COMMUNITY COMMEMORATIONS OF THE CHORNOBYL ANNIVERSARY (05/26/96)

COMMUNITY COMMEMORATIONS OF THE CHORNOBYL ANNIVERSARY

PORT REPUBLIC, N.J.

PORT REPUBLIC, N.J. - It was the latter part of April when the third grade in Port Republic School was observing Earth Day and Arbor Day. During their discussion about pollution and saving the environment, a newspaper article in the Atlantic City Press came to their attention.

The article, titled "After 10 Years, Chernobyl's Full Effect Remains Unknown," included a photograph of a 5-year-old boy suffering from leukemia. His bald head was marked with lines for coming medical procedures.

The third graders, 8-and 9-year-old children, were extremely sympathetic and upset, wanting to help the stricken child and other children as well. Ideas and suggestions were offered, excitement for the project swelled, and after discussing their plan with the school principal, the project was announced: a cupcake sale in the school cafeteria on Thursday and Friday, April 25 and 26.

Signs were made and posted. The kids visited each classroom to announce the coming sale. Each pupil brought in homemade cupcakes to sell.

The project netted $100, which was donated to the Children of Chornobyl Relief Fund. The third graders experienced satisfaction knowing they had offered some aid to children far less fortunate than they.

A job well done - and entirely thought of and executed by sympathetic youngsters under the guidance of their teacher, Mary Prychka.

TORONTO

by Yakiv Krekhovetsky

TORONTO - The Ukrainian Association of Visual Artists of Canada (USOM), based in Toronto, held an auction of its works and those of some well-known artists of the previous generation for the Children of Chornobyl Canadian Fund. The fund was the beneficiary of $5,300 in net earnings when the two-hour auction was over.

Before the auction there was an excited buzz of anticipation as over 100 works of art at bargain starting bids were viewed on April 21 at the Ukrainian Canadian Art Foundation, which offered the use of the gallery cost-free, a gesture of support by Jaroslava Szafraniuk, founder, and its board of directors. Then Andrij Babytsch, president of USOM, opened the auction with some official remarks.

The main moderator and ad-hoc auctioneer, Luba Goy, noted comedian of Royal Canadian Air Farce and other stage fame, offered the creative works to the audience. Assisting her was Renata Duma-Jaciw, hostess of the Svitohliad TV program and talented choir director. The two gracious auctioneers extolled the art, encouraged the audience, engaged in pleasant banter, and sold, sold, sold for the children of Chornobyl.

Other people in active assistance on the scene were artist Zenon Fedory in his beret and artistic attire, and Ruslana Wrzesnewskyj, vice-president of the Children of Chornobyl Canadian Fund, who coordinated the hospitality team for the day. Also on hand were many artists of USOM, displaying, recording and joining in the excitement of the day.

But perhaps the greatest motivating force was the audience, who made it all a success. It participated in a real spirit of generosity and with a sense of purpose. Every now and then one heard a spontaneous comment in the crowd, like: "Good, it's for the children."

This first USOM auction also had some superb prizes for two lucky lottery ticket holders at the end of the afternoon. An exquisite rendering of Maria Styranka's well-known theme, "Flowers in the Morning Mist," was won by Eugene and Renata Romanchukewych, while an elegant oil painting by Mr. Babytsch, "Still Life with Fruit," went to the home of Halyna Semanyshyn. Both paintings were the generous donations of the artists.

The afternoon ended with a feeling of accomplishment by all concerned, and with pleasant socializing over coffee and dessert.

USOM has become quite active in the last two years through a series of exhibits in Toronto and one in New York.

PARMA, Ohio

PARMA, Ohio - On Friday, April 26, the date of the 10th anniversary of the nuclear disaster in Chornobyl, Ukraine, special services were conducted here at St. Vladimir's Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral.

At 10 a.m. the Revs. Stephen Hankavich and John Nakonachny of St. Vladimir's, the Rev. Dennis Kristof of St. Nicholas Ukrainian Orthodox Pro Cathedral in Lakewood, Ohio, and the Rev. John Chirovsky of St. Pokrova Ukrainian Catholic Church in Parma served a moleben for the health of the victims suffering the effects of radiation. Sermons were given by the Rev. Chirovsky in Ukrainian and the Rev. Kristof in English.

Following the moleben, all proceeded outdoors to the Famine Monument, where a memorial service was held for those who perished in the disaster. Irene Pavlyshyn and Helen Dmytrewycz, chairpersons of the Chornobyl Fund Committee of the 60+ Club, placed a wreath of blue and yellow flowers at the base of the monument.

Following the services, a documentary on the tragedy was shown in the parish center.

Over the last two months, parish organizations and parishioners of St. Vladimir's have donated over $15,000 to mark this sad anniversary.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - The Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and the Harvard University Committee on Environment sponsored two days of events, April 24 and April 25, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Chornobyl tragedy.

The importance of the commemoration was dramatically emphasized by the fires in the 30-kilometer zone at the Chornobyl plant and the radiation leak that occurred the week of the anniversary, so that the Harvard events were widely publicized in the Boston area and mentioned nationally by the AP wire service. A broad spectrum of the Boston community attended all three sections of the commemoration.

Eyewitnesses to the Disaster

On Wednesday evening, April 24, the focus was on eyewitness perspectives to the tragedy. Dr. Lubomyr Hajda, associate director of the Ukrainian Research Institute, opened the session with general remarks about Chornobyl and its tragic legacy. Lt. Gen. (retired Ukrainian militia) Volodymyr Korniychuk then spoke to a large audience about his experiences coordinating the original emergency response (he was responsible for internal affairs for Kyiv Oblast at the time), including the bureaucratic nightmares, the indifference of the Moscow Party bosses (including Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev), the incredible lies that were told to all involved, the total lack of compassion for the civilian population by the Soviet center, the heroism of the firefighters and the liquidators.

Ltd. Gen. Korniychuk's address was emotionally charged and sparked responses during the question and answer period, especially with regard to the fact that the Communist Party allowed the May Day parade to take place in Kyiv. He had no answer to one pointed question about why it was not possible for anyone who knew about it to have spread the word in Kyiv and elsewhere. (At the time of the parade, he himself was still engaged in containment at the accident site.)

A stunning visual perspective of the tragedy was given by the Kyiv-based filmmaker Volodymyr Kuznetsov, who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career to documenting Chornobyl and its aftermath. His works were shown on several Boston-area television stations during the week, and he took part, with other symposium participants, in a televised roundtable discussion on the local PBS station, WGBH.

Mr. Kuznetsov's address on Wednesday riveted the audience - even more so his films, "The Chornobyl Accident: A Chronicle of the Sarcophagus Construction" (1996) and "While We Still Live..." (excerpts) (1992). The images of the destruction and the interior of the sarcophagus were haunting, but it was the images of the children affected by Chornobyl that left the audience most deeply moved and shaken.

The long-term effects: specialists' perspectives

The session on Thursday afternoon, 25 dealt with the longer-term effects of Chornobyl for Ukraine. Prof. George Grabowicz, director of the Ukrainian Research Institute, made introductory remarks. Among the most vivid images he evoked while explaining the importance of Chornobyl for Ukraine was of remote villages in Polissia that had escaped World War II - not even knowing that it had taken place - only to be unable to escape the lethal effects of radiation. Chornobyl summarily cleared the ethnogenetic homeland of the Slavs of all human life.

John Dillon, a Vermont-based journalist and Knight Science Fellow at MIT who has written extensively on Ukrainian environmental issues and nuclear issues in the former Soviet Union, followed with an expansive overview of Chornobyl, especially concentrating on the future for ecological concerns surrounding it. His general conclusions were grim, given the state of the Ukrainian economy and its dependence on nuclear energy.

Sergei Skokov, an eco-businessman from Kharkiv and current Muskie fellow at MIT, then talked about the state of the nuclear industry and structural problems in avoiding another Chornobyl. He stressed the necessity for adherence to international conventions on nuclear safety and liability, which are regularly flouted by signatory states.

In his comments and the questions and answers that followed, disdain for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was clear, especially in its handling of the Soviet response to the accident, which, as characterized by Mr. Skokov, was: "Okay. Be good boys. Do what you need to do." What the Soviet government did was to lie about every aspect of the accident, which hampered accurate assessments of the accident and consequences for years to come.

The question of energy diversity and alternatives to nuclear power were raised by the audience. Messrs. Skokov and Dillon both admitted that alternative energy diversification in Ukraine is a dead issue at present. One scholar in the audience noted that the Ukrainian government had put up so many bureaucratic obstacles that Western alternative-energy companies had pulled out of such Ukrainian projects as the windmill field in the Crimea.

Hydro power remains the most viable alternative to nuclear energy. However, the greatest savings will be gained through conservation - Ukrainian industry uses 11 times more energy per unit production than in the West, one of the worst ratios in world. This situation is the product of a pernicious cycle: an inefficient industrial base that cannot generate the capital necessary to update itself to become profitable and more energy efficient so that Ukraine is less dependent on nuclear energy and energy transfers from Russia. Western aid seems to be the only way out of the crisis, all agreed.

The second session continued with Prof. Jane Dawson of Wellesley College speaking on environmentalism and nationalism; Dr. Natalia Lakiza-Sachuk, head of President Leonid Kuchma's Committee on Problems of Women, Children and Family and a visiting scholar at Georgetown University, speaking on the socio-demographic effects of Chornobyl; and Dr. Anna Klimina of the Institute of Economics, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and a visiting fellow at the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard, addressing the economic burden. Dr. Lakiza-Sachuk's views have been reported in The Weekly in previous issues.

She and Dr. Klimina engaged in an emotionally charged debate with a Ukrainian audience member who had taken part in the May Day parade as a young student about the resolve of the Ukrainian government to close Chornobyl. The questioner, Hlib Nechaev, who has studied economics and urban affairs at MIT, noted that the government could shut down the station if it had the will to do so and cut funds from other sources.

In the ensuing debate, Dr. Klimina argued that economic consequences would be too harsh for Ukraine to bear alone and Dr. Lakiza-Sachuk agreed, saying the socio-psychological harm from the the economic repercussions could not be tolerated. When pressed on a "basement" figure for what Ukraine needs from the West in aid for Chornobyl, Dr. Klimina answered not less than $4 billion.

The Anti-Nuclear Movement and Ukrainian National Aspirations

Prof. Dawson pointed out the political importance of Chornobyl in sparking the anti-nuclear movements in Ukraine, Lithuania and Armenia. She noted that Ukraine differs from Lithuania and Armenia in that within these countries the anti-nuclear movements were the focal points for nationalist, anti-Soviet movements that eventually took them over. Upon achieving independence, the anti-nuclear movements died in Lithuania and Armenia; indeed, many of those who had been anti-nuclear activists before the fall of the Soviet Union became pro-nuclear afterward, when it became clear that Lithuania and Armenia would need nuclear power to remain independent.

The situation in Ukraine, though, was different. The Ukrainian anti-nuclear movement that began two years following Chornobyl fostered groups that sought Ukrainian autonomy, but were distinct from them and never completely subsumed by them. In Ukraine, anti-nuclear groups have continued into the present, even though the independent government reversed its initial decision against the expansion of nuclear power in Ukraine (as happened in Lithuania and Armenia) and nuclear power is important to Ukraine's independence in the energy sector.

Another telling fact that she has documented is that the anti-nuclear movements in Lithuania and Armenia were ethnically exclusive and anti-Russian in a hostile way, while the movement in Ukraine embraced all ethnicities, including Russians, and was profoundly anti-Soviet, rather than anti-Russian. These results are significant because they show that the early predictions by Western pundits about the impossibility of inter-ethnic unity in Ukraine were deeply mistaken. The ability of Ukrainians of all ethnic backgrounds to come together over Chornobyl foresaw their ability to forge a united, independent Ukrainian state.

The view from a senior scientist

Prof. Richard Wilson, Harvard's Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics, gave a keynote lecture on Thursday evening which formed the third part of the commemoration. Professor Wilson was the first Western scientist to be admitted into the Chornobyl area for study and was one of the first to devote long-range study to the problem. He had senior contacts with all scientists involved on the Soviet and Western sides, and continues to work with scientists from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia to chart the consequences of the disaster.

His lecture focused on the controversy in the scientific community over what actually happened at the time of the explosion, radionuclide deposition patterns, the total amount of radiation released, and the lasting health effects of ionizing radiation. His views have most recently been expressed in Science and several national talk shows; he steered a middle course in the health debates and agreed with Dr. Alexander Sich's assessments about the radiation release.

As a longtime researcher (he turned 70 last week and has been involved in nuclear issues as long as there have been nuclear issues), he expressed extreme indignation at the Soviet government's handling of Chornobyl and confided to the audience that many senior former Soviet scientists and officials have come to him privately in the years afterward to apologize for the lies they perpetuated earlier. He told the crowd that he simply replies "tell it to the people who were contaminated needlessly."

He ended his lecture by drawing a parallel to the war that struck the same area over 50 years ago - its brutality to the innocent, its indifference to human life, the callousness with which bureaucrats at the top conducted it. He hoped that neither military war nor the just as insidious radiation war waged on the innocent in the aftermath of Chornobyl would ever happen again. A silent "amen" hung over the audience in conclusion.

The two-day commemortive event was made possible through the sponsorship of the Ukrainian Studies Fund, the Institute for Sustainable Communities of Montpelier, Vt., the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Chornobyl Challenge '96 Coalition.

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