#Chornobyl

[bacony-cakes]

[folklorespring]

Evacuation due to Chornobyl disaster, 1986. Photos by Viktor Marushchenko.

[ohsalome]

Today is a 37st anniversary of the Chornobyl Nuclear Plant disaster. It's hard to talk about one unprocessed national tragedy while living through another.

The Chornobyl disaster was totally preventable and it took away countless lives of people living in the region, especially in Ukraine and Belarus - both the liquidators and the civillians. Despite the very air and dust being literal poison, the soviets had not only hid this information from the people, but forced everybody to partake in the May the 1st parade - because god forbid we lose our face before the international community as a working class paradise! If not for the nuclear scientists in Sweden who raised the alarm about the dangerous levels of nuclear particles coming from northern Ukraine, who knows what would have happened. It definitely would have been swepped under the rug and forgotten by the international community, together with its victims - just like Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan is barely known abroad.

With russia constantly threatening to turn Zaporhizhzha nuclear plant into second Chornobyl, the wound caused by this tragedy is cut open again.

We all love the HBO Chornobyl series, and I genuinely am grateful to Craig Mazin for the amount of empathy and respect he brought to the series; but for today I indulge you to watch something made by ukrainians, to try to understand what this tragedy means to us and how it influences our lives even today.

For the documentaries, my favourite series by this day remains the "Dragons live here" by Your Underground Humanitarian School Youtube channel, which, unfortunately, can only offer automated english subtitles - they should, however, be sufficient.

As for the feature films, I recommend "Gateway" (you can stream it online with english subtitles here). And here is the official english trailer:

[sonyaheaneyauthor]

1991 stamp of the Soviet Union showing the harmful effects of radiation, in recognition of the 1986 Chornobyl disaster in Ukraine.

[vyvilha]

a folk song from chapayevka village, chornobyl region

this type of song is called голосіння (holosinnya — "keening"), and they are usually sang by women over the dead body during the period between death and funeral. in this song, the woman is mourning both her dead son, and the land that they were forced to leave due to the chornobyl disaster.

translation under the cut

We went there

The houses are overgrown

Can't see anything over the weeds

Oh my God

Thirty years had passed

Now I can't even recognize

Neither my house, nor my village

Oh my God, oh my God

Oh my son, my nightingale

My son, my little dove

How far they brought us

And I will never come to you again

And will never see you again

Oh, my land, my golden one

My land, my dear one

Oh, how far they brought us

That I can't come to you

Our roads, our paths are overgrown

And our houses, and everything

I can't even recognize

Not the village, nor any of our backyards

We got lost, can't even find our houses

Oh my God, oh my God

[acidumvalericc]

i realised that I've never thrown in my S.T.A.L.K.E.R. fanart, so I'll throw it in this small collection !! ☢

several fan characters, as well as commissions for friends

[teeth--thief]

Google Drive full of book PDFs about Chernobyl

Link to the Google Drive if you don't want to click the title: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1kscKFciW6almJA8p-0sUQPO3c0A4AQYe

Note: It will be updated regularly - for as long as I'll be able to find/get new things =) So far I've compiled 41 books in three languages.

Just to repeat what I said in the first post: I'm open to any requests or suggestions or even PDFs themselves, if someone wants to share theirs from their collection. Message me, send me an ask, throw a rock through my window - whatever you prefer, just please, do it yourself because I'm too scared to message anyone, thanks. No fiction - that's the only rule. Any language is welcome - if you want me to look for a certain book in the language of your choice, I'll do that. If you have a book in language other than English, I'd love to add it to the Drive! If you have a better version of whatever PDF I've already got, then I'd be more than happy to do a swap.

Now, some of my reasoning, if anyone's interested: first of all, I think it's important for everyone to be able to access stuff like this. Think of it as a library, minus the "give these back" part. Secondly, I get soooo mad when people are like haha, found this super rare, basically impossible to find, very expensive book! ...I shall now keep it exclusively to myself. Ma'am, you're ruining the vibe and stalling everyone's hobby research but I guess you do you...

List of all the books (under the cut):

In English:

Voices from Chernobyl - Alexievich S.

Chernobyl Reactor Accident - Source Term

Chernobyl - Insight from the Inside - Dr. Chernousenko V.M.

How It Was - Dyatlov A.S.

(ENG+RUS) Chernobyl Booklet

Chernobyl: The Devastation, Destruction and Consequences of the World’s Worst Radiation Accident - Fitzgerald I.

Final Warning. The Legacy of Chernobyl - Gale R.P.

Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster - Higginbotham A.

INSAG-1

INSAG-7

Interesting Chernobyl - 100 Symbols

From Chernobyl To Fukushima - Karpan N.

Manual for Survival. A Chernobyl Guide to the Future - Kate Brown

Chernobyl. Confessions of a Reporter - Kostin I.

The Politics of Invisibility. Public Knowledge about Radiation Health Effects after Chernobyl - Kuchinskaya O.

Memories - Kupnyi A.

Chernobyl 01:23:40 - The Incredible True Story of the World’s Worst Nuclear Disaster - Leatherbarrow A.

Chernobyl Notebook - Medvedev G.

No Breathing Room - Medvedev G.

Chernobyl Record - The Definitive History of the Chernobyl Catastrophe - Mould R. F.

Wormwood Forest - A Natural History of Chernobyl - Mycio M.

Life Exposed: Biological Citizens After Chernobyl - Petryna A.

Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy - Plokhy S.

Ablaze - Story of Chernobyl - Read P.P.

Producing Power: The Pre-Chernobyl History of the Soviet Nuclear Industry - Schmid S. D.

Chernobyl: A Documentary Story - Shcherbak I.

The Vienna Report

Chernobyl - Crime Without Punishment - Yaroshinskaya A.A.

In Russian:

Chernobyl: Kak eto bylo. Preduprezhdeni - Kopchinsky, Steinberg

Chernobyl. Tak eto bylo. Vzglyad Iznutri - Voznyak Ya. Troitskiy N.

Лучевая болезнь человека (очерки) - Гуськова А.К., Байсоголов Г.Д.

Чернобыль. Как это было - Дятлов А.С.

Чернобыль: 30 лет спустя - Кравчук Н.В.

Живы - Купный А.

Чернобыль - Щербак Ю.

(ONLY Pages 367-383) Чернобыль, 10 лет спустя. Неизбежность или случайность?

KGB files - pre and post accident (includes additional information in Ukrainian)

In Polish: 

Jak to było - Diatłov A.S.

Czarnobyl - Plokhy S.

Czarnobyl - Sekuła P.

Katastrofa w Czarnobylu - Sekuła P.

Czarnobyl. Od katastrofy do procesu - Siwiński W.

[iirych]

Stalker Miku ☢️

[vintage-ukraine]

Two young women from Chornobyl, 1915

[arkhaichno]

the red forest, ferris wheel of pripyat, etc.

The references I used are from an article about infrared photography and Chornobyl. I found the photos to be melancholy & beautiful and also really cool. It somewhat reminds me of some of the photos im seeing for the upcoming s.t.a.l.k.e.r. 2 game

[vermutandherring]

38 years since the accident at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant

On the night of April 26, 1986, the biggest disaster in the history of nuclear energy has happened. At first, government of the ussr tried to hide the scale of the tragedy, until the increase in the radioactive background in other countries caused concern. Historians emphasize the political responsibility of the communist regime, which put the lives and health of millions of citizens at risk for the sake of ideological interests.

At first, the blame for the disaster was placed only on the staff. However, in subsequent years, explanations of the causes of the accident were revised. The main reasons are considered to be an incorrectly designed reactor, the production of which the soviet union tried to make cheaper. This caused insufficient awareness of the personnel about the principle of operation of the equipment. And because of the desire of the Soviet authorities to speed up the experiment and its results, the test program was not properly agreed upon.

If you want to watch a good series at your spare time:

If you prefer horror video games:

My article about why you should keep in mind this tragedy alongside with other ussr crimes, when you decide to play russian video games:

Little reminding: Chornobyl is a Ukrainian toponym, so it is logical to pronounce/write it according to the rules of the Ukrainian language.

CC used for the screenshot:

• Helicopter • Exoskeleton • Uniform • Gas mask

[rrrauschen]

Vudon Baklytskyi < The Black Sun of Chornobyl {1988} The Chornobyl Madonna {1980s} > via: http://archive-uu.com/en/profiles/baklytskyi-vudon

[folklorespring]

Przewalski's horses in Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, Ukraine.

Already endangered species is facing the threat of russian landmines. One horse was killed after stepping on a mine back in May.

[ohsalome]

It would be intentionally dishonest to say that the Chornobyl Disaster of 1986 was an accident, as official party line stated. According to the nuclear scientists who analyzed the event, not only was it inevitable, but "it was just a matter of time and which power unit that would not withstand the first". The problems were present on every single level - starting from the materials used for the plant, and ending with the work protocols.

The higher-ups at Moscow not only knew that the Chornobyl Nuclear Plant was one of the most dangerous NP in ussr, and that "the radioactive danger of a potential disaster is 60 times than that of Hirosima and Nagasaki" - according to the results of the official KGB investigation; at the moment of the disaster the project managers had reports of at least 29 emergency shutdowns, 9 accidents and 68 key equipment failures that had already happened on the Chornobyl NP. The real number could be much higher but is currently unknown due to many KGB archives remaining classified.

For example:

On September th 9th 1982 at 18:18 during a trial run of the reactor of the first power unit there was a significant release of radioactive substances into the environment. The total activity of beta-emitting radionuclides exceeded natural levels by dozens of times, and in the area of Chystohalivka village, located 5 kilometres from the Chornobyl power plant, the figure was exceeded by hundreds of times. The investigation team found about 20 gross violations in the operation of the power unit. Instead of following the protocol of alerting the civillians and declaring the village a "temporarily contaminated territory", KGB implemented measures to hide the fact of an accident ever happening.

Every report of the KGB investagative teams that we have access to ended the same: taking measures to conceal the very fact of the accident occurence. It came to the absurd situations when the workers were unaware of the fact that the previous shift's team had encountered an emergency situation.

------

Source: The KGB dossier on Chornobyl - from construction to accident

[sonyaheaneyauthor]

Ukraine 1990: Children from the Chornobyl nuclear disaster region are taken abroad for medical treatment.

[currie-a]

My old art on the Chernobyl tragedy