《Voices from Chernobyl》是一本由Svetlana Alexievich著作，Picador出版的Paperback图书，本书定价：USD 16.00，页数：256，特精心从网络上整理的一些读者的读后感，希望对大家能有帮助。
《Voices from Chernobyl》精选点评：
●“这些人们已经见证了对别人来说一无所知的事情。我感觉我在记录着未来。”
●它的价值在于真实。某些程度上可能比纪录片更客观。真实世界复杂纷乱痛苦，读得很慢。不同的声音启发对个人，政治，历史和文化的思考。
●记录历史，汇报真相，这本书的问世在俄罗斯的文化背景下太不容易了。说实话作为读者，心情还是很猎奇的，看那些阐述不为人知的事实部分，就很带劲；看那种很哲理性的篇章，就有些痛苦。沉重是真沉重，但这世上实则没有真正的感同身受。另外，HBO迷你剧改编太成功了。#12
●看书进度快=拖稿的日常。。。
●This might be us and this might be the future horror.
●是因为无意中看了一部《切尔诺贝利日记》的电影，引发的我想更多了解些有关切尔诺贝利事件的事实。文章很真实地记录了经历了这场灾难的人们不同却又相似的经历，代入感很强，一口气读完，算是对那个事件有了更深的了解，同时也希望永远不要再这样的事情重演了，不管是什么原因带来的灾难，承受的永远是无辜的人们。
●看到一半弃，信息封锁、以科学研究为名不顾家人情感强行隔离、受难者莫名被“英雄”，读到这些行径我竟是习以为常的漠然。和普通的烂尾新闻报道无异，故事以情动人，然而缺乏理性反思批判，事故原因不明，预防机制未探讨。网上一股脑对苏联的批判我也呵呵，至少最后医护还是相对尽心心力直到人死亡，也许彼时人命比草芥稍贵一些？开篇新婚母亲为照顾受辐射丈夫历经千辛万苦怀孕半年还贴身伺候丈夫起居，各种专业医护人员的劝阻全然不顾一意孤行，所以丈夫死后你歇斯底里产出女婴器官衰竭四小时就死了怪谁？为了成全你澎湃四溢的情感不顾自己和孩子的健康，个人无法苟同
●Heart breaking stories. It's the individuals who pay for the egoism of powerful ruler. Heroism costs lives. Dictators have little regard for human lives. The "common people" are treated as sand in the history, which were thrown upon the burning Chernobyl.
●surprisingly good
●在真正的苦难面前，人们是没有愤怒的，只有爱，然后在记忆或遗忘中继续生活。
《Voices from Chernobyl》读后感(一)：Voices from Chernobyl
I really like the book. I bet the original version should be even better.
I find myself really into some cultural aspect of Russian people. Valorous and heroic, if two words to describe. There are many stories about liquidators, the ordinary workers or soldiers who were sent to clean the exploded reactor. "If we had to, we went, if it was needed, we worked, if they told us to go to the reactor, we got up on the roof of that reactor". I think I really like and admire this kind of heroism. Very sad part is that almost all the people who went died within a few years after they came back. The last story was told by a wife of a liquidator. But when the wife once asked the husband was he sorry to go there？ "He shaked his head no, and writes in the notebook 'when I die, sell the car and the spare tire, and don't marry Tplik.'(The husband was already not able to speak...)"
ut this book is not only about heroism, but also about the introspection, although I can't understand completely. I probably don't dare to say that I can fully understand. I couldn't imagine what if the one I love most goes to this kind of mission and come back so sick and would die in a scariest way what would I think about this world. I also cannot imagine the feeling I have if I were asked to leave the place I've lived for decades.
Finally, I am glad that I read the book to get to know all these people and their stories.
《Voices from Chernobyl》读后感(二)：关于纪实性苦难文学
【讨论课的作业贴在这里】
2015年获得诺贝尔文学奖的斯维特拉娜·阿列克谢耶维奇曾有一部作品叫做《切尔诺贝利的回忆：核灾难口述史》，这是一部纪实性作品，却不仅仅关于现实。书是由被采访者的独白组成，也就是说由人对于现实的不用感受和记忆组成的。所以，这本书的重点不再那个上个世纪确实发生了的大家都知道的切尔诺贝利事件，而是与这个事件有关的人，和人的思想感受。所以，它是一本关于人的书。所有的艺术作品都是关于人的，但不都是把人的困境和苦难鲜活地摆在你面前的作品。
关于文学艺术呈现什么，我觉得和人的精神需求有关。在现代之前，缓慢的时代变迁满足不了人的好奇心和对超现实的渴望，所以有了虚构，有了故事。诗歌最先也是故事的诗歌。但是现代的社会可谓是日新月异，时间如洪流般把人们卷走。每一个脆弱的生命像树叶般随流而下，或沉入历史的河泥。伴随着的，还有社会分工日益的专门化，细致化，知识也是如此。每个人只要扮演好自己的角色，做好分内的事情，生活也能照常下去。这时，每个人的世界变小了，但也变大了。科技和经济带来的全球化是我们能接触到了地球另一端的故事，知识的积累也让我们得知过去的故事。故事已可以由远方他人的现实生活改编而成，由因为时间快速流动而变得奇异非常的过去改编而成，有时不用改编的直接呈现就能冲击我们的感官，甚至心灵。非虚构文学应运而生。艺术的世界不再由艺术家造就，现实就是艺术。
纪实性文学作品不同与其他虚构文学作品的地方之一，便是我们在踏入另一个世界的同时，清晰地知道那是个真实的世界，不容拒绝地向我们展现我们自己的世界所缺乏的东西，也在提醒我们作为人类我们所共有的一些东西。它不用于虚构性文学作品，还在于我们不能逃离，因为现实不容置疑。我们在幻想中或快乐或悲伤，最后我们却还会回到现实之中，被两个世界的差异所震撼，左右思量着哪个世界更美好，哪个世界更悲惨。美好的想象或能给我们疲惫的心灵以暂时逃离的港湾，悲惨的景象或让我们更加勇敢地去面对现实。然而纪实性的艺术不能给我们抽身的机会，因为在赏析它们的同时，我们就在自己的现实之上又增添了一层现实。我们不单单暂时进入了一个世界，我们更进入了自己所在的世界，这个世界只有一次，不能重复，不能模仿，不能想象。不仅我们的心灵受到了触动，在心灵相撞击之时我们更更新了自己的认知。
《切尔诺贝利的回忆：核灾难口述史》也是一部苦难文学作品。"苦难“二字是对艺术的”快乐经验论“的直接反驳，有人认为艺术就是带来快乐的体验，但是快乐也可以由其他方式带来，并非一定需要艺术。所以艺术的价值和重点并不在与它给观赏者带来的某种特定的情绪或体验，虽然这种体验可能是组成某种艺术价值的要素。如果说我们阅读《切尔诺贝利的回忆：核灾难口述史》只是为了流泪，那么切洋葱圈的效果可能更直接。苦难文学作品有着类似于悲剧艺术的特质，在这种文学之中，人们同样渺小而无力，似乎命运捉摸不透也不可反抗。但是苦难文学里除了人与天的斗争之外，还有人与人之间的斗争，并且和自己的斗争，纪实性增强了苦难文学的痛点。
但《切尔诺贝利的回忆：核灾难口述史》不单单是一部纪实性文学作品。这本书中的现实是人口述的现实，经过与切尔诺贝利事件有关的人的情感和思想洗涤或精炼过的现实。所以我们走进的不是切尔诺贝利这个事件，因为在阅读这本书之前我们可以通过其他更为有效有趣的方式来了解这个时间的前前后后，我们走进的是是这些人的生命情感。所以说这本书关于人。我们通过这些被采访者的视角来看他们的世界，看我们自己的世界以前未探究过的部分，也在重新审视我们所共有的部分，这些日常中会被忽视的共同点却只在苦难之中被夸大而凸显出来。这种口述的艺术手法让我想到了2015年一部优秀的法国记录片《人类》。这部纪录片采用个人采访的方式，让平凡人诉说他们的故事和感想，却不平凡地冲击着观者的心灵。我们从这些采访之中看到了每个人眼中心里不同的世界，却也相同的世界，在这些新鲜展现出来的真实世界的部分里，那些就算自己不用经历就能感同身受的生命情感是最为真切而印象深刻的。人是什么？人的有限和无限是什么？社会是什么？国家是什么？人与人之间又是什么？最后那些热滚滚的泪水又告诉了我们什么？
《Voices from Chernobyl》读后感(三)：They were saving life itself. Life’s continuity.
#書# 2016《VoicesfromChernobyl》9.5/10
（沒找到Penguin這個版本，只能借用這個版本）
Format: Kindle Edition
age Numbers Source ISBN: 0241270537
ublisher: Penguin; 01 edition (21 April 2016)
最近被HBO的評分爆高的短劇《 Chernobyl》刷屏，但我不願意看這片：一方面是因為沒有勇氣面對悲慘的真實再現，另外一方面也不希望這個人類浩劫被娛樂成輕浮的談資（沒看過短劇，不是否定HBO，只是太多影視創作為了收視率或者其他目的，舉著“娛樂至死”或“歷史就是可以隨意篡改的小丑”大旗，極端無底線胡編亂造）。
2016年其實已經讀完S. A. Alexievich的《切爾諾貝利的悲鳴》中文版，確切的說，是讀了兩次，但一直無法下筆——思路一直被悲憤衝擊，完全無法下筆。這次下定決心，改讀英文版《VoicesfromChernobyl》，借用外語閱讀的理性思維，小心翼翼地嘗試用文字為這群人類英雄獻上一朵小白花。
They were heroes. Heroes of the new history. They were saving something greater than their homeland. They were saving life itself. Life’s continuity.
1. 死亡
1.1. 一個關於門板的獨白
1.2. 苛求一個正常的快速的死亡
1.3. 孩子們等待著死亡
2. 活著
2.1. 不怕死亡的老人
2.2. 死亡不可怕，被當成“他們”才可怕
2.3. “我們”依然活著
3. 災難
3.1. 官僚系統僵化、腐敗和墮落
3.2. 一位區委第一書記的獨白
4. 信仰
4.1. 讚美英雄主義
4.2. 反思英雄主義
5. 控訴
5.1. 對蘇聯的控訴
5.2. 對自己的控訴
5.3. 對民族的控訴
6. 永恆
1996作者完成本書的時候，10年前的切爾諾貝利核災難已經變成了一種商品——恐懼、苦難、悲憤統統都變成了熱銷品，局外人抱著廉價的同情，獵奇地消費著這場災難。
Fear has been commercialized. Fear of Chernobyl is on sale because that’s all we have to sell in the international markets. It’s our new product. We sell our suffering.
作者深深明白這一點，她非常克制地挑選故事，沒有繼續在倖存者傷口撒鹽，而是忠實地履行她記者的身份，虔誠地記錄著每一個小人物的聲音——這些微弱的呼喚，卻組成了震撼人心的大合唱，讓讀者對倖存者們的悲痛和勇氣產生共鳴，彷如和作者一起採訪，身同感受地咀嚼現場每一絲情緒。
This is not a book on Chernobyl, but on the world of Chernobyl.
What I’m concerned with is what I would call the ‘missing history’, the invisible imprint of our stay on earth and in time. I paint and collect mundane feelings, thoughts and words. I am trying to capture the life of the soul. A day in the life of ordinary people. Here, though, everything was extraordinary: both the event itself and the people, as they settled into the new space. Chernobyl for them is no metaphor, no symbol: it is home.
They told their stories, searched for answers. Together we pondered. Often they were in a hurry, afraid that time would run out; I didn’t recognize that the price of their witness would be their lives. ‘Record this,’ they would say. ‘We didn’t understand everything we saw, but let’s leave this behind. Someone will read it and make sense of it. Later, after we’re gone.’ And they had good reason to hurry: many of them are no longer alive. But they managed to send a message.
The monument to Chernobyl’s heroes is the man-made sarcophagus in which they laid to rest the nuclear fire. A twentieth-century pyramid.
1. 死亡
1.1. 一個關於門板的獨白
死亡對於切爾諾貝利，是無法逃避的話題。但我學習作者，盡量克制，所以不引用讓人淚流滿面的開篇和結尾《Alonehumanvoice》兩個割心故事，而只想摘錄一個承擔了家族悲傷離別的門板獨白《Monologue on a whole life written on a door》——讀完本章時，我的手都是抖的……
We weren’t allowed to take any belongings. Right, I won’t, but there’s just one thing I will take. Just one! I needed to remove the door to our apartment and take it with us, I couldn’t leave the door behind. I would board up the entrance. That door was our talisman. An heirloom! My father lay on that door. I’m not sure where the custom comes from – they don’t do it everywhere – but in our parts, according to my mother, the dead have to be laid on the door from their home. They lie on it until the coffin is brought. I sat the whole night with my father, and he lay on that door. The house was open all night. And that same door is covered in notches, right to the top. It was marked as I grew: a notch for first grade, second grade, seventh grade. One from just before I left for the army. And next to that, you can see my son growing up. And my daughter. Our whole life is written on that door, like on an ancient papyrus. How could I leave it behind？
ut I took it. The door. One night. On a motorbike, along the forest road. I took it two years later, when our apartment had already been looted. Picked clean. The police were chasing after me: ‘Stop or we’ll fire! Stop or we’ll fire!’ They took me for a looter, of course. It’s like I was stealing my own front door.
My daughter had turned six. On the very day of the accident. When I put her to bed, she’d whisper in my ear, ‘Daddy, I want to live, I’m only little.’ I didn’t think she’d understand anything. Whenever she saw a nurse in a white coat at the kindergarten or a cook in the canteen, she’d go crazy. ‘I don’t want to go to hospital, I don’t want to die!’ She couldn’t stand anything white. We even changed the white curtains in our new place.
Can you imagine seven bald girls together？ There were seven of them in the ward. No, that’s it! I can’t go on! Talking about it gives me this feeling … Like my heart is telling me: this is an act of betrayal. Because I have to describe her as if she was just anyone. Describe her agony.
My wife came back from the hospital. Her nerves snapped: ‘If only she’d die, rather than going through this torture. If only I could die, so I wouldn’t have to see this.’ No, that’s it! I can’t go on! It’s too much. No! …
We put her on the door. On the door my father once lay on. Until they brought the little coffin. It was so tiny, like the box for a large doll. Like a box. I want to testify: my daughter died from Chernobyl. But they want us to keep quiet. ‘It hasn’t been scientifically proved,’ they say. ‘There isn’t enough data. We’ll need to wait hundreds of years.’ But my human life, it’s too short. I can’t wait that long. Write it down. You record it at least. My daughter’s name was Katya. My little Katya. She was seven years old when she died.’
1.2. 苛求一個正常的快速的死亡
對於患上“切爾諾貝利癌症”的人，最大的願望是可以正常地死去，而第二大願望則是可以快速地死去。讀著他們經歷的痛苦，死神的確比上帝還更仁慈……
ow he’s dying. He’s in terrible pain. I went to see him this weekend. ‘Ask me what I really want？’ ‘What？’ ‘An ordinary death.’ He’s forty. Loved women. Has a beautiful wife.
I’m not afraid of death any more. Not of death as such. The mystery, though, is how it will happen. My friend died. He puffed right up, till he was like a barrel. And a neighbour was out there too, he was a crane operator. He went coal black, shrivelled up till he was the size of a child. The mystery is how I’ll die. If I could choose, I’d want an ordinary death. Not a Chernobyl death. Just one thing that’s certain: with my diagnosis, it won’t drag out for long. Sense the moment, and put a bullet in your brain.
He began changing: every day, I found a different person. His burns were coming to the surface. First these little sores showed up inside his mouth and on his tongue and cheeks, then they started growing. The lining of his mouth was peeling off in these white filmy layers. The colour of his face … The colour of his body … It went blue. Red. Greyish-brown. But it was all his precious, darling body! You can’t describe it! There are no words for it! It was too much to take. What saved me was how fast it was all happening, I didn’t have time to think or cry.
The last two days at the hospital, I’d lift his arm and the bone would be all wobbly, hanging loose, the tissue falling away from it. Pieces of lung, lumps of his liver were coming up through his mouth. He was choking on his own innards. I’d put a bandage on my hand and slip it into his mouth, scoop it all out … You can’t describe it! There are no words! It was too much to take. This was my sweetheart, my love …
This wasn’t the normal cancer everybody’s afraid of, but Chernobyl cancer, which is even more terrible. The doctors explained it to me: if the metastases had affected him from inside his body, he would have died quickly, but they crawled over the surface. Over his body, over his face. He had a kind of black growth over him. Something happened to his chin, his neck disappeared, his tongue flopped out. His blood vessels burst and he began to haemorrhage. ‘Oh dear,’ I would cry. ‘The bleeding again.’ From his neck, his cheeks, his ears. All over the place. I would bring cold water, apply compresses. They didn’t really help. It was horrific. The pillow would get soaked. I would bring a basin from the bathroom. The blood dripped into it, like a cow’s milk hitting the pail. That sound, so peaceful and rural. I still hear it now, in the nights.
Everyone dreams of an easy death. But how can you earn it？
1.3. 孩子們等待著死亡
死亡，對於已經死去的人，甚至是在等死的老人、成人，沒有現世的重量和意義，但是讀到孩子們對於死亡的態度——每一個字節，每一個標點符號，都一錘又一錘地砸在心上。
Yesterday, I was on a trolleybus. There was a little incident: a boy wouldn’t give up his seat to an old man, who was telling him off: ‘When you’re old, you will find nobody stands up for you.’
‘I’m never going to be old,’ the boy retorts.
‘How so？’
‘We’re all going to die soon.’
All around you, people are talking about death. Children are thinking about it. But that’s something you should contemplate at the end of life, not when it’s just beginning.
Have you ever heard children talking about death？ You get it in my class. Fourteen-year-olds are already debating and discussing whether dying is scary or not.
Right before their eyes, there’s always someone or something being buried. Being laid to rest in the ground … People they knew. Houses and trees, everything is being buried.
They read science fiction, it captivates them. There you’ll get a man hopping off the earth, operating in cosmic time, in other worlds. They aren’t able to fear death the way adults fear it, people like me, for instance; they’re excited by it as something fantastical. A shift to a new place …
I used to think I would never die, but now I know I will. A boy was lying next to me in the hospital. He was called Vadik Korinkov. He drew little birds for me, little houses. He died. Dying isn’t frightening. You just sleep for a long, long time and don’t wake up. Vadik told me that, when he died, he would live in another place for a long time. One of the older boys told him. He wasn’t frightened.
I had a lot of friends here: Yulya, Katya, Vadim, Oxana, Oleg … and now Andrey. ‘We will die and become part of science,’ Andrey used to say. ‘We will die and everyone will forget us.’ That’s what Katya thought. ‘When I die, don’t bury me in a graveyard. I’m afraid of cemeteries. There are only dead people there, and crows. Bury me in open countryside’, was what Oxana wanted. ‘We are going to die,’ Yulya said, and cried. For me, the sky is alive now when I look up at it. They are up there.
2. 活著
2.1. 不怕死亡的老人們
在死亡面前，的確人人平等，但在命運面前——斯大林恐怖中出生，二戰就是童年，老了還要再面對切爾諾貝利——何來平等而言？這樣的一輩子，死神又有何威脅力呢？
The only righteous thing on the face of the earth is death. No one has ever bribed their way out of that. The earth takes us all: the good, the evil and the sinners. And that’s all the justice you’ll find in this world. I’ve slogged my guts out honestly all my life, lived with a clear conscience, but not much justice has come my way. God must have been doling out everyone’s share, and when my turn came the pot was empty.
My good husband liked to say that man pulls the trigger, but God carries the bullet. We all get our different fates. Some of the youngsters who left have already died in their new place. But here I am, walking with my cane. Still on my feet.
God has granted me long years, though He didn’t give me a good lot in life.
2.2. 死亡不可怕，被當成“他們”才可怕
活著是不是真的比死亡更好？人言可畏，放逐天下皆準。對於切爾諾貝利倖存者，核災難是第一層傷害，親朋好友離世是第二層傷害，而局外人把他們當成怪物避之大吉則是更深層次的傷害——死人也害怕死人，連在墓地也不願意葬在他們隔壁——他們失去了作為普通人活下去的最後希望！
The world has split in two: there is us, the people of Chernobyl, and you, everyone else. Have you noticed？ We don’t make a point of this ‘I’m Belarusian’, ‘I’m Ukrainian’, ‘I’m Russian’. Everyone just calls themselves Chernobyl people. ‘We’re from Chernobyl.’ ‘I’m a Chernobyl person.’ As if we’re some sort of separate people. A new nation …
And then, just like that, you’ve turned into a Chernobyl person. A curiosity! Some person that everyone shows interest in, but nobody knows much about. You want to be the same as anyone else, but it’s no longer possible. You can’t do it, there’s no going back to the old world. People look at you through different eyes. They ask you questions. Was it terrifying？ Tell us about when the reactor was on fire. What did you see？ Can you still, you know, have children？ So your wife hasn’t left you？ In the beginning, we all turned into some kind of rare exhibits. Just the word ‘Chernobyl’ still acts like an alarm. They all turn their heads to look at you. ‘Oh, from that place!’ That’s what it felt like in the first days. We lost not just a town but a whole life.
We made our way to Minsk. We bought train tickets from the conductor for three times the price. She brought in tea for everyone, but to us she said, ‘Use your own mugs and glasses.’ It took a while for us to cotton on. First we wondered if they were short of glasses. No, that wasn’t it! They were frightened of us. We’d get asked, ‘Where are you from？’ ‘Chernobyl.’ And they would sidle away from our compartment, not let their children run past us. We arrived in Minsk, got to my mother’s friend’s place. My mum to this day feels ashamed that we piled into someone else’s apartment in our ‘dirty’ clothes and shoes that night. But they welcomed us and fed us. Felt sorry for us. Although their neighbours popped round: ‘You’ve got guests？ Where are they from？’ ‘Chernobyl.’ And they sidled away too.
eople gave a wide berth to the graves of the Chernobyl firemen who had died in Moscow hospitals and been buried nearby in Mitino. Local people wouldn’t bury their own dead alongside them. The dead afraid of the dead …
他們很矛盾，既希望有人記錄這段歷史，但又不希望始終被當成怪物、試驗品、黑盒子來看待，“他們”本來就是“我們”啊！
At times, I think it would be better if you didn’t write about us at all. Didn’t view us from the sidelines, didn’t try to diagnose us with radiophobia or whatever, didn’t separate us out from everybody else. Then people wouldn’t be so afraid of us. After all, you don’t talk about a cancer patient’s dreadful disease in his own home. And you don’t mention someone’s sentence in their cell, when they’re in prison for life.
The way I see it, we’re just research specimens. An international laboratory in the middle of Europe. There are ten million Belarusians, and more than two million of us are living on contaminated land. Nature’s laboratory. Come, record the data, do your experiments. They come here from everywhere, from all over the world. They write theses and monographs on us.
‘They’re using you here as “black boxes”. The people here are black boxes like the ones they have on aircraft. They record all the information about the flight, and if a plane crashes they look for its black box.’ We think we are living life like everyone else. We walk around, go to work, fall in love … But no! Actually, we are recording data for the future.
2.3. “我們”依然活著
於其活在世人的冷眼下，還不如抱團取暖：大家都是怪物，大家都是病患，大家都是切爾諾貝利倖存者，大家都是被這個世界拋棄的孤兒。
We had the choice of moving away, but my husband and I thought it over and turned it down. We’re afraid of other people; whereas here, we’re all just the people of Chernobyl, together. We’re not afraid of each other. If someone offers you apples or cucumbers from their plot, you accept them and eat them. We don’t politely put them away in a pocket or bag and throw them away afterwards. We have a shared memory, the same fate. And anywhere else we’re regarded as outsiders. People look askance at us, fearfully. Everybody is so used to the words ‘Chernobyl’, ‘Chernobyl children’, ‘Chernobyl evacuees’. ‘Chernobyl’: now that gets prefixed to everything about us. But you don’t know the first thing about us. You’re afraid of us. You run away. If we weren’t allowed out of here, if they put a police cordon round us, many of you would probably be relieved.
There are lots of us here. The whole street. They call it Chernobyl Street. These guys worked their whole lives at the power plant. Many still go there to work shifts, they run the plant with a rotation system now. Nobody lives there any more, and they never will. They’ve all got serious illnesses, disabilities, but they won’t give up their work, they wouldn’t even think of it. They’d have no life without the reactor. The reactor is their life. Where else are they needed now？ Who needs them？ They keep dying. It’s a quick death, they die on the go.
但在偷偷溜回輻射污染區的農民群體里，作者記錄了他們對故鄉家園的執著，甚至有一種坦然的自由自在——眼淚多少也有一點熱度，多少也可以暖暖人心。
Home is where the heart is. The sunshine isn’t the same anywhere else.
You have to leave bread on the table and salt, a bowl and three spoons. As many spoons as there are souls in the house. To be sure you’ll return.
In the Zone itself I was struck by the indifference with which people talked about the disaster. In one dead village, we met an old man. He was living all alone. We asked him, ‘Aren’t you afraid？’ And he answered, ‘Of what？’ You can’t be frightened the whole time, a person can’t do that; some time goes by, and ordinary human life starts up again. Everyday human life.
Here you’ve got all the land you could want! Plough a hundred hectares if you like. And there’s no authorities. Nobody bothering you here. No higher-ups. We’re free.
I’ve got two sacks of salt. We’ll be all right without the state! Got plenty of firewood – surrounded by forest. The house is warm. The lamps are lit. All good! I keep a nanny goat, a billy goat, three pigs and fourteen hens. There’s land and grass to your heart’s content. Water in the well. Freedom! We like it! What we have here is no collective farm, it’s a commune. Communism! We’ll buy another horse. And then we won’t need anyone. Just one horse.
There’s total freedom here. I’d say it’s heaven. There is nobody here, just wild animals wandering around. I live among the animals and the birds.
3. 災難
3.1. 官僚系統僵化、腐敗和墮落
切爾諾貝利其實是兩場大災難，第一場是核電站核災難，第二場則是前蘇聯政權腐敗導致的人道災難。
核災難爆發初期，不說普羅大眾，就算專業人員也都毫無災難預案。而所謂的避免恐慌，大事化小，有序撤離，事後回看更像是一場浩大的騙局。但最讓人悲哀感歎的是沒有人敢質疑，慣性地認同並且配合宣傳機器，用自己的健康甚至生命去為這個騙局背書！
He told me later it was like walking on hot tar. They beat back the fire, but it was creeping further, climbing back up. They kicked down the burning graphite. They didn’t have their canvas suits on, they left just in the shirts they were wearing. Nobody warned them. They were just called out to an ordinary fire.
Later, lots of the doctors and nurses in the hospital, and especially the orderlies, came down sick. They died. But back then, nobody knew that would happen.
On the radio, they announced: ‘The town is being evacuated for three to five days. Bring warm clothes and tracksuits. You’ll be staying in the forests, living in tents.’ People even got excited: a trip to the countryside! We’ll celebrate May Day there. That’ll be something new! They got kebabs ready for the trip, bought bottles of wine. They took their guitars, portable stereos. Everybody loves May Day!
We sat for days watching the television and waiting for Gorbachev to speak. There was no word from the authorities. It was only after the May Day celebrations were over that Gorbachev appeared and said there was nothing to worry about, comrades, everything was under control. There had been a fire, just an ordinary fire. Nothing that unusual. The people living there were getting on with their work. And we believed him.
uddenly, there were television broadcasts … One of the narrative tropes: a village woman has milked a cow. She pours milk into a jar, a reporter with a military radiation meter comes and sweeps it over the jar. There, see？ Absolutely normal, and the reactor is only ten kilometres away. Footage of the River Pripyat, people swimming, sunbathing. In the distance, we can see the reactor with smoke above it. Commentary: ‘Voices in the West are trying to sow panic, spreading outright slander about the accident.’ Again the radiation counter is brought out, held over a bowl of fish soup, then over a bar of chocolate, then over doughnuts on sale at an outdoor kiosk. This was deliberate deception. The radiation meters our army had at that time were not designed for testing food. All they measured was background radiation. The sheer volume of lies in our minds associated with Chernobyl bears comparison only with the situation at the outbreak of war in 1941 under Stalin.
無論有文化沒文化，有背景沒背景，第一反應都是國外反動勢力的破壞——這是那個時代的悲哀。而這種無需思索“顯而易見”的答案，更讓人誤判輕重緩急，使更多無辜的生命陷入為難。
‘Most likely sabotage. Somebody must have done it deliberately. That’s what all the guys reckon.’ It was what everyone was saying. What they thought at the time.
For a third month they are telling us on the radio, ‘The situation is stabilizing … The situation is stabilizing … The situation is stabilizing …’ They instantly revived the forgotten vocabulary of Stalinism: ‘Western intelligence agents’, ‘arch enemies of Socialism’, ‘spying forays’, ‘sabotage’, ‘a stab in the back’, ‘subverting the inviolable union of Soviet peoples’. Everybody is harping on about undercover spies and saboteurs, rather than iodine prophylaxis. Any unofficial information is treated as enemy ideology.
the mind was simply not prepared for anything like that; on the other, we had always been told we were the best, the most amazing, and we were living in the world’s greatest country. My husband is an engineer, he has a degree; but he seriously tried to persuade me it was an act of terrorism. Enemy sabotage. That’s the way we thought, that’s how we had been brought up.
極力掩蓋事實，抹殺一切證據，這自欺欺人的“穩定”，又用了多少生命去獻祭？
Like everyone else, I had a personal exposure monitor hung round my neck. After the shift, I had to collect them and hand them over to the KGB. To their secretive First Department. There they took readings, wrote something down on our cards, but the amount of roentgens each person got was a military secret. Bastards! Sons of bitches! Some time goes by, then they tell you: ‘Stop! You can’t do any more!’ All that medical information … Even when you were leaving, they wouldn’t tell you how much you’d had. Bastards! Sons of bitches!
Have people told you that taking pictures anywhere near the reactor was strictly forbidden？ You could only do it with a special permit. They confiscated cameras. Before they could leave, the soldiers who had served there were searched, just like in the Afghan War, to make sure they had no photos. God forbid! No evidence. They took the television crews’ footage off to the KGB. Returned it after they’d exposed it to light. The amount of information they destroyed! Testimony. All lost to science. To history. It would be good to find the people who ordered that … How would they try to explain themselves？ What could they come up with？ I will never forgive them. Never!
obody would listen to us scientists and doctors. Medicine and science were being dragged into politics. Of course they were! You mustn’t forget the intellectual context in which all this was happening, the kind of people we were at that time, ten years ago. The KGB were on the loose, the secret services. The Western radio broadcasts were being jammed. There were thousands of taboos, Party and military secrets. Secret guidelines. And to cap it all, we had been brought up to believe that the peaceful Soviet atom was as harmless as peat and coal. We were fettered by fear and prejudice. Misplaced faith.
災難還未平息，就已經粉飾太平，繼續在輻射區安排毫無保護的無意義的勞動生產，而且把產品持續輸往其他地區——閱讀著區委官員的真心話，讓人憤怒得恨不得把書撕爛！
A tractor is ploughing … I ask the official from the District Party Committee who’s accompanying us, ‘Is that tractor driver protected？ Does he at least have a respirator？’ ‘No, they don’t wear respirators while they are working.’ ‘What, have they not brought you any？’ ‘Of course we have! We’ve got enough to see us through to the year 2000, but we don’t issue them. It would start a panic. They would all run away, go to other regions!’ ‘What kind of way is that to treat people？’ ‘It’s easy for you to talk like that, professor. If you get fired, you’ll just find another job. But I would be completely stuck.’ What sort of a regime is that？ Unaccountable power of one person over another … This was not just deceit, this was a massacre of the innocents.
In the first year after the disaster, millions of tonnes of contaminated grain were processed as animal feed, given to cattle, and the meat then found its way on to our tables. Poultry and pigs were fed bonemeal laced with strontium.
3.2. 一位區委第一書記的獨白
在本書第三部分《Admiring Disaster》，作者特別記錄了一位區委第一書記的獨白《Monologue on the eternal, accursed questions: ‘What is to be done？’ and ‘Who is to blame？’》，值得一讀再讀：他堅信自己所做的一切都是正確的，並且為此獻祭了親孫女的健康——正是因為每一顆政權螺絲釘的兢兢業業，這部機器慣性地輾軋更多的尸體。
他的一句“I’m a man of my time, not a criminal …”你會原諒他嗎？換做是你我，我們又真的會“槍口抬高一尺”甚至敢於抗命而為嗎？你又會原諒自己嗎？
There were telegrams from the Central Committee, from the Provincial Party Committee. We were given the task of avoiding panic. Panic really is a terrible thing. It was only during the war that people were following reports from the front as closely as they were the bulletins from Chernobyl. Fear and rumours. People were killed not by radiation but by an incident. We had to … our duty … It’s not true to say we were hiding everything from the outset. At first, no one recognized the scale of what was happening. Priority was given to higher political considerations. But if you disregard emotions, disregard politics …
If I’d said then it was wrong to bring the people out in the streets？ ‘You want to sabotage the May Day Parade？ That’s a political offence! Put your Party card on the table immediately!’
We were all part of that system. We believed in it. We believed in heroic ideals, in the Soviet victory. And that we would vanquish Chernobyl! We would all pile in and overwhelm it. We read avidly about the heroic struggle to tame the reactor, which had broken free of the power of humans. We conducted indoctrination sessions.
eople have to be motivated, inspired. They need ideals. Then you’ll have a strong state. Sausages cannot be an ideal, or a full fridge. A Mercedes is not an ideal. You need shining ideals! And that was what we had.
If I’m a criminal, then why is my granddaughter … my child … She is ill too … My daughter had her in the spring, brought her to us in Slavgorod in nappies. In a pram. They came a few weeks after the explosion at the power station. Helicopters flying, army vehicles on the roads … My wife begged me: ‘We must send them to our relatives, get them away from here.’ I was the first secretary of the District Party Committee. I totally forbade it. ‘What will people think if I send my daughter and her baby elsewhere？ When their own children have to stay here.’ Those who bolted for it, trying to save their own skin … I called them into the District Committee, to the office, ‘Are you a Communist or not？’ It was a test of integrity. If I’m a criminal, why did I not save my own child？ (Becoming incoherent.) I did … she … in my own house … (Calms down after a while.)
I believed them. I called people to my office and said, ‘Comrades, if I run away, if you run away, what will people think of us？ They will say the Communists deserted them!’ If I couldn’t persuade them with words and emotion, I took a different approach: ‘Are you a patriot or not？ If not, put your Party card on the table. Throw it down!’ Some did.
My granddaughter has leukaemia … I’ve paid for everything. A high price … I’m a man of my time, not a criminal …
4. 信仰
4.1. 讚美英雄主義
在這場災難中，英雄層出不窮——英雄主義，是流淌在蘇聯人民血液中。從小到大的教育，都是為祖國為人民時刻準備著。英雄是被讚美和歌頌的，而膽小鬼是被鄙夷和排斥的。他們並不僅僅是因為軍令如山，也不是因為恐懼（雖然這多少也有一點），就算模模糊糊知道被騙，知道這是去送死，依然還是義無反顧跳入火海，為祖國為人民獻身。
正因為如此單一的人生觀價值觀，在切爾諾貝利這歷史舞台上，英雄們前仆後繼，跳完他們此生最悲壯最絢麗的絕舞。
I wanted to do something heroic, put my character to the test.
I’m a military man, my duty is to do what I’m ordered. I took an oath. But that’s not all, there was also the heroic urge. They’d nurtured it, sown it in our minds at school, at home. And then the political instructors set to work on us. The radio, the television.
You have to serve the Motherland! Serving the Motherland is our sacred duty.
Every year, on 26 April, we get together, those of us who were there. Those who are still left. We look back on those days. You were a soldier in that war, you were indispensable. All the bad stuff gets forgotten, and that is what stays. What lingers is the fact they couldn’t cope without you. You were essential. Our system, our military, operates pretty much superbly in an emergency. Out there, you were finally free and needed. Freedom! At moments like that, the Russian people show how great they are. How special! We’ll never be like the Dutch or Germans. And we’ll never have good roads or groomed lawns. But we’ll always have heroes!
The call went out, and I answered it. Had to be done. I was a Party member. Communists, forward! Was just the way things were.
To go out there or not to go？ To fly or not？ I was a Communist, how could I refuse to fly？ Two navigators refused, said they had young wives, hadn’t had kids yet. How they were humiliated! That was the end of their careers! There was another court too: the court of manliness. The court of honour! You see, there’s a buzz, knowing the other guy couldn’t do it, but you can. Now I look at things differently. After my nine operations and two heart attacks, I don’t judge anyone any more. I can understand them. They were young lads. But I’d still do it all again. That’s a fact. The other guy couldn’t do it, but I could. A job for real men!
From the viewpoint of our culture, thinking about yourself was selfish. It showed a lack of spirit. There was always something more important than you and your life.
We are brought up to be soldiers. That is what we are taught. Constantly mobilized, constantly ready to undertake the impossible.
eople were not happy, but at the same time they had a sense of having done their duty. We have that in us: we ought to go where it is difficult and dangerous and be ready to defend our Motherland. What else have I been teaching the children？ Precisely that. You have to go into battle, rush into the line of fire, defend, sacrifice. The literature I was teaching was not about life: it was about war and death: Sholokhov, Serafimovich, Furmanov, Fadeyev, Boris Polevoy …
There was no whingeing. If this job had to be done, someone had to do it. The Motherland had called, commanded. That’s the way we are.
ut to say anything publicly about the results would see you stripped of your academic degree, and even your Party card. (Becoming nervous.) But it was not fear. Not because of fear, although we were fearful, of course … But because we were people of that time, citizens of our Soviet land. We believed in it. It was all to do with faith. Our faith … (Lights a cigarette in his agitation.) Believe me, it was not from fear … or not only from fear. I’m answering you honestly. For my own self-respect, I need to be honest now. I want …
4.2. 反思英雄主義
但當一個又一個鮮活的生命逝去，特別是自己的摯愛就這樣飛蛾撲火，或者因為自己魯莽導致兒子腦癌，再強大的愛國主義也無法安撫內心的傷痛。
At one time … At one time, I envied heroes. Those people who had a part in great events, when everything was in the balance, conquering great summits. That was how we talked then, what we sang about. Such splendid songs. (Sings.) ‘Little eagle, little eagle …’ I can’t even remember the words now. ‘Fly higher than the sun …’ Is that right？ What wonderful words our songs had. I used to dream! I felt sad I wasn’t born in 1917 or 1941. I think differently now. I don’t want to live history, in historic times, where my short life is just so defenceless. Great events trample it underfoot without even noticing, without pausing. (Pensive.) After us, history is all that will be left. Chernobyl will be left … But my life？ My love？
I went out there. Although I didn’t have to. I volunteered. In the early days, I didn’t meet anyone half-hearted. It was later they got that blank look in their eyes, once they’d grown used to things. Were we after medals？ Special benefits？ Rubbish! I personally didn’t need anything. An apartment, a car, what else？ Ah, yes, a dacha. I had all that. It was the male lust for adventure that kicked in. Real men were going on a real mission. And the others？ They could hide behind their mothers’ skirts. One guy brought a certificate saying his wife was giving birth, another had a small child. Sure, it was risky; sure, it was dangerous – radiation. But somebody had to do it. And what about our fathers in the war？ We got home. I took everything off, all the stuff I’d been wearing there, and threw the lot down the rubbish chute. I gave the cap to my little son as a present. He kept asking for it. He wore it non-stop. Two years later, he was diagnosed with a brain tumour. You can write the rest yourself. I don’t want to say any more.
4號反應堆上飄揚的紅旗，是用一個個年輕的生命換來的“勝利”——但這戰勝的到底是什麼？
我們歌頌英雄們的事跡，但為什麼要普通人變成英雄？！是誰造成了這些不可收拾的災難？鮮艷的國旗蓋住了千瘡萬孔的尸體，也蓋住了腐敗墮落的政權和草菅人命的價值體系。
Every day, they brought the papers. I read just the headlines: ‘Chernobyl, Site of Heroic Deeds’, ‘Reactor Is Vanquished’, ‘Life Goes On’, We had political officers. They put on political sessions, told us we had to emerge victorious. Over what？ The atom？ Physics？ The cosmos？ Our nation treats victory not as an event but a process. Life is a battle. That’s where our great love of floods, fires and earthquakes comes from. We need a stage for our ‘displays of courage and heroism’. Somewhere to hoist the flag. The political officer read us news items on the ‘high level of political awareness and efficient organization’, on how, within a few days of the accident, the red flag was flying over Reactor No. 4. There it proudly fluttered, until a few months later it was ravaged by the tremendous radiation. So they raised a new flag. And another. The old one was kept as a souvenir. They ripped it into shreds and shoved it under their jackets next to their hearts. Then they took the rags back home, showed them off proudly to their children. They preserved them. Heroic lunacy! But I was just the same, no better. I tried to imagine the soldiers climbing on to the roof. Sheer suicide. But they were brimming with emotions. First, their sense of duty and, second, passion for the Motherland. You’ll tell me it was Soviet paganism？ But the thing is, if they’d handed the flag to me, I would have climbed up there too. Why？ I can’t really answer that.
Don’t write about the miracles of Soviet heroism. They happened, those miracles! But first it was incompetence, sloppiness, and only then came the miracles. Throwing yourselves on to pillboxes, flinging your chests against machine guns. But nobody writes about the fact they should never have issued those orders in the first place. They slung us in like they dumped the sand on the reactor. Like we were sandbags. Every day, they hung up a new soldiers’ bulletin: ‘Their brave and selfless work …’ ‘We shall stand firm and triumph.’ They came up with a lovely name for us: ‘Soldiers of the Fire.’
“我們”到底是什麼？書中切爾諾貝利博物館館長不同意的觀點，反而卻是一面很好的鏡子：我們總是把自己看得微如塵埃，期待在歷史中焚身以火，用生命去書寫不朽。
He was trying to persuade me this was because we put a very low value on life. A kind of Asiatic fatalism. The person who makes the sacrifice has no sense of himself as a unique, irreplaceable human being. It is a longing for a role to play. Until this moment, he has been an actor with no lines, an extra. He has had no role, been no more than part of the background. Suddenly, he is a star. A longing for meaning. What is all our propaganda about？ Our ideology？ You are offered the choice of dying and acquiring meaning. They raise you up. They give you a role! It is worth dying because, afterwards, you will be immortal.
5. 控訴
5.1. 對蘇聯的控訴
在這權力的金字塔尖，無數人的命運，掌握在千里之外、視人命僅為數字的幾個人手上——古老的沙皇只是讓位給共產主義的沙皇。每級官員扶緊頭上烏紗帽，抬著頭等待塔尖的命令，全然不覺自己媚臉上深深的腳印，更全然不覺自己正踩在逐漸冰涼的尸體上。
During the first days, my feelings were mixed. I remember the two most powerful were fear and resentment. Everything had happened, and no one was telling us anything: the authorities were silent, the doctors were saying nothing. There were no answers. At district level they were awaiting instructions from the provincial level, at that level they were awaiting instructions from Minsk, and in Minsk from Moscow. A long, long chain … which meant that in effect we had no protection. That was the main feeling during those days. Somewhere, far away, there was Gorbachev and a few others. Two or three people deciding our fate. The fate of millions of people.
They were afraid of their bosses. And their bosses were afraid of those above them, and so on up the chain, all the way to the general secretary. One man decided everything from his celestial heights. That was how the pyramid of power was built. It was headed by a tsar. At that time, a Communist tsar.
They were more afraid of the wrath of their superiors than of a nuclear disaster. Everyone was waiting for a phone call, for orders, and nobody did anything on their own initiative. They were terrified of taking personal responsibility.
Actually, those people were not a gang of crooks. The best way to characterize it is as a conspiracy of ignorance and corporatism. Their guiding principle, their bureaucratic training, had taught them never to show initiative, to be obsequious.
And all they cared about wasn’t people, but managing to hold on to power. A country where power matters and people do not. The primacy of the state is unchallengeable, and a human life is without any value at all.
5.2. 對自己的控訴
但雪崩時，又有哪一片雪花是無辜的呢？我們當然可以把食指指向腐敗的權力金字塔塔尖，那另外4根手指呢？
在權力面前的跪的太久，連科學家都有意忽略或特意壓制內心的懷疑，相信黨定勝天，可以扭轉自然規律，甚至是閉著眼睛給自己找理由去遵從惡法，執行惡令——在切爾諾貝利的核災難的鏡子前，大家終於看清了自己的模樣！
It was not only the authorities who were deceiving us: we ourselves didn’t want to know the truth, somewhere deep down, at a subconscious level. Now, of course, we don’t want to admit that to ourselves. We prefer to curse Gorbachev, to curse the Communists … It was all their fault. We were blameless. We were victims.
On television, Gorbachev was being reassuring. ‘Emergency measures have been taken.’ I believed him. I – an engineer with twenty years’ experience, someone who knew the laws of physics. I knew every living thing needed to be evacuated from that area, at least temporarily. But we conscientiously carried on, making our measurements and watching the television. We were accustomed to believing. I belong to the post-war generation that grew up with that faith. Where did it come from？ We had been victorious in a dreadful war. At that time, the whole world admired and respected us. That was really true! In the Cordilleras, the name of Stalin was carved into the rocks. What did that mean？ It was a symbol! It meant we were a great country.
o there’s the answer to your question of why we knew and said nothing. Why didn’t we shout it from the rooftops？ We reported the situation. I told you, we wrote internal reports. And we stayed silent and obeyed orders implicitly, because we were under Party discipline. I was a Communist. I don’t remember any of our staff being afraid for their own skin and refusing to travel to the Zone. And that was not because they were afraid of losing their Party card, but because of their faith. Above all, a belief that we were living in a fine and just society that put people first. Man was the measure of all things. For many people, the collapse of that faith ended in a heart attack or suicide. A bullet in the heart, as with Academician Legasov. Because when you lose that faith, when you are marooned without faith, you are no longer part of something, but complicit in it, and you no longer have any justification. That is how I understand what he did.
In one collective farm, for instance, there might be five villages: three ‘clean’, two ‘dirty’. They were all two to three kilometres apart. Two would be getting compensation, three wouldn’t. In a ‘clean’ village, they would build an animal-breeding centre. ‘We’ll bring in clean fodder.’ Well, where was that supposed to come from？ The wind carries dust from one field to another. It’s all just one farm. To build the centre requires permits and a commission to authorize them. I am a member of that commission, even though everyone knows we ought not to sign this project off … It’s a crime! In the end, I found myself an excuse: the problem of uncontaminated fodder is no concern of a nature conservation inspector. I’m only a small person. What can I do about it？ Everybody found an excuse, an explanation. That is an experiment I have conducted on myself. I realize now that terrible things in life happen unspectacularly and naturally.
核災難后幾天的五一勞動節遊行，無論官員還是平民，大部分人選擇了“團結”，展示不畏懼任何困難的勇氣——這固然有不知道核污染危險的無知和被騙，但更多是已經被徹底污染、無法獨立思考的精神災難。
The May Day Parade？ Nobody forced us to turn out for it; nobody obliged me to. We could’ve decided not to go, but we didn’t. I don’t remember a more crowded, happy May Day Parade than the one that year. There were concerns, of course, but you wanted to run with the herd, to feel the sense of solidarity, to be in there together with everybody else.
we dressed our children up and took them to the May Day Parade. We didn’t have to go. We had a choice. We were not forced, nobody required our attendance. But we considered it was our duty. What？ At a time like this, on a day like this？ We should all be together. We ran down into the street and joined the throng. On the podium, there were all the secretaries of district Party committees, standing shoulder to shoulder with the first secretary and his little daughter. She was standing somewhere she could be seen. She was wearing a coat and hat, even though the sun was shining, and he was wearing a military waterproof cape. But there they were. I do remember that. The contamination was not only in our land but in our minds. That had been going on, and would continue, for years.
而十年後，一部分人依然不願醒來，死死抓住蘇維埃社會主義的尾巴，哭訴自己未得到出賣靈魂該得到的補償——哪一場災難更讓人悲歎呢……
My characterization, if you want it: a hybrid between a prison and a kindergarten, that’s what Socialism is, Soviet Socialism. A citizen surrendered his soul to the state, his conscience, his heart, and in return received his rations for the day. Beyond that, it was a matter of luck: one person got a bigger ration, another a small one. The only constant was that you got it in return for selling your soul. And the thing we most wanted to avoid now was our foundation turning into a distributor of that kind of ration: the Chernobyl ready-packed meal. People were used to waiting and complaining. ‘I am a Chernobyl victim. I am entitled, because I am one of the victims.’ As I see it today, Chernobyl was a major test of our spirit and our culture.
5.3. 對民族的控訴
俄羅斯民族，從來就沒有“我”的存在，都是“我們”，整齊劃一但是面目模糊。這就是我們追求的最高集體主義？
ut that is a kind of barbarism too, the lack of a sense of self-preservation. We always say ‘we’ instead of ‘I’. ‘We will show what Soviet heroism is!’ ‘We will show the character of the Soviet people.’ To the whole world! But then what about me？ I don’t want to die either. I’m frightened.
另一方面，對於俄羅斯民族，恐懼和悲劇已是常態，平淡安穩是生活更像是假象——必須要用死亡為它添加意義。
為國獻身的洗腦固然是主因，但是從沙皇時代開始就缺乏對個體的尊重，沒有對自我的認同，更不用說理解和體驗真正的自由，這些更是把“英雄主義”神化為生命唯一目的。
Our Russian people have always lived in fear of war and revolution. That blood-drenched vampire, that Devil incarnate, Joseph Stalin … and now it’s Chernobyl. And we wonder why people here are the way they are. Why aren’t they free？ Why are they so afraid of freedom？ It’s just that they are more used to living under a tsar: a father of his people. It makes not the least difference whether he’s called the “general secretary” or the “president” …
We are adepts of metaphysics. We live not on the ground but in the realm of dreams, of talk, of words. We need to add something to everyday life in order to understand it. Even when we are living next to death.
I remember us debating the course of Russian culture with its penchant for tragedy. Without the overhanging shadow of death, nothing would be understood. It would be possible to come to terms with the disaster only by building on the foundation provided by Russian culture.
正因為對死亡的“輕視”，自然不會看重生命價值，更加不會尊重自然規律或社會現實——“The psychology of a rapist. The materialism of a caveman. Defying history, defying nature.”讀完這句話，百味雜陳……
Russia never saved her own people, because the country’s too big, too endless.
How long do you think we remembered that incident？ Barely a few days. After all, we Russians are incapable of thinking only about ourselves and our own lives, of not looking beyond that sort of thing. Our politicians are incapable of thinking about the value of a life, but that goes for us as individuals too. Know what I mean？ We just don’t think that way. We’re made of different stuff.
As for technological discipline … For Russians, discipline has always been associated with coercion: the stocks, chains. The people wanted to be spontaneous, liberated. The dream was not of freedom but of liberty. For us, discipline was a means of repression. Our ignorance has a peculiar quality, something close to oriental barbarism.
We were brought up in a particular kind of Soviet paganism. Man was almighty, the crown of creation. He had the right to do whatever he pleased with the world. Ivan Michurin’s phrase was much quoted: ‘We cannot wait for the favours of nature; our mission is to take them from her.’ The attempt to inculcate in the people qualities and attributes they did not possess. The dream of global revolution was an aspiration to remake human beings and the world around us. Remake everything! Yes! There’s that renowned Bolshevik slogan: ‘With an iron fist we shall herd the human race into happiness.’ The psychology of a rapist. The materialism of a caveman. Defying history, defying nature.
6. 永恆
在原子面前，人類多麼雄偉宏大；在原子面前，人類多麼卑微渺小。智人走出非洲，也就是距今5-10萬年的歷史，而切爾諾貝利的輻射衰敗期卻超越20萬年，這場災難的意義，我們無法理解，我們怎麼可能理解？這超越了我們的知識儲存，這超越了我們所有的想象力！
我們自大地打開了災難的大門，卻再也無法把它關上，“永恆”通過石棺的縫隙，亙古不滅地照耀著我們……
After forty years, everybody started talking about the war and thinking about it properly. Before that, we had just been aiming to survive, rebuilding, having children. It will be the same with Chernobyl. We will come back to it later and understand it more deeply. It will become a place of pilgrimage, a Wailing Wall. For the present, though, we have no ritual, no ideas! Curies, rems, sieverts – that doesn’t add up to understanding. It’s not a philosophy, not an outlook. In this country, man comes either with a gun or with the Cross. That goes right through our history. There has been nothing else. There still isn’t.
I began wondering why so little has been written on Chernobyl. Our writers keep on writing about the war, about Stalin’s camps, but they’re silent on Chernobyl. There are almost no books on it. Do you think that’s just a coincidence？ It’s an episode still outside our culture. Too traumatic for our culture. And our only answer is silence. We just close our eyes, like little children, and think we can hide. Something from the future is peeking out and it’s just too big for our minds. Too huge for us to handle.
More than twenty years have passed since the accident, yet I have been asking myself ever since: what was I bearing witness to, the past or the future？ It would be so easy to slide into cliché. The banality of horror. But I see Chernobyl as the beginning of a new history: it offers not only knowledge but also prescience, because it challenges our old ideas about ourselves and the world. When we talk about the past or the future, we read our ideas about time into those words; but Chernobyl is, above all, a catastrophe of time. The radionuclides strewn across our earth will live for 50,000, 100,000, 200,000 years. And longer. From the perspective of human life, they are eternal. What are we capable of comprehending？ Is it in our power to extract and decipher the meaning of this still unfamiliar horror？
The night of 26 April 1986. In the space of one night we shifted to another place in history. We took a leap into a new reality, and that reality proved beyond not only our knowledge but also our imagination. Time was out of joint. The past suddenly became impotent, it had nothing for us to draw on; in the all-encompassing – or so we’d believed – archive of humanity, we couldn’t find a key to open this door.
Unable to find the words for these new feelings and emotions, unable to find emotions for these new words, we no longer knew how to express ourselves; but we were gradually immersed in the atmosphere of a new way of thinking, and so it has become possible today to pinpoint our state at the time. The truth is that facts alone were not enough; we felt an urge to look behind the facts, to delve into the meaning of what was happening.
未來咬住了過去，自我吞食也即是再生的希望。切爾諾貝利災難，沒有任何一個災民，他們都是英雄：死去的英雄用生命去換人類的延續性，而活著的英雄用生命去記錄一切，等待後人有能力去解開重生的密碼。
Time had bitten its own tail, the beginning and end had merged. Chernobyl, for those who were there, did not end in Chernobyl. They were returning not from war, but almost from another world. I realized that they were consciously converting their suffering into new knowledge, donating it to us. Telling us: mind you do something with this knowledge, put it to some use.
They were heroes. Heroes of the new history. They were saving something greater than their homeland. They were saving life itself. Life’s continuity.
切爾諾貝利英雄們，向你們致敬！
Contents
ome historical background
A lone human voice
The author interviews herself on missing history and why Chernobyl calls our view of the world into question
1 Land of the Dead
Monologue on why people remember
Monologue on how we can talk with both the living and the dead
Monologue on a whole life written on a door
Monologue of a village on how they call the souls from heaven to weep and eat with them
Monologue on how happy a chicken would be to find a worm. And what is bubbling in the pot is also not forever
Monologue on a song without words
Three monologues on ancient fear, and on why one man stayed silent while the women spoke
Monologue on how man is crafty only in evil, but simple and open in his words of love
The Soldiers’ Choir
2 The Crown of Creation
Monologue on the old prophecies
Monologue on a moonscape
Monologue of a witness who had toothache when he saw Christ fall and cry out Three monologues on the ‘walking ashes’ and the ‘talking dust’
Monologue on how we can’t live without Tolstoy and Chekhov
Monologue on what St Francis preached to the birds
Monologue without a title: a scream
Monologue in two voices: male and female
Monologue on how some completely unknown thing can worm its way into you
Monologue on Cartesian philosophy and on eating a radioactive sandwich with someone so as not to be ashamed
Monologue on our having long ago come down from the trees but not yet having come up with a way of making them grow into wheels
Monologue by a capped well Monologue about longing for a role and a narrative
The Folk Choir
3 Admiring Disaster
Monologue on something we did not know: death can look so pretty
Monologue on how easy it is to return to dust
Monologue on the symbols and secrets of a great country
Monologue on the fact that terrible things in life happen unspectacularly and naturally
Monologue on the observation that a Russian always wants to believe in something
Monologue about how defenceless a small life is in a time of greatness
Monologue on physics, with which we were all once in love
Monologue on something more remote than Kolyma, Auschwitz and the Holocaust
Monologue on freedom and the wish to die an ordinary death
Monologue on a freak who is going to be loved anyway
Monologue on the need to add something to everyday life in order to understand it
Monologue on a mute soldier
Monologue on the eternal, accursed questions: ‘What is to be done？’ and ‘Who is to blame？’
Monologue of a defender of Soviet power
Monologue on how two angels took little Olenka
Monologue on the unaccountable power of one person over another
Monologue on sacrificial victims and priests
The Children’s Choir
A lone human voice
In place of an epilogue
上一篇：《孔子》读后感锦集
