A shocking look at one of the biggest nuclear disasters in human history
Prayer for Chernobyl - a shocking look at one of the worst nuclear disasters in human history through the testimonies of those who were most affected and impacted by the Chernobyl explosion. Author Světlana Alexijevičová, narrated by Lucie Kožinová and Zdeněk Mahdal.
On April 26, 1986, a series of explosions destroyed the reactor and building of Chernobyl's Unit 4, located near the Belarusian border. This event became the greatest technological disaster of the 20th century. For small Belarus (population 10 million) it was a national disaster. During the Great Patriotic War, the German fascists destroyed 619 villages and their inhabitants on Belarusian territory. After Chernobyl, the country lost 485 villages and settlements. During the war, one in four Belarusians died, today one in five lives in the contaminated territory. This represents 2.1 million people, including 700,000 children. The book by Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich is compiled from interviews with people, whose lives were profoundly affected by the Chernobyl disaster, with the widows of firefighters, who were the first to be sent to extinguish the burning power station without any protection, with mobilized soldiers deployed on a massive scale, often senselessly, to deal with the aftermath of the disaster, with the displaced peasants, scientists, who were forbidden to inform the population, party workers, who have waited in vain and in vain for instructions from above.
We can read it as a warning of the technological apocalypse, but also as an indictment of the communist regime, whose fault the Chernobyl power plant was built shoddily and with insufficient precision, and who, in an instant, when decisive action was needed, lied to his own people, He covered up the extent of the disaster and caused the deaths of thousands of people through his inaction and incompetence. Many Russian historians and political scientists believe that the shock that the Chernobyl disaster caused in Russian society was one of the? the main causes of the rapid collapse of the communist regime five years later.