Cause and Effect: Understanding Chernobyl by Marianne Barisonek

Author:Marianne Barisonek
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Europe, Russia, History
Published: 2011-03-21T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6: The Liquidators

“I lost the sensation in my left hand, later of the left arm, finally of half of my body. Later I suffered from palsy of the left arm, and now of both two legs. They did not know what to do, but they did not consider the radiation as a cause of my suffering. I still went working as trolleybus conductor, and I said nothing about my problems, because I needed an income for my family. I was driving the bus with one hand and one foot, until the day where I fell unconscious, and where they brought my home. Now I cannot walk, my legs are no more supporting my body, at home I have to lean against the wall. I was constantly falling, so my wife told me to remain in a rolling chair, where I am now. Nightmare! “The man is rotten, that’s all”. I have to resign. I am rather young, age 38, but one could say 60 years. His other colleagues had already died, so he concludes: “From the five friends we were, I remained the only one alive, like a white crow, an original.”

Anatoli Saragoviets from the film “The Sacrifice”

Somewhere between 600,000 and 800,000 people, mostly men, were sent to Chernobyl to deal with the aftermath of the disaster. The Soviets referred to the clean-up effort as “liquidating the consequences”. Chernobyl workers became known as liquidators. The term liquidator covers a wide variety of people from scientists and doctors to laborers. Some of the liquidators were in the army before the accident. Some were conscripted afterward in a special draft.

Under the Soviet system it wasn’t uncommon for people to be told that they would have to spend several weeks in another part of the country digging up potatoes, picking cotton or bringing in the rye harvest. So when Maluk Valechin was told that he had to report to the district headquarters he wasn’t particularly alarmed.

He’d heard rumors about something going on at the nuclear power station but no one knew any details. He was part of a convoy of over 100 trucks that went to the state-run farm not far from the reactor. They were to evacuate livestock.

Nothing seemed alarming until the veterinarian showed up wearing a rubber coat, heavy rubber gloves and boots. As they rode to farm the vet explained a little about radiation to Valechin. He told him that even though he wouldn’t be able to see anything, the radiation was very dangerous. He warned Valechin not to get out of the truck when they got to the farm.

Everything had to be done in a hurry. There were thousands of animals to evacuate. He couldn’t stay in the truck to keep away from some invisible radiation. He had to get out of the truck to load the cows and horses.

Everyone was outside in the dirt. The unusually hot, blustery weather blew up clouds of dust from the dirt road. Trucks and tractors, the frightened horses and cows; everything kicked up the dust.

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