Introduction

The year 2021 marks the 35th anniversary of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (ChNPP) located near the town of Pripyat, Kyiv district, in northern Ukraine. This symbolic anniversary compels us once again to turn to the recent past and look at the disaster and its consequences. Construction of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant began in 1970. From 1977 to 1986, four graphite-moderated nuclear reactors were commissioned. On 26 April 1986, in the most recently built fourth reactor (put into operation in 1984), technical damage led to several small and one large explosion, causing a huge fire. As a result of the explosion, the reactor was completely destroyed and the 1,000-tonne plate cover was ejected. The radioactive elements inside dispersed into the natural environment and formed a cloud. In the area of the accident, dozens of employees and volunteers lost their lives, hundreds were affected by radiation sickness, thousands of residents were evacuated, and hundreds of thousands were displaced from their homes (Kulev 2016, 21–6). The radioactive cloud mainly affected large parts of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, as well as the Scandinavian countries and separate areas in Central and Eastern Europe.

A Soviet government committee, headed by Boris Shterbina,^[1] was set up to resolve the crisis. The committee directed efforts to clear the debris and bury the reactor under a huge concrete shelter (called the “sarcophagus”). This large-scale operation, which lasted from 1986 to 1988, involved about 240,000 people, known as “liquidators”. In the following years, their number increased to 600,000. Many of them became ill (Diachenko 2001).

Around the nuclear power plant, Soviet troops established a 30-kilometre zone with restricted public access, the so-called “exclusion zone”, covering an area of more than 2,400 square kilometres. This area was considered to have received the highest radioactive contamination. The so-called “red forest” (a destroyed forest of white pines that acquired a rusty colour as a result of the Chernobyl accident) near the power plant became one of the most radioactive sites on the planet and a symbol of the damage done to nature (seePaskevich, undated).

Today, worldwide, the ChNPP accident is compared to the US atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Together with the Fukushima-I accident in 2011, it is considered one of the two most severe level 7 events on the International Atomic Energy Agency’s International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale. Various international organisations, such as the World Health Organisation, Greenpeace, and others, report that the effects of the Chernobyl accident in the areas mentioned caused the deaths of tens of thousands of people, and a significant increase in the number of people suffering from thyroid cancer as well as other diseases (Petryna 2013).

Given the contemporary information flow from different countries and in various languages—media publications, reports, films, photographic material, scientific studies, etc.—there are many versions and hypotheses about the occurrence at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. It is difficult to imagine the full extent of the consequences of this disaster in terms of human life and health. The Chernobyl accident, along with the recession of the Soviet economy, theperestroyka policy of then Soviet party leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the prolonged Soviet presence in Afghanistan, and so forth, have been seen as prerequisites for—and as factors that contributed to—the collapse of the USSR (Dubnov 2019). The scholarly discussion of disasters and their causes, as well as the consequences and strategies for overcoming them, has attracted the attention of more and more researchers from different disciplines, and new or insufficiently studied issues and aspects are constantly being added to the research agenda. Thirty-five years later, the Chernobyl events still arouse the interest of the media and the general public all over the world.

Research Notes

Historiography on the issue of Chernobyl is extremely diverse and could be the subject of a separate study. The accident has been widely discussed by scholars from various scientific fields in terms of its causes, the management of the disaster and post-disaster situation, its effects on human health and flora and fauna, and the experiences of ordinary people. From the year of the accident until today, hundreds of scientific papers have been published in the field of atomic and nuclear physics, radiochemistry and radiation ecology, agriculture, medicine, medical anthropology, as well as other fields of study (seeBonchev, Mandzhukov, and Manushev 1990;Nesterenko 1992;Smith and Beresford 2005). Interviews with the “liquidators” have been published (Stepanov 2014). The National Chernobyl Museum^[2] established in Kyiv, Ukraine, in 1992, aims to preserve and promote the history of the Chernobyl disaster. A virtual museum was later developed in four different languages, making the documentary collections easily accessible to those interested from all over the world.

The Chernobyl accident remains a topical issue, which motivated us to turn our attention to the memories of residents from countries peripheral to the disaster area and where the authors live—Russia and Bulgaria—and the most directly affected countries, Ukraine and Belarus. The paper presents the initial stage of a comparative study on memories of the Chernobyl disaster of Ukrainians, Belarusians, Russians, and Bulgarians, conducted in 2021 under the conditions of another disaster, the COVID-19 pandemic. The objective we initially set ourselves was to track different aspects of local memories related to awareness and the degree to which people were affected, their reactions to the disaster situation, the effects and consequences, the preparedness of the population, and people’s assessment of the post-disaster management. In terms of content, the issues we discuss extend into the research field dealt with by the anthropology of disaster. The latter focuses on the study of the social and material consequences of disasters (including psychological, socio-economic, socio-political, health, demographic, and other effects) and their causes and types—natural, technological, biological, and social (Oliver-Smith and Hoffman 1999). It is significant not only for academic studies but also for disaster management at local and national levels in the countries concerned, which aim to cope with the consequences and prevent potential future disasters. Our contribution in this direction is methodological rather than applied in the work of those institutions responsible for disaster management. Despite the objective dimensions of the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident, people’s subjective experiences and memories—as well as research—continue today. Of course, questions can always be asked such as, “Can we draw very general conclusions based on more or less personal stories?”, or “Do we need to look at memories of the disaster in a chronological perspective to draw a deeper picture of how it is remembered?”. Anthropological ethnography enables the study of Chernobyl memories to be considered on a further level—as the multiplicity of the perspectives of different affected groups and individuals. Within these perspectives, it is important in what way the disaster and its aftermath are made sense of by the people themselves. A crisis situation can be identified as such not only by the people for whom it has a direct physical impact, but also by other more distanced communities (even if not directly affected) through their convictions about the danger to their own lives, health, and well-being, and their different social constructions of reality (Quarantelli 1985, 41–73).

Our study, conducted by two researchers of different nationalities, encountered a number of challenges starting from defining terms such as “socialist regime”, “Soviet era”, “postsocialism”, and “post-Soviet space”, as well as research methods, to the analysis of the field materials collected for us in a “non-traditional” way during the Covid-19 pandemic and against the background of the tense relations between Russia and Ukraine. In the course of our work, we believe that we successfully overcame these challenges and managed to unite around a common approach. In essence, we focused on the “intertwining” of several oral stories from Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and Bulgaria—countries of the former socialist bloc that shared a common ideology and policies in the past, and whose populations have common or similar memories of the same events, recalled with conflicting feelings of nostalgia and trauma. We aim to highlight the colourful, general, and at the same time specific, aspects of respondents’ memories 35 years later, without trying to frame them comparatively in relation to earlier studies. In the future, we do not exclude deepening and expanding our research in this direction.

Inspired above all by the approach in Svetlana Alexievich’sVoices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster (2005), we at this stage reviewed stories from peripheral regions of the disaster only. Comparing these with the experiences of people affected at the epicentre will remain a challenge for our future work.

We conducted semi-structured interviews with 14 residents of these countries between December 2020 and August 2021. The respondents were men and women with secondary and higher education, and over 48 years old. They were selected through the “snowball sampling” method—by using professional and social networks—according to their place of residence. In the case of Ukraine, they were from the same regions (Odessa region, the city of Odessa, the villages of Shevchenko and Vladychen); in the cases of Russia and Belarus, from the same cities (Russia—the city of Barnau, Belarus—the city of Minsk); and in the case of Bulgaria, from different parts of the country (the city of Sofia, the towns of Montana and Svishtov, and a village in northeastern Bulgaria). The fieldwork was conducted without any financial support, being at the same time subject to travel restrictions imposed because of the epidemiological situation in the respective countries, as well as influenced by people’s fear to communicate face-to-face. Most of the interviews—with Ukrainians (three), Belarusians (three), and Bulgarians (four)—were conducted via the Internet applications Messenger, WhatsApp, and Viber, as well as by phone. Those conducted with Russian citizens (four) were held on location in the Siberian city of Barnaul, where one of the authors of this study is based. The number of respondents was set in advance; our focus was not to capture broader public attitudes, but rather to show the different perspectives of residents from different countries, cities, and villages, with diverse professional backgrounds. It should also be noted that at the start of our research, we expected the deteriorating political relations between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Ukraine to limit the possibility of conducting interviews in Russian by the Russian co-researcher, but this did not happen. Although the Ukrainian respondents—three of whom were of Bulgarian origin, from the community of Bessarabian Bulgarians—had the opportunity to speak to both researchers (Russian and Bulgarian by nationality), they ultimately preferred the Russian with whom they had no language barrier.

We would like to stress that the memories of our respondents were extremely colourful; thus, our primary aim was to portray them rather than to generalise them as collective memories or compare them to other studies. Our central research question was how people on the periphery of the disaster remember and interpret the Chernobyl accident in terms of (1) their access to information about the incident, (2) government recommendations and measures, (3) short-term and long-term consequences, (4) respondents’ assessments of the institutional disaster and post-disaster management, and (5) respondents’ preparedness today.

Remembering the recent past as a counterpoint or complement to written/documented history is a multi-layered issue that has been studied within various paradigms: individual and collective memory (Assmann 2006, 210–24); sites of memory (Nora 1989, 7–25); national identity (Straub 2005); nostalgia (Boym 2001); trauma (Alexander et al. 2004), and more. Unravelling the memories of the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident as a “crossroads” in the personal stories of several countries, we encountered a palette of narratives with different emphases, which is why we cannot call memories of Chernobyl “collective”, but rather individual. Although the stories collected from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Bulgaria have common points, they differ in terms of people’s experiences and empathy, and their approaches to overcoming it. For the ordinary person, their “truth”—formed as a result of their experience and preserved through their memories—comes first, while interpretation of the disaster’s consequences varies according to their geographical distance from the location of the disaster, as well as temporal distance.

In this article, excerpts from the respondents’ answers are included and quoted. The full text of the interviews, transcribed in Russian and Bulgarian, is to be archived in the “Disaster” collection in the Ethnographic Archive of the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies at the Ethnographic Museum of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, thus making it accessible to a wider scientific audience.

In summarising the collected information, we established that the field data indicates different “layers” in the narratives according to the country and the exact place where the respondents lived and continue to live, as well as regarding their education and professional background. In the set of questions that we put to the respondents, we did not include topics widely discussed in the scientific literature and the public domain in general, or in American and Russian film about the Chernobyl accident, whether and to what extent the human factor was involved, and who was responsible for the incident. We expected to find spontaneous answers to these questions without asking them, but this did not occur.

It is significant that regardless of ethnicity, the two respondents with secondary education in Bulgaria—a man of Turkish origin, and a woman of Bulgarian origin—preferred complete anonymity and generally felt that they could not yet speak “freely” on the subject of Chernobyl because they might harm themselves or the researcher. This is why, for moral and ethical reasons, we decided to present the personal information about the respondents by indicating their first name initial, gender, age, education, place of residence, country, and in some cases, if relevant to the collected data, their professional specialisation.

Awareness of the Chernobyl Accident

In the first days following the Chernobyl accident, the Soviet government did not publicly announce the disaster which affected the short-term and long-term health of the population in the area of the disaster and in dozens of countries in eastern, central, and northern Europe. On 28 April 1986, a short television message was broadcast in the USSR (Hristov 2011), and two days later, a short message was published in the Soviet national press:

FROM THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS OF THE USSR. An accident has occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, damaging one of the nuclear reactors. Measures are being taken to eliminate the consequences of the accident. Assistance is being provided to the injured. A government commission has been set up (Izvestiia, 30 April1986).

How people became aware of the Chernobyl disaster is an issue that occupies a large part of the narratives collected from all four countries. To the question, “When, how, and what did you learn about the Chernobyl accident?”, respondents gave almost the same answer: there was a lack of public information in the early days, and they were subsequently informed mainly by professional contacts and friends. Few interviewees were informed only through the media. Most respondents linked their memories to their position of employment at that time, educational activity, and family events. Some of them, then Soviet citizens, were directly involved in dealing with the initial consequences of the Chernobyl accident because of their jobs.

On May 1st, there was a demonstration all over the Soviet Union. And May 2nd was a beautiful, wonderful, sunny day, and everyone was going on picnics to the sea… I went to the sea with my son and my friends. My husband was working in the Far East at that time. We were sitting by the sea. One of my friends was working in the regional hospital in Odessa… She was on duty and came later… and said: “Friends, something strange is going on. They are doing tests on all foreign students who live here. And everyone, if possible, is being sent home.” Something like that. And she also said about the May 1st demonstration that, “something happened in the country. I don’t know, probably even here in Ukraine. Because they are all very concerned. They [the party leaders] were standing on the tribunes and it was clear that they were not joyful and happy”… We mocked her, “Alka, are you crazy, what can happen on May 1st?!” She said: “I don’t know… Something happened and it was probably in Ukraine”… On the 2nd or 3rd of May, my husband called me: “Lyuda, hurry up and take the children and get out of there because there was an explosion, there will be consequences”… And we did, after the last day at school. I took the kids and we left. My mother… thank God, she was there to help me, and we all left for the Urals. I remember when I arrived back, the summer had passed, in September they had already started… And also, they said that there had been an explosion on the 4th, 5th, 3rd [of May]. I don’t remember it. It went unnoticed. It wasn’t on the news all the time. (L., 73-year-old woman, higher education, Odessa, Ukraine).

I remember. I have a daughter, born in 1978, and it was her birthday on April 25th. And we had a small birthday party, I was working in a kindergarten at the time. In the evening, we were sitting and celebrating her birthday. In the morning, we were told that my husband was going to Chernobyl. Of course, we were hysterical. I was scared because we had no idea what it was. Anyway, that’s how it was. Then my husband was brought back for health reasons… But it’s scary… In our village, people were mobilised and sent there. Some are still alive and some are already dead. (T., 64-year-old woman, secondary education, Shevchenko village, Odessa district, Ukraine).

I found out specifically about the accident itself when it appeared in the media, but the day before the information appeared, it turned out that the accident had happened on the 26th [of April]. Before May 1st, there had already been some rumours that something was wrong… You know, it’s difficult for me to give specific figures, but I know from enterprises that people were sent in a semi-violent way [to the Chernobyl area]. And the father of one of my classmates, a good acquaintance of mine, was involved in the liquidation. It did not have any negative impact on his health. He was born in 1927, yet he is still alive today. (O., 59-year-old woman, higher education, Minsk, Belarus).

At first, I worked in the Ministry of Construction for a long time, then I moved toBelcoopsoyuz [Belarusian Cooperative Union]. I worked as head of the equipment department. And in Khoyniki,^[3] literally on April 26th, it happened. If my memory serves me right, after a couple of months I was in Khoyniki, that is, in the 30-kilometre zone, which was declared the most terrible. In this zone I was on a business trip, then I was assigned to the Gomel region… And I remember that there were checkpoints, and the cars were washed, we were all checked, well… the bosses came in their cars with their water… But we were just ordinary mortals who went around. Now it is literally in front of our eyes: we were walking in such beautiful weather and along a road, and there is a deserted village on our right, no one is there. On the left… is a garden with apple trees. A red ribbon was stretched across and it read: “DANGER ZONE”. And I walked two metres from this danger zone, do you understand? (M., 83-year-old woman, higher education, Minsk, Belarus).

…I left Barnaul on 1 May 1986, and did not know about the accident. Here in Barnaul, nobody knew anything about it, they hadn’t broadcast anything yet and there was no news. And I found out about the accident only when I arrived in Minsk (L., 74-year-old woman, higher education, Barnaul, Russia).

I was just studying to become a fire safety engineer at the Irkutsk Higher School. They gathered us on alert, lined us up in a row, and gave us the task to be ready within two and a half hours. We all gathered… Then we were given emergency rescue kits which included breathing apparatus. And so we stayed on standby for a day. We were on duty first at the High School which was then located on the territory of the Irkutsk Fire Technical School, and then we were transferred to the cargo terminal of the Irkutsk Aircraft Plant… In general, we were sitting and waiting for the order to leave for the site of the accident. We were told that we would be sent there by the end of the second day. After a two-day wait, the emergency order to move the School of Fire Engineering personnel to the accident area was lifted. On the third day after the accident, information about the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant began to leak out, which was full of guesstimates, but no one knew in detail what had happened. (A., 58-year-old man, higher education, Barnaul, Russia).

Yes, there was a lot of talk about Pripyat in 1986. And later, it became known that people were evacuated from there. They created a 30-kilometre alienation zone, but it was so far away from us that [we] didn’t pay much attention to it. (N., 61-year-old man, secondary education, Barnaul, Russia).

I learnt only after May 1st when everyone already knew more or less. We didn’t know anything before that. On the 2nd or 3rd of May it all became clear, but before that, from 26th April until then—nothing. We found out about the accident from the radio and television, but not that much, without any “trumpeting” [announcing loudly], only as a fact. There was information at the hospital, butex post facto. They said that Chernobyl had exploded and there had been an accident, and hence a radioactive situation, dust, and so on. Up in northern Bulgaria, near [the town of] Kozloduy, it was said that the radiation was higher. (Ts., 75-year-old woman, higher medical education, Sofia, Bulgaria).

Later we learnt that the reactor had exploded, they said they were making a sarcophagus to bury it. But I don’t remember after how long they started giving us information. They did not talk about it. It was a [information] blackout. People didn’t know. We were not aware. I was very young, 30 years old. There were two or three newspapers to read, but I didn’t take things that seriously. We were picking strawberries and everybody was joking, “I picked the most radioactive and had to eat it!”. I remember once they started talking, they said there would be a boom in disease after 30 years. They were talking about some strontium, decaying after 30 years. It’s not right and it’s not humane not to inform us, but it’s always been that way and will be that way. (S., 65-year-old woman, secondary education, Svishtov, Bulgaria).

The respondents’ answers included various assessments related to their understanding of the dangers that followed the disaster at the time, and later. The media blackout about the accident led to the dissemination of information mostly informally through communication at work and local rumours, which some respondents trusted fully, others not. Each respondent, according to his/her professional occupation and place of residence, made sense of the news of the Chernobyl accident and reacted differently—from feeling fear to joking. The memories of the respondents from the four countries share a common theme: they did not receive full and timely information from government institutions.

Memories of State Recommendations and Taken Measures

After learning about the Chernobyl disaster, the respondents received partial information through the media and from friends, colleagues, and bosses on the measures they should take to preserve their health. To the question, “What measures did you have to follow? How did you learn about them?”, they answered by referring to their daily behaviour and food consumption.

On May 2nd, the civil defence service announced that we shouldn’t go outdoors, but rather stay indoors. They came to the dormitory and measured the degree of radiation. They instructed us how to act. Yes, they did it, but they did it a little later. (I., 69-year-old man, higher education, Vladychen village, Odessa district, Ukraine).

But then the girls [the interviewee’s friends] had already started talking: close the windows, they told each other, try to close the windows… We returned [to Odessa], I don’t remember if it was in October, September, or something like that, but I remember that they were washing the pavement. And they were saying there were problems with the radiation background. It was slightly higher. There was much talk. The very next summer my girlfriend was in a pioneer camp. They banned kids from going out without slippers… I don’t remember well, but I tried not to buy big, let’s say huge, apples, or big [fruits or vegetables], beets, or big potatoes because those were called “Chernobyl-ish”. We started saying “it’s Chernobyl-ish” because it is of abnormal size—extra-large. (L., 73-year-old woman, higher education, Odessa, Ukraine).

At that time, I worked as a teacher in a kindergarten, and the children and I went out. Nobody warned us about anything, that’s how it was, that’s how it was. They said it didn’t reach us. (T., 64-year-old woman, secondary education, Shevchenko village, Odessa district, Ukraine).

No, no, absolutely no recommendations—nothing, but we tried to do it ourselves. I am still careful at the shop, if it says [produced in] Gomel or Rogachev then I don’t take it, you know… At that time—no, no recommendations, well, just dosimeters. There, both mushrooms and dairy products were checked, also if something came from those areas. We tried not to take it ourselves, but no one gave us any instructions. (M., 83-year-old woman, higher education, Minsk, Belarus).

…and it was discussed in class and everyone came after the weekend with the information they had heard from their families. Yes, and it was said that something had happened. You can’t be in the sun, you can’t be outside, and soon afterwards the gardens blossomed and everyone watched with horror the pollen being shaken down after the rains… The only thing was that later on, they said that we shouldn’t eat the seeds of apples when apples ripened in the summer because there had been higher levels of radiation when the orchards were in bloom and there was more radiation then. So, you can eat apples, but you should not consume the seeds of the apples. (I., 48-year-old woman, higher education, Minsk, Belarus. I. was 12 years old at the time of the accident).

I remember that there was a rush to buy iodine. From that period, iodised salt was actively used. I can say that at this level people just started to protect themselves. On a state level, there was nothing announced officially… You know, there was, there still is, a prejudice about it on an everyday level—when you go to the shop and you look at where it was produced, if that area is close to Chernobyl. My generation tries to avoid those products. (O., 59-year-old woman, higher education, Minsk, Belarus).

L., a 74-year-old woman from the city of Barnaul, Russia, who had been in Minsk on a course to improve her medical skills, noted that there had been an instruction regarding precautionary measures in connection with the situation in Ukraine:

In the first days of our stay, they immediately explained to us what to do… In the dormitory where we lived, they told us: “Drink these drops once a day.” I don’t remember for how long we drank them. And we had to take a bath every night. …They warned us not to swim, not to stay in the sun for a long time, but nevertheless, we violated this rule.

After we heard about the incident around the 3rd or 4th of May, all the vegetables —lettuce, fresh onions—disappeared. Before that, there had been plenty. My husband and I were going to his aunt’s place in Nadezhda [a district of Sofia] and at the front door of a house, a man was selling home-grown onions and lettuce. We passed him. It was both surprising and illegal what he was doing. In Sofia, my children had to stay inside more, the windows had to be closed. You weren’t supposed to drink tap water, only mineral water, but it was complicated because you didn’t know when it was tapped or bottled. They didn’t allow the consumption of dairy products. Only dry milk was consumed. But in the countryside, people who kept cows or sheep said that when they found out about the accident, some people tried to sell the milk, but there was a ban. People in Sofia took the news of the accident to heart. They did not buy milk, only pasteurised milk. They started to take iodine and we did as well. They gave it to us at the hospital. I forgot how much it was. They said we had to drink iodine. Whether everyone drank or not, I can’t tell you. It was like a preventive measure. Some people started wearing masks like nowadays but without any order being issued. Not everyone, but some people, were simply stressed. That’s how it was. It was horrible. (Ts., 75-year-old woman, higher medical education, Sofia, Bulgaria).

Honestly, I have no memory of receiving any warnings about anything from the Bulgarian state. We were not warned by the authorities or the Regional Health Inspection or anyone else, we made our conclusions by ourselves, not to eat fresh and fast-growing vegetables—radishes, parsley, lettuce, mushrooms, and others. We used to go for mushrooms but after the accident we stopped. (S., 65-year-old man, higher medical education, Montana, Bulgaria).

With few exceptions, the respondents received no specific instructions on how they should protect themselves from elevated background radiation. Although it is notable that those respondents with medical education and those living in Belarus, though not all, took more preventive measures, the instructions they obtained were mostly communicated on a local level. There are two interesting points in the collected narratives that illustrate the development of local preventive approaches which respondents relate to the present. Interviewees from Ukraine and Belarus still pay attention to oversized vegetables and fruits, avoiding those grown in the Chernobyl area. In Bulgaria, a Sofia resident with a medical background compared the wearing of masks by highly trained medical staff then and now in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. The narratives from all four countries are dominated by a damning assessment of the lack of information from state institutions once the accident became known.

Short-term and Long-term Consequences

To the question, “How did the Chernobyl accident affect you in the short and long term?”, respondents from the four countries answered in the context of the impact on their health, on the lives and health of their acquaintances, and relatives.

In the Cherkasy region, my husband has relatives, and some people from there were taken to Chernobyl as liquidators. One of them was my husband’s brother. He has already died. The poor thing! (L., 73-year-old woman, higher education, Odessa, Ukraine).

Yes, yes, I have a lot of friends who were Chernobyl victims. One of them is in a sanatorium now. Now this man is 74 years old. I have a friend from [the city of] Polonnoye, Khmelnytskyi district, who was also a liquidator and her health is also very bad. She has already had two operations, her adrenal glands were ill… A lot of children were born with disabilities, a lot. In 1992, I gave birth prematurely to a boy. I think it was a consequence of Chernobyl. The baby was born with cerebral palsy in the eighth month of my pregnancy. Until the age of 15, the boy was disabled. Now, thank God, thanks to the fact that I went everywhere, the boy has received [proper medical] treatment… he had residual effects—intracranial pressure. (T., 64-year-old woman, secondary education, Shevchenko village, Odessa district, Ukraine).

For example, in our region we have cancer diseases. People are sick now, I don’t know, it has been so many years… So many years have passed now. Back then, even when the Chernobyl [accident] happened, there were sporadic cases of cancer. Now I don’t know if that has something to do with it, maybe not. Now people are dying of cancer, a lot of people… In our region, I mean in the neighbouring village, in our village, and the next one. It’s our Budzhak region. The Budzhak region of southern Bessarabia. Here, I do not know what this is about, but people are getting sick. I have two sick people here. My daughter is ill, 29 years old, and my wife recently had a breast operation, last year… We were less affected because the wind was blowing towards Russia, so this jet dust went to Belarus, to the Rostov region, here, to Russia. But anyway, Romania was also affected. We are 30 kilometres away from the Romanian border here. And Europe was also affected. (I., 69-year-old man, higher education, Vladychen village, Odessa district, Ukraine).

Firstly, the area nearby [Chernobyl] is in serious dеsolation. Now there is an active attempt to develop extreme tourism there, and I even have a master’s student who has written a paper on the subject, given the extent of nature reserves in the area… Some animal species are no longer found there, some, on the contrary, are in a state of mutation… That is one point, of course, there is the natural factor. The second factor is the influence on ethnic history because a great number of people had to leave their homes and something like displacement took place… According to some articles, some people are trying to come back, but everything is in such a dilapidated state, all communications are disrupted, etc. People’s houses are ruined and so on, they are trying to restore their life there. Tens of thousands of people had to move away, this also affects future generations. And perhaps the main problem is the impact on health. Because problems with the thyroid gland in Belarus are quite obvious and I think that the thyroid gland is not the only problem. Most likely it affects the cardiovascular system as well and, as I have been told by doctors, neurological problems are now one of the most pressing issues in terms of health. (O., 59-year-old woman, higher education, Minsk, Belarus).

It is a Belarusian catastrophe because the largest infected area is Belarusian, a huge part of the Gomel region was affected and is unsuitable for farming and making a livelihood. This is a tragedy for the people who lived there. This is a catastrophe for the economy, because not only were people evicted, there was then another problem—their resettlement. In Minsk, in the district of Malinovka, micro-neighbourhoods were built for the Chernobyl settlers. This was not taken well by the locals. Then they [Chernobyl settlers] moved to some villages, that is, this is also a separate topic. Then, the liquidators, the people who eliminated the consequences, initially had privileges and benefits, but gradually everything was taken away from them. Now the liquidator has absolutely nothing, no pension, no easier access to medical services. He has nothing. The tragedy of the people is one thing. Another catastrophic aspect is that everything there is infected: iron, car parts, and so on… And the authorities could not, or did not want to, deal with it. And then, all the same, many of these areas were sowed of rapeseed. The main problem here is that the authorities are closed off and their actions are not public. There are no democratic procedures that would influence the rise of public opinion on this issue and so on. (I., 48-year-old woman, higher education, Minsk, Belarus).

L., a 74-year-old woman from the city of Barnaul, Russia, who spent two months in Minsk in May and June 1986, said: “When I returned to Barnaul, I had changes in my blood, both the haemoglobin was decreased and the number of leucocytes decreased, but then all this recovered.”

I have many friends in Ukraine who were Chernobyl recruiters, they were sent to remove the consequences of the accident. I have friends with radiation sickness. We had no serious consequences here. Bulgaria was not much affected. According to my data, there was a slight, temporary increase in radiation. While in Ukraine and Belarus there were catastrophic consequences, the forest around Chernobyl is still closed and the radiation level is still elevated. It is clear that this is a big technogenic catastrophe. (S., 65-year-old man, higher medical education, Montana, Bulgaria).

Gradually, many children started to get sick with anaemia, pneumonia. By the end of 1986 and 1987, there were many such children. It was said that among those who were born after April 26th there were various congenital anomalies and some developed malignant anaemia. The more intelligent women began to have abortions en masse, others who were in the last months of pregnancy gave birth and kept their children. And many elderly people began to fall ill after that. I had a cousin who was the principal of the sports academy. He and his family had gathered for May 1st. They had bought a huge amount of lettuce. He told me that they ate two trays of salad. He was in his forties and the next year he became sick. He had leukaemia. So, in October or November they found out about his sickness and the next year he died. He was a healthy and big man, and he passed away. There was much such leukaemia at that time. (Ts., 75-year-old woman, higher medical education, Sofia, Bulgaria).

When I talk with acquaintances, we recall that I have no memory of having sick classmates from my childhood, and now there are many diseases. There are a lot of children at my children’s age who have thyroid problems. I keep telling them, “You are children of Chernobyl!” (S., 65-year-old woman, secondary education, Svishtov, Bulgaria).

Although the respondents lived far from the epicentre of the disaster and were not personally affected, they constructed a perception of the dangers of the consequences of the Chernobyl incident for human life and health that has not diminished 35 years later. Their understanding of the aftermath is based on “arguments” relating to the experiences of others close to them—family members, colleagues, fellow villagers, and citizens whose health has been affected. The prevailing opinion across the collected accounts is that the main long-term consequence of the Chernobyl accident is an increased risk of cancer. Based on kinship and social contacts, and on personal observation rather than official data published in the past or present, the respondents’ notions of the consequences of the Chernobyl accident illustrate the social constructions of past reality discussed byQuarantelli (1985, 48).

Assessments of the Institutional Disaster and Post-disaster Management

The majority of the respondents gave negative answers to the question, “How do you assess the measures taken by the governing bodies in connection with the Chernobyl accident?”, focussing on the lack of public information about the disaster event. However, in the responses of a small minority of interviewees (mainly Russian citizens), there was an understanding and even positive assessment of the Soviet authorities’ handling of the fire.

When it happened, the state had no experience. There was no experience of how to deal with this case on such a large scale. It was a civilian enterprise. What happened is that a lot of people who were working in the reactor died. A lot of people died. I do not know, maybe there are such statistics or not… The state practically did not do anything, they just warned and produced such reports. I don’t know if they were true or not, at least they said something. (I., 69-year-old man, higher education, Vladychen village, Odessa district, Ukraine).

Here, it’s not right that they [the government representatives] didn’t say anything right away. But then again, they didn’t think it was as serious as all that. That’s why it was like this. Someone was afraid to report back, to tell someone about the seriousness of what had happened. They were afraid in general to lose their jobs, their positions, so to speak. Оn May 1st, the government, standing on the tribunes, maybe didn’t know the extent of what had happened. Yes, it happened, but then they started saying that the sarcophagus was being built… My brother also said that in general people from every corner of our country got up and went to Ukraine. Another thing is that now the state has forgotten them. In Ukraine, they even took away some benefits. (L., 73-year-old woman, higher education, Odessa, Ukraine).

Well, today I already know a little about the actions of the authorities. They were criminals, no doubt, because the government moved to cover up what was happening, despite the scale, despite the enormous harm to the country, to the people, to the environment. How else can this be assessed? (I., 48-year-old woman, higher education, Minsk, Belarus).

Perhaps the steps were taken correctly. By the time they realised that it was necessary to cool the reactor…until they realised that, it was too late, it was necessary to build a concrete construction, and only after that did everything go well. By the time they realised the amount of harmless dose [of radiation] you could get at the initial stage, almost 100 percent of those who were the main participants in the liquidation were gone. (A., 58 -year-old man, higher education, Barnaul, Russia).

I think the right measures were taken and they started to evacuate everyone in time. And how to react? And what was not announced immediately? We have always been like that—they took care of the minds [smart people], especially for May Day. This happened on April 26th. They waited, obviously, and announced [the Chernobyl accident] after the holidays, and why to hide something?! There was nothing to hide. And the behaviour… everything was correct, people were evacuated on time… (I., 58-year-old woman, secondary education, Barnaul, Russia).

The authorities had to inform us at least on what to eat. Then, we realised that we shouldn’t drink milk and dairy products. My perception of the mountain areas was that everything there was cleaner and safer. I remember that it was said back then that it was more harmful there and milk was more harmful, and so on. It was rumoured that the children should not have played outside, or eaten salads. It was said that abortions were recommended. I don’t remember when it was talked about, whether before or after November 10th [1989], but there was talk about how the government was stockpiling. (S., 65-year-old woman, secondary education, Svishtov, Bulgaria).

Regarding the Chernobyl accident, the authorities hid everything in general and remained silent… The population was not informed at all. Today, it is not like this. The authorities, specifically in Sofia, inform the population and take adequate measures. (H., 69-year-old man, secondary education, from a village in Shumen district, Bulgaria).

The state announced the accident, but everyone saved themselves as best they could. The only right thing is that abortions were not stopped. We talked. We were outraged that the government was hiding [information]. It is said that they [the party leaders] ate the purest, perhaps imported, fruit. They immediately understood and immediately took action for themselves. I don’t even remember how long after that, on the satirical TV show “Ku-ku”, which was broadcast on television, they said: “Attention! A new Chernobyl accident!” They were punished for that. People were angry. It was very scary because it was not clear if it was true, then we realised that it was not. (Ts., 75-year-old woman, higher medical education, Sofia, Bulgaria).

Despite the predominantly negative evaluation of the reactions of state institutions, it cannot be overlooked that some accounts from Russia included a positive assessment, most likely due to the great distance between the Chernobyl accident and the Siberian region where the respondents live. Although all the respondents lived on the periphery of the event, some felt the disaster’s aftermath more strongly, and in this sense sought greater responsibility on the part of the state. Those who gave a rather positive assessment of the actions of the responsible institutions thought that correct measures had been taken to contain the disaster and inform the public, while at the same time they distanced themselves from the Chernobyl event and its consequences as a disaster that did not affect them.

Preparedness Today

At the end of our interviews, we asked the respondents if they felt prepared to react to potentially similar disaster events and to cope with the consequences. We received concrete and rather negative, laconic answers.

I think I am not [ready to react]… During the Soviet Union there was military training, they taught us how to disassemble and assemble automatic rifles, it was like military training, but now there is nothing. Now we have democracy. (I., 69-year-old man, higher education, Vladychen village, Odessa district, Ukraine).

M., an 83-year-old woman with higher education from Minsk, Belarus, said: “So, maybe we have learnt our lesson. Maybe the disaster helped to create more ‘openness’. Somehow, they [the government] began to inform those people.”

To some extent, steps have been taken to provide individual protection to personnel working at the nuclear plant. But in general, for the mass protection of the population, practically nothing has changed since then. Yes, they started to install enhanced protection, let’s say there is protective equipment, which in case of an accident completely covers the reactor, and that’s it. (A., 58-year-old man, higher education, Barnaul, Russia).

There is no way to prepare for such an incident. If something happens in Kozloduy [town where the Bulgarian NPP is located], there is nothing we can do. They used to build radiation shelters, now there is no such thing. So, there is no way to prepare. (S., 65-year-old man, higher medical education, Montana, Bulgaria).

Now we are a little more familiar, we look [at things] a little differently. First, you won’t drink tap water, you won’t drink milk, even if it’s bottled… You wash your hands all the time, like we wash them all the time now. Now, a thing like that could hardly be covered up. (Ts., 75-year-old woman, higher medical education, Sofia, Bulgaria).

The majority of respondents sought greater responsibility from state institutions and defined the actions of the government regime as “criminal”. The issue of blame and individual guilt was not discussed in detail by the respondents, although they remembered some situations in detail; most likely this was also a way of overcoming trauma and adapting to post-Chernobyl reality. The lack of trust some respondents showed towards state institutions remains to this day. Those who give a rather positive assessment of the actions of the responsible institutions distanced themselves from the Chernobyl catastrophe and its aftermath. Solidarity with the Soviet government and self-distancing from this disaster can also be interpreted as another way of dealing with its consequences. Here, successful policies and the mission of government “heroes” came to the fore.

Concluding Remarks

The paper presents the initial results of a joint Russian-Bulgarian field study on memories of Ukrainian, Belarussian, Russian and Bulgarian nationals about the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident and its aftermath 35 years later. Through the personal stories, we can trace the extent to which people adapt or have adapted to a post-disaster environment—in this case study, following the Chernobyl accident. The collected interviews from the periphery of the affected area indicate that this disaster event and its consequences—announced with delay—caused trauma of various dimensions in countries where radiation levels were elevated. In the narratives of former Soviet citizens from Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus, it is clear that there is greater personal involvement, while in Bulgaria, the Chernobyl accident and especially its silencing are perceived as one of the “sins” of the communist regimes in the USSR and Bulgaria.

The majority of the respondents learnt late about the Chernobyl accident. They were mainly informed through rumours at their workplace or via relatives. Even people (and their acquaintances and relatives) directly involved in extinguishing the fire and removing wreckage had limited access to information. Similarly, they learnt about the protective measures to be taken through informal social and professional contacts. These measures differed according to professional specialisation and place of residence. In general, respondents associated them with limiting their consumption of fast-growing vegetables and fruits, as well as dairy products. Those with a medical background had slightly more detailed information about which restrictions should be observed—information they received at their workplace. While in Russia radiation dosimeters were widely used, in Ukraine, Belarus, and Bulgaria respondents had no memory of them.

As they learnt about the dimensions of the Chernobyl disaster, respondents experienced stress and trauma triggered by fear that their lives and health, as well as those of their loved ones, could be—and in some cases, were—affected. Nevertheless, the interviewees generally did not consider themselves direct victims of the Chernobyl disaster, which could be interpreted as a way of overcoming their fear of the dangers posed by its long-term effects. Most of them believed that the diseases that developed subsequently were a result of the lack of public information and proper state recommendations. Almost all the respondents thought that the increase in cancer rates in their countries and home regions was connected to the elevated radiation levels after the Chernobyl accident. According to the collected narratives, there were two types of victim in the short and long term: the so-called “liquidators”, sent to contain the effects of the fire on site and who subsequently died; and people who consumed food affected by increased radiation, fell ill as a result, and died.

The respondents’ assessments differ concerning the actions of the responsible institutions in managing the disaster and their subsequent post-disaster management. People acknowledged that while the Soviet leadership had first faced the problem of controlling the scale of the incident on the spot, it had later postponed the announcement of the real dimensions of the disaster. Hence, these two issues were assessed differently. Most interviewees condemned the actions of their national governments and especially the lack of public information. At the same time, while the Russian respondents clearly understood that the USSR’s Council of Ministers had deliberately not disclosed information about the scale of the disaster and the consequences for human health, they nevertheless positively assessed actions they considered successful. It is interesting that respondents who grew up in the Soviet era but have lived most of their lives in post-Soviet Russia, at a time of democratisation and the liberalisation of public life between the 1990s and 2000s, included positive remarks. We were therefore able to relate them to the memory of solidarity in Russian society, which like a “black hole” absorbs the (non-acknowledged or silenced) traumas of the twentieth century (Oushakine 2009). Respondents from Ukraine and Belarus criticised recent state measures that have withdrawn the financial and social privileges of the “liquidators” who were most affected by this disaster.

Most of the interviewees expressed emotion when talking about the disaster’s consequences. They included a reference to future generations as the “children of Chernobyl” (S., the Bulgarian 65-year-old female respondent). This raises another important research question concerning the long-term effects of radiation on future generations, as well as their perception of the accident as relayed in their parents’ memories. Significant is the comparison of the prevention measures with the current pandemic situation caused by the Covid-19 virus (in the interview with Ts., the Bulgarian 75-year-old female respondent), which shows a certain psychological and emotional readiness to respond to disasters that have biological consequences. In general, the interviewees have “learnt” some lessons on how to respond to such a disaster, though these lessons were learnt against efforts to silence information following the Chernobyl incident. However, the interviews make clear that the minds of most respondents do not allow the idea of the occurrence of a similar incident in the future. Although any disaster also contributes to knowledge about nuclear power—expertise that is used in the reconstruction and modernisation of existing power plants—the accident in Fukushima-I in early 2011 testifies to the fact that humanity cannot yet be fully protected from such catastrophes. There are still over 430 nuclear reactors in the world.

List of Interviеws

Interview with L., 73-year-old woman from the city of Odessa, Ukraine, 2021.

Interview with T., 64-year-old woman from Shevchenko village, Odessa district, Ukraine, 2021.

Interview with I., 69-year-old man from Vladychen village, Odessa district, Ukraine, 2021.

Interview with O., 59-year-old woman from Minsk, Belarus, 2021.

Interview with M., 83-year-old woman from Minsk, Belarus, 2021.

Interview with I., 48-year-old woman from Minsk, Belarus, 2021.

Interview with A., 58-year-old man from the city of Barnaul, Russia, 2021.

Interview with N., 61-year-old man from the city of Barnaul, Russia, 2021.

Interview with L., 74-year-old woman from the city of Barnaul, Russia, 2021.

Interview with Ts., 75-year-old woman from Sofia, Bulgaria, 2021.

Interview with S., 65-year-old woman from the town of Svishtov, Bulgaria, 2021.

Interview with S., 65-year-old man from the city of Montana, Bulgaria, 2021.

Interview with H., 69-year-old man from a village in Shumen district, Bulgaria, 2021.