The army of those who suffered from the Chornobyl power plant disaster now comprises over three million people, including more than a million children. It is next to impossible to fully estimate the economic, social, medical, environmental, and ethnographic losses Ukraine sustained in the wake of that disaster. The point is not only in the existing methods of assessing the damage but also in the lasting effect of a large number of radioactive substances on the current as well as future generations of Ukrainians. Scientists also cite such a detrimental aftermath of the Chornobyl accident as a worsened social mood of the population. There also is a new tendency now, on the eve of the disaster’s eighteenth anniversary: the Center of Social Examinations at the Institute of Sociology of Ukraine has conducted research into what brings Chornobyl victims back to life. The Day requested Doctor of Economic and Social Sciences Yury SAYENKO, scholarly supervisor of the Chornobyl and Sodium project, a longtime researcher of Chornobyl-related problems, to tell about the results of this survey.
“What impact do Chornobyl disaster consequences have on Ukrainian society today? To what extent adequately does the public understand the existing risk?”
“This is a strange picture indeed. The Chornobyl disaster has warped human consciousness. Material hazards, such as environmental contamination and negative effect on human health, are still pressing on the psyche. Clearly, people continue to live according to the subjective perception, rather than objective assessment, of their condition. For example, squatters greatly underrate the danger of their plight, while those who were resettled in safer areas tend to overrate the danger as much as they can. Paradoxically enough, it is this category, resettles, who feel the worst, for when one is taken away from a customary natural and social environment, he/she endures a terrible stress that remains for years.”
“Could we have reduced the number of Chornobyl-related social problems? How are these being addressed today?”
“The trouble is only passive help was given immediately after the accident. We began to pursue a wrong social policy and provide wrong social support from the very outset. For passive social aid is unable to form viable social communities in the atmosphere of a dying social life. There was enough money in Soviet times to help the victims quite generously by granting various privileges and promising a beautiful life in new-built neighborhoods. The policy was to stop the economy because it was impossible to live in the affected areas.
“The development of the social sphere — cultural, educational, and other facilities — was also ended. In other words, the social infrastructure was also brought to ruin. Meanwhile, people continued to live on that territory and felt, so to speak, doubly unhappy — because of the disaster they lived through and the deliberate destruction of the environment they were used to. Two-thirds of those polled think they and their children are lifelong losers.
“To revive, a person needs not only passive aid but also an environment in which he/she could be active socially, economically, and politically. We still have to implement a comprehensive revival program in the second and third Chornobyl disaster areas. This problem will not be solved unless an interdisciplinary and interdepartmental approach is taken to it because the Chornobyl situation is today entering a new phase — revival of socioeconomic life in the affected areas. Although the state had long been aware of this revival paradigm, it had limited financial and organizational resources. But it is this paradigm that the United Nations will support.”
“How should the socioeconomic revival of the affected areas begin?”
“This is what I asked the Chornobyl victims themselves during the survey. Their answers stunned me, ‘We need almost nothing! Just let us live until we die.’ The people who have been waiting too long for help have lost any vision of the future and such a notion as a way of life. As long as five years ago 85% of the Chornobyl victims resisted resettlement because they had heard from some acquaintances that this was a painful breaking point in life. What we need now is a program to revive these contaminated areas.
“Our survey has an interesting comparison of the attitude to the disaster on the part of Chornobyl residents and the Transcarpathians who suffered from natural calamities. What the Transcarpathians say they need is not only money but also the whole range of social institutions. The Transcarpathian victims have not lost the sound social awareness of their requirements, with only 13% being unable to name the range of their social needs. Conversely, 59% and 46% failed to name this in the second and third Chornobyl areas respectively. This uncertainty reveals a low and depressed social awareness of people in the above-mentioned areas. ‘Just let us live until we die’ is the example of a purely consumerist and paternalist mentality. Different groups of Chornobyl victims require different ways of assistance. This should the subject of a special study. There are various, big and small, settlements which represent absolutely different capacities and life patterns. There can be no all-purpose models of rebirth. Yet, will and belief in the future must be restored everywhere. An individual must first make a wish to live and only then understand what he wants this for. Only then can we show how this wish can be fulfilled and what should be done for each specific group. It is professionals (doctors, engineers, teachers) who were the first to abandon these contaminated areas. This territory now requires ‘special’ people who know about local problems. We need to create such conditions, to cook such a social broth, that these people were able to organize and support themselves.”
