Monday, August 24, 2009
Traveler, stop a minute to say a prayer
The tablets are among 40 or so memorials dotted all over Russia to commemorate not only Chernobyl but earlier disasters, or nuclear tests, that were kept secret for decades — near Chelyabinsk in 1957, at Semipalatinsk from 1949 — as well as all who have died or suffered as a result of joining the hundreds of thousands of people who were drafted or volunteered for the cleanup and encasing of the reactor, the “liquidation” of the Chernobyl accident, as the Soviets called it.Mind you, the rest of the nuclear community is not without similar events, but the old USSR had a splendid disregard for the sanctity of life.
These memorials have drawn scant attention either nationally or internationally. They have sprung up mostly on local initiative by members of a national association, Soyuz Chernobyl, or the Union of Chernobyl, a nongovernmental organization founded in 1990 to remind everyone of the dangers of radiation (which were unsuspected by most Soviet citizens at the time of the Chernobyl accident).
Vladimir V. Bondarenko, a group member reached by telephone at its Moscow headquarters, said some branches apply to town or regional councils to pay for the memorials, while others raise their own money. The installations range from Tarusa’s simple plaques to elaborate commissioned sculptures.
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