I love oral histories. I’ll read them on any subject, even one I have no interest in. There’s just something about them that fascinates me. I love to hear all the different perspectives on the same topic. I’ve read sad oral histories before, but I’ve never read anything like Voices from Chernobyl.
Voice from Chernobyl is hands down the saddest book I’ve ever read. “Sad” isn’t even the word. The grief flies right off the page and envelops you. It’s also incredibly moving and downright poetic. There were some chapters that made me cry and one that I had to skip entirely (massive trigger warning for animal cruelty, child death, general misery all over the place).
I knew almost nothing about Chernobyl before reading this, beyond the broad strokes. I was a preschooler when it happened, so I don’t remember what it was like to learn about it in real time. For those who don’t know, in 1986, a nuclear power plant in Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union) suffered a catastrophic explosion and meltdown. The radioactive contamination was worst in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, but parts of Europe as far away as Italy and Greece were also affected.
The response from the Soviet government was about what you might expect–at first, they tried to cover up the accident, then they admitted it but tried to downplay it. People who lived within a few miles of the plant weren’t even evacuated until the next day, and no one was given full information on what had happened. In many contaminated areas, people continued to live, farm, and raise their children. While numerous first responders died from acute radiation poisoning in the weeks and months after the accident, and studies have shown dramatic increases in thyroid cancer and other cancers in affected areas, much of the health impact has been disputed or is unclear.
Voices from Chernobyl includes recollections from people who lived near the plant, workers who were sent in later to clean up the site, loved ones of those who died in the immediate aftermath, scientists, journalists and photographers who tried to cover the disaster, and even refugees from other parts of the world who found a safe place to live in the abandoned houses just outside of the exclusion zone. It slowly paints a full picture of the disaster, and it also painted a picture of Soviet culture in a way that I’d never seen before. I don’t really know what to say or how to review this book. Either it sounds like something you would be interested in reading or it doesn’t, but what I can say is if this is a topic you’re interested in, this book is excellent.