December 30, 2004

• Wormwood, the Moscow Legacy

  
  

  (Kids get in free!)

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

  Chernobyl is probably one of the most provocative and lasting (not to mention undeniable) examples of the fact that things get much worse, not better for people and the ecology when the land is ruled by tyrants. This especially such when they are occupiers, as was the case with the Kremlin dominance over the region of Ukraine and the rest of Eastern Europe up through the 1980’s.

  
  

   

  
  

  In a regime which valued appearance over safety, afraid enough of the people to propagandize them and not to set them free, the Soviet Empire brought numerous tragedies to fruition in its iron-booted wake. From toys rigged with bombs handed out to children in Afghanistan to babies born without arms and legs in the Ukraine, the regime of Stalin showed to all the world why Communism has its place alongside Nazism and Fascism in history as examples of a true affront to the very ways of nature.

  
  

   

  
  

  The good news for much of Eastern Europe today is that the people have cast off this awful tyranny. Now that period is little more than a museum piece and a lesson to many, alongside the German concentration camps.

  
  

   

  
  

  In a recent article in the Moscow Times titled “Meanwhile, Back in Chernobyl”, writer Helen Womack describes a new offering now available to tourists visiting Ukraine, and to be certain one of incomparable historical intrigue.

  
  

   

  
  

  Chernobyl and the nearby ghost town of Pripyat are now frozen in the Red “glory” of the Soviet Evil Empire and provide for the willing tourist the somewhat risky opportunity to venture back twenty years and see exactly how things were in the USSR before it all finally flew apart. The Chernobyl power plant was the height of Soviet glory and collective ingenuity. It was also where a good friend of mine was stationed as a Soviet soldier before the meltdown. His stories of the historic Soviet inefficiencies alone make one wonder why the meltdown didn’t happen quite a bit sooner.

  
  

   

  
  

  But now it seems at least, some want to turn the place called “Wormwood” into a Nuclear Disneyland, complete with its own lighting. One of the main companies involved in making this happen is Chernobyl External Services.

  
  

   

  
  

  Helen tells us that,

  
  

   

  
  

  Chernobyl External Services deals mainly with foreign specialists going to ecological conferences, of course, but it will also get out the white minibus and roll out the red carpet for the curious layperson. If 20 people can be found to fill the bus, then the cost for each individual is only $60.
  
  The firm says that on a short visit to Chernobyl, the danger from radiation is now no greater than flying in an airplane, and advertises its guided tour as a “safe adventure.” In fact, CES is not the only company offering trips to the Zone, although the number of takers among visitors from overseas has evidently not been great so far. The contaminated air is only one disincentive: In order to enter the 30-kilometer exclusion zone that was thrown around the nuclear plant after the accident and is still in force, visitors also need permission from the SBU, the Ukrainian successor to the Soviet KGB.
  
  Tour leader Sergei Akulinin works with good humor and military precision. “See you at the bus in eight-and-a-half minutes,” he joked. Not eight, not nine, but eight-and-a-half.”

  
  

   

  
  

  Then travelers get to sit down for a meal in a converted bomb shelter with a charming seaside theme: “Trout was on the menu, not locally caught. The drinking water was bottled.” Maybe a lead suit might be good fashion for this excursion.

  
  

   

  
  

   The tour then heads to a museum at the site of the accident dedicated to the workers who lost their lives trying to contain it.

  
  

   

  
  

  “”It was not an atomic explosion but a heat explosion,” Sergei made clear. Nevertheless, radioactive dust from the ruined reactor was carried on the wind over a wide area of Ukraine and into neighboring Belarus and Russia. The communist authorities failed to warn the population immediately — indeed, May Day parades went ahead in Kiev — and it was Sweden that first alerted the world to the disaster.”

  
  

   

  
  

  

  
  

  Upon reading that I thought to myself, “Now that history has repeated itself in Thailand, perhaps we can re-examine the much-extolled benefits of elitist regimes who have no regard for the lives of their ordinary citizens.” But who knows, and at least for that matter the people of Ukraine have asserted themselves as the ones rightfully in charge of their own destiny, which will surely be a blessing for their children.

  
  

   

  
  

  Workers still worked at the plant, manning and minding the sarcophagus now enclosing the fourth reactor, which was the one that failed two decades ago. The sarcophagus is said to becoming “unstable”. Yet the workers and the tours continue.

  
  

   

  
  

  In the ghost towns surrounding Chernobyl, such as Pripyat, not much is left of the communities which once eked out a living there, save a few stray dogs, abandoned buildings and one or two courageous souls who have ventured to return to their homes in most cases.

  
  

   

  
  

  Still, there sit entire fields of abandoned tanks, military helicopters, trucks and other equipment worth an untold amount of money to Moscow- and one has to wonder if things are indeed so much safer now, why is it none of this equipment has been reclaimed.

  
  

   

  
  

  One is left with the same sense of iron-cold lifelessness in this town of death and tragedy that strangely enough hung like a cloud over the entire country even before the accident many winters ago. The sterile, inhospitable machine of Soviet Communism, its artwork on billboards reminiscent of cog wheels though dying off at the time, first left in Chernobyl in its abandoned buildings and deformed babies a lasting and ugly death mask.

  
  

   

  
  

  Aside from the fact Helen Womack cites the now renowned Yelena the Biker, whose alleged hoax was a claim she traveled throughout the entire closed-off sector surrounding the Chernobyl accident which included highly radioactive areas – displayed a surprising amount of gullibility for anybody let alone a writer for the Moscow Times, I still find the entire idea of such a tour enticing. In addition to this, I think the story brings out an interestingly unexplored and fascinating aspect of Ukraine’s history that truly helps to show us why a free and sovereign Ukraine is in the world’s best interest, which is no doubt what comes of any reflection from such a tour.

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

  Related:

  
  

   

  
  

  Wormwood – A Shrine to Nuclear Contamination

  
  

   

  
  

  Chernobyl – An Engineering Disaster

  
  

   

  
  

  Dr. Meshkati’s Page on Chernobyl

  
  

   

  
  

  Internal Workings of the Soviet System

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

  To find out more about taking a tour of Chernobyl through CES, you can contact Sergei Akulinin at chvs@slavutich.kiev.ua

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

  

  
  

   

  
  

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  • 1:33 am
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