Voices from Chernobyl (Lannan Selection)

“… Just thinking of all your days to come, the bitterness, the life that rough mankind will thrust upon you. Where are the public gatherings you can join, the banquets of the clans? Home you’ll come, in tears, cut off from the sight of it all, the brilliant rites unfinished. And when you reach perfection, ripe for marriage, who will he be, my dear ones? Risking all to shoulder the curse that weighs down my parents, yes and you too - that wounds us all together.” - Oedipus in Oedipus Rex by SophoclesI was a freshman in college when Chernobyl disaster occurred on April 26, 1986.I vaguely remember being terrified about the scope of the incident; however, the Soviets were our enemies, so except for being concerned for how it would impact my life, I gave it little thought.When Svetlana Alexievich won the Nobel Prize in Literature last year, Chernobyl was brought back into my life. And for that I will forever be grateful.Ms. Alexievich’s Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster is one of the hardest books I’ve read due to the graphic descriptions of the impact on human life, but it is a book that must be read due to the immense amount of truth it contains.By truth, I don’t mean that it correctly represents the events of the disaster and its aftermath, which it does, but rather, that in the book’s monologues, we as readers are exposed to many of life’s truths. For example:“Only in evil is man clever and refined. But how simple and sympathetic he is when speaking honest words of love. Even when the philosophers use words they are only approximations of the thoughts they have felt” (66).And“… That all our humanistic ideas are relative. In an extreme situation, people don’t behave the way you read about in books. Sooner the other way around. People aren’t heroes” (111).It goes on and on. There is much more to this book than an oral history or a glimpse into the worst industrial disaster of our time.I thought when I read the book, I would be horrified by the accounts of the survivors, but I was more horrified at how I saw in these stories the cost of human behavior and ideologies. Lest you think, however, that these behaviors and ideologies are exclusive to the Soviets, and that their kind have faded into history, think again, as there are many moments in the work that reminded me of current arguments, events, and propaganda in our own time and country.After reading the book, one also must admire the courage of the author! Ms. Alexievich’s work on this project itself was an act of heroism, as she was interviewing people that oftentimes didn’t wish to speak, in a country that still was trying to cover-up what had occurred. Written ten years after the event, Ms. Alexievich solicits the personal reflections of a wide range of those that were witnesses to Chernobyl - villagers, soldiers, scientists, liquidators (those responsible for the clean up), Communist Party officials, mothers, children, widows, and re-settlers.The words in the book are those of the interviewed, but the organization of these “monologues” into a coherent whole is what makes the book much more than a telling of the event and its aftermath. It is this organization and focus that Ms. Alexievich provides, which takes the project to the realm of truth.For me, the moment that I’ll never forget is when I realized how those that survived, whether or not they became sick and died, would never be the same. And I don’t mean they are forever haunted by the events, as no doubt they are, but rather that they could never truly return to society. They were shunned, set apart, and labeled:“I got home, I’d go dancing. I’d meet a girl I liked and say, ‘Let’s get to know one another.’‘What for? You’re a Chernobylite now. I’d be scared to have your kids.’” - Soldier stationed at Chernobyl (46).“Now I look at my kids: wherever they go, they’ll feel like strangers. My daughter spent a summer at pioneer camp, the other kids were afraid to touch her. ‘She’s a Chernobyl rabbit. She glows in the dark.’ They made her to into the yard at night so they could see if she was glowing” - resident of the village of Khoyniki (195).It was this last excerpt that made me think of Oedipus’ speech to his children. Even those that survive will pay for the disaster that was Chernobyl until their deaths.People often say, “I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy,” and now that I think about my reaction to Chernobyl all those years ago, I feel ashamed. For even though the Cold War was still a reality in 1986, making the Soviets our enemies, this devastation is exactly that … something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.All of this might tend to push you away from reading the book, but I promise you that there is much more here than shame, horror, and tragedy. For this book, more than any other I’ve read recently, made me think more about “truth” and how I live my own life each and every day.For more of my reviews, visit https://readingwritingreacting.wordpress.com

Through a series of beautifully crafted monologues by journalist Svetlana Alexievich, a candidate for the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature, she gives a voice to the voiceless by offering a literary megaphone to the citizens in, around and beyond Pripyat, Russa who experienced the all out lethal aftereffects of when the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant experienced a cataclysmic meltdown on April 26, 1986.With navigational restraint and skill, she interviews those who survived the ordeal first and secondhand, and for those who did not survive, the flame of their memory was carried on by those loved ones who were left behind in the radioactive hell that Alexievich brings so descriptively back to life. By applying her literary aptitude and journalistic acumen, she enables these victims and survivors their dirge or aria of woe to be humanely and candidly expressed. She tells tales that are more grim than fanciful, of homes and villages abandoned, radioactive pets and farm animals hunted down and executed, of mutated children and citizens literally melting away due to the radioactive toxicity that was, by degrees, slowly killing them. Alexievich is also very astute at conveying the tyrannical old party Communist belief system that was held by the victims and survivors of Chernobyl before and after the nuclear disaster. The Chernobyl “cleanup” crew and others of the same cloth were spurred on by thoughts of heroic mother country illustriousness and beliefs of Soviet indomitability while others were propelled by a more capitalistic inspiration, that by being involved with the mop-up after the tragedy, they would benefit somehow monetarily and materialistically. And so, they willingly threw themselves into the epicenter of the nuclear monster, only to come out severely contaminated with dashed hopes and chintzy medals for their valiant efforts. Cold war politics and ideologies aside, when Chernobyl exploded, it melted something other than the physically tangible reactor and those who inhabited in and around it. The deadly blast melted away a long-held idology, a Communist philosophy that failed its people. It was, in some respects, the beginning of the end in many ways.Like other great literary journalists and writers: Ernest Hemmingway, Joan Didion, Ryszard Kapuscinski (just to name a few), Alexievich is a powerful writer, who, with gusto and tenacity really throws herself into the story she is trying to tell. She too was born and schooled near where Chernobyl loomed, like an overwhelming Mt. Everest, and it was fitting that it was she who chose to tell this story. If a picture is worth a thousand words, than these monologues are worth far more.