clothes, to go out… We can’t allow ourselves even the basics! How did we get to this? We’re working just the same as before. Who brought the country to this state? I don’t know. The radiation, of course, we understand. Maybe it wasn’t adequately monitored, like they say. Everything is bureaucratised. No-one has to answer for their actions, for what they do in their job. We have become irresponsible.
Chapter V
DISINFORMATION IN KIEV
The solution […] would be to see a new generation of people who would have learnt to accommodate ignorance and uncertainty…
Technical report, No 151, WHO,
Geneva, 1958, page 59.
1. THE MARKET IN KIEV
On this Saturday in November 1990, crowds of citizens across all the eleven time zones in the USSR are trying to survive within the free market introduced by Gorbachev. Perestroika is in full swing. In an imitation of Lenin’s 1921 new economic policy (the NEP), the new leader of the Kremlin has opened its doors to new forms of capitalist economics which co-exist with the empty shops of state socialism. Denationalising small business, allowing private enterprise is an attempt to get the blood circulating in the body of the country that had stagnated under Brezhnev. That day in Kiev, the historic capital of Holy Russia, where, ten centuries before, Prince Vladimir, who had converted to the orthodox Byzantine church, baptised the Russian people in the Dnieper River, the huge market was bustling.
With the murmur of the crowd in the background, two old women are selling their onions to passers-by. A young woman at a stall on one side is selling potatoes.
Q.—How do they monitor your produce?
—These potatoes are from my vegetable garden. If they had been too contaminated I would not have been given scales to sell them. They measure the levels of radioactivity and if they are “clean” they give me a certificate that I have to present before they will give me scales. Then I can sell them. And there are also inspectors going round, monitoring the stalls.
—Your area was not contaminated?
—It seems that where we live is clean.
—Do you know what radionucleides are?
—Invisible particles, which are bad for you. Everybody knows that.
—Do you feel safe, or do you feel that there is a strange danger around you?
—Everyone feels unsafe. Even now.
—Are you absolutely confident about the food that you eat? The meat, the milk?
—Me personally, I’m not really confident. But what can we do, there’s nothing else to eat.
A queue has formed in front of the laboratory that measures food produce destined to be sold. Everyone is presenting food that has come from their own vegetable gardens. A woman is making notes behind a counter. An old man, poorly dressed, holds out some apples in front of the counter. The woman scolds him.
—They should be in a bag, grandad!
—A bag… Can you give me one, please?
—You need a bag ... OK, I’ll get you one. How many apples have you got?
—About ten kilos.
—Where are they from?
—My house, over there, under the Patton Bridge, next to the river. I’ve got some apple trees.
—Are you retired?
—I’m a war invalid.
After the test has been done, the old man goes off with his certificate to get some scales. A customer has been watching.
Q.—Do you think it’s safe?
—I don’t know…We trust her. She doesn’t have any reason to mislead us. But perhaps they are not monitoring everything?
A smartly dressed woman has just bought some carrots. They are covered in soil. She is young, beautiful and seems tense. When we suggest that they should be cleaned, the earth removed and then washed, she becomes aggressive.
—So according to you, the carrot itself isn’t radioactive? Really? You think radioactivity can be washed off, is that what you think? You wash the food and then it’s no longer radioactive? Come on… you can’t wash radioactivity off with water!
Q.—I’m talking about the radioactivity deposited on the outside.
—You can’t wash radioactivity off
with water! It doesn’t wash off. You can’t wash radioactivity off with water because radioactivity, it’s like that… (she makes a fluttering gesture with her hand in the air).
Q.—The radioactivity is carried in particles of matter, in dust.
—I’m telling you, you can’t remove radioactivity with water! I don’t believe it. You can say what you want. Radiation isn’t dirt, it isn’t dust, it’s made up of ions. You must know that.
Q.—But they exist in physical matter ...You must have been told that. You don’t believe it?
—Yes but… particles… alpha… I don’t believe it. Those particles can’t be washed. It’s obvious.
I remembered that in Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, everywhere in Europe apart from France, people were warned of the danger and told to wash vegetables, especially leafy varieties. But I too, like this woman, I could not conceive of radioactivity except in its immaterial form. Yet the evening before, in the laboratory at the Scientific Research and Radiological Medicine Institute in Kiev, the good witches, who were analysing the liquidators’ clothing, had cut them up into tiny pieces, and had showed me, in material form, radionuclides of caesium-137 that they had extracted. A thin silvery red film in the little metal flat cups, 2 or 3 cm in diameter. I had put my Geiger counter next to it and it had started to beep and the needle moved straight away from 0.114 μSv/h (natural background radiation) to 30 or 40…
2. SCIENCE IN THE GOOD WITCHES’ LAIR
In the laboratory at the Institute for Scientific Research and Radiological Medicine in Kiev, an elderly woman in a white lab coat turns over some grass in an electric oven. It is a sample brought in by the physicist Volodymyr Tykhyy from a site where a Greenpeace medical centre is going to be built. The grass is not contaminated. In a pan are some carbonised mushrooms. There are many samples of all sorts piled up on the floor in the next room; they have been collected from the environment, including from vegetable plots. There are several women bustling about around the pans and the ovens.
Q.—Can you explain what you are doing here with all these instruments? It looks like the witch’s scene in the Shakespeare play?
—We are like witches actually. I’ll tell you why. The samples need to be carbonised in stainless steel containers. Ordinary pans do the job very well. That container is for sterilising surgical instruments. The oven is just an ordinary kitchen oven. It’s the only way to do it in the first stage of carbonising. Suppose we were doing it on a gas stove. It’s impossible to maintain a steady temperature: any increase in the size of the flame might cause the caesium to vaporise. It needs to just simmer very gently, so that the radionuclides don’t vaporise.
—So it is actually the best scientific equipment?
—I can’t say it’s the best, but for the first stage of the process, we haven’t found anything better. Naturally it would be better if we had hermetically sealed containers but that’s not possible. It needs good ventilation. We would very much like to have modern equipment but we don’t even think about it.
—Is it dangerous using this equipment?
—It’s not dangerous if the samples are not very radioactive. But if we are burning samples like the ones we showed you, if we are burning the liquidators’ clothes or very contaminated samples, then yes, it can be dangerous. You have to do it extremely carefully.
—How do you get on with the local people? Do you go into the contaminated villages? Do they trust you?
—The local people trust us. Maybe because I go with my team. I’m not young any more and I try to explain everything as clearly as possible. They are more likely to believe me, looking like someone’s grandmother, than an institution. We go there with our measuring equipment and we show them what it reveals. After I’ve measured the milk, I do the calculation in front of them on a piece of paper and I say “If you drink all this milk you will receive this much contamination. You shouldn’t drink more than one glass a day. It’s better not to give this to your children”.
—Are the people here suffering from “radiophobia” as the authorities say?
—No, I don’t think there has ever been widespread “radiophobia”. It’s exaggerated. But they are frightened. Especially the people in Kiev. About 80% of the population are very frightened, they think the town has very high levels of radioactivity. Which is not true. It’s because they have never been told the truth. Until very recently, our work was kept absolutely secret and the level of training in health was very low. Everything was secret. Anyway our people know very little about these sorts of things. Nothing. Even specialists, such as physicists, know nothing about radiological risks. They hear the word radioactivity and there’s an outcry. But they know nothing about levels, effects or how to protect themselves from it... These things are not easy to explain to people. And, even teachers, academics with scientific qualifications, understand very little.
—Because we have no experience of the way in which it acts on the organism?
—Yes, that’s it. We have no experience and our knowledge is insufficient.
3. THE MAIN SQUARE IN KIEV
A meeting has just taken place in the centre of Kiev and a lively discussion is going on among the demonstrators.
—They hide everything from us. They say that it’s all within acceptable levels. In reality, Kiev is contaminated. Especially when it’s sunny, you can see layers of contamination in the atmosphere, in the air. Everywhere in Kiev is contaminated with radioactvity, even though they say everything’s fine. They’ve shown us a map, they say that all the areas around Kiev are not normal, but strangely in Kiev, everything’s fine. They’re lying; the Party is lying to us all the time.
—Tell me, you can see the radioactivity with the naked eye?
—Well no, you can’t see it at all.
—So why do you say that everywhere is contaminated and no-one knows anything?
—Because the radiological laboratories take measurements, but they are never allowed to publish the results. There is a cover-up. The democratic press itself talks about it. They say in the press that the city is contaminated.
—Exactly. They say that 3000 patches have been identified in the town, but that doesn’t mean they’re lying to us all the time, or that you can see radioactivity on the rooftops. That’s rubbish. I think that since the accident and its immediate effects, the level of radioactivity in Kiev is within normal limits. In any case, I personally believe the official information. I don’t know about the food products that arrive in the shops because I don’t know who is monitoring that.
—The situation is very alarming because suddenly a lot of people are experiencing health problems. The situation is very, very bad. I know because my wife works at the Kiev Institute of Medicine. They aren’t publishing their figures, and every month they hide the number of deaths caused by the radiation. They are hiding it.
—Do you believe the information put out by Green World?51
51 Green World was an association set up in 1987, in response to the Chernobyl disaster, which then became the Green Party in Ukraine
—Yes, we trust what they say. Because it was set up by people who suffered the effects of the accident, not by those in power who take all the medicines for themselves. The people in power evacuated their own children a few days after the accident, but they forced the children of the town to take part in the May Day processions. None of their children were there.
Chapter VI
SWISS PERESTROIKA IN A SOVIET HOSPITAL
To the great dishonour of the UN agencies and of the Western governments who failed to act, civil society came to the aid of the victims. Their initiatives were sometimes extremely effective though insufficient given the scale of the disaster. Before learning about one of these initiatives, we needed first of all to distance ourselves from another source of disinformation.
On 6th March 1991, the editors at Swiss Italian Radio-Televi
sion received some propaganda in the form of a cassette tape, accompanied by the following instructions:
SWISS ATOMIC ENERGY ASSOCIATION—ASPEA
The Soviet Union Atomic Energy Agency has supplied us with an English copy of the new film Chernobyl as viewed from the 90’s which was produced by experts at the Kourtchatov Institute of Atomic Energy in Moscow. The film is of particular interest and value given the context of the 5th anniversary of the accident in Ukraine, and we are sending you the enclosed tape for broadcast. French and German versions, as well as the English version enclosed will be available soon in U-matic format for Pal, Secam and NTSC systems.
In our opinion, this unique document provides good material for television programmes about the accident at Chernobyl, which is why we would like to draw it to the attention of the editors concerned. There are no copyright problems as the Soviet Union had relinquished these rights to the European Nuclear Society (ENS) for viewing by the general public.
SWISS ATOMIC ENERGY ASSOCIATION
Administration Dept
Our documentary was ready to be broadcast. We replied with the following press release:
This officially authorised Soviet information describes a radiologically controlled situation, no longer presenting a danger from a scientific, medical and social point of view.
The documentary Noi di Chernobyl (We of Chernobyl), the result of an investigation undertaken in Ukraine and Belarus in November 1990, paints a different picture from that of the Soviet experts: it contradicts in particular the claims made concerning the safety and protection of those exposed to radioactivity . The conditions of imprisonment in which hundreds of thousands of people live, disoriented by years of lies on the part of officials and manipulated by local authorities who have no interest in evacuating them; the tragedy of children who are becoming more and more ill and are dying in the contaminated territories; the scandal of the 600,000 liquidators that the Soviet state refuses to care for medically and to help, after they were employed in useless decontamination work over enormous areas that are still radioactive today. These facts, reported by correspondents of the RTSI (Radio Television de la Suisse italienne) are as much an indictment as a call for assistance: a plea for our attention and for our help from the citizens of the Soviet Union who denounce the role and the responsibilities of the International Atomic Energy Agency of the United Nations.
The Crime of Chernobyl- The Nuclear Gulag Page 18