Resumo de Voices From Chernobyl - SVETLANA ALEXIEVICH

Voices From Chernobyl:

The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

Svetlana AlexievichThe 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor is one of
the best known industrial accidents of all time, but there has been relatively
little reporting of its human consequences. Voices From Chernobyl
begins with a brief encyclopedia-style account of the effects on Byelorussia,
where two million people live on contaminated land, but otherwise presents the
human side of those. It is an oral history, offering firsthand accounts from
those involved with or affected by the disaster.

The longest piece is nearly twenty pages, but most are much shorter and
there are some choruses with just a paragraph or two from each individual. This
allows a broad range of voices to be heard.

The wife of a first-response fireman who took several weeks to die from
radiation poisoning. Self-settlers who stayed behind or returned to the
contaminated zone. Russian refugees from Tajikistan who preferred the risks
of radiation to those of young men with guns. Conscript soldiers sent in to
forcibly evacuate people or to work as liquidators, ploughing under
crops, trees, topsoil and houses. Hunters employed to kill abandoned cats and
dogs. Helicopter pilots and unprotected men on foot who cleared the roof of the
reactor after robots failed to work in the intense radiation. Children with
birth-defects. Those who used condemned food and equipment or recycled it onto
the black market. Scientists and health workers who tried to alert people to
the risks of radiation. Officials and bureaucrats who spoke out and those who
toed the line.

The different perspectives of those Alexievich listened to come through,
though she has clearly reworked her material. A certain amount of detachment is
perhaps necessary to prevent an overpowering succession of heart-rending
stories. One of the speakers concludes: you can write the rest of this
yourself, I don''t want to talk anymore.

And Grandma ? she couldn''t get used to the new place. She
missed our old home. Just before she died she said, I want some sorrel! We
weren''t allowed to eat that for several years, it was the thing that absorbed
the most radiation.

Our political officer read notices in the paper about our
high political consciousness and meticulous organization, about the fact those
just four days after the catastrophe the red flag was already flying over the
fourth reactor. It blazed forth. In a month the radiation had devoured it. So
they put up another one. I tried to imagine how the soldiers felt going up on
the roof to replace that flag. These were suicide missions. What would you call
this? Soviet paganism? Live sacrifice? But the thing is, if they''d given me the
flag then, and told me to climb up there, I would have. Why? I can''t say. I
wasn''t afraid to die, then. My wife didn''t send a single letter. In six months,
not a single letter.

But when they put labels on the milk that said, for
children, and for adults ? that was a different story. That was a bit closer to
home. All right, I''m not a member of the Party, but I still live here. And we
became afraid. Why is the radish leaves this year so much like beet leaves? You
turned on the television, they were saying, Don''t listen to the provocations of
the West! and that''s when you knew for sure.

The personal details of the stories are what grabs the reader, but they
often touch on broader themes. Some of those Alexievich records are historians
and philosophers themselves, but the more concrete accounts are often the most
revealing. The Chernobyl disaster is linked by
many to the Second World War, which still looms large for the older generation,
and by some to the end of communism and the breakup of the Soviet
Union, which followed soon afterwards.

Voices from Chernobyl is a powerful work which deserves a broad
readership. As well as being aion of the human effects of
widespread radioactive contamination, it offers a view of the final years of
the Soviet Union and of life in Byelorussia.
It should certainly be read by those caught up in the recent revival of
enthusiasm for nuclear power, if only so the possible consequences of accidents
are clear.

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