It’s 35 years since an explosion at one of the reactors at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant north of Kyiv resulted in a horrendous catastrophe that shook the world and contaminated and traumatized Ukraine and parts of Belarus.
What occurred was bad enough – the consequences are still with us – but it could have been far worse, not only in Eastern Europe, but for the entire planet. We survived, though dozens were killed, and a substantial, though unknown, number affected by the deadly, cancerous, and deforming radiation.
Much has been written on this somber subject, the latest and probably best major work treating it being Serhiy Plokhii’s Chornobyl. Following from this, Netflix produced a major, dramatized, in effect documentary, series on what occurred which, to the surprise of many, became a record-breaking success.
Now we know what we did not know then because of the secrecy of the Soviet system. And, as we remember and honor again those brave individuals who gave their lives acting in good faith to contain the disaster, without even being informed of the terrifying scale of what was at stake, we also should spare a thought for the political fallout from this notorious historic event.
On this somber anniversary, I do not want to retell the story of what happened. But, as someone who was very much involved in reporting both to Ukrainian society and the outside world about the political aspects of this tragedy, to re-emphasize its impact as a factor accelerating the precipitation of a Ukrainian national movement for independence and the collapse of the Soviet system.
Quite simply, the explosion at Chornobyl not only blew the roof of an atomic reactor and released deadly radiation into the atmosphere – but, in effect, blew the lid off the Soviet system.
The catastrophe and the secretive way it was handled, or rather mismanaged, by the Soviet leadership claiming to have become more open under Mikhail Gorbachev, instead opened Pandora’s box. It released a multitude of pent-up questions, doubts and suppressed hopes accumulated over the more recent decades of Soviet rule.
So briefly, let’s recall the Ukrainian aspects of these notorious events – and how it contributed to Ukraine, then still a dependent Soviet republic, becoming sovereign, independent, state. And with the 30th anniversary of Ukraine’s declaration of independence just around the corner – on Aug. 24 – this is quite timely.
Just to set the scene. Although a younger Soviet leader, Gorbachev, had taken over in 1985, and was talking about the need to reform, modernize, or, in his terminology, “restructure” the Soviet system and allow more openness – glasnost – in the spring of 1986 this still seemed like empty talk and hollow promises.
In Ukraine, the hardline dinosaur, Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, remained in place as Moscow’s proxy Communist party chief. And the arrest and imprisonment of Ukrainian dissenters continued. In the second half of 1985, the poet Vasyl Stus died in the Gulag along with several other Ukrainian political prisoners. Patriotic activists Mykola Horbal, Yosyf Terelya and Petro Ruban were given sentences of 12-15 years.
When the accident at Chornobyl occurred, I was working as a researcher at the US-funded Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty center in Munich. With Moscow remaining silent, we, like others, first heard reports about a possible nuclear accident from the Swedes who had noticed alarming levels of radiation emanating in their direction from the east.
We started searching for possible sources. In the meantime, the local radio in Munich advised parents not to allow their children to play in the children’s sandpits and playgrounds located close to many residential buildings. We realized something very serious had occurred, though on May 1 the party leadership even held a May Day parade in the Ukrainian capital, pretending nothing had happened.
Chornobyl was soon identified as the likely source of the radiation. I did my research and discovered that there had already been warnings domestically that the authorities had not heeded. I made this known in the Western press.
In March 1986, the Kyiv literary journal Vitchyzna had described construction difficulties at the nuclear plant.
On March 27, 1986, Liubov Kovalevska, writing in the mouthpiece of the official Ukrainian writers’ union, Literaturna hazeta, went even further. She stressed that it was highly irresponsible to rush ahead with the building of nuclear power stations without proper regard for safety norms.
I quote from my book The Ukrainian Resurgence published in 1999 London and Toronto: “Kovalevska also reminded readers that by 1988, when its sixth reactor was due to come online, the Chornobyl atomic power station would be the ‘most powerful’ in the world.”
I saw that at least two respected Ukrainian academicians, Aleksander Alymov and Borys Paton, had expressed serious concern about the siting of a huge atomic nuclear pant so close to the Ukrainian capital and virtually on Ukraine’s main water artery – the Dnipro River.
But it was Moscow that made all the decisions.
Later, in 1993, the Soviet Ukrainian prime minister at that time, Oleksandr Liashko, acknowledged: “The plant…was not under our control. During the entire 14 years I worked as the head of the Council of Ministers, I visited it only once…And the documents concerning the various experiments and tests there… did not reach us.”
Quoting again from my book: “The Chornobyl nuclear disaster became a turning point in more ways than one….the Gorbachev leadership was forced to review its policy on handling information and ended up giving fresh impetus to the development of glasnost….For the non-Russian, it sharpened sensitivities about the extent of Moscow’s control over them and the power of the central ministries.”
Dissidents were still being held in Gulag, for it was not until late 1987 and 1988 that Gorbachev started releasing political prisoners. Indeed, he kept up the jamming of Radio Liberty and other Western radio stations until November 1988.
So, it was left to the writers working within the Soviet system to speak out. And, after Chornobyl, they no longer hesitated.
The occasion was the Ninth Congress of the Writers Union of Ukraine which opened on June 5, 1986. It was held in the chamber of the Soviet Ukrainian quasi-parliament, the Verkhovna Rada.
As I wrote in The Ukrainian Resurgence – “The symbolism is apparent only with the aid of hindsight: delegates to this congress, at which the latest Ukrainian renewal can say to have been launched, could hardly have foreseen that in a few years’ time some of them would be sitting in the same hall as members of the parliament of an independent Ukraine.”
The doyen of the Ukrainian literary establishment Oles Honchar told his colleagues in the presence of Shcherbytsky that the Chornobyl disaster had “shaken the world” and that the country’s writers could not accept things as before. Just as there was a need to safeguard Ukraine’s national environment, it was also crucial to protect the nation’s cultural and linguistic heritage.
The poet Ivan Drach was the most outspoken. He gave an explosive speech that brought the delegates to their feet. Drach not only blamed the Communist Party leadership for the Chornobyl catastrophe but also spoke only about the Holodomor, claiming more Ukrainians had perished as a result of Joseph Stalin’s man-made famine in Ukraine in 1932-33 than during the Second World War.
Other writers, such as the poet Dmytro Pavlychko, Volodymyr Yavorivsky and the literary scholar Mykola Zhulynsky, also weighed in at the Congress or after it. Collectively, they were to form the nucleus of the alliance of national democratic forces uniting newly released political prisoners with other leading intellectuals called Rukh (initially, Popular Movement for Restructuring) that emerged in 1988-99 and promoted the path to independence.
Initially, after the Chornobyl disaster, unofficial ecological groups emerged, then cultural and religious ones, and eventually more politically oriented patriotic ones. Civil society was born, and the return home of the political prisoners only strengthened it. Their joint implicit slogan of “Never again” as regards Moscow’s control over aspects of Ukrainian life was translated into an irrepressible united demand for freedom and independence.
