Chornobyl’s legacy of state disregard for human life echoes in Russia’s war in Ukraine

Four decades ago, the explosion of the Chornobyl (also known as Chernobyl) nuclear power station in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic shook the very foundations of the Cold War world and heralded the beginning of the end of the Soviet era. It also shook millions of lives, including mine – back then a Soviet kid living in Ukraine’s capital who no longer understood the world.

Why were the adults around me suddenly in panic mode? Why were the TV, newspapers and all authorities claiming that nothing was wrong? Why were my parents sending me to my grandmother’s village and skipping the usual May First celebration in my native Kyiv? Was there a chance that my life meant nothing to my country? These questions rushed through my head like a never-ending train.

Heavily contaminated

Two months later, after I was back from my grandma’s village, the “train” finally stopped. My schoolmates dug up an old radiation detector in our school in central Kyiv – and it started wailing like crazy. Even two months after the catastrophe, some parts of my city were still heavily contaminated. Yet, instead of evacuating people, the Communist Party sent them to the May First demonstration. The happy propaganda picture shown on TV turned out to be more important to the party than the health of generations to come.

So there it was – my answer, in the shape of a radiation detector screaming the truth right at my face: no, my life meant nothing to the Soviet Union. Just like the lives of the millions of people who died in the artificial famine of 1932-33. Just like the lives of thousands of soldiers sent to an unnecessary war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. To me, a perfectly indoctrinated Soviet kid, the discovery was shocking in its finality: I lived in an inhumane country that saw human life as something expendable, a means to an end – political or ideological, nothing more.

Later, I found out that things were even worse than that. It was not just about the terrible mishandling of the catastrophe, it was also the insanity of causing the catastrophe for no apparent reason. The Chornobyl explosion took place because someone high up in Moscow decided to conduct an experiment in Ukraine – how far could one push the envelope in terms of nuclear power plant security. It was an endlessly stupid experiment. Millions of people in Ukraine and the neighbouring republics of the Soviet Union turned out to be nothing but ants in a cruel “science project” involving kilotons of nuclear material.

Chornobyl was one of the things that put an end to the Soviet empire. However, as we have seen in recent years, not to Moscow’s penchant for bloody and irresponsible experiments. After all, what was the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine if not a geopolitical Chornobyl on steroids – another attempt to push the envelope at the cost of millions of lives?

The communist ideal

As a teenager, I still believed in communist ideals. But after what happened in Chornobyl, I knew the truth: the communist ideal was nothing but a blood-thirsty idol. And because I still meet starry-eyed idealists who believe in that idol, I wish I could share with them what I discovered as a kid. That real-life communism is the opposite of what it claims to be: constant lies instead of truth, mass depravity instead of equality, genocides instead of fraternity, bondage instead of liberty. An insane monster that first created a nuclear cloud for no reason and then sent crowds of people to celebrate May First under it.

Sadly, I look at today’s Moscow and see that nothing has changed. The same cruelty and aggressive stupidity reveal themselves in waves of drones attacking Ukrainian cities day after day, month after month, year after year – and in waves of Russian soldiers sent to die in the trenches of Donbas, fighting for villages that turned to scorched earth long ago.

Will the 21st century be the age of geopolitical catastrophes? Will the powerful of this world treat humankind like ants in their insane “experiments”? Will this insatiable, land-grabbing, aggressive strain of imperialism celebrate a comeback, disguised as anti-imperialism?

These are all open questions – until the day the radiation detector starts wailing in our faces. But by then it will be too late to respond. DM