Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster Book

I was about 5 when Chernobyl happened, and my family lived near the Baltic Sea, not that far from the explosion zone, relatively speaking. I can't really remember what exactly I understood about what had happened. I remember our family friend's little niece came from Belarus to stay for the summer. I have strange knowledge of the dangers of radiation and mutations and acid rains and death by "belokroviye" (leukemia). I knew a lot of people with enlarged thyroids and I also somehow still know that I need iodine not to get sick. Strange things I have in my subconscious. Sometimes I wonder what I learned from life and what - from Roadside Picnic (a novel prophetic in many ways). This is what Alexievich writes about - you live through Chernobyl, and Chernobyl becomes a part of you in many ways.

It took me 30 years to finally be ready to find out what really happened. A lot of information is out there, but none of it presents the scope of the tragedy quite as well as Alexievich's work does. Told in personal stories, this collection of monologues leaves no stone unturned. Of course there are tales of horror and guilt and crime. But, mainly, I think Alexievich is right to conclude that what is at fault in this tragedy is Russian mentality - a peculiar beast of heroism, fatalism, idealism, carelessness, lack of self-preservation and unexplained hope that whoever is in power will know best. The same mentality that leads people to elect one dictator after another, through centuries, with the same catastrophic results.