The Crime of Chernobyl- The Nuclear Gulag

by Wladimir Tchertkoff

  The peasant.—Aha! (And he waves goodbye to me and goes off)

  7. LIONIA’S MOTHER

  There are twelve people in Lionia Yavorsky’s family, three generations living in a three-roomed wooden khata, on the edge of a marsh that is used in summer as a pasture for cows. The household is run by the mother, an energetic peasant woman aged about 50 and by Lionia, the Cinderella of the house. While the mother oversees the property with hurried step, occupied morning till night with the cows, the pigs, the hay, the backyard, the vegetable garden and all the unforeseen problems that arise, Lionia looks after the grandchildren and feeds them and cooks for everyone. The father is unemployed.

  Q.—We measured your milk because your son’s level of radioactivity was high.

  The mother.—It is high but we can’t sell the cows. We are a big family. The children are young. We can’t. I get 6 million roubles and my husband is unemployed. We have to live. My grandson is still very young; look at him. We don’t know what to do to survive.

  Q.—By the way, does no-one give you any clean milk?

  The mother.—They bring it to us, but you need money to buy it. We haven’t got any money.

  Q.—The collective farm doesn’t give you any?

  The mother.—Oh the collective farm doesn’t bother about us. One peasant went to ask for some fertiliser, and they said “No!” She began to cry so they gave her some.

  Q.—Do the people working on the collective farm get clean milk?

  The father.—Their cattle graze in the fields. They are less radioactive.

  The mother.—We have three cows altogether. We were told “Sell them, Sell them!” But we’re not selling them, we can’t live without them.

  Q.—Which fields are they pastured in?

  The mother.—Over there… But they shouldn’t be: there is too much radioactivity. Here is the hay. It was in the stack. We’ve put some of it in the barn. But there’s a lot of radioactivity there too… What can we do? Before, the collective farm gave us hay.

  Nesterenko.—We’ve just been talking to the president of the collective.

  The mother.—Huh? Don’t bother!

  Nesterenko.—Listen to me. Just listen for a minute: they are offering you a clean field, at Kochtovassi.

  The mother.—He said that?

  Nesterenko.—He said it just now.

  The mother.—Then give it to us, my husband would go anywhere.

  Nesterenko.—You must go there now. The vice-president of the district committee, the president of the collective farm, and ourselves, were present. It was all recorded on camera. He can’t refuse now. Take advantage. Cut the hay, Pasha will measure it (To Pasha) That way you will be able to see if it is clean. If it isn’t, it’s not worth the trouble of preparing it. If it’s clean, then prepare it for winter. Secondly, before haymaking, he is offering you some pasture for your cows near the school. It’s better to go there, because it’s obviously more contaminated here. And graze your cows there because 80% of the contamination in your children is coming from the milk. The rest is from mushrooms, berries and fish.

  Q.—And how do you feel yourself?

  The mother.—Oooh! I don’t feel well. I am losing weight, I’m not getting any better, I’m not in good health.

  Q.—Where do you feel ill?

  The mother.—My heart...stabbing pains…And when I start working, it will suddenly hit me…I start shaking. It vibrates, I have to sit down and then it goes away. Sometimes my blood pressure goes up and I have to lie down, like a log.

  She goes off. How can I describe the natural elegance of this 50 year old Slavic woman, with slightly Asiatic features? (The Tartars reached as far as this area in the 13th century). In spite of the lines on her face, caused by exhaustion, worry and the poison that is eating away at her body, she has incredible energy; there is something of the Romany in her, her silhouette, and her nervous energy as she goes about her work busily, confers on her a real beauty. The rapid pace of her walk through the tall grass to fetch her cows from some distance away is like a rhythmic dance.

  Nesterenko.—Did you see? She is thin. You can see how hard she works. A really brave woman. Everything in the garden is tied up, looked after. The soil is acid here, it needs lime. If they gave her potassium, in large quantities, the food she produces would be clean. Even here. You can see, the help that is needed for the people living here isn’t enormous. We have analysed their needs. If each family just got this practical help, everything would be alright.

  Q.—Are they contaminated?

  Nesterenko.—Of course they are! We will measure the children and her also, and you’ll see, they’re all contaminated. The hay there is contaminated. What is needed is potassium, calcium and phosphorus. With these three fertilisers everything would be clean. And she could protect her children. Because 90% of their radioactive load comes from what they eat: milk, vegetables and the produce that is gathered in the forest. The food that she collects from the forest, she must learn to soak in salt water. It would be less contaminated. Same with the fish…but she says they don’t eat much fish. So for them it’s the milk, the vegetables and the mushrooms.

  Q.—Can it be done?

  Nesterenko.—Did I tell you about Karin Reese from Burgwedel, near Hanover in Germany? She took charge of the village of Obidovichi in the Bykhov district. Five years ago, each family was examined to see what minerals they were lacking. She found the funding, we bought them and used them. She has already bought eight milk separators. And we brought everyone to the institute: the head teacher at the school, the director of the collective farm, teachers, young mothers running busy households. We held a three day seminar. There you are, we started with levels of 700–800 Bq/kg, and today we have 40–50 Bq/kg of contamination. The aid given by Burgwedel to the village of Obidovichi is an example of concrete aid.

  Q.—This woman might never have had heart problems?

  V.Nesterenko.—Yes, of course. It’s the caesium…These are all the symptoms that Yury Bandazhevsky talks about. We will measure her today. If she has caesium, it will be blocking the energy transmission at a cellular level. Her heart is incapable of any effort. You can see how she races here and there, because she needs to work, and that is why she has heart pain. She gets up at 4 in the morning, and does all the work here. If she had another piece of land, she would cultivate that too.

  8. THE FATHER AND THE BLUEBERRIES

  Q.—Can I taste?

  The father.—Why?... Of course!

  —And the caesium?

  —So what (He laughs) I’m used to it all.

  —Do you eat them?

  —Yes…Take some, taste them. The juice won’t do you any harm. Taste…They’re not very good. A bit acid. They’ll be sweeter later on.

  —How much caesium do they contain?

  —None.

  —You don’t know. Have you had them measured?

  —No.

  —Never?

  —No.

  —But everyone knows the forest is contaminated?

  —Yes, of course!

  —And the blueberries are contaminated…

  —We have to live, don’t we? So, you’ve seen, the people go there, pick them, bring them back and sell them.

  —Where?

  —In the towns. Everywhere, even in Russia. (He laughs)

  —The caesium is dispersed everywhere. (He eats in silence, looking at the forest) You should get them measured. (He carries on eating) How much do you sell them for?

  —3000 roubles a bucket.

  —For a bucket. How many kilos is that?

  —It’s not full. About 6 kilos.

  —They are bought by the bucket?

  —They are sold in buckets or in bottles. If you buy them in bottles, they cost more.

  —How about if I buy a kilo from you, can I do that? I wil
l buy a kilo and I will get them measured straight away at Olmany…For me, just so I know. How much for one kilo in a bottle? I will buy one, maybe more.

  —You will have to ask her. I didn’t collect them; it’s not up to me to decide. (He laughs).

  —It isn’t your business?

  —No…Can you measure this wood that comes from the forest and this that comes from the barn?

  —Yes, we’ll measure them.

  Contamination of the Yavorskys:

  — the father, born in 1945: 419.52 Bq/kg;

  — the mother, born in 1950: 444.39 Bq/kg;

  —the son Lionia born in 1985: 630.92 Bq/kg;

  — The grandson (Tolik), born in 1998: 1,538.27 Bq/kg. Inside the body of this baby, that weighs 8 kg, there are 12,300 artificial radioactive atomic disintegrations per second.

  We measure Yavorsky’s blueberries.

  Pasha.—They contain 573 Bq/kg. Normally, blueberries with this level of radioactivity would not be sold on the market. (The limit is 185 Bq). But at the market no-one asks if it’s been checked, the people don’t care. If it was me, I would ask the vendor to show me a certificate of conformity for the blueberries. If he couldn’t show me one, I wouldn’t buy them. Those who buy them and don’t ask for verification are at fault.

  Chapter V

  SLOBODKA

  1.5 mSv/y, 5–15 Ci/km²; 70 km from Chernobyl

  2000

  Early in the morning on the 4th April, we arrive at the home of Lena Dubenchuk, the dosimetrist who runs one of the 83 LRMCs still under Vassili Nesterenko’s control. The Belrad team, which has arrived before us, is measuring the radioactivity of the children and their mothers with the mobile spectrometer provided by Ireland. By the end of the day, everyone in the village will have come through. Lena wants to introduce us to the Skidan family so she takes us to their house. Romano Cavazzoni is filming as we walk along the beaten track that forms the main street of the village. The region of Polessie, spared the industrial development that has filled our landscape with “high tech” artefacts, remains a vast architectural and human museum from another era.

  In the slanting morning light, a teenage boy reads a letter to an elderly peasant woman, who cannot read, from her grandchildren who have emigrated to the town. Two other elderly peasant women are talking in front of the wooden fence of their khata. The larger woman adjusts the shawl that envelops her face. She is both intimidated and exhilarated by the camera.

  The larger woman.—There is radiation everywhere.

  Q.—Where, everywhere?

  The other peasant.—There’s none left, it all blew away.

  The first.—It went underground and off into the sky.

  Q.—But, has it gone, or has it stayed?

  The two peasants.—We don’t know. We think it’s all gone.

  The Skidan family is poor. There are five children and the mother works at the hospital in the neighbouring town. The father is unemployed. All of them have health problems. What strikes us as we listen to the conversation between the two women and Nesterenko, is the knowledge of the subject of radionuclides displayed by these two country women, exasperated by the local bureaucracy. They have acquired this knowledge through necessity, faced with the changing nature of their environment, whose secrets have previously been transmitted from generation to generation. Today, they are disoriented, especially the mothers, who want to know and understand, for the sake of their children.

  It is they in any case who run the centre for the monitoring of incorporated radioactivity in the human organism. The government gives them no help and they have to battle with the local officials, who, as at Poliske, cannot be bothered with anything unless it is in their own interests. The normal level of caesium-137 should be zero becquerels. Mrs Skidan knows this and can see the effect it has had on her own children whose development has been compromised.

  Nesterenko.—When were your children last measured?

  Mrs Skidan.—The last time your team was here. We get them measured each time.

  Nesterenko.—And how much did they measure?

  Lena.—90 and 70,

  Nesterenko.—That’s a lot.

  Lena.—The youngest one had very little, didn’t he?

  Mrs Skidan.—A little over 30.

  Nesterenko.—What did you do then to reduce it?

  Mrs Skidan.—We bought vitamins. We economised on other items. And we take the milk to Lena to be separated. In any case, in summer, the children absorb more radioactivity. They play outside, in the sand… But the problem is the food. Lena, you remember, we couldn’t find any cheap meat. We had a little veal calf, last year. Lena measured it… the meat was not clean. The meat we were buying from Kalinkovichi was four times the limit.

  Nesterenko.—Before it is slaughtered, the animal should be fed for two or three months on clean fodder. While it is living it will purify itself biologically. If you want to sell your meat, prepare clean fodder, have it measured by Lena and give it this hay for two months. You will have clean meat without any caesium in it.

  Mrs Skidan.—Yes, we have to sell our meat. There is always a problem with my salary which never arrives. The children want to eat something good, but we can’t buy anything and we have to eat our own radionuclides. We do everything we can, we try to understand what we need to do, but the children are not in good health…

  Nesterenko.—We have brought you some Yablopect. Give it to the children and we will come back in a month to monitor their levels of radioactivity.

  Gradually Mrs Skidan begins to talk, more and more quickly, jumping from one argument to another. She gives vent to the feelings of humiliation and anxiety that have overwhelmed her.

  Mrs Skidan.—I fell out with the district committee over some compensation claims for convalescence. I told them I did not want charity. I gave birth to these children; I knew what I was doing when I put them on this earth. I’m not asking for any extras. Why can’t they give me what I’m entitled too? Three of my children are at school. They’re all ill. This one has a goitre. The little girl’s thyroid is enlarged, this one has problems with his sight. ..We barely make ends meet, we economise on everything just to buy food.… The radioactivity is having an effect. The little one here can’t speak. We took him to see a psychiatrist at Kalinkovichi. He examined him and said that his mental state was normal, that we should take him to Gomel…

  Nesterenko.—Have him examined by a speech therapist because your child is not the only case like this. In this area, many of the children have language development problems.

  Mrs Skidan.—You need money to do it. If I ask for a car, I have to pay for the petrol. And you need to follow the treatment three of four times a week…They either think I’m not right in the head to have had so many children, or that I’m alcoholic and that I had them just to get benefits.

  Nesterenko.—The children are here and you are responsible for their health. You are the only person who can help them. So don’t feel ashamed if people offer you money. Take no notice of what stupid people say.

  Mrs Skidan.—Members of the executive committee came to see me and said some very insulting things. One of them, a man called Obuzenko, addressed me with the familiar “you” form. Even if I am younger than he is, I am a woman, and he should show me some respect. He attacked us: “Why do you keep making complaints? You’re telling lies…” They haven’t brought us a gas supply. There is an arrangement whereby gas should be provided in the Chernobyl zone. Because our wood stoves are basically nuclear reactors. And they won’t give it to us. Where should we get our wood? From the zone where they have organised a reserve for contaminated wood. There isn’t any here, it all comes from there. If this is the arrangement, why have they not supplied us with gas? At least for cooking for the children. And he just shouted at me: “No, we haven’t got gas, you can’t have it!” Then he said the opposite. “No, you mustn
’t use the wood stove!” So where am I supposed to cook, if they aren’t supplying us with gas? I had an argument with him one day about the milk separators. The villages are dying. How many families with young children have stayed in the village? If someone has stayed, the least they could do is to help them. Don’t reject them! They had enough money to give 100 million roubles to the Kalinkovichi football team for an anniversary evening. But there was none for milk separators. Someone managed to get us one, on the sly, for two months, to share between three families!

  Nesterenko.—How many becquerels were there in the milk? You said it was 200, didn’t you? And after it was separated, how much?

  Lena .—About 70.

  Mrs Skidan.—Yes, it reduces the radioactivity by about a third or a quarter.

  Nesterenko.—That’s good. It means that the children are taking in three or four times less radioactivity.

  Mrs Skidan.—What hurts, for example, is when they say “Chernovshchina is in the zone, Obukhovshchina is in the zone, but you, Slobodka, you are not in the zone”. It’s 4 km from here! We need clean fodder for our pigs, fertilisers for the seeds that we sow ourselves… For example, I have a hectare of land, because I can’t buy everything from the shop. I grow half grain and half potatoes. They give fertilisers to Obukhovchchina and to Chernovshchina because they are in the zone. But the people in Slobodka, we’re not in the zone! We called the executive committee. We asked them why we’re not included in the zone. They came and they shouted at us. “Don’t call us again!”

  Nesterenko.—I’ve got a suggestion: there is a man called Ivan Albinovich Kenik. He is the president of the committee that deals with all the problems concerning Chernobyl (ComChernobyl). It’s worth writing a letter to him about all your problems, including the fact that you have been talked to in an insulting way. Don’t be afraid. Write to him. I will go and see him and I will tell him all about it. I have a meeting with him next week. Because I am in no doubt that you should get all the help you need. This is one of the 350 villages in Belarus where the milk is regularly contaminated.