"The day after the accident there was an old aeroplane, an E2 I think, flying very low, about 300 metres above ground, to and fro, to and fro. It shot at the clouds and then it rained here. I myself saw how it did it. The plane flew to and fro like a rifleman – to and fro, to and fro. First there was a cloud and then it disappeared. The clouds fell down to earth as rain. The sky cleared."


Grigorij rolls a cigarette from a piece of torn newspaper and his homemade tobacco, leans back on the wooden bench and looks out over his radioactive garden. He has a glass eye, so he can only see the garden with one eye, which has a cataract. He is a happy man, a born optimist, and despite the lack of electricity in the village he loves living in a beautiful place with green trees. It is peaceful, it costs nothing to live here and there is water in the well nearby.

Many people living permanently in the radioactive areas have this type of eye problem. Shortly after the Chernobyl accident the doctors in the provincial town Gomel had to stop all eye operations in order to avoid bleeding. Grigorij knows nothing about this. He feels healthy and well and sees nothing strange in the fact that he has had problems with his eyes when he was in his fifties. ”I was examined by the doctor and there's nothing wrong. They came in an ambulance and examined me. They took samples of the vegetables. I haven't heard from them since, so everything must be OK, ” says Grigorij and invites us inside for a glass of vodka.

Visiting a village in Belarus feels like a visit to an open air museum. Bartolomeevka, situated northeast of Gomel in southern Belarus, is no exception. Flocks of geese roam around the road at the side of a well. The houses are made of wood with special carvings around the windows. There are two rooms in Grigorij's house; one serves as a pantry and hall and the other as a combined dining room, kitchen, living room and bedroom. One can sleep on a little platform above the oven, which the house is built around. It keeps the place warm on the cold winter days when the snow comes and everything stops.

Grigorij was born in the village in 1937. He lived there until he entered the army and served his national service in St. Petersborg. Here he met his wife and remained for 20 years. In 1976 they were divorced and he moved back to his mother in the village.

”It's peaceful and safe to be here. I don't have to pay for electricity. When the spring comes I can plant everything in the garden: potatoes, cabbages, tomatoes, tobacco, cucumbers. I can gather mushrooms in the forest and berries, which I can sell to people passing by on the main road."

The area in southern Belarus where Grigorij lives is just as contaminated as the area around the Chernobyl plant 96 miles away. In contrast to the closed zone around the nuclear power plant one can drive a car with no problem to Grigorij's village. There is a control point on the main road, but it is a long time since anyone was stopped there. As one approaches the village the geiger counter awakens and starts beeping.

There has been much secrecy and mystique since 1986 concerning why the area is so contaminated. Grigorij, who had no problems with his eyes 20 years ago, was witness to a fighter plane shooting chemicals so that the radioactive cloud from Chernobyl began to rain, thereby preventing it from continuing on its way to Moscow with its population of millions.

On the morning of 27 th April 1986, when Grigorij was on his way to work, he noticed that the water was green.

”Right by the house the water in the puddles was green. It had just been raining and the water was peculiarly green. Nobody said anything to us at all. But the 'women's radio' broadcast the news very quickly. There was a rumour of an explosion at a nuclear power plant somewhere or other."

Although the Chernobyl accident could not be covered up, it wasn't until 1989 that the scientific community in the West received information about how serious the contamination of southern Belarus was. For many years after the Chernobyl accident the West focused exclusively on what had technically gone wrong at the nuclear power plant. Nobody concerned themselves with the people who lived on the border between Belarus and Russia, there were no examinations of the ground, there were no human rights organisations complaining about the fact that radioactive rain had been allowed to fall on the population. In other words, there was nobody who knew with scientific certainty that the level of contamination present at 5 to 10 miles from the reactor could also be found 90 to 120 miles from Chernobyl.

Although today there are many eyewitness accounts the authorities have still not given an official confirmation of the incident. The paradox is of course that a radioactive cloud was heading for a city like Moscow, with its population of millions, and that it was therefore necessary to take action; to act quickly as if it were a Hollywood action film, where the hero makes the difficult decision on behalf of humanity. At that point there was of course nobody who knew that the Soviet Union would split some years later and leave the task of clearing up to a small totalitarian country with few economic means.

Nothing changed in Grigorijs village and life continued at its old pace, as it had always done. Grigorij continued to work in the forest as he had done for the previous ten years. After three years the forest district received temporary orders to close. The timber could only be sold if the bark was removed first.

Shortly after the accident soldiers arrived from the reserve army to replace the village roofs, replace the fences and put new asphalt on the roads. Grigorij's house was just a short distance from the forest and when the soldiers came to put on a new roof he asked the superior to measure the radiation in the soil around the house. This was done and when, a short time later, the upper layer of soil was removed and the radiation was measured again it was lower by a factor of two. Everything seemed to be fine.

It was not until 1992 – six years after the accident – that the Belarus authorities decided to pay compensation and move the village inhabitants to safer areas. A meeting was held before the evacuation. The young families with small children were promised new apartments if they moved. The older generation were asked to remain where they were. Families with their own houses were offered 8,000 roubles and a new house. This was a large amount of money and people began to demand that everyone should be evacuated – not just the young.

The inhabitants were moved and the old social atmosphere started to disintegrate. In spite of the fact that they now lived in safe, non-radioactive houses the elderly began to die shortly after moving. They were transported back and buried in the village churchyard. ”They died of nostalgia. They missed their village, their homes and the place they had lived,” says Grigorij with conviction. ”It's easier for the young ones to adjust to something new."

A demolition firm, Polesje, from Gomel, was responsible for the destruction of the village. A large hole was dug, into which the radioactive houses were deposited and covered over. ”I felt awful when they buried the houses. I knew the people who'd lived in them. They'd been happy and sad in those houses and it took less than a minute for a bulldozer to come along and destroy them."

There were many villages that had to be destroyed and it took a long time for the firm to remove all the houses in Bartolomeevka. They would come for a few months one year, move on to another place and come back the following year to continue the work. The houses that were constructed of bricks were difficult to remove. The school in the village still remains half demolished. It has become a good place for people from the places around to collect bricks and other building materials. Nobody seems to think about the fact that this is causing radioactivity to be spread around the whole country.

Grigorij was evacuated to a town called Vetka, but he did not like living there – he wanted to live in the village where his family was buried. He felt too old to live in a new place – not because there was anything wrong with it. The house was made of brick, had seven rooms, gas, a bathroom, running water, central heating - everything. He simply could not live there."

From having grown up as an honest man in the Communist Soviet Union Grigorij became a squatter at the age of 55 when he decided, along with others from the village, to return and settle in the evacuated houses. To be on the safe side they chose to live in houses close together. Most of the village had not been destroyed at that point, so there was a good selection from which to choose. They found a place with good houses and a well, so they had access to water. The telephone lines and electricity supply had been removed, so they used candles and petrol lamps as in the old days.

Although Grigorij has lived in the place for four years he has not noticed anything wrong with his health. He feels well. He is convinced that there is no longer any radioactivity in the area. He never worries about the radiation. His body is free of radioactivity. Everybody is healthy. Radioactivity is washed out of the body with alcohol.

”I like my life here. Only a bulldozer can move me from here. My only path from here is to the churchyard under a pine tree to eternal peace. What do I want with the towns? The man in charge of this zone is trying to get people to move to Vetka. He cries out: 'You have to move to Vetka now! To Vetka! You will have apartments there.' What do I want with an apartment in Vetka? What do I want with the houses there? All sorts of people from different areas have been brought together in Vetka. Vetka used to be inhabited by people of the old faith * and by Jews. It was peaceful. No one would harm anyone else. Now it's dangerous in Vetka. Even one of the women from the local authority was assaulted."

”Everything's fine here."


About EarthVision's 20 Years 20 Lives Project.


- Meet Hanna Koslova, Wife and Mother, Ukraine
- Meet Galina Bandazhevskaya, Pediatrician, Minsk, Belarus
- Meet Valentina Smolnikowa, Buda-Koshelevo, Belarus
- Meet Alexander Filippov, Retired School Teacher, Babichi village, 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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* Religious tendency in Russia and Belarus,which observes the old values and old rules of the church prior to the 17 th Century

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