”At the moment people only get four hours of lessons in
radioactivity. Who teaches these four hours? It’s usually a general
class teacher, who’s normally not a specialist in the subject. They
can specialise in a million other things: mathematics, biology etc.
There’s a really high degree of ignorance about radioactivity, even
amongst people who have high positions in society. It’s something
that never ceases to surprise me.”


Alexander shows us around the village school where he used to work. The long corridors are painted in bold colours and there are small exhibits and posters made by the pupils. Alexander points out a locked door in a corner, leading to a little room. It used to be the school’s radioactivity laboratory but now that Alexander is retired the room has been locked, the teaching stopped and the equipment removed.

”After Chernobyl I wrote five small books,” Alexander reminisces. ”They were methodological recommendations for the teachers in village schools. The books are about life in villages, farming and radioactivity.”

For many years after the accident nobody in the affected areas knew what they should do in their everyday lives. Courses on radioactivity safety were arranged in the schools, but there were no teaching materials.

Alexander, who at the time was deputy inspector for the village school, contacted the Institute for In-service Training of Teachers in Gomel about collaboration. ”My first brochure was called ’Protect Yourself and Your Country’. It was a book about methods for working in an area with high radioactivity. The last brochure was called ’Smart Agriculture’. It was written in a question and answer format. There are 150 questions and 150 answers. It gives agricultural-ecological explanations about our work in nature, in the forest and in agriculture. It explains how to do things in a particular way. In the first part I give information about what people should do. In the second part there is an explanation of why they should do these things. People need to have some knowledge about this.

Only 300-500 copies were published but there were no other materials for all the villages. The government did not publish anything but Alexander would not comment on why. ”I didn’t want to start a fight. I was diplomatic,” he says.

He set up an ’ecological centre’ in the little room at the school with apparatus that could measure the content of caesium in foodstuffs. Furthermore he acquired some apparatus to measure nitrates, pH values, potassium and phosphorus. ”It’s important, because if plants contain caesium, strontium and nitrates then they become incredibly dangerous to eat.”

The pupils were involved in identifying the cleanest and the most contaminated zones around the village. Radioactivity was charted on maps of the local forest and fields around the village. By knowing where the invisible pollution was located they could recommend where berries and mushrooms could be gathered safely.

”These were the first results of the milk, berry and mushroom investigation,” says Alexander and brings out some old school posters. ” There is also information about radioactivity in game and fish in reservoirs with stagnant water. Birch tree juice is pure. In the birch tree wood behind the school the ground is contaminated with 4 curies of radiation but the birch tree juice is clean. Why? Because most of the radioactivity is found in the uppermost 15 cm of the soil, while birch tree roots go deeper.”

All our recommendations are geared towards teaching children how to make food safely, how to get ’completely’ clean food from ’relatively’ clean food using technology,” says Alexander of the teaching project.

After Alexander retired there were no other teachers to take over this important area of instruction. ”I can see that teaching in radioactivity is going on as it should in the places where they have some knowledgeable and enthusiastic teachers,” says Alexander. ”But unfortunately there is no system”.

In southern Belarus radioactivity has been a fixed part of everyday life for the last 20 years. So it is surprising that it hasn’t been an obligatory part of the schools’ curriculum over a long period. Alexander thinks that if people in the ministries - or even just the local school inspector - knew more then their knowledge would spread downwards in the orthodox country. ”We obey the law. We do the things we’re expected to do.”

”Our people have a problem. They’re lazy and irresponsible with regard to their health,” Alexander says critically. ”Even young people with babies don’t care about contamination, although they know they shouldn’t eat berries, mushrooms and milk. ’We’ve survived for 20 years and hopefully we’ll live another 20 just fine,’ they say”.

In agriculture attempts are made to prevent radioactivity getting into foodstuffs by spreading calcium, dolomite and potassium on the fields. This serves to block strontium and caesium but, on the other hand, these elements remain in the soil. Alexander is of the opinion that the soil can be completely rid of radioactive elements, but only through the use of plants.

”We conducted an experiment for four years. We took 10 plants from the legume family and sowed them. We measured the radioactivity levels in the soil in the spring and autumn. We were able to measure how much radioactivity was ’sucked’ out per year. At the same time we took measurements from the plants themselves. The conclusion was that many plants ’suck out’ radioactivity. But these are plants that are not economically profitable. For example, lupines are very effective but they become highly poisonous and can’t be used afterwards. You have to bury them in soil that isn’t going to be used. Clover is also effective but it’s a biennial plant and it can’t suck out everything. So we selected a perennial white clover. It sucks out radioactive nuclides and has a number of other advantages. It can survive even if it’s trodden on. It can be eaten and it grows rapidly. All sorts of animals can eat it, it contains a lot of protein and it gives good honey.”

In a typical Belarusian village there is at least one cow per house. In the mornings the cow is let out onto the road, along with the other cows of the village, for collection by a herdsman who takes the herd to pasture. In the evenings the scene is repeated with hundreds of cows on the road when they are on their way home to be milked.

”We had 300-400 cows in the entire village,” says Alexander. ”But today we don’t have more than 50. Many cows became sick with leucosis, a blood disease similar to leukaemia. They wandered around in the forest where there was a lot of radioactivity. Now there are fewer cows and we have therefore had a clean field allotted. I don’t know whether we had this sort of illness before. Nobody checked the milk then. Perhaps there was some problem but we didn’t check for it. The only sort of check there was on the percentage of fat in the milk.”

Alexander made some calculations of the cows’ problems. Approximately 3⁄4 of the herd used to go into the forest. That was because it led them to yield 11⁄2 to 2 times as much milk. Of the cows that went into the forest 50 % got leucosis and of those that went into the field 15 % got the disease.

”In the forest there is a background radiation of 20-22 micro roentgens per hour – up to 30. But in the soil there is between 1 to 5 curies per km2. Six months ago our area was categorised as a ’region entitled to evacuation’, i.e. an area where there is a level of 5-10 curies of radioactivity per km2. An order from the ministerial council was made public, in which more than 200 villages were declared contaminated at a low level. We therefore became an area with ’periodic control’,” explains Alexander. ”I was surprised that our village was entitled to evacuation when our forest is officially clean. The forest ranger has had absolutely no money in compensation, or ’coffin money’ as we call it”.

In August 2002 the government carried out a new investigation of the contamination and issued an order about reorganising the system with the country’s zones so that people could return to the land. 146 villages were declared ’contaminated at a lower level' than before.

”It’s not about compensation. People have become disorientated,” says Alexander. ”They don’t know anything about this sort of thing. They were told that everything was clean and that it’s fine to live here. But that’s not true!”

”I can certainly tell you how that investigation was conducted here. A radioactivity measurer from the regional centre came here with another from the regional administration who was responsible for the Chernobyl questions. There was also a representative from the office of the Hygiene Board. They went round our sports facilities and took readings of the background radiation. Then they came back to our village, where I met them. They asked me where the most contaminated place in the village was. I invited them to the laboratory where I had my equipment, which we could use to take readings. Then we could investigate where the most contaminated place was. They said to me that we didn’t need to do that because they believed me. And as a result our village kept its old status as a ’highly contaminated place’. All the areas around us were declared clean. There was no one they could ask in those places. 6 kilometres from here there is a village called Golovki, which lies on peat soil. I know that it’s more polluted than our village, but it’s now been declared clean, while ours continues to be regarded as contaminated”.

Alexander has always lived in a country with problems. The First World War left its mark. Later there was a civil war and then a war with Finland in 1940. During the Second World War Alexander was a young boy. When the area was liberated in 1943 his father went into the army, where he remained until the end of the War.

The family were actually peasant farmers but Alexander wanted to become a gardener and applied for a place at the agricultural college in Grodno. In the post-war years there were many people who received special benefits. For example, orphaned young people and children of invalids could get into university as a matter of course. Alexander had to attend four entrance examinations, but although he achieved the highest grades in three of them and the second highest in the final one he was not awarded a place.

As soon as the military committee heard that he had not been admitted they drafted him into the military. Alexander entered the navy and remained there for five years. In spite of his military training Alexander retained his desire to study. A few months before he was due to end his military service he bought some books and began to study for the entrance examinations again. This time it went well and he was accepted. Times were still hard and there was no money to live on while studying, so Alexander had to study part time and work for the remainder of the time.

In those days one could not simply live wherever one chose and since Alexander came from a small village family it was not easy to obtain a passport and permission to move to the town. So he moved back to his village and although he was very much overqualified he found a job at the village school where he remained ever since.

The inhabitants of the village should be pleased about that. Without a high level of education it can be difficult or almost impossible to understand what radioactivity is. ”It was perhaps easier for me than for the others, because I’m an agronomist,” says Alexander. ”I have an education as a biologist from Minsk and furthermore I have an education in ecology and the rational use of natural resources.”

”The scientists working in the field of radiology are very loyal to the government,” concludes Alexander. ”They produce data which the government wants. They inform us that in general there has been a 34 % drop in the level of radioactivity in the country over the last 14 years. They calculate this based on the half-lives of the elements. They don’t say anything about the fact that when strontium decays americium is produced and that plutonium produces yttrium. These elements are even more dangerous than the original strontium and plutonium. Furthermore, they have a much longer lifetime. On the one hand there is less strontium and plutonium, but on the other hand we don’t hear anything about the new situation.”

”Nobody tells us anything and it’s difficult to prove anything. People die of ordinary illnesses. If they admit that a person dies because of radioactivity then they have to award compensation afterwards. Who wants to do that? That’s why there are no doctors who are allowed to say anything to people about the fact that mortality is related to radioactivity. If someone dies of a weakened heart then that in itself is given as the reason”.



About EarthVision's 20 Years 20 Lives Project.

- Meeti Grigorij Sorikov, Pensioner, Belarus
- Meet Hanna Koslova, Wife and Mother, Ukraine
- Meet Galina Bandazhevskaya, Pediatrician, Minsk, Belarus
- Meet Valentina Smolnikowa, Buda-Koshelevo, Belarus
- Meet Igor Komisarenko, Direktor of the Komisarenko Institute for Endochrinology and Metabolism, Kiev, Ukraine
- Meet Constantine Checherov, Nuclear Physicist, Kurchatov Institute, Moscow, Russia / Slavutich, Ukraine
- Meet Natalia Ivanovna Ivanova, Deputy Director, Vesnova Orphanage, Mogilev Oblast, Belarus
- Meet Danilo Vezhichanin, Mayor, the village of Yelno, Rivne Oblast, Ukraine


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Text: Mads Eskesen
Translation: Angela Heath

Photos: Mads Eskesen and Gabriala Bulisova

The story is based on interviews in 2004 and in 2005 by Marianne Barisonek and by Mads Eskesen