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VOICES FROM CHERNOBYL
VOICES FROM CHERNOBYL
SVETLANA ALEXIEVICH
TRANSLATION AND PREFACE BY KEITH GESSEN
First published in Russian as Tchernobylskaia Molitva by Editions Ostojie, 1997
Copyright © 1997 by Svetlana Alexievich
Translation © 2005 by Keith Gessen
First edition, 2005
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
ISBN 1-56478-401-0
Partially funded by grants from the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, and the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.
Dalkey Archive Press is a nonprofit organization located at Milner Library
(Illinois State University) and distributed in the UK by
Turnaround Publisher Services Ltd. (London).
Printed on permanent/durable acid-free paper and bound in Canada.
CONTENTS
Prologue: A Solitary Human Voice
PART ONE: THE LAND OF THE DEAD
About What Can Be Talked about with the Living and the Dead
About a Whole Life Written down on Doors
About What Radiation Looks Like
About How a Person Is Only Clever and Refined in Evil
PART TWO: THE LAND OF THE LIVING
About a Man Whose Tooth Was Hurting When He Saw Christ Fall
About How We Can’t Live without Chekhov and Tolstoy
About What We Didn’t Know: Death Can Be So Beautiful
About How the Frightening Things in Life Happen Quietly and Naturally
About Freedom and the Dream of an Ordinary Death
By a Defender of the Soviet Government
About the Limitless Power One Person Can Have over Another
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
On September 11, 2001, after the first hijacked plane hit the World Trade Center, emergency triage stations were set up throughout New York City. Doctors and nurses rushed to their hospitals for extra shifts, and many individuals came to donate blood. These were touching acts of generosity and solidarity. The shocking thing about them was that the blood and triage stations turned out to be unnecessary. There were few survivors of the