2. THE AUTHORITIES AT STARAYA KAMENKA
There are two villages on either side of the river Sozh. Gaishin is on a hill overlooking the river to the west. To the east, lower down towards Russia, Staraya Kamenka suffers agony during the seven or eight months of the year when it is cut off from the rest of the world.
Conversation between Tamara Golubina, president of the local council of Staraya Kamenka, Valeri Drosdov, president of the regional executive committee, Nesterenko and Lisa.
Golubina.—Now, during this season, we can get to the district administrative centre , but in winter we can’t get there. They bring us bread from Krasnopolie once a week. They bring food to the shop once a week. Last year, the roads remained blocked. Only the main road that goes to Krasnopolie was cleared. Our road that links up all the villages was not passable. So what can we do? The people who live in other villages come here on horseback to buy whatever it is they need. If they haven’t got a horse, they come on foot, and then there are people who can’t get here at all. We stock up for the week. That’s what I do in winter, I buy bread for the week.
Nesterenko.—There are five or six villages here, is that right?
Golubina.—There are nine villages. Under our administration. We need to get out of here…
Drosdov.—The sooner the better.
Golubina.—The sooner the better because we don’t live here, we just survive. When we lost the collective farm, life became very difficult.
Drosdov.—We lost it because of Chernobyl, because the main village Starinka, where the collective farm was situated, the village council, the whole infrastructure, the social centre, everything had been entirely evacuated. Here, at Staraya Kamenka, only a sub division of the collective farm was left.
Golubina.—And the sub division had to be evacuated with all the rest.
Nesterenko.—The collective farm was managed from where?
Drosdov.—From Starinka, in the village of Starinka. It was evacuated and buried.
Neseterenko.—How many people lived there?
Golubina.—About 300 people… The farms were doing really well.
Nesterenko.—Strange… Why not here?.. How many curies were there?
Goboulina.—20…at Starinka. At Dobrianka there were 28.
Nesterenko.—And here?
Gobulina.—Here? 8.
Q.—But why are the inhabitants more contaminated here than at Gaishin?
Gobulina.—At Gaishin, people have jobs, they get a salary, so they have money to buy food. Our people have nothing to buy food with. They go into the woods, they pick mushrooms, berries. They hunt. They fish.
And they work in the woods cutting logs. Where else can they work? There is no collective farm any more, so they work in the woods. Fifteen, twenty people have work in Gaishin, on the other side of the river. But they only started work in June, because the river was flooded. Our fields get flooded and you have to cross the fields to get to Gaishin. They take a long time to dry out. There are ditches and everything. Besides it takes time to put the bridges back, for the road to be passable. So our people could only start work in June. They worked in June, July and August. Perhaps they will be able to work in September too. Then it’s finished. The rains come, and the fields can’t be crossed, and the floating bridge will be taken off and everything will stop.
Nesterenko.—OK, in winter the pontoons are lifted. But can’t you get there through Slavgorod?
Golubina.—Last year, we went through Slavgorod. But it’s just more expense for the collective: taking the bus there and back. Fifteen kilometres on our side, fifteen on the other, that’s 30 kms to Gaishin: 60 kilometres there and back for ten to fifteen people.
Q.—Have you got a school? How many children?
Golubina.—Twenty nine and about forty pre-school children.
Q.—So, children are still being born here?
Golubina.—Yes, they are being born.
Q.—Are the people here aware of the radioactivity? Are they afraid?
Golubina.—No-one notices it. We live with it.
Q.—Aren’t they worried about having children?
Golubina.—I’m sure they worry, yes.
Q.—But they still have them.
Golubina.—What else can they do?
Nesterenko.—Life isn’t going to come to a stop.
Golubina.—Whether you’re worried or not, you have babies. We were afraid too when our little one was born, we had to check to see everything was in order...For the moment, everything seems to be normal.
Drosdov.—Last year, in our ten villages, the contamination in milk was above the admissible level.
Nesterenko.—More than 100…
Drosdov.—More than 100 Bq/l. At Dubno there were two samples of milk that were contaminated, 106 and 120 Bq.
Q.—In an area that is contaminated like this one, isn’t the Ministry of Health supposed to bring a spectrometer and measure? How many times?
Nesterenko.—Once a year minimum. And on the same subject, there is a Council of Ministers decree that says the president of each collective farm should be taking measurements.
Drosdov.—There is a spectrometer at the local hospital, which worked up until 2000. The technicians said it couldn’t be repaired. So at the moment we have no spectrometer in our region.
Q.—In principle, the spectrometer should be brought to the villages?
Nesterenko.—No. In principle, the president of the collective farm should accompany the inhabitants in a bus and get them measured once a year. That is an official decree. Most seriously, the Ministry of Health states—I read it in the minutes of Parliament in April—that 98% of inhabitants in this area have been measured.
Gobulina.—Our people? No-one has taken them anywhere. When we had a machine that worked at the local hospital, people went. They were simply invited to get measured. If anyone was going to town on business, they would be told: “Go and get yourself measured”.
Q.—Did all the inhabitants get themselves measured once a year, or not?
Goboulina.—No, they didn’t all go.
Q.—So, the Ministry of Health is not telling the truth.
Nesterenko.—Of course not!
Q.—And if the measurement exceeds admissible levels, what happens then?
Nesterenko.—They have to write a report to the regional executive committee, contact the family, talk to them, find out what caused the accumulation, and give advice. We made sure that the CORE programme included the necessity of buying spectrometers for the villages of Slavgorod and Bragin. We made a proposal to the European Commission to give us funding to buy them, because they are absolutely indispensable. But it would be better of course if they were not fixed but mobile like ours. I am convinced that we need to approach the inhabitants rather than the other way round. Say to them: “OK, we measured you a month ago, today we’re going to measure you again. And we will tell you the result straight away”. The president of the collective farm can send the results to the public health department. They are obliged, on the basis of these results to take charge of anyone whose level is above 200 Bq/kg in body weight.
Q.—Have food products been measured here?
Gobulina.—The health authorities in Slavgorod measure food products. The milk almost every month. Other products, when required. People take their potatoes and their beetroot, anything they have grown.
Q.—Is it done here in the village?
Gobulina.—They take it there. Then they send us the information.
Q.—But on a day to day basis, families don’t know exactly what they’re eating?
Gobulina.—No, of course not.
Nesterenko.—To do it properly there would need to be a radiometer here at the clinic. So that everyone could come and measure.
Gobulina.—Before, a long time ago, it was like that here.
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Nesterenko.—Of course, at Staraya Kamenka, even at Gaishin.
Gobulina.—We used to send someone from here to Minsk. They would receive training at your Belrad Institute and we had a dosimetrist at the clinic. Then everything disappeared, I don’t know why…
Nesterenko.—Then Rolevich147 arrived, in 1994. At the beginning, we had 370 centres like that.
147 I.V. Rolevich was the vice-president of ComChernobyl during the years when 285 out of a total of 370 of Nesterenko’s centres were closed. It was I.V. Rolevich who took the decision personally. Rolevich contributed to CEPN publications during the years 1996–1999.
Gobulina.—I know that afterwards they came and put all the machines under lock and key…
Q.—Vassili Borissovich, you had a local centre here…
Nesterenko.—We had centres here and in Gaishin as well. That’s how we did it… At the time the government introduced as a general rule, a dosimetrist in these villages. They had to monitor the milk and the meat…Afterwards they announced it was finished, there was no danger any more. This is what they claimed in 1993148, and by 1994, there were only 180 centres left out of the 370. By 1995 there were only 90, and now there are just 56, financed by ComChernobyl.
148 In 1993, Julich published its reassuring results, which omitted these villages. See p. 160.
Q.—Did Rolevich close them because the government has no money or for another reason?
Nesterenko.—I think in this situation, the main reason is money of course. Afterwards, they started to look for reasons to justify it. Instead of saying: “There is no money, let’s find a way to keep these centres going”, they said: “The danger has passed, we don’t need them any more”. It’s Rolevich that made that mistake. When the government closed my centres, I made appeals abroad. Today, we have 19 centres that are maintained through partnerships between German and Belarusian schools. The German children make cakes, knit, and sell what they make, and collect the money. Here, we needed to do the same thing: find a partner. For example the German association Burgwedel, near Hanover, helps the village of Polessie in the Chechersk district (5–15 Ci/km2). They came last year, twenty eight people: “We want to judge the situation for ourselves”. They talked to the teachers, the town council, the president of the collective farm and they made a five-year agreement. They decided to invite children to go and stay in Germany. They bought and installed a greenhouse near the school to grow clean vegetables. We invited doctors, agronomists, forestry experts, all our local specialists, and we passed on our experience about the best way to help. It’s an example of the kind of project that shows how even in these contaminated areas, we achieved a six-fold reduction in the radioactive load in people living here. (He is talking to Golubina). We will try to find you a partner. In my opinion, the dosimetrist and the doctor should be the last to leave a village. Unfortunately that’s not the adopted policy. They closed the centre and took everything away, all the equipment and the skills.
3. ADULTS COME TO BE MEASURED
The manager of the shop and an elegant young mother come to be measured at the school, where Nesterenko’s technicians have set up the spectrometer.
Q.—How much did you measure?
The elegant mother.—A lot. 736.
Q.—And you?
The manager.—580.
The elegant mother.—My son, the youngest, had even more than 200. Has he got less now?
The dosimetrist.—Yes, half as much, but still too much.
The elegant mother.—It’s odd, so quick…Let’s see how much I measure, now.
Q.—Have you changed your diet since the last time?
The elegant mother.—No. Everything we measured was at admissible levels. We were told that it was practically uncontaminated and that we could eat it.
The dosimetrist.—I can see on the screen that your measurement is very high… It will be less than last time but still a lot.
(Nesterenko comes in)
Nesterenko.—What’s new here? Ah, it’s the Zhuravliov family. How much has she accumulated?
The dosimetrist.—385.
Nesterenko.—Is that all? ... So tell me, what have you eaten in the last month?
The elegant mother.—The same as before.
Nesterenko.—That’s impossible, if the level is lower.
The elegant mother.—No really, nothing’s changed.
Nesterenko.—There have been a lot of apples recently. Maybe you have been drinking a lot of apple juice? ...
The elegant mother.—No, we ate some apples, but we haven’t drunk any fruit juice. We can’t afford to buy fruit juice.
Nesterenko.—But you must have made fruit puree?
The elegant mother.—We eat fruit puree sometimes, yes.
Nesterenko.—The fact that the level has gone down can only be explained by having ingested pectin. It could be in beetroot, or fruit…
The elegant mother.—I don’t know. Our food is practically the same as before.
Nesterenko.—The machine registers what you have.
The elegant mother.—I don’t believe in those machines.
Nesterenko. (he laughs)—Where do you work? What do you do?
The elegant mother.—I am a chief accountant.
Nesterenko.—So, you’ve had an education. Well, if your body is giving off gamma rays…
The elegant mother.—If it’s true that the level really has been halved…
Nesterenko.—It really has. It would be important to know how your diet has changed. The machine records what you have eaten, let’s say, over the last two months. Something in your diet has changed since the beginning of the summer, since the spring.
The elegant mother.—Absolutely nothing.
Nesterenko.—Game?
The elegant mother.—No, why? ... I don’t know.
The manager of the shop is measured using the HRS (Human Radiation Spectrometer)
Nesterenko.—The peak on the right shows that it is very high. They have accumulated a lot. Unfortunately, they eat a lot of contaminated food.
The elegant mother.—We are very contaminated.
Nesterenko.—You see it and you say “I’m not eating any contaminated food”. It’s not the Holy Spirit that’s responsible…
The elegant mother.—Everything was monitored.
The manager.—All our food products were monitored and it was all clean. It’s all admissible.
Nesterenko.—But was it contaminated?
The elegant mother.—No, it was all admissible.
Nesterenko.—Listen, if you bring meat and it measures 480 Bq, according to the norms, it will be “clean”. But it’s contaminated!
Q.—So, the norms are wrong?
Nesterenko.—They need to be stricter. They are wrong.
The elegant mother.—We are told lies about everything.
Nesterenko.—Yes, unfortunately.
The elegant mother.—There’s no truth anywhere.
A conversation between the manager and Nesterenko.
The manager.—We brought berries and had them monitored. They were collected from a place that I was a bit suspicious of. They told us they were within admissible limits.
Q.—“Admissible”, what does that mean?
Nesterenko.—If the berries measure 80 Bq, they will be considered “clean”.
The manager.—They measured 60 Bq.
Nesterenko.—But the berries need to be below 30 Bq.
A mother, Natalia, interrupts.—Can I bring the children?
Nesterenko.—We’re here for the children. The adults, that’s one thing, but we are here for the children…
4. MAIA SAVCHENKO,
COW HERDER ONE DAY A MONTH
At dawn, we go with Maia Savchenko, who takes the cows far from the village, beyond a ravine. Clouds of
mist float above the fields and the ponds, and then dissolve as the sun rises.
A gentle strong peasant woman, Maia talks in a straightforward manner, apparently unsurprised at the arrival of these foreigners and their interest in her life. Her quiet distress contrasts with the beauty of the poisoned landscape.
Q.—You are from Staraya Kamenka?
Savchenko.—Yes.
—Were you born here?
—Yes.
—And your ancestors too?
—We have always lived here. Now there’s the radioactivity. You managed to get here, luckily because the bridge is open, you can get across easily. But at the end of autumn, they take the bridge away for the winter so we can’t get out any more. It’s like living on an island, no-one comes to se us and we don’t go anywhere. Especially since they demolished the collective farm, and we no longer have the machines. We can’t even call an ambulance if someone is ill.
—How do you survive?
—It’s difficult, of course. At the school, the teachers are mostly self-taught. In a way, they’re quite ignorant, you could put it like that. (She laughs) They haven’t closed the school yet. They’ve said they’re going to close it next year. There aren’t many children at the school: twenty-seven children. We’re in a difficult situation.
—Is there a nursery school?
—No.
—Are there any young children?
—Yes, there are some very young children, but no nursery.
—How do you see the future, for you and for your children? Do you have any?
—I have three children. All at school. The oldest is 14 and the youngest is 8. We live…you know… another day gone, everything is alright. We’ve slept, we’ve got up, we’re OK. We have signed petitions. The authorities came from Minsk. We asked about leaving.
—To be evacuated?
—According to the register at the village council about 350 families stayed. So we are asking, we are writing to them to ask them to move us somewhere else… down there, beyond the river, to the West of Sozh. So that we can get to the hospital more easily. So that the children can go to a normal school.
The Crime of Chernobyl- The Nuclear Gulag Page 50