Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

Pripyat resident Lyudmila Ignatenko was the young wife of fireman Vasily Ignatenko, who was among the first wave of firefighters sent to battle the reactor fire on the night of the explosion. She gives a heartbreaking account of her deep love for Vasily and describes staying at his bedside for weeks in a special hospital in Moscow for people with radiation poisoning, caring for him until his gruesome death. Two months later, Lyudmila—23 years old at the time—gave birth to a baby girl, who died within hours because of congenital heart and liver complications resulting from radiation exposure.

Retired psychologist Pyotr S. shares traumatic childhood memories of World War II: “There were battles going on all around. The street was filled with dead people and horses” (26). He adds, “I thought the most horrible things had already happened” (26). However, the Chernobyl disaster taught him that, even in peacetime, he isn’t protected from such horror.

Zinaida Kovalenko is an elderly resident who returned to her village after the evacuation. She describes feeling lonely but seems content to live out her final years at home. Like many rural villagers, she had little understanding of radiation at the time:

[W]e thought: it’s a sort of a sickness, and whoever gets it dies right away.