Chernobyl, PripyatJuly 27, 2007 There’s a 30-kilometre area with checkpoints surrounding the power station. As you drive in you need to put on a serious face and say: “I’m from the Ministry of Emergency Situations”.  No one is going to redo the road leading to Chernobyl, they just patch it up in parts. There’s thick forest on either side of it. There used to be fields and villages here twenty years ago. Let’s stop by the forest to go for a tinkle.  Right in front of us — bog-standard impenetrable forest.  On the road the sun is shining brightly, here arboreal semi-darkness reigns. Gradually, your eyes adjust and you suddenly start distinguishing the outlines of streets, fences and houses.  A minute later you can make out that you are on Kurchatov street in the village of Zalesye.  Everything is overgrown with unruly jungle, and the fauna is diverse and dynamic, like in the demilitarised zone between South and North Korea — after all, there isn’t anyone to intervene. ChernobylMapThe sign is an old Soviet one, but it’s been Ukrainified using whitewash and paint.  Chornobyl When I told acquaintances about my trip they asked whether there are any three-eyed cats here.  Of course there are. And all of the visitors are outlined in glowing green, like Homer Simpson after a shift at the Springfield nuclear power plant. Chernobyl is a village, the kind where you can have lunch in the staff canteen. Apart from a few old signs, there’s nothing to see here.  So let’s make a move in our time machine.  PripyatMapRight next to the exploded power station sits the Soviet town of Pripyat, founded in 1970.  There’s another checkpoint at the town entrance.  The first thing you see as you drive into the centre is a hammer and sickle on a pole (shout out to Vyazma, Kineshma, Novoaltaysk and Barnaul, Kansk and Bratsk, as well as Syzran!).  Pripyat is a truly Soviet city. It’s still 1986 here. It’s the USSR here for all time.  There aren’t any insulated window units here.  No elite housing.  No casinos, no arcade games.  There aren’t any “Euroset” mobile phone stores.  No satellite TV.  No internet.  No “Coca-Cola”.  No pain-free dentistry.  No printers.  No health insurance (in this photograph of an operating theatre you can see medical records detailing abortions).  No Barbie dolls.  There aren’t any supermarkets. There’s nowhere to buy food at night.  No gyms either.  No transformers.  No video game consoles.  No gamers.  No built-in appliances.  No intercoms.  No advertisements for goods and services.  Neither face control, nor nightclubs.  No penthouses.  Also, there aren’t any people here.  |
