1998
One hot June day we found Anatoli Saragovets in his wheelchair stripped to the waist. Eight years had gone by since our last visit. He is a different man. He has difficulty breathing, apparently because of the partial paralysis of his ribcage. He cannot entirely control his hands and his arms, and therefore his movements. This is no longer the smiling young man of eight years ago. He welcomed us without embarrassment. His simple conversation has a strange tone, painful and humorous at the same time.
A. Saragovets.—All I did was fall down, fall down…My wife said: “You need to use a wheelchair”, so I did. That’s it. Now I’m in a wheelchair. If I had my legs it would be alright. My legs don’t work anymore, so that means I’m fucked. The diagnosis says: not curable neither here nor abroad. Nowhere. “Multiple sclerosis” is what they wrote. That’s all. This year I’m due to appear before the Medical Board who have promised me a car. But with this diagnosis I’d be amazed if they gave me one. At Chernobyl, it was my job to drive in front of the column of liquidators with my water tanker, so that they wouldn’t swallow the radioactive dust… We drove straight up to the reactor… but it’s too painful to remember. It’s better not to remember. The sun is shining outside, it’s… a lovely day. If not, if you start remembering, it’s a nightmare. It was a long time ago and it’s not true. We say it a lot here: “All that happened a long time ago and it’s not true”. It’s best not to recall those times… Before, I was a man. Before, I could walk: Before, I could drive. Now I can’t do either. A nightmare.
I knew Vodolazhsky. He’s dead. Migorek Klimovich is dead. Lionka Zaturanov is dead. In short there’s only Kolka Verbitsky and myself left… Of the five of us, I’m the only one left… A white crow. I don’t know. None of my friends are left.
I would just like to ask if there is anyone from abroad, who would like to… I don’t know…help me find a car… even an old one… second hand… so that I could get out, go out into the countryside. Because like this, without seeing nature, it’s difficult ... A nightmare… I sit at the window and watch. People go past. That’s all. What else have I got left? An early death? I will live as long as God allows me. Man is finished, that’s all. The boredom, ohhh! ... you could go mad. I just have to resign myself to it all. I’m still young, but…
Q.—How old are you?
A.S.—I’ll be 38 in October. I might as well be 60, what difference is there? I’m resigned to it, after all these years. One day I was in the front room and my dog comes in and looks at me. “What are you looking at me for? “ I said: “Woof!” He must have thought this man has gone mad… and who knows? And he went into the kitchen. He stayed there for a while, then he came back. “What’s the matter? Woof!” He went off again, then he came back a third time. I said “Woof!” And he said “Woof!” So there you are, the two of us had a little chat. Nightmare. It was funny.
The dog was always trying to catch the parrot, when it taunted him. The dog slipped and fell over. The parrot who was running away slipped and fell over too. Both of them. What do I know, it was funny. Whereas now, of course, it’s not the same.
When I was completely paralysed I was lying like a plank on the bed. The dog came up, put his paws on my hand and looked at me with tears in his eyes. He was ill as well. “You’re not well either, little brother, go and have a walk”. He died sometime later. He was on the sofa but he got down to die. He didn’t die on the sofa. He was a good dog.
There must be something up there… I don’t know. I didn’t think I had sinned so badly against God… I don’t know… normally. A nightmare.
Before we left, Anatoli commented one by one on the photos of his colleagues that we had taken during our last visit.
A.S.—I have no news of Anatoli Borovsky. I don’t know where he is, what he’s doing… (Nobody told him he had died.) Petia Shashkov…
Q.—Do you see each other?
A.S.—Shashkov, from time to time. He used to come but not now. Vit’ka Kulik came a couple of times. But I’ve lost touch with him completely. Same with Sachka Grudino That one, on the other hand, I don’t know him. (He looks at a picture of himself taken eight years ago.) Hello darling! (He laughs.) A nightmare.
2001
When we went to his home in June 2001, it was his widow that greeted us. He had died on the 14th July 1999
Mrs Saragovets.—His health went downhill suddenly. He couldn’t move his arms or legs anymore, he couldn’t eat or drink unaided, he couldn’t do anything at all. His legs were covered with eczema. The doctor said it was a result of the bone marrow decaying and that it was the end. He was a condemned man. He lay here for six months We didn’t hospitalise him because we didn’t want him to be a guinea pig for their experiments. The effects of radiation are practically incurable and they test all their new methods on the patients. He was bed-ridden for six months and then… he was practically rotting alive. All his tissues started to decompose, to the point where his hip bones were visible. I took care of him myself according to instructions from the doctor until the day his heart stopped. We tried to alleviate his suffering with injections, tablets… But there was nowhere left on his body where you could inject... The bones were bare. His whole body was disappearing. His back entirely, you could touch his hip bones with your hand. I put my hand in with gloves on to disinfect it and I pulled out…the remains of bone that had come away. Decomposed bone, rotting. He was fully conscious. He asked only to die quickly, so the suffering would stop… It was so painful… When I had to turn him from one side to the other, he’d grit his teeth, other times he’d groan. He never cried out, he endured it all. He had great strength of will.
We questioned the doctors, consulted a top specialist, we approached everyone we could to ask them about it. They said they knew nothing about this illness. The decomposition of the bone marrow left them dumbfounded. They were powerless.
I’m grateful to our local doctor Gula. She became our friend and I consulted her continually. I must also thank the English Fireman’s Association who helped us. One of them, whom my husband knew, helped us financially, from England. Every three months he would send us something, as he might to a friend. But we have never received any help from the Ministry of Health or other government organisations.
We were married in 1983 and in 1986 he found himself at Chernobyl. That’s where all our troubles started. He was always ill. Then the left side of his body started to go numb. The doctors said “You’re playing the fool, you’ve just caught a cold from being in a draught”. But in fact it was a completely different illness. His immune system had been destroyed. I think Chernobyl was a tragedy, not only for us, but for the whole of Belarus… so many innocent victims. To die like that, for nothing. To think those men who sacrificed themselves there are completely forgotten. Even this apartment where we live was taken over during the hunger strike that my husband and the other liquidators went on. Because when they were recruited they were given great promises of apartments, crèches for the children. And then it all came to nothing. It was the only way to get themselves heard.
Q.—Was he a believer?
Mrs S.—Not really but… he did say that “God allowed me to live thirteen years after Chernobyl” so that means he felt that it was a big thing. If not, how… how can you explain how he resisted so long? Here, the men died straight away. Vodolazhsky, a good friend of ours, a colonel, a helicopter pilot, died straightaway and exactly like him. Exactly the same phenomenon of decomposition of the organism like my husband. He flew over the reactor; he protected his soldiers by preventing them from flying, he piloted himself. He understood what it would lead to.
It hurts to think about it, to look at all this. Very painful. We don’t understand why.
(A silence) He could talk about anything to anyone.. He could be funny and serious. He was always good fun. It was easy living with someone like him…who understood everything. And who lived life to the full.
Chapter VIII
THE CRIME COMMITTED
BY THE UNITED NATIONS
AGENCIES
A tragedy, enacted by a few individuals, who, day after day, decide the fate of millions of people.
YVES LENOIR, op. cit.
It is upon this radiological, health, medical and social reality of the abandoned liquidators and contaminated populations that the International Chernobyl Project—comprising 200 experts from 25 countries and representing, among others, the IAEA, UNSCEAR, the FAO and the Commission of the European community—imposed its verdict, during the IAEA conference, in Vienna, from 21st to 24th May 1991.
What research had been undertaken under its auspices, and what, in substance, did the International Chernobyl Project say?
According to experts, the radiation has had no effect on the health of the population. Both external and the internal doses of radiation were overestimated by the Soviet authorities.
The scientists from the countries concerned, Ukraine and Belarus lacked competence in the subject of radiation when they attributed to it the health problems they were encountering, when it was likely that these were caused by psychological and stress factors.
No attempt was made by experts from the International Chernobyl Project to estimate the doses received in the acute phase, the first weeks following the disaster.
In the opinion of the experts, the numbers of people re-housed and the food restrictions imposed need not have been so extensive. In applying a lifetime dose as the criterion for re-housing, there was no point in taking into account the dose accumulated over the three preceding years.
Thus, for strictly economic considerations, the seriousness of the concept of the lifetime dose, proclaimed as a radioprotection measure, has been eliminated. Manipulated in this way, this dose limit no longer has any objective value scientifically or medically.
All the children examined were found to be in good health. There was no significant difference between children of the same age from contaminated localities and “control” localities.
The data collected does not reveal any marked increase in leukaemia or in thyroid tumours since the accident. The only information available regarding these illnesses was based on hearsay.
“Hearsay!” exclaimed an astonished Bella Belbéoch “When Professor Demidchik, in Minsk, had already operated on 29 children in 1990 and 59 children in 1991 for thyroid cancer. In 1990, the incidence of thyroid cancer was already 20 times higher than before Chernobyl and this figure would continue to increase in the following years”.
No mention in the International Chernobyl Project of immunity problems in children, nor of the increase in chromosomal abnormalities. No significant increase in birth defects, which is astonishing in the light of the studies published by G. Laziuk.54
54 In 1996, G.Laziuk wrote: “One of the unsolved problems of the Chernobyl catastrophe is the increase in the proportion of children born with congenital malformations, recognized at birth, and corresponding to the most common forms of hereditary damage (. . .). The appearance of this problem in our country deeply concerns the population; and weighs heavily on them. The radionuclides emitted from the power plant (Cs-137 and Sr-90) are damaging our genetic heritage (mutagenic effects) and interfering with the normal development of organs (teratogenic effects)”. G.I. Laziuk, D.L. Nikolajew and U.W. Nowikowa. “Dynamik der angeborenen und vererbten Pathologien in Folge der Katastrophe von Tschernobyl”, in Gesundheitszustand der Bevolkerung, die auf dem durch die Tschernobyl-Katastrophe verseuchtem Territorium der Republik Belarus lebt. Die wichtigsten wissenschaftlichen Referate, International Congress “The world after Chernobyl”, Minsk, 23–29 March 1996.
Nothing about the health of the 800,000 liquidators. Cancelled out. For the international experts, they never existed.
This official untruth was put forward without the slightest serious scientific foundation. Using the “Hiroshima dogma” as a basis, it was preceded by no specific studies in the field. In the report Bella Belbéoch came across some very strange findings: Professor Pellerin had supplied 8,000 dosimeter films that had been worn for two months by the inhabitants of certain selected contaminated villages.55 90% of these films were below the detectable levels of natural background radiation. Bella Belbéoch then wonders whether “there is no additional radiation discernible above ambient “background” levels in these selected contaminated areas” (See the “political” explanation for this put forward by Nesterenko further on and for the technical explanation, see the footnote.)
55 Bella Belbéoch’s question is ironic because the statement is absurd. It would probably have been more effective to use thermoluminescent dosimeters rather than film dosimeters because the former are a lot more sensitive. These film badges, which are used as dosimeters in the nuclear industry, (they were developed for use in detectors and fixators, their sensitivity depends on the size of the silver bromide grains) have a threshold detection level of around 0.2 mSv. This threshold is roughly the same as two month’s accumulated dose of natural radiation. In fact the dose debit before Chernobyl must have been about 10–15 µrem/h and two months represents about 1,440 hours. If you take 14 µrem/h (0.14 µSv/h) the accumulated dose through natural radiation will be around 200 µSv, i.e. 0.2 mSv. So there is no detectable radiation above natural background radiation in contaminated areas close to the area that was evacuated in 1986 and “selected” by the International Chernobyl Project.
Denouncing “Western responsibility in the health consequences of the Chernobyl disaster in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia”, Bella Belbéoch concluded:
The support given to the central Soviet power by the WHO and other international organisations, nullified the efforts being made by Ukrainian and Belarusian scientists to protect their people in the contaminated zones. And for that we are responsible. […]
This behaviour of our experts scarcely raised an eyebrow in the scientific community, or intermediary organisations (medical professionals, unions, civil society associations), or in the media. Our responsibility for the health consequences of the Chernobyl accident is therefore total. What is more, the actions taken by our experts, following Chernobyl, set a precedent for the use of purely economic criteria in the management of crises, with daunting implications should a nuclear accident occur in our own countries, an eventuality that cannot be ruled out. 56
56 Bella Belbéoch, op.cit.
V. Nesterenko explains how the Soviets selected the subjects they would study for submission to their Western colleagues. The two parties worked hand in hand: the tacit complicity predicted by Bella Belbéoch, five days after the disaster.
This is what he told us in April 2000.
V. Nesterenko.—In 1989, various documents that had been kept secret were allowed into the public domain. Gorbachev and the president of the Council of Ministers, Ryzhkov, wrote to the IAEA to ask them to send specialists to answer the question of whether “we have taken all necessary measures to protect the population and what consequences should they fear”. The experts arrived, three million dollars were allocated to the Soviet Union. The specialists worked at Gomel, in Ukraine and mainly in Russia. When I heard about it, I suggested to the Ministry of Health that I could give them the information I had in my possession. I was told that it served no purpose, that the specialists from the Ministry of Health in Moscow were already involved and working with them. So, they were knowingly disregarding anyone who might give them any different information. Given the expense of providing the daily needs of these 200 Western specialists, they only stayed for short periods at a time. Then there was the language barrier and secondly…
they were filling their heads with rubbish. At Bragin, our people had decontaminated four times on a run. The experts arrive, do their measurements: “Oh, it’s not so bad here!” They did not tell them that the soil had been removed four times.
Then, in September, they came to examine the children. They brought spectrometers, they measured the children: “You see, their accumulation is minimal”. But they forgot to tell them that these children had spent the previous three or four months in the Naroch district in other words, one of the clean areas in Belarus. They had been eating clean food, and as children’s bodies purify themselves very quickly, their levels of accumulation were very low. In other words… if, at least, this work had been undertaken on a competitive basis, if it had been announced that “Brussels has proposed a project, they are recruiting specialists…” But that’s not what happened. In Belarus, it is the government and the government alone that put forward names to work with the Western experts. My opinion on this is very clear. It’s obvious that there is a nuclear lobby, very powerful, a worldwide lobby. They pay. They give money for their projects. Here, they choose who to give the order to and in what way. Some years later, I was told by our specialists that, during discussions at the IAEA conference in Vienna in 1996, where there was a large delegation from Belarus, trained by the government so we were not there, our people were told: “Only thyroid cancer has been officially recognised in your country. Say nothing about any other illness”. Each of them was told (some of my former students worked for the IAEA): “If you leave those questions alone, you will receive lucrative contracts from the IAEA. New contracts. If not, you will get nothing”. Some people will starve before they sell their souls. Unfortunately not everyone is like that and it’s no secret to anyone that scientists lived better during the Soviet era. Therefore, it becomes clear that the scientific research is intentionally organised so that correlations between illnesses and radiation dose received do not show up.
The Crime of Chernobyl- The Nuclear Gulag Page 21
