Nicely dressed, with the Ukrainian and Russian flags in their hands and decorations on their chests, the Chornobyl disaster fighters Anatolii Kozhevnikov, Viacheslav Dudaliev, Vladimir Mikhailov, Igor Golovchonov, Vladimir Shchepanskiy, Aleksandr Lazunko and Vladimir Shatygin gathered near the monument to the Victims of the Chornobyl disaster. There were seven of them but there could have been more but for the death and serious disability.
After the photo session I asked the head of the Krasnoyarsk Territorial Organization of Disabled People “Union Chernobyl” Vladimir Mikhailov how many people of the Krasnoyarsk Krai were sent to fight the Chornobyl disaster and how many people have been lost over the last years. This is what he replied:
“Overall 2,636 people were sent to the Chornobyl zone from our region, 695 of them have died since 1986 and 978 Chornobyl disaster fighters are disabled. The average age of those who died was 46 years old.”
What is your personal Chornobyl epopee?
“As a reserve officer of the 29th chemical defense regiment of the Siberian Military District I arrived to the Chornobyl zone from Krasnoyarsk on December 10, 1986. We deactivated the area around the 3rd an the former 4th units (we removed the radioactive soil and cut the ‘red woods’) and deactivated the 3rd unit by scraping the walls, stripping the linoleum off the floors, washing the polluted premises with decontaminating solutions, etc. When I got 20.4 rems I was withdrawn from the Chornobyl zone and came home to Krasnoyarsk on April 12, 1987.”
How did your private life go after Chornobyl?
“When I got sick the doctors of the medical committee told me: ‘Your working ability will only worsen with the years.’ It happened so: first I was given the third disability group and then the second one. Just like many other Chornobyl disaster fighters I was counted out of the active life. However, due to my personal struggle for life and my wife’s support our family did not break up. (My daughter Natalia was born before Chornobyl and Svitlana, who was born after the disaster in 1992, now studies at a university.) Since I had a large experience of organizational work the Chornobyl disaster fighters of the Krasnoyarsk Krai chose me to be the head of our NGO. The protection of the rights and interests of the Chornobyl disaster fighters and their families has been the main goal of my work for 10 years now…”
How do you assess that Chornobyl period of your life?
“When I arrived in the Chornobyl zone I felt just like at the war: in the evening we were sitting and counting the ‘alive’ and ‘killed’: measuring the radiation dose everyone received during The Day and deciding who can work the next day and who should be sent back home. Not only radiation affected us but the stress because of the unfamiliar atmosphere. The war is very strange when one does not see and does not feel the enemy.
“How have we been treated since Chornobyl? The officials of any levels, ranks, and colors have told us one and the same phrase many times: ‘We did not sent you to Chornobyl!’ What can one reply to this? It was our duty and honor! If it was our duty and honor why does not the country need us after we gave it our health?! There were those who laughed and said: ‘I dodged Chornobyl and you, fool, went there.’ Any villain can always find a moral excuse for their moral worthlessness. But somebody had to clean the earth out of that radioactive contamination. Somebody had to protect babies and young mothers. Tell me, what those men would have been worth of if they had laughed and told their wives and children: ‘We dodged Chornobyl!’ The Chornobyl epopee is a dramatic but integral part of my life that divided it into two periods: the white and the black one, before and after Chornobyl.
“In the Chornobyl zone I did and experienced what I had to. And I have no regrets.”
