The mother.—Dead. They weren’t able to treat them.
Q.—Where were you during the accident?
The mother.—In Minsk. We didn’t leave the town. We were told Minsk was not contaminated, that in Minsk everything was fine. He was born after the accident. We have no idea how much radiation he received.
Q.—Maybe it was the food? Radioactive milk?
The mother.—Maybe. No-one knows.
Q.—Are you confident now about the food you are eating, do you think it’s uncontaminated?
The mother.—No, unfortunately.
JUNE 1998
The father of Dima.—We are still not confident about the food but we still eat it.
Q.—It looks as if you’re out of the woods?
The mother.—We’re hopeful but we’re not absolutely certain. When Dima was taken into hospital, the mothers were not allowed to sleep with the children at the hospital. I was only able to stay with Dima because he was under three years of age. I slept in a ward with six children. I kept an eye on all of them including my own. It was only when Dr Aleinikova came back from Switzerland with this new procedure—she had simply observed the practice of hospitals abroad—where the children slept with their mothers—she gave permission for the mothers to sleep with their children. The first time my husband came in to the ward wearing a white coat, it was a real event: “This can’t be happening, someone from outside coming into the ward, with the children!” Now everyone is allowed in. But before, it was impossible!
As a mother myself, I can tell you that, in general, the mothers are left in ignorance, left to cope on their own. I didn’t know what this illness was. I didn’t even know why the children were dying. Why? I really didn’t understand! Someone should have explained it all to us, to tell us what we needed to do.
At the centre, Dima had a good general practitioner and I came straight to the point. I went to see him in his office and I said “I want to know everything. Can I ask you questions?” “Go ahead!” I bombarded him with questions, to the point at which he had to admit that he did not know the answers. These are things we don’t know”. It’s great when a doctor talks to you honestly. It’s rare. I am really grateful that right from the beginning he said, “We don’t know”. Instead of reassuring me that everything would be fine when we could see that nothing was right.
If I’m honest, I still don’t really believe he’s cured. No-one can give you guarantees, not even Doctor Olga Aleinikov. Especially as Dima was the first to receive this new type of treatment. They have perfected the treatment now and adapted it for the children of Belarus.
Q.—Children from Belarus are different from Swiss children?
The father.—According to Doctor Aleinikova, Belarusian children react differently to chemotherapy because of their diet and their way of life. The reactions of a child from Belarus and a child from a rich Western country differ at the cellular level. Without taking into account psychological particularities. The ignorance and incredulity of the parents have an effect on the child and the relationship between doctors, parents and children here is less open. We don’t ask what tomorrow will bring any more, we live each day as it comes.
Chapter VII
THE ORDEAL OF THE LIQUIDATORS
Dr Michel Fernex has commented on the medical aspects of the documentary films we made about the deteriorating health of the Belarusian liquidators, that we met for the first time in 1990, then in 1998 and in 2001. The film “The Sacrifice”, by Emanuela Andreoli was based on these films and was presented as documentary evidence at the International Symposium on “The health of the liquidators (decontaminators), twenty years after the explosion of the Chernobyl reactor”, organised in Bern by the Swiss branch of the PSR/IPPNW53, on the 12th November 2005.
53 Doctors for Social Responsibility—International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.
Michel Fernex, Emeritus Professor at the Faculty of Medicine in Basle:
What we see and what we hear in the film provide answers to many questions and controversial subjects. It appears, for example, that the doses recorded for each individual depended on orders received by the officers in command who co-ordinated the operation. These orders resulted in the systematic underestimation of the doses received by the soldiers, who were working in unacceptable conditions around the shattered reactor.
The expert studies, which do not take into account the internal dose, resulting from the inhalation of dust, rich in radionuclides, will exclude many of these people who are ill or who have died because the dose noted in the register only takes into account what was written down at the time, a more than doubtful record as it relates only to external radiation.
The film explains the work undertaken by these “volunteers” and the magnitude of the risk of their inhaling radioactive gases and dust containing radioactive particles derived from burnt uranium or plutonium. The internal doses, of which the most serious relates to alpha particles, which give off enormous amounts of energy but do not penetrate the skin—damage nearby cells, and especially their genetic material, (causing cancers, hereditary illness and birth defects in the liquidators’ children). It is the inhalation of dust containing high levels of radionuclides, and in particular uranium derivatives released in the form of smoke or invisible dust, that results in deposits of nanoparticles leading to cancers.
The film shows that the work consisted of, among other things, scraping off the top-soil and using spades to throw it onto lorries, to be buried in enormous pits. It would have been impossible to avoid inhalation of the different radionuclides which would then settle in the lungs or circulate through other organs, irradiating and altering nearby cells for decades.
The liquidators describe their accelerated ageing. This symptom, premature ageing, previously recognised as a symptom of radiation, has been removed from the list of illnesses that can be attributed to radiation after Chernobyl.
The general practitioners seem unaware of the illnesses that result from this chronic irradiation. As the situation worsens, even the professors who were consulted seem to be out of their depth, powerless in the face of these unknown illnesses, while Belarus is renowned for its high standard of medical training. It is, for example, in this country that the reality of the epidemic of thyroid cancer was established, an epidemic that Western specialists refused to recognise for between five and eight years.
1. PIOTR Shashkov
1998: EIGHT YEARS HAVE PASSED SINCE OUR LAST MEETING
Q.—How have you been since we last saw each other?
P.S.—Worse and worse. I have an enlarged liver. I have problems with my spleen, pancreas and thyroid. I am diabetic. Last year, they should have operated on my thyroid but they had to see to my leg first. They removed a malignant tumour. I have four scars. I have to use a walking stick. I have no control over my left leg—it’s as if it’s dead.
Q.—Do you remember someone called Anatoli Borovsky, that we also met last time? Where could I find him?
P.S.—He’s dead. I’m sorry. (He is overcome and I look at his profile as he gazes into the distance with tears in his eyes) Many of them are no longer with us…So many have died already. I have lists of all my men. Many have died. I buried a guy scarcely a week ago.
Q.—Another! But they’re so young.
P.S.—Well yes, they’d be 35 or 36 now.
2001
Q.—Last time we came to see you was three years ago. How is your health now?
P.S.—It’s worse. I’ve had another operation on my leg. The flesh started to detach from the bone and decay.
Q.—Was that side of you more exposed to radiation than the other? Was there something in your pocket?
P.S.—No, I was in an armoured vehicle converted into a bulldozer, my left side against the plating. No protective clothing, just an ordinary soldier’s uniform treated with some sort of fluid. Nothing e
lse. The whole of my left side was irradiated. The flesh on my leg comes away from the bone and suppurates.
Q.—As a liquidator, do you get any sort of help?
P.S.—No, none. Even for the fifteen years since Chernobyl they’ve given us absolutely nothing. They even suspended our pensions. I was supposed to be going into hospital in April but I was told there were no beds. They’re reserved now for those that can pay. You have to pay for everything.
Q.—And what was it you had to go into hospital for?
P.S.—I go in every year for an extended cure. They treat my liver, stomach, heart….legs. Footbaths bring me a lot of relief. The worst thing are the abscesses, first on one finger, then on another. Same with my feet. They heal over and then start to suppurate again. The doctors don’t know what it is. You see? Same thing. I had one there and now there’s one here. There’s always somewhere that’s rotting. I apply plantain leaves to draw out the pus, that’s all. My nails fall off all the time.
Q.—What do the doctors say?
P.S.—That all of it is because of the radiation. Before the explosion, I was never ill. I was a steel worker in a foundry. I was a weight-lifter. I could lift my wife with one hand.
Q.—How old are you?
P.S.—I was 50 in November. I was invalided at 37. First degree invalidity.
Q.—First degree, meaning what?
P.S.—It’s the last. For those on the brink of death. But I’ve become… an optimist. Do you understand? I ignore the pain; I get up in the morning. Straight away I feel sick. I vomit. Bile. It’s the same every day. They don’t want to operate on me... Because of the diabetes. But I’m just carrying on as if I’m well. It’ll be the mushroom season soon. I’ll go to the forest, for sure.
Q.—You go out walking?
P.S.—I walk two or three hours a day even though my legs hurt. It’s probably something to do with my circulation only working at 45% in my lower limbs. I’ve no circulation… I’ve even taken a needle and pricked a vein to see: there’s no blood. I also have heart problems—cardiac stenosis. The left ventricle is not functioning.
Q.—That’s why the blood is not reaching the extremities?
P.S.—No, it’s because of the radiation.
Q.—Yes exactly, the radiation affects the heart.
P.S.—It must be that. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a drop in the ocean compared to what we got.
Q.—The comparison makes no sense.
P.S.—It’s true. The fallout was much greater here. The whole of Belarus is contaminated. Measure any product and the dosimeter starts clicking. But people have to eat, don’t they?
Q.—Is your wife also being monitored?
P.S.—No, they don’t take the wives of the liquidators into account. They have no rights. Children born after Chernobyl are on the lists... But children born before Chernobyl are not taken into account either.
2. THE ILLNESS AND HUMILIATION
OF ALEXANDER GRUDINO
1998
A. Grudino.—Chernobyl happened just as we were thinking of having children. After the disaster, we were forbidden to have children for 3 years. As for those who did, their children are all sick. Thyroid and the rest. All the children are ill, every last one. I can’t have any children myself now. Apart from the fact that I am not capable of having children, the Medical Commission at work also wrote down “hypoplasia” and explained that it was a congenital condition. But, how can it be congenital if I served in the army and was perfectly healthy? My ulcer too, they said that was hereditary. How come? Neither my father nor my mother had ulcers. All of that, it’s to hide the real reason, to act as if Chernobyl has nothing to do with it. But I’m not the only one; there are hundreds of us lads like that, hundreds.
Q.—We saw each other eight years ago. How has life changed for you since then?
A.G.—At first it was just about alright. Then all the illnesses started to get progressively worse. Looking at me on the outside, I look as if I’m alright. But on the inside, nothing is healthy. Before 1986, I didn’t know what illness was. I just had colds like everyone else. Whereas now I have a stomach ulcer, I have pains in my bones, in my vertebrae, permanent pain in my joints. When the weather turns, I walk like an old man, and I hurt everywhere. Where have you seen a man of 40 with pain everywhere? I have constant dizzy spells, especially in the sun. I can’t tolerate sunlight. I always wear a hat and look for the shade. I can pass out if I stay in the sun.
As for the children, I’m not in a position to quote precise figures but those I’ve seen are all ill. For us, the old, as they say, it’s one thing, but for children, it’s a tragedy. They will not live to our age.
And then the injustice never ends. I was summoned before the recruitment board, twelve years after Chernobyl. When I showed them my liquidator’s certificate which exempted me, they marked “valid until 2000” at the top of it. Why? Up to 2000, I’m a liquidator and after that I’m nobody anymore? War veterans are still war veterans even forty years after the war. What does that mean? What do they take us for?
—They want to liquidate you?
—Probably. To forget Chernobyl.
—Liquidate the liquidators.
—That’s it.
3. THE ILLNESS AND HUMILIATION OF VICTOR KULIKOVSKY.
1998
V. Kulikovsky.—Briefly, I suffer from all sorts of diseases of old age: sclerosis of the brain with oedema of the brain, alteration of the brain cortex and of the circulation. Not just of the brain, of the whole body. I have problems with my memory, headaches, failing eyesight. Since 1995–1996 my blood composition started to stabilise but it was completely altered. In 1990- 1991 I started to have major problems with my legs. They wouldn’t do what I wanted them to do. I stopped going out. The doctors say sclerosis but in fact, they don’t understand it. It’s getting better, but yesterday, I walked a little , in the evening my legs swelled up and were still swollen this morning. Mainly the left leg, you can see it’s more swollen than the right. I’ve got other problems too… ulcer, gastritis, what’s the point of enumerating them all? My arm hurts, my shoulder joint is frozen. If I try and move my arm, it is very painful.
It’s hard to say how much radiation I received, in reality. The fact is that I worked on Reactor No. 4, in other words right next to the holes caused by the explosion. The 11.92 rem noted on the certificate, it’s laughable. After our hunger strike in 1990, the Institute of Radiological Medicine tried to reconstruct the dose I received. It was about 100 rem. That’s a lot. Nobody who had worked, like me, on the reactor in 1986, had the right to 25 rem on their certificate. Because at 25 rem, they had to pay them special compensation. One day Georgi Lepin, the scientist who created the Chernobyl Union in 1991, after he also, had been a liquidator, asked me to describe the places where I had been working, in order to reconstruct approximately my dose. When he’d read the twenty or so pages I’d written, he asked me “Is all this true?” I’d gone into great detail including sketches. Even today, with the ground concreted over, and the scattered fuel removed, there are certain places where the background radiation is up to 1.5 roentgens! How much would there have been before? And how much radioactivity would a man working there have received? He said that even with my detailed recollections they could never accept the extent to which I’d been irradiated because it would be too high. Of the order of ... less than 1000 but more than 500. Over 500. The men I worked with… Two years ago I tried to get in contact because to obtain the documents, you have to have confirmation from several people who worked in the same area as you. You need two, three people, at least. I tried to find the other men I had worked with there. I can honestly say I didn’t find one. Not one. All the requests I sent, whether to the police or to relatives in different towns came back marked “Deceased”. There were about a dozen in our team.
Before Chernobyl I played a lot of sport. I did my military service with t
he airborne divisions. I was strong. Now I can’t climb the stairs. I can hardly walk even on the flat. I can’t get enough air. My heart…
Even so, in 1995, they accorded me third degree invalidity, which gives the person the right to the minimum pension, which they were then ordered to withdraw because I’d taken part in the hunger strike. If you want to humiliate a man, crush them; it’s very easy. The hospital called me in for examinations. When I arrived there was the professor and a female doctor in the office. They closed the door and said “Why do you need a walking stick? You’re cured! You can throw it away!” And the woman doctor asked me “Do you drink?” “No”. “Even at a party?” Maybe a small glass, no more”. “And your father?” “What about my father? He does what he likes”. So they wrote “Father chronic alcoholic”. I did not know how they came to this agreement between the two of them. “That will be all, you can go now”. They gave me the extract and I read “The father is a chronic alcoholic. On the basis of the data noted above, the illness is due to chronic hereditary alcoholism”. “I shall go to the tribunal with this diagnosis”. “You can go where you like”. I went as far as the regional prosecutor with this diagnosis. He read it and said. “Keep this diagnosis until things are better. The time will come when we will deal with the facts of this case”. That was in 1993, at Hospital Number Five in Minsk. After that, in 1995, this is what I hear being said at the Institute of Radiation Medicine Polyclinic: “Kulikovsky? Are you not dead yet? Why have you come? You’d have been better off staying at home!” “I don’t understand why you’re speaking to me in that tone”. She examined me, wrote down her diagnosis, then snapped: “Everything has to be paid for”. “It’s because of the hunger strike that you are behaving like this towards me?” “Yes, there’s always a price to pay. It’s for the strike”.
4. THE DECLINE AND AGONY OF ANATOLI SARAGOVETS
The Crime of Chernobyl- The Nuclear Gulag Page 20
