History Repeats Itself – Belarus (Part 2)
Read Part 1 here, if you’re so inclined.
***
This is Chernobyl.
On April 26th, 1986, reactor #4 exploded sending a cloud of fallout into the sky four hundred times bigger than that caused by the bombing of Hiroshima. The nearby town of Pripyat, Ukraine awoke in a tizzy, the children awestruck as they snuck away from their parents to get closer and watch the flames and smoke billowing into the sky.
What did the Soviet Union do?
Nothing.
Not a damn thing.
Only when the alarms were set off by radiation at the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant did the Soviet Union even admit there had been an accident. Mind you, Forsmark is in Sweden.
This is Pripyat.
Anyone see a resemblance to Grodno?
I do.
Pripyat wasn’t evacuated until April 27th when they explained the city needed to be cleared for three days. No one was allowed to take anything with them. There is now a containment area of 30km surrounding Chernobyl, a dead zone where no one lives. They were never allowed to return for their belongings. Pripyat is Grodno as a ghost town.
Why do I bring up an event that took place in the Ukraine when my focus was a high school trip to Grodno?
1) 60% of the radioactive fallout caused by the Chernobyl catastrophe fell on Belarus.
2) On May 1st, 1986, the town of Grodno was in the middle of celebrating May Day. Children were running through the fire hydrants, people were playing in the streets, socializing and welcoming the unusually warm spring weather while there was enough radiation in the air to kill a horse. The government didn’t tell them.
3) To this day the radiation poisoning that children suffered at that time has resulted in women my age being afraid to have children. There is a catastrophic number of birth defects, mutations, and ailments in children born to women of my generation (including the cardiac degradation condition commonly known as the ‘Chernobyl Heart’ defect, as well as Thyroid Cancer in teenagers). There are orphanages throughout Belarus overrun with children who were abandoned by their parents due to mutations and deformities. (See the documentary Chernobyl Heart. All four sections of the film are available online.)
Sure, you’re wondering, “Why you bringing this up now, Caitlin? Let the past be the past,” you say.
You’re right. You’re totally right. Yet, let me leave you with these small tidbit factoids before I let it go.
1) The Chernobyl Power Plant Disaster of 1986 only released 1 – 5% of the actual radiation. The rest is now encased in the tomb of the Chernobyl Power Plant. The plant is off limits and is crumbling from age and conditions. Those who travel close enough can hear it crumbling from within. If a good winter storm were to settle a heavy layer of snow on the rooftop of Chernobyl and cause it to collapse, the resulting catastrophe would put the effect of 1986 to shame.
2) Belarus is now a ‘Presidential Republic’ and their President’s name is Alexander Lukashenko. He was President when I was there ten years ago. Despite the fact that he ordered the brutal beatings of every man, woman, and child on a main city street of Minsk (the day before I walked that very street) due to rumors of a protest against his tyranny, apparently they’re still ‘electing’ him to office.
3) To quote filmmaker Maryann De Leo, “The scientists say the next Chernobyl will be Chernobyl.”
I simply worry of what a man who reinstated the ‘first office’ in school systems (first office was a post held by a Soviet Official. If anyone taught against the Communist movement, said anything not agreed upon, he or she ‘disappeared’. It was done away with at the fall of the Iron Curtain. Why would a democratically elected president reinstate such a post?) would do if Chernobyl were to release its fury on the citizens of Belarus again.
I have a theory.
Nothing.
***
(Me in the throes of extremely nervous laughter with a creepy dude in the oldest church in Grodno. Good times.)
