BOOK REVIEW: A journey to the radioactive zone (04/28/96)

BOOK REVIEW: A journey to the radioactive zone

by Roman Woronowycz

Glenn Alan Cheney, in his latest book, "Journey to Chernobyl: Encounters in the Radioactive Zone," not only gives the statistics on the aftereffects of the world's worst nuclear accident, but has compiled an impressive oral history of the events that occurred at Chornobyl at the end of April and the beginning of May 1986 as explained by the liquidators and people who lived in the area.

The author of 11 other works whose themes range from nuclear proliferation to El Salvador, Mohandas Gandhi and American television tells an intensely interesting story about the area around Chornobyl, which he traveled while attempting to pick apart truth from fallacy, exaggeration and disinformation.

What makes the book so readable is the Connecticut College professor's straightforward tone, which shifts from the absolutely serious when speaking of the suffering of the children, and the displacement of thousands out of the zone, to the bemused when describing the quirks of Soviet life.

Mr. Cheney spent six weeks in the Kyiv and Chornobyl regions just after the Soviet Union fell in August 1991. He writes of problems with obtaining a passport, of buying food, of being told that 19 cents is too much to pay for a can of Belgian beer.

Any person who has spent time in Kyiv can relate to his description of the problems with telephones. Explaining how unreliable telephones were, he writes: "Ida seems to have a phone chronically off the hook. I have a sensation that all of Kyiv is off the hook."

Or about workers who are never in their offices. "It looks like an office that maybe a dozen people use, but only now and then really, considering it more than a place for a smoke before moving on."

When describing life in Kyiv, his train travels, public toilets, the book takes a lighthearted tone, while accurately chronicling life in the beleaguered country still trying to find its economic legs in the post-Soviet era.

However, when he talks of the environmental disaster, the deaths and suffering that have resulted, he gives insightful analysis into what led the world to a disaster of mythical proportions. He interviews some of the leading experts on Chornobyl, including Yuri Shcherbak, today Ukraine's ambassador to the United States, then minister of the environment, and Dmytro Hrodzinsky, an academic associated with Ukraine's Academy of Sciences.

Mr. Cheney resists any impulse to take on the technical language of the scientists and experts with whom he converses. He keeps the language tight, the story moving.

The most compelling part of the book is the passages that describe the hours after reactor No. 4 blew skyward. The reader gets a first-hand accounting of what went on at ground zero from Borys Stolyarchuk, who was at one of the control boards near the area in the reactor where the fatal experiment that caused the blast took place. Valentina Patushina, who lived in the city of Prypiat, where the workers were housed, tells the author of the disinformation, the uncertainty, then the panic and final evacuation.

Mr. Cheney does not pretend to have all the information. He questions more than he asserts and observes more than he investigates. However, when the final page is turned the reader will know much more of what happened at Chornobyl and why, and will have a real appreciation of the difficult life in Ukraine that still exists, even five years after independence.

"Journey to Chernobyl: Encounters in a Radioactive Zone" is published by Academy Chicago Publishers. The 191-page book is generally available in major book stores.

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