Liudmila Ignatenko’s testimony, wife of the dead fireman Vasili Ignatenko:
I don’t know what to talk about. Death or love? Or is it the same? About what?’
We had married recently. We still walked down the street holding hands, even when we were shopping. Always together. Used to tell him ‘I love you’. But I didn’t know yet how much I loved him. I could not imagine it. We lived in the building blocks of the firefighters’ unit, where he used to work. In the flat at the top. There were three other young families; we had a kitchen to share. And downstairs there were the cars. Red firefighting lorries. That was his job. I was always aware of everything: where he was, what was going on.
I heard a noise in the middle of the night. Shouting. I looked out the window. He saw me: ‘Close the windows and go to bed. There is a fire in the plant. I’ll be back soon.’
I didn’t see the explosion. Only the flames. Everything looked lit up. The whole sky. Tall flames. And soot. A horrible heat. And he was not back yet. The soot was caused by burning tar; the plant’s ceiling was covered in tar. Over which people used to walk, he remembered later, as if it was resin. The flames were suffocating, and all along, he was crawling. He went up the reactor. They were throwing out the burning graphite with their feet. They went there without wearing their canvas suits; they left with what they were wearing, in their shirts. Nobody warned them, they called them as if it were a normal fire.
Four. Five. Six. At six we were to go and see his parents. To plant potatoes. There are 40 Km from Pripiat city to Sperizhie, where his parents used to live. We had to go to sow and plough. It was his favourite job. His mother often remembered how neither herself nor her husband wanted to let him go to the city; they even built him a new house. But the Army took him. He served in Moscow, in the firefighting troops, and when he came back he only wanted to be a firefighter. He didn’t wish for anything else. [She goes silent].
Sometimes I think I can hear his voice. Alive. Not even photos have the same effect on me like his voice. But he never calls me. And in dreams, it is me calling him.
Seven. At seven they told me he was in hospital. I ran there, but the hospital was already cordoned off by the militia; they didn’t let anybody through. Only ambulances were allowed through. Militians were screaming: the cars are contaminated, do not get close. I was not alone, all the women, whose husbands were that night in the plant, came over.
Do not trespass.
I ran looking for somebody I knew who worked as a doctor in that hospital. I grabbed her by the uniform as she was getting out of a car. ‘Let me get in!’ ‘I can’t! He’s bad. They’re all bad.’ I was still grabbing her. ‘Only to see him.’ ‘Fine’, she says. ‘Quick, fifteen, twenty minutes.’
I saw him. He was swollen all over. He almost didn’t have any eyes. ‘Milk! Lots of milk!’ said my friend. ‘Let him drink at least three litres.’ ‘He does not drink milk.’ ‘Then now he’ll have to.’
Many doctors, nurses and especially assistants in that hospital would be ill after a while. They would die. But back then nobody knew it.
At ten in the morning the technician Shishenok died. He was the first one. On the first day. Then we found out that underneath the rubble another one had been trapped, Valera Jodemchuk. They didn’t manage to get him out. They were trapped between concrete. Back then we still didn’t know that all of them would be the first ones.
I ask him, ‘Vasia, what will I do?’ ‘Leave! Leave! You’re expecting a child.’ I am pregnant, it is true. But how am I going to leave him? He asks me ‘Go! Save the child!’ ‘First I’ll bring the milk and then we’ll see.’
My friend Tania Kibenok arrives. Her husband is in the same room. She has come with his father, who has a car. We all get into the car and we go to the village to get milk. About 3 kilometres from the city. We buy many 3-litres containers of milk. Six of them, so that there was plenty for everybody. But the milk was provoking them to vomit horribly. They kept on losing consciousness constantly; they put them on a drip. Doctors assured us, I don’t know why, that they had been poisoned by the gases; nobody was talking about the radiation.
In the meantime the city was filled up by military cars, all the roads were closed. You could see soldiers everywhere. Short-distance trains stopped running. They washed the cars with a white powder. I felt alarmed. How was I going to get to town at the following day to get fresh milk? Nobody was talking about the radiation. Only military men were wearing masks. City people carried the shops’ bread, muffin bags open. On the shelves there were cakes. Life went on as usual. They washed the streets with powder.
At night they didn’t let me into the hospital. A sea of people around it. I was standing in front of his window; he got close to it and shouted something at me. He looked so desperate! Among the crowd somebody made out what he was saying: they were taking them to Moscow that night. The wives got together in a circle. We made up our minds: we are going with them. Let us be with our husbands! You have no right! We tried to get through by pushing and scraping. The soldiers, soldiers had already formed a cordon of two rows, and they prevented us from getting through by pushing. Then the doctor came out and confirmed that they were being taken to Moscow that night on a plane, that we had to bring them clothes; what they were wearing in the plant had already been burnt. Buses were not running already, and we went on foot, running, home. When we came back with our bags, the plane had already left. They had lied to us. So that we didn’t shout, nor cry.
Night fell. On one side of the street, buses, hundreds of buses (they were already preparing the city’s evacuation), and on the other, hundreds of firefighting cars. They brought them from everywhere. The entire street was covered in white foam. We were treading on that foam. Shouting and swearing.
Evacuating the city
They said on the radio the city would be evacuated for three, maybe five days. Take winter and sports clothes with you, for you are going to live in the woods. In tents. People were even happy: they are sending us to the countryside! We will celebrate the First of May. Something unusual. People were preparing roasted meat for the trip, they bought wine. They took guitars, tape-recorders. The wonderful May celebrations! Only those women whose husbands had suffered the misfortune were crying.
I can’t remember the trip. When I saw his mother it felt like I was waking up. ‘Mother, Vasia is in Moscow! He was taken there in a special flight.’ We had just sowed the orchard. Potatoes, cabbages (and in a week’s time they’d evacuate the village!) Who was to know it? That night I threw up violently. I was six months pregnant. I felt so ill.
At night I dream he is calling me. While he was alive he used to call me in his dreams: ‘Liusia, Liusia!’. But after he died he didn’t call me a single time. Not a single one. [She cries]. I wake up in the morning and tell myself: I am going to Moscow on my own. I that… ‘Where are you going to go, in your condition?’ his mother asks me, crying. My dad also came with me: ‘It is better if I go with you.’ He took all the money they had in their account, all of it…
I can’t remember the journey. The entire trip has been erased from my memory. Once In Moscow we asked the first militian we saw to which hospital the Chernobyl firefighters had been taken to, and he told us; I was even surprised, for they had scared us we wouldn’t be told, it was a state secret, ultra secret.
To the Clinic number 6. To the Schúkinskaya.
The hospital was specialized in radiology, and they did not let you in without a pass. I gave money to the guard and he told me ‘Go ahead.’ He told me the floor I had to go to. I don’t know who else I implored and begged to. The truth is that I had already arrived to the radiology section manager’s office: Anguelina Vasílievna Guskova. I still didn’t know her name, I could not remember anything. The only thing I knew was that I had to see him. Find him.
She quickly asked me: ‘But, on God’s name! Child! Have you got any children?’
How was I to tell her the truth? It was clear I had to hide my pregnancy. She wouldn’t let me see him! Thankfully I am thin and it was not showing at all.
Yes, I answered. ‘How many?’ I think to myself ‘I have to say I have two children. If I only have one, she won’t let me through.’
‘A boy and a girl.’
‘Well, if you have two, I don’t think you’ll have any more. Now listen: his central nervous system is completely damaged; his spine is totally destroyed.’
‘Well’, I thought to myself, ‘this will make him more nervous.’
‘And listen to me well: if you start crying, I’ll send you home straight away. It is forbidden to embrace and kiss each other. Don’t get too close to him. I’ll grant you half an hour.’
But I already knew I wouldn’t leave. If I did, it would be with him. I had sworn to myself!
I get in…I see them sitting on their beds, playing cards, laughing.
‘Vasia!’, they call him.
He turns around. ‘Good Lord! She has even found me here! I am lost!’
It was funny to see him with his size 48 pajamas for his is a 52. Too short in the sleeves and legs. But the swelling in his face was gone. They were injecting them with some kind of solution.
‘You, lost?’ I ask him.
And he wants to hold me.
‘Sit down’ the doctor doesn’t let him get any close to me. ‘No embracing here.’
I don’t know how, but we made a joke out of that. And a minute after everybody got closer to us, even people from other rooms. All of them were our men. From Prípiat. For they brought 28 of them in that plane. What’s the story? What’ s going on in the city? I tell them that they have started to evacuate people, that they are taking all the city to the country for three to five days. The men grow silent; but there were two women there, one of them was on duty at the entrance the day of the accident, and she starts to cry: ‘My God! My children are there. What will become of them?’
I wanted to be alone with him; well, even if it was only for a minute. The guys noticed and each of them came up with an excuse in order to get out to the corridor. Then I held him and kissed him. The he pulled away.
‘Don’t sit close to me. Take a chair.’
‘That’s nonsense’, I told him, giving it less importance. ‘Did you see where the explosion came from? What was that about? Because you were the first ones to arrive.’
‘The most likely explanation is that of sabotage. Somebody has done it on purpose. All the guys agree on this.’
Back then that’s what they said. That’s what they believed.
When I arrived at the following day they had separated them, each in a different room. They had categorically forbidden them to go out to the corridor. To talk to each other. They communicated among themselves by knocking on the walls. Stop-hyphen, stop-hyphen. Stop. Doctors explained that each organism reacts differently to the radiation doses, so that what one can stand might kill the another. Where they were, even the walls reacted to the Geiger. To their left, their right and the bottom floor was emptied of people. They took everybody else out, they did not leave a single patient inside. Not even on top, nobody else was left. (…).
His death
One night I’m sitting on a chair beside him. At eight in the morning I tell him ‘Vasia, I’m going out for a while. I’m going to rest a bit.’ He opens and closes his eyes, he lets me go. Once I get to the hotel and to my room, I lie on the floor –I couldn’t lie down in bed, I was so sore all over- I am called by a nurse: ‘Go! Run to see him! He’s calling you nonstop!.’ But that morning Tania Kibenok had asked me so many times, she had begged me: ‘We’re going to the cemetery together. I can’t do it without you.’ That morning they were burying Vitia Kibenok and Volodia Právik.
He was very close to Vitia. Two friendly families. A day before the explosion we had taken a picture together in the residence. How handsome our husbands look there! Happy. The last day of our past life. The time before Chernobyl. How happy we were!
I come back from the graveyard and I hurriedly call the nurse: ‘How is he?’ ‘He died about fifteen minutes ago.’ What? I’ve spent all night beside him, I’ve only been away for three hours! I was beside the window, screaming ‘Why? Why?’ I was staring at the sky and screaming. Everybody in the hotel could hear me. They were scared to get close to me. But I got over it and told myself that I would see him for the last time, that I would go to see him. I flew down the stairs. He was still in the chamber, they had not taken him away yet.
His last words were ‘Liusia! Liusia!’ The nurse tried to calm him down telling him that I had just left, but that I would be back soon. He sighed and went quiet.
I did not leave his side again. I went with him to the grave. Although what I remember is not the coffin, but the polyethylene bag. That bag. In the morgue they asked me whether I wanted to be shown how they were going to dress him, and I said I did. They dressed him with his uniform, and they put his hat on his chest. They did not put his shoes on. They could not find adequate shoes, because his feet had swollen. It looked like he had bombs instead of feet. They also had to cut up his uniform, they could not put it on him.
A shattered body
His body was shattered. He was a big bloody wound. During his last two days in hospital I would take his hand and the bone moved inside, it was separated from the flesh. Bits of lung and liver would come out of his mouth. He was drowning in his own entrails. I would cover my hand with a surgical gauze and I would put it inside his mouth in order to take all that from inside of him. This can’t be told! This can’t be written! It can’t be borne! All my beloved…all so mine. No shoe size would fit him. They put him in the coffin barefoot.
In front of my very eyes. Dressed formally, they put him into a plastic bag and they tied it up. And once in that bag, they put him inside the coffin. They also put the coffin inside another bag. A transparent film, but thick as a tablecloth. And all of this was put inside a zinc coffin. They could barely fit it in. Only the hat was left on top.
Everybody came. His parents, mine. We bought black handkerchiefs in Moscow. An extraordinary commission received us. All of us were told the same: we cannot give you back your husbands’ bodies, your children’s bodies, they are extremely radioactive and they will be buried in a Moscow graveyard in a special way. Inside soldered zinc coffins, beneath reinforced concrete. You have to sign these documents. We need your consent. And if somebody, outraged, wanted to take the coffin home, they convinced him that they were heroes, they said, and that they did not belong to their families. They were official people. And they belonged to the State now.
We got into the bus. Relatives and a few military men. A colonel with a radio. I could hear coming from the radio: ‘Wait for orders! Wait!’ We drove around Moscow for two or three hours, through the belt road. Then we went back to Moscow. And from the radio: ‘We cannot enter the graveyard. Foreign correspondents have surrounded it. Wait a bit longer.’ The relatives were silent. Mother was wearing the black handkerchief. I feel myself losing consciousness.
I have a hysterical attack: ‘Why do we have to hide my husband? Who is he? Is he an assassin? A criminal? A common prisoner? Who are we burying?’ My mother tells me ‘Hush, hush, my daughter.’ And she caresses my head, she holds my hand. The colonel informs through the radio: ‘Requesting permission to enter the graveyard. The wife has had a hysterical attack.’
Translated from “Voces de Chernóbil, 20 años después”, by Svetlana Alexievich, published in “El País Semanal” on 9th April 2009 (available in
Belarus after the catastrophe
‘Belarus. To the rest of the world we are a terra incógnita, unknown land, still to be discovered. The White Russia, that’s more or less how our country’s name sounds in English. Everybody knows about Chernobyl, but only as related to the Ukraine and Russia. Belorussians still have to tell their story…’
(Naródnaya Gazzette, 27th of April 1996).
On the 26th of April, 1986, at 1:23’58” a series of explosions destroyed the reactor and building of the 4th energetic block of Chernobyl’s Nuclear Central Plant (ACP), located near the Belorussian frontier. Chernobyl’s catastrophe became the most serious technological disaster of the 20th century.
For the small Belarus (with a population of 10 million inhabitants) it meant a national cataclysm, despite Belarusians not having any nuclear plant within their territories. Belarus was still an agricultural country, with a population mainly rural. During the Big Patriotic War, German Nazis destroyed 619 Belarusian villages and their inhabitants. After Chernobyl the country lost 485 villages and towns: 70 of them are buried forever. During the war one out of 4 Belarusians died; nowadays, one out of five lives in a contaminated territory. We are talking about 2.1 million people, 700,000 of them being children. Among the causes of the demographic fall, radiation is at the top. In the regions of Gomel and Mogilyov (the most affected by Chernobyl’s accident), the death rate is a 20% higher than the birth rate.
