Ablaze

by Read, Piers Paul;

5

  In the campaign for these elections to the republican Supreme Soviet, environmental, scientific and political issues had all become inextricably linked together in the public mind. No longer was Chernobyl the product of Brezhnev’s era of stagnation – the apotheosis, as Legasov had said, of the incompetent running of the economy. Now it was the product of the Communist system itself, the apotheosis of Bolshevik duplicity and indifference to the welfare of the people. But to prove their point, the democrats had to establish that there had indeed been duplicity and indifference: that the children of Pripyat had deliberately been left to play in air laden with radioactive iodine 131; that the citizens of Kiev had been made to march up the Khreshchatyk on 1 May while the party bosses had sent their families out of the city; and that to save the state a few rubles, millions of people were still living on contaminated land.

  The more vigorously this line was pursued by the enthusiastic activists of Green World, the more alarmed became those still living in the contaminated areas. On 30 March 1989, a meeting was held to discuss the situation in the House of Culture in Narodici – ironically, one of the towns to which the inhabitants of Pripyat had first been evacuated. People came from the surrounding countryside; the hall was soon full, and loudspeakers were placed in the corridors outside to enable latecomers to hear what was said.

  First the chairman of the local civil defence committee declared that on the day after the accident the radiation levels in Narodici itself had measured three roentgens per hour; yet no one had been told and nothing had been done to protect its citizens. A dosimetric expert from Romanenko’s Centre of Radiation Medicine who had come to the meeting protested that this was impossible, but he was contradicted by a member of the public who said he had data from the Centre itself that revealed that the level of caesium in the soil just north of Narodici was more than fifty curies per square kilometre. ‘How can children be expected to live in such conditions?’ he asked.

  Not merely in Narodici, but also in nearby Polesskoe, people demanded to be evacuated from their contaminated zones. Claim and counterclaim, made by the government on one side and the Green activists on the other, drove the often unsophisticated residents into a state of hysteria. ‘I am still young, I want to live,’ cried a woman at one of the village meetings, ‘and I want my children to live. But when I give my children a glass of milk, I feel treacherous, because I do not know how much caesium it contains. I have already been in the hospital three times, and so have my children. Yet before the Chernobyl tragedy, we were all healthy.’

  Even in lightly contaminated areas, people demanded the extra monthly, allowance to buy ‘clean’ food. Yet when the government agreed to their demands and paid this ‘coffin money’, it was taken as proof that they had indeed been living in danger all along. Most used the money to buy vodka, the traditional antidote for both radiation and despair.

  Against this barrage of invective, Ilyn and Knijnikov were obliged to amplify the official line. In April 1989, Ilyn wrote an article published in both Ukrainian and Belorussian periodicals stating that in the 786 zones affected by the accident in Chernobyl, the average dose received by people was six rems. Blood tests had shown that 2,600 had received a higher dose of up to 17.3 rems, and eight hundred of these a dose that was higher still. Ilyn predicted that over the next thirty years there would be an additional thirty cases of thyroid cancer, and an additional sixty-four deaths from leukaemia and other cancers. In an interview, Knijnikov conceded that ‘there were doses of radiation rather high for the thyroid gland’ and that ‘theoretically we can expect a higher cancer incidence in medical personnel. There is a risk, though it is not high, about one per cent, but its negative effects can be reduced by timely diagnostics and adequate treatment.’ In the same article, Vladimir Asmolov, the head of the nuclear-safety department at the Kurchatov Institute, referred to the Soviet Greens as ‘the most ignorant Greens in the world’.

  This new candour did nothing to calm the agitation, or to save Ilyn and Israel from the charges that they were responsible for covering up a heinous crime. The campaign against them was led by the radically pro-glasnost newspaper Moscow News. In February 1989, it published an article by Vladimir Kolinko, a journalist who had covered the Chernobyl accident for the Novosti News Agency, describing the grotesque livestock born in Narodici and claiming a dramatic increase in thyroid disease and a doubling in the incidence of lip and mouth cancer since the accident. He also wrote that there had been an increase in the incidence of infant mortality, and that abortions had been recommended to women in the zone. Kolinko’s article was reproduced in a Ukrainian newspaper for young people, Molod Ukrainy, which ensured that his alarming statistics reached those concerned.

  Kolinko’s claims were quickly refuted in Pravda Ukrainy by scientists from Romanenko’s Centre of Radiation Medicine in Kiev. The head of the epidemiological laboratory wrote that because of the migration of the population from the Narodici region after Chernobyl, the number of patients treated for cancer had actually dropped. There were only three cases of lip cancer in 1987 and 1988, whereas there had been seven in an earlier two-year span. The director of the Centre’s Institute for Clinical Radiology showed that the birth and death rate of babies had remained stable in the period, and that while local doctors might have recommended abortions, this had never been sanctioned by the authorities in Kiev.

  The claimed genetic mutations in livestock were also dismissed with a certain measure of scorn. The Petrovsky collective, where Kolinko had claimed there were sixty-two freak calves, had been found by experts to have produced eight; this amounted to about 2 per cent of live births, the same number as had been recorded in three farms in the Polessia region on a veterinary inspection before the accident. These genetic anomalies were thought to have come either from inbreeding or from an increase in nitrates and an absence of microelements in the soil.

  Acknowledging that scare stories of this kind had been made possible by the obsessive secretiveness of the authorities in the past, the editor of Pravda Ukrainy sought to add authority to the official point of view by seeking the opinion of the American expert on radioactive contamination, Professor Richard Wilson of Harvard University. Wilson condemned Kolinko’s article as an attempt by the Soviet press to ape the kind of sensationalism so common in the West.

  In a further attempt to reassure the public, the Ukrainian Council of Ministers published for the first time a detailed account of the consequences of the accident in the newspaper Radyanska Ukrainia, including maps of the contaminated zones. Intended to reassure the population, in point of fact, this official candour revealed areas of contamination previously unknown to the general public, and higher levels of contamination in meat, fish and mushrooms than had been hitherto supposed.

  Nor did it stop the search for scapegoats by Moscow News. ‘Thousands of people are asking today: who is responsible for the favourable radiation readings in many Belorussian and Ukrainian villages whose inhabitants now have to be moved to new places?’ In its April 1989 issue it described the ‘Chernobyl syndrome’ by the formula that ‘the damage caused by the mistake is directly proportional to the length of time it is hushed up.’ In May, it posed the question put by the Belorussian critic and filmmaker, Ales Adamovich: ‘Who should answer for such an unforgivable three-year-long disregard for the health and interests of tens of thousands of people?’

  6

  Passions ran high, and some of those who had held power at the time of the accident broke ranks to shift the blame. On 12 July, at a televised session, the Supreme Soviet was asked to ratify the reappointment of Yuri Israel as chairman of the State Committee of Hydrometeorology. He immediately ran into a barrage of questions about his role in the aftermath of the accident. Some speakers criticized him, others defended him, and then came a dramatic intervention. Valentina Shevchenko, the proleterian virago who had stood next to the Ukrainian party leader Shcherbitsky to watch the May Day parade on the Khreshchatyk in Kiev in 1986, walked up to the
podium to speak.

  ‘I am one of the representatives of the political leadership of the Ukraine that we are talking about today,’ she said. ‘In addition, the Chernobyl zone is today in my constituency. I would … simply like to read out to you some excerpts from a document.’ She then read from the document that the Ukrainian leaders had insisted should be signed by Ilyn and Israel on 7 May, stating that the levels of radiation in and around Kiev were safe. Then she turned to Israel. ‘Surely you remember, Yuri Antoniyevich, when we invited you to the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Ukraine Central Committee? Do you remember how you talked to the whole Politburo, and how it was proposed that you should write a note with recommendations and conclusions, and how you and Comrade Ilyn worked the whole day on this note, and the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Ukraine Central Committee held a session at half-past eleven at night to examine your conclusions and recommendations? You will also remember, then, that when you were sitting at the table opposite me, I asked you a question: “Yuri Antoniyevich, what would you do if your own grandchildren were in Kiev?” You remained silent. And on the basis of your silence, we insisted that the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukraine adopt a resolution to evacuate children from the city of Kiev. I am grateful to all the fraternal Union republics that took in our children; as a result of this we were able perhaps to prevent more widespread illness among our children.’

  Then Shevchenko took up the question of the evacuation of Pripyat. The Ukrainian leadership, she said, had been ready to evacuate at 8.00 a.m. on 28 April, but the decision had only been made by Scherbina that afternoon. He had been the head of the commission, and all the decisions he had made had been carried out by the government of the Ukraine ‘working most efficiently round the clock’. She conceded the complexity of the task they had faced, but ‘today we still do not know what to expect, and I think that Yuri Antoniyevich, occupying such a high state post and being responsible for exceptionally important work, should occupy a standpoint not of compromise, but … of great principle. I will vote against you, Yuri Antoniyevich, and appeal to the deputies from Ukraine to vote against you.’

  This intervention brought the Soviet prime minister, Ryzhkov, to the rostrum. ‘I should like to throw light on certain aspects of one problem about which Comrade Shevchenko spoke so fervently just now. This is the issue of the Chernobyl disaster. We must quite soberly evaluate the situation there at the time, and what is happening there today. I asked to speak because exactly three days after the accident an operation group of the Politburo was given broad powers to eliminate the extremely complex situation that had developed at that time. There is no need for me to describe in detail what we did. We did everything that we could have done. Everything that we understood, we did to save people. This was true, I think, over the two years that the commission worked, from 29 April 1986 to 1988. In 1988, the commission did indeed cease to exist, and its functions were handed over to a government commission. Let me say, however, that at that time we faced a most difficult situation. It is easy enough to argue today about why such and such was not done in such and such a way, and so on. But at the time every moment counted and decisions had to be made quickly, responsibly and in a professional way, because it was a matter of people’s lives.

  ‘We heard here of a meeting of the Politburo of the Ukraine on 7 May. I don’t know about that. I was not present. But I know that I was with you on 2 May. Do you remember? Do you? Do you remember that we went to the zone with the political leadership? And that was before 7 May. I do not want to accuse anyone, but I think it is quite wrong to level accusations today against those people who did everything they could to save the situation.

  ‘A second matter. It was a special situation, and I have to say that enormous human effort and material resources were required to put out the fire. We did not know what to expect. The consequences could have been far worse than those that did occur. We involved our finest scientists. They were physicists – among them the late Valeri Alekseyvich Legasov, now dead. He helped us with his knowledge as a physicist. He made recommendations to the operational group. And I have to say that he does not deserve to be forgotten. Then there was the physicist Velikhov – I cannot see him here today – who was also there, who also gave advice. Or take Ilyn, Academician Ilyn, who made certain decisions on health care. And I would like to say that among the scientists whom we gathered there at the disaster site, the very best of the scientific world, was Comrade Israel, whom we are discussing today.

  ‘I am convinced that if we had not attracted at that time the very cream of our society – our scientists – we could not have coped with that tragedy, or even if we had, then we would have made even more mistakes than, unfortunately, are apparent now. Today we should be thanking the scientists who helped so much to eliminate this national tragedy.’

  XII

  1

  Ryzhkov’s eloquent speech, an unprecedented outburst of emotion from such a reserved man, did not stop the dissident clamour. Ryzhkov himself, apparently so decent and reasonable, the very best that the system could provide, was nevertheless a product of the system, a party boss, and damned as such by the new nationalists and democrats in Belorussia and the Ukraine.

  Nor did Moscow News let up on its campaign to punish those responsible for Chernobyl. In October 1989, in an article entitled ‘The Big Lie’, it printed the transcript of a round-table discussion on the cover-up held by Yuri Shcherbak and Ales Adamovich, both now people’s deputies; Vladimir Kolinko, the journalist from the Novosti News Agency; Valentin Budko, the first secretary of the Narodici District Communist Party Committee; and two other people’s deputies from the affected regions, Yuri Voronezhtsev from Gomel and Alla Yaroshinskaya from Zhitomir. The latter described the anguish suffered by those still living in the contaminated zone. ‘I heard a woman addressing a meeting. She said: I come home and my little son stands near a cup of milk. On seeing me, he gets frightened that I’ll scold him because he isn’t supposed to drink the milk, so he tells me, Mummy, don’t swear at me, I’ve only dipped a finger into the milk …’

  Who was responsible for this cruel state of affairs? ‘The lying started three and a half years ago,’ said Shcherbak, ‘and I believe that we still do not know the most dramatic truth about the accident.’ There must now be a thorough investigation to discover ‘who made the decision not to notify the public about [this] global catastrophe.’ Adamovich wanted to punish those responsible for ‘the crime that started in 1986, continued and is continuing … People who are guilty of these crimes, all these lies and frauds, of concealing the truth … will not be able to change the situation … To conceal their lies, they will have to continue prevaricating and lying. Therefore those who have not yet managed to retire on pension must quit their posts.’

  The round-table participants named names. As the head of the commission, Boris Scherbina had signed the order that classified all information about radioactive contamination in the thirty-kilometre zone. But Vladimir Marin, now chief of the Nuclear Power Division of the Bureau of Fuel and Energy, but then responsible for the nuclear power department of the Central Committee, had known of the accident an hour or so after it had happened. There were also the physicists and scientists. ‘How could doctors sign documents hiding the truth from the people, thereby dooming them to suffering?’ asked Adamovich. ‘Our science and medicine,’ answered Shcherbak, ‘have turned into servants of the political system. This is the most horrible thing that can happen to science.’

  Most clearly culpable in this respect were Professor Yuri Israel and Academician Leonid Ilyn. The latter had not only corroborated ‘the big lie’ but was also responsible for establishing the permissible dose of thirty-five rems which Velikhov had told Adamovich ‘came out of the blue’. Admittedly the World Health Organization had approved the thirty-five-rem norm after a visit to the affected area in 1989, but when the French atomic specialist Professor Francis Pellerin had been asked why h
e supported it, he had said that the Soviet Union lacked the resources to make it any lower.

  A particular target for Shcherbak was Ilyn’s ally in Kiev, the minister of health, Anatoli Romanenko. ‘In the Ukraine today, at literally every meeting, people demand that Anatoli Romanenko, minister of public health of the Ukrainian SSR, should be called to account.’ Although in the United States at the time of both the accident and the May Day parade, he was now held responsible for the delay in alerting the people of Kiev to the dangers of radiation, and in ascribing the suffering of those living in the contaminated territories to ‘radiophobia’. He had lost the protection of the longserving party leader Vladimir Shcherbitsky, who had retired in September; the last of Brezhnev’s satraps, and a consistent opponent of both Gorbachev and glasnost, Shcherbitsky astounded everyone by surviving for so long. In November, Romanenko followed. His resignation came when the Politburo of the Ukrainian Communist party met to discuss Chernobyl. The reason given was the burden imposed by his dual role as minister of health and director of the Centre of Radiation Medicine; he retained the second position, which, as a national appointment, was the gift of Ilyn, not of the local party leaders. He was replaced by his young deputy, Yuri Spizhenko, until then a supporter of his superior’s stand.

  At the meeting of the Politburo, the first secretary of the Kiev Regional Committee, Grigori Revenko, who had been deeply involved in the Chernobyl crisis from the beginning, blamed both RUKH and Green World for fomenting fear among the population by spreading unscientific rumours. However, by February of the following year, Spizhenko admitted to the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet that there was indeed a medical crisis in the controlled regions; the thyroid glands of fifty-eight hundred children and seven thousand adults had been adversely affected by radiation, and a large number of the two hundred thousand liquidators living in the Ukraine required careful medical attention. He blamed the past failure of his ministry in appreciating the magnitude of the crisis on the classification of the data by the ‘so-called Third Division of the USSR Ministry of Health’.