"Partisans" were the names of the reservists sent to remove the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. The key rings attached to the uniforms are individual radiation meters. Photo from the archive of Alyaksandr Babok
Over 90,000 people officially passed through Chernobyl. Belarusians removing the consequences of the accident. It was the third largest ethnic group in the ranks of the liquidators after the Ukrainians and Russians.
Today, Chernobyls are middle-aged and elderly people, often ailing. The stay in the "zone" left a mark on their health. When, in the already independent Belarus, the authorities gradually deprived them of the concessions granted during the USSR, they felt frustrated and forgotten. The symbol of their frustration is the fact that Vasil Ihnacenko (Russian: Vasily Ignatenko) has not been awarded the Hero of Belarus award to this day. The fate of the firefighter has just been shown in the series "Chernobyl".
In the years 1986-1987 he served as a lieutenant of the internal troops and dealt with catching criminals who had escaped to the "zone". He spent a total of 30 days there, and although he was not directly involved in the decommissioning, he was also exposed to radiation. As he claims, the attitude of the state towards the liquidators can be expressed in one sentence: "The homeland has sent, the homeland has forgotten."
Why has there been a disaster?
- I am convinced that the cause of the breakdown was a "brothel" - comments Siarhei Szalkiewicz, who came to "wife" in September 1986 as a driver in a chemical reconnaissance company. “I know that the station employees were already referring to the reactor back then as quite ordinary. It used to be like this with steam locomotives. At first, people fled when they saw them, shot them, and then they got used to it. It was the same with the reactors. And then they blamed it all on Anatoly Dyatlov.
Siarhei Szalkiewicz with his personal radiation meter. However, the soldiers could not read its level without a special device. Photo D.Dziuba, Belsat.eu
Mikhail Kapylau, who came to the Chernobyl "wife" on June 10, 1986, thinks otherwise and spent 4 months there. He served there as deputy platoon commander of the aftermath of the crash.
- None of us were at the power plant at the time of the breakdown and we can only talk about what we have read. At the end of 1986, the Atomnadzor investigation was published in the journal "Nauka i Życie", in which it was written that Dyatlov said that the reactor was like a kettle and nothing could happen to it. So the case was not in a "brothel", but in one man who was convinced that he knew everything, that nothing bad would happen.
Reactor fire fighting
Siarhei Szalkiewicz knows the exact account of the reactor extinguishing action from Ivan Szarlej, the commander of the fire department at the power plant.
- In fact, the fire trucks did not come in one column, but individually. And from the very first minutes, a squad of firefighters from the power plant worked on the site. Secondly, the firefighters did not extinguish the fire from the ground - there it was over 75 meters high and no stream would come. They immediately went upstairs to put out the tar on the roof of the reactor. Nobody wore any special protective gear, as no one realized what had happened. Neither firefighters nor station employees. They were wearing just such clothes as to put out an ordinary house.
In the film, a fireman picks up a piece of graphite. It is probably a creative procedure, but it is entirely possible that firefighters were even running around graphite. The information that the reactor had exploded did not appear until the next morning.
Calling liquidators to the "zone"
The film shows a scene when militiamen are spreading around houses with characteristic cards. These were calls to appear at the liquidators' assembly point.
- I was 21 years old and I just returned from the army - says Siarhiej Szalkiewicz. - At the very beginning, the policemen brought summons with such a red diagonal line. But people, seeing them, began to quit their jobs and avoid leaving. So they began sending out the usual summons to appear for a 25-day military exercise. I was glad then that I was not going to Chernobyl. But when I went to Minsk, it turned out that they had gathered liquidators from all regions of Belarus, who formed a column of several kilometers. Only those who were too drunk and those with sentences were taken out of it. So the young, healthy and sober went to Chernobyl. We also read an order calling for special military maneuvers to eliminate the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. They threatened with 3 years in prison for their arbitrary departure.
Siarhei Bukrej was one of the first to receive a summons with a red stripe. He stayed in the "zone" from June 10 to October 10, 1986.
- On June 7 at 8 am, a "mient" [cop] came to my house with a summons with a red stripe. Where are we going, he did not say - says Siarhei.
Anatol Pracharenka worked as a driver and carried clothes from a warehouse in Narovla (a town on the Belarusian-Ukrainian border) to the Pripyat fair. On April 26, he was due to go to the town near the power plant as usual, but his truck was not allowed in. However, it was still unknown what happened. According to Prachorenka, on May 1, everyone was led out on the May parade, and the evacuation of the area began only 3 days later.
- May 4 was just the holiday of Easter. Me and many other drivers were summoned to the war kehilla [military replenishment headquarters]. We were assembled in front of the district government building. People from Chojniki, Brahina and Narovla were transported to Minsk.
The liquidators say that two categories of people were sent to Chernobyl: soldiers of the drafting service and soldiers of reservists, who in the slang were called "partisans"
- [Valery] Legasov and all the others will sign the words that the dirtiest job was done by "partisans", reservists. There were two soldiers in my battalion - adds Szalkiewicz.
How did information about the crash spread?
- It was like a wave - says Szalkiewicz. - First they understood the situation in the power plant, then in Pripyat, then also in Narovla, and so on. However, people still didn't believe it. When the information reached my Stołbków after May 9, people started talking about taking iodine. I also remember another time when I was going home on leave, people started talking about some other Chernobyl outbreak. I couldn't stand it and said there was no explosion. They "how do you know?" I replied that I was there yesterday, these people immediately ran away. They were afraid of radiation. This Fairy tale lasted a long time. It was only when they found out that the entire city had been evacuated and that the reserve soldiers had been torn from their beds at two in the morning. The fear was that they even threw party cards so as not to go there.
Contamination level
- Our unit - recalls Szalkiewicz - stood in the field between the displaced villages of Babicze and Rudakow. People couldn't live there, and we soldiers did. We slept in tents of 36-38 people. There were small stoves in the tents. They brought us food, but not the wood, and we had to smoke whatever was at hand. Entire villages were buried because of contamination, and here we are warming up near such "mini-reactors". Special smokers smoked in the furnaces, and when they later took their blood for analysis, the indicators were worse than those of the liquidators. These guys caught more radiation than we did, and they didn't even see the plant.
The soldiers were not told what dose they had received. They had no dosimeters, only sensors that were taken from them and only then read the results in special devices. But anyway, everyone was assigned the same - a safe level from 7.7 to 10 x-rays.
- Once, I met with employees who provided contamination statistics during liquidation - says Szalkiewicz. - They said that they transmitted information about the radiation level in a given place. They convey and hear in response, "You f ed up? It can't be that much, lower it. " And they lower it, and those at the top pass it on, and there again they order them to decrease. And after arriving in Minsk, I was surprised to find out that according to statistics, there could not be the kind of radiation I was talking about. After returning from the "wife", my nose was bleeding all the time, my blood pressure was jumping up. For 9 years I have been officially disabled - adds Szalkiewicz.
Liquidators say that their duties also included cleaning the roof of radioactive graphite, which was found there after the reactor explosion. Sergey Bukrej was removing graphite from the characteristic chimney above the power plant. As he recalls, one exit lasted 1 minute and 45 seconds, because the radiation level was then 800 x-rays per hour.
- They chased all the people through this roof from covering the reactor. Regardless of the activity - and cooks and communications. They put us in lead. The good thing is that blood tests were done, and if someone had bad results, they wouldn't go. We worked in five minutes, five minutes each - says Mikhail Kapylau.
Before we left, they gathered us and the general came to say goodbye. At the end he said "the questions are?" Everyone was silent, only one boy suddenly began to complain that he had a wrong dose and that he only had a mother and what would happen to her, if something happened to him. And what did the general say? He started screaming, "He's a provocateur, give him three days in jail." Fortunately, we had a normal commander and he didn't send him there.- At first, we wore the green masks called "pig's mouth" shown in the movie, then they changed them to more comfortable masks similar to surgical ones. In the "zone" sometimes I had the impression that I was in a large surgical ward - people dressed in white and wearing masks around - adds Szalkiewicz.
Near the power plant, unlike in the movie, no one was standing or smoking if they didn't have to. Everyone was running. Cars, bulldozers, tractors were covered with lead. Once we approached the power plant, a soldier jumped out and chased us away so that we could hide around the corner of the building. We didn't have any tools with us, we didn't know where it was safe. There were places where the radiation exceeded the norm several hundred times - he says.
Suicide of prof. Valery Legasov
- Many said that he killed himself because he did not get the star of the Hero of the USSR. But I am sure that he did not go to the "wife" for the star - Szalkiewicz believes. - When we returned, people were afraid of us. They didn't sit down at one table, didn't say hello. As if we were sick with AIDS. Then a new phrase appeared: "We've all gone Chernobyl." Once I couldn't stand it and said, "You can sit by the fire all night, but try to take your pants off and sit on it, you know the difference?"
Then there were accusations against us. That we were supposedly washing away the radioactive dust unnecessarily, because it penetrated into the ground. The pilots were accused of dumping lead into the reactor. The displaced people thought they tasted lead, but even before they started dropping it.
And the same accusations were made against Legasov that he was using the wrong methods. And when the party members pretended that everything was OK, only Legasov dealt with real problems, which was well shown in the film. But when the crisis was over, they made him a scapegoat and started trying to make him fail.
Legasov, as depicted in the film, knew he was dealing with something that happened for the first time in history. He had to solve various difficult dilemmas - there was a scene in the film where in a bar and people asked if it was dangerous. Even though he was shaking, he says it's okay. He did not want to panic.
Why is this movie important?
- The film is needed - says Szalkiewicz. - He says what happened was not a joke. Yes, I look at him like a front-line soldier watches war movies. There are some inaccuracies in detail here that can be seen by those who were there.
Some time ago I attended a meeting with veterans of the Great Patriotic War, Afghans and Chernobyls. One son of the regiment said that the liquidators defended what they had fought for in 1941-45. Somehow I felt so nice that he considered us his heirs.