After Chernobyl: life in a village that does not exist. How I went to the Chernobyl zone and what I saw there - Internet club, day after day

Yana Sedova Tuesday, 26 April 2016, 18:29

After thirty years of separation from their homes, resettlers from the Chernobyl zone have already settled down in a new place, but the most expensive things for them are still the little things taken out of the zone Photo: Yana Sedova

More than 20 thousand people were resettled from the 30-kilometer zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Many had to travel around the world in the first years. Some were taken to neighboring villages, where the background radiation was acceptable, and they continued to go and cultivate their gardens and collect simple harvests, despite the fact that these fruits and vegetables were no longer suitable for consumption. Then the residents began to be resettled in different regions, given apartments or houses, then the so-called “Chernobyl villages” grew everywhere like mushrooms. But in the very first winters, the new, hastily built housing could fall apart. Therefore, someone, waving his hand, returned back to his native threshold. They were evicted again... "Apostrophe" visited the village of Novoselki, Makarovsky district, Kyiv region, where a village with 50 households was built for residents of the 30-kilometer Chernobyl zone after the accident.

The settlers have already settled down, reconciled themselves, gave birth and raised children and grandchildren, and some even have great-grandchildren. Of the things they once acquired, some have saved only old photographs; for others, the most valuable treasure remains a vase bought in youth or the first set, painted in a Soviet style with a simple red red pattern. Some people still keep a wooden stupa, which by all standards belongs in a museum, while others cannot part with their homespun linen towels - but these crumbs of a past life warm souls and remain the only memory for people who, like trees, were uprooted and forced to assimilate on a new land.

The village of Novoselki, Makarovsky district, Kyiv region, where a village with 50 yards was built for residents of the 30-kilometer Chernobyl zone after the accident Photo: Yana Sedova

Polesie style stove

Valentina Trikisha lived in the village of Zhovtnevoy, in the Chernobyl zone. She, her husband and children were deported in 1992. She still keeps the icons that she inherited from her parents, and the linen that her grandmother and great-grandmother once embroidered. “I can’t part with them,” Valentina admits.- This is memory! At school we had a holiday for Christmas this year, so I gave a linen tablecloth and a towel to put the kutya on the table. Of what I keep, there are only some chavuns left, nothing else.”

Valentina is happy to show off the stove in her house in Novoselki. “We immediately folded it when we moved in, they don’t make anything like this here, it’s a Polesie-style stove!” she explains. More and more fireplaces are being made here, but there are no stoves here that you can climb on top of and lie down.”

She lays linen on the beds and says that after the renovation she really wants to make the room in the Ukrainian style, so that icons covered with towels will hang in the corners. On the street near the house, Valentina shows growing peonies: “My husband also brought flowers from there, he lived there for another year after we moved. And I also have a favorite plant, we call it “fog.” Do you see how fluffy the leaves are? "It was customary for us to sew them on brides' veils when weddings were held in the village. Oh, it was beautiful when these fluffy leaves were sewn on a white veil!" - recalls Valentin Trikisha.

Gorokhovaya Matryona, whose house is located across the street from Trikisha, will soon turn 83 years old. She once lived in the village of Ilyinka, Chernobyl region. Her daughter Antonina laments: this year she barely persuaded her mother not to have a pig, and she is already worried about what she will do all summer. But there is always enough to do in the village.

Matryona's family left the zone in May 1986. Later, Antonina recalls, the authorities provided cars for people to take their belongings out of those areas that were spared by radiation. In Matryona’s house in Novoselki there is still a buffet bought in the 1960s. Matryona strokes the sideboard with her hand and explains: “How can you throw away something like this, and buy the plywood that they are making now! It will stand and blur, but this - eternal thing! Now the furniture will get wet- It will immediately disappear, and this buffet will have nothing even in the rain.”Antonina laughs and shows other valuables that are kept in the cupboard,- decanters and teapot.

But the oldest rarity in the family is considered to be the stupa of Baba Moti - and the truth, as if it came out of a picture from a fairy tale- more than a meter high, hollowed out from a tree trunk, but still strong. According to Antonina, this stupa was given to her mother by her father, who was born in the century before last- in 1895. The stupa is stored in a barn; it is usually taken out on major holidays or on parent’s day, when they are cooking big feast. “Working stupa, mom’s friends bring poppy seeds, she pushes them on everyone, doesn’t recognize them when they steam them, thinks that this kind of poppy is much better,”- Antonina smiles. Baba Motya, as if to confirm her words, takes up the “crush”- a wooden device equipped with a metal tip on one side, and vigorously knocks it in a mortar.

On the street near the barn there is another rarity - a harrow that they rent to their neighbors and that they themselves use regularly. Antonina says that they once wanted to take both stags and wooden troughs out of the zone, but such property is not allowed through the checkpoint.

"U ordinary people The only valuable thing was the furniture. They left everything behind. They slaughtered the pig, only part of the meat was taken, the rest was left for the dog... We had a dog Bill, they let him off the chain, so he didn’t leave the yard, that’s what our friends told us, who came to the village, - Antonina wipes away her tears.- The last time my father was there, they gave people a bus, and this dog climbed into the passenger compartment, lay down under the seat, and he was big, people began to make noise, scream, they were afraid that he would bite. And then he himself, without anyone saying a word to him, got up and got off the bus. When we arrived the next time, we found him in the yard, shot. Then they shot all the cats and dogs in the villages so that they wouldn’t go wild.”

Another dog is now living out its life in their yard. He was brought as a puppy straight from Chernobyl. “There was no need to argue about the name, they called it Radik, because there is radiation there,” - says Antonina.

At the porch there is another reminder of my native village - viburnum grows here, a seedling of this tree was also brought from the zone. “When relatives come together, every year we have a group photo under this viburnum tree, that’s the tradition,” - says Antonina.

Nothing left

Another resident of the Chernobyl village, Lyubov Semenenko, is already 86 years old. She lives in her house alone. I once moved here from Andreevka and settled in a 30-kilometer zone. She walks around the yard and around the house with a stick, but it’s clear that she’s not used to sitting still. The house is spacious, there is not much furniture, everything is clean and tidy. “The grandchildren help, they live in Boyarka,” - Love explains.

She ended up in Novoselki five years after the accident. Baba Lyuba had two sons and a daughter, but she had to endure the worst thing - lose all your children in Peaceful time. The youngest died of a stroke, the elder- At a construction site, the trailer where he was located was struck by lightning. The operation was unsuccessful for my daughter and she did not survive. "And my grandfather died, there is no one, the woman sits herself,- says Grandma Lyuba.- But I have grandchildren, five of them, and a great-great-granddaughter has already been born. And I’m already old.”

Baba Lyuba talks little about her past life. She admits that she has nothing left except furniture and a couple of photographs, but then shows a towel embroidered by herself 50 years ago, which she carefully stores in an old dressing table.

Nature has taken its toll

Baba Lyuba’s neighbor and friend, Maria Fedorenko, 78 years old, also from Andreevka. She cheerfully answers questions, and her son Vasily and daughter-in-law Nadezhda help her remember the events of 30 years ago. After the accident, her family was first taken to a village not far from Andreevka, so that all summer people quite calmly went to their native village to cultivate their gardens. Fedorenko arrived in Novoselki in 1990.

Family values and there is little left - a couple of earthenware figurines, an old service bought by Maria and her now deceased husband 50 years ago, now it is kept in a closet in a place of honor- at the very top. “This was the first set of services in their lives, we don’t use it,”- Nadezhda explains.

Vasily shows the most valuable photograph in the house - a black and white portrait of his older brother wearing a pioneer tie. “This photo was always hanging above my parents’ bed at home,”- says Vasily.

He demonstrates another rarity - an old bast box, which is still used for seeds during sowing. His wife Nadezhda recalls with tears their past life and how quickly their homeland turned into an abandoned exclusion zone: in Pripyat, where they lived, everything was overgrown over the summer, vegetable gardens in the villages- Same. “There nature immediately took over. Where once the swamp was drained, there is now a swamp again, the beavers have returned,”- she says. Vasily, who worked as a driver for many years and helped people remove things, remembers how he wanted to pick up a stuffed toy dog ​​that stood on the TV from his room in a hostel located next to the Pripyat Ferris Wheel. But the dosimeter showed that one of the dog’s ears was affected. I had to leave it.

“When people were choosing things that could be taken out, they used to check it like this: they open the closet, and there are sheets there, as if they had been beaten by rays, they take one from above - g dirty (phonit), another, third- dirty, then the fourth- clean. So they collected property bit by bit."

Now Vasily and Nadezhda live in Vyshgorod. They, as Chernobyl survivors, were given an apartment there many years ago. Nadezhda says that they keep one vase at home, which they managed to take out of Pripyat.

They both sadly remember the nature of the now long-infected native land, admit that. Nadezhda says with tears that when, after the accident, some of the Chernobyl victims were treated to apples, they, too, with tears in their eyes, answered: “And our apples are now rotting there.”

We are publishing material that Belarusian journalist Vasily SEMASHKO prepared for the site based on the results of his numerous trips to the Belarusian segment of the Chernobyl zone beyond last years.

The photographs in the text were taken by Vasily Semashko (color) and Sergei Plytkevich (black and white). You can view photos in full size by left-clicking on them.

Polesie Nature Reserve

Belarusian eastern Polesie is part of the largest swamp in Europe, located along the banks of the Pripyat River.

Flat terrain, impassable swamps, partially destroyed by land reclamation in the 1960s-1970s, sandy islands with pine forests, deep-water Pripyat with countless labyrinths of channels on both banks, where in some places there are natural beaches with amazingly white quartz sand.

Pripyat River flood

The Chernobyl disaster divided life here into “before” and “after”. “Before” - a calm, measured life, when people from Belarusian villages went to Pripyat to go shopping, and some of the Belarusians even worked at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. “After” is what can be seen now.

Plans for the evacuation of the population from the 30-km zone in the event of an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant were developed long before the accident, which generally confirmed the correctness of these calculations. The population from this zone was evacuated in the first days of the disaster.

The zone was partially surrounded by a barbed wire fence, and in 1988 it was declared a nature reserve. Judging by the presence of plastic insulators on the wooden posts, an alarm system was provided. The remains of this fence, already fallen down, can still be seen in some places both in Belarus and Ukraine.

Later it became clear that fallout fell out extremely unevenly. There are practically clean places in a 30-kilometer zone, and in some places people had to be resettled as far as 150 kilometers away. Because of this, in Belarus the boundaries of the resettlement zone were adjusted until 1992.

Also, when resettling in Belarus, they tried not to touch regional centers and some important roads. As a result, the boundaries of the resettlement zone turned out to be very tortuous. Thus, the border of the restricted zone lay next to the busy Khoiniki-Bragin highway and further along the outskirts of Bragin.

The Polesie State Radiation-Ecological Reserve was organized in 1988 in the Belarusian part of the exclusion zone on the territory of the three regions of the Gomel region that were most affected by the disaster - Braginsky, Khoiniki and Narovlyansky.

On the territory of the reserve there are 96 abandoned settlements, where more than 22 thousand residents lived before the accident. The administration of PGREZ is located in the city of Khoiniki.

Initially, the area of ​​the PGREZ was 1313 km 2 . After the annexation of part of the adjacent resettled territory to it in 1993, the area of ​​the reserve is 2154 km 2, which turned it into the largest in Belarus.

About 30% of the cesium-137, 73% of strontium-90, 97% of plutonium isotopes 238, 239, 240 that fell on the territory of Belarus are concentrated on the territory of the PGREP. The density of soil contamination reaches 1350 Ci/km 2 for cesium-137, 70 Ci/ km 2 - for strontium-90, 5 Ci/km 2 - for isotopes of plutonium and americium-241.

Due to the presence in ecosystems of significant quantities of long-lived isotopes of plutonium and americium, the main territory of the reserve cannot be returned to economic use even in the long term.

In the Polesie State Radiation-Ecological Reserve, 1251 plant species are registered, this is more than two-thirds of the country’s flora, 18 of them are listed in the International Red Book and the Red Book of the Republic of Belarus. The fauna includes 54 species of mammals, 25 species of fish, 280 species of birds. More than 40 species of animals are classified as rare and endangered.

The reserve's staff is about 700 people, 10 of whom have an academic degree. Annual costs for the reserve are approximately US$4 million.

Belarusian zone

In the first years after the accident, the main task of the guards was to prevent the looting of the property left behind. At that time, people did not realize the full significance of the disaster and hoped to return to their homes by the fall.

Initially, the checkpoint in the restricted zone was manned by police officers sent here on a two-week business trip, for whom this business trip turned into a two-week binge. Later, they were replaced by reserve staff from local residents, and order became a little better. Local police also participates in the protection of the reserve - their cars have a radiation hazard sign.

It was the Chernobyl disaster that became the impetus in Belarus for the founding of the Ministry of emergency situations. In 1990-1991, the BSSR State Committee on Problems of the Consequences of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Disaster (Goskomchernobyl of the BSSR) was created, which in 1995 was reorganized into the Ministry of Emergency Situations and Protection of the Population from the Consequences of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Disaster.

In 1998, the words “and protection of the population from the consequences of the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant” in the title “Ministry of Emergency Situations” were abolished, and the State Committee for Chernobyl became part of the Ministry of Emergency Situations.

In 2001, for some reason, the State Committee for Chernobyl was separated from the Ministry of Emergency Situations into a separate structure under the Council of Ministers of Belarus, and then in 2006 it was returned to the Ministry of Emergency Situations.

Now the main task of the reserve is to ensure a state of peace in the zone so that the fallen radionuclides are not transferred to the clean territory.

That is why the reserve operates in closed mode - any species are prohibited in the zone production activities, and in general the presence of strangers there is reduced to a minimum.

The Belarusian Chernobyl zone is divided into the following parts. Closer to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant there is an exclusion zone with the highest level of radiation contamination. All human activity is prohibited in the exclusion zone.

Further from the epicenter there is an evacuation zone. Limited human activity is permitted here. Basically, this is planting forests to prevent wind erosion of the soil and blocking old irrigation canals to swamp the area to reduce the risk of fires.

For the same purpose with different regions In Belarus, geodetic signals, which have become unnecessary with the development of satellite navigation, are brought into the zone, which are used here as observation towers to detect fires.

These towers can also be used as a telephone call point - there is no cellular communication near the ground, but at an altitude of more than 20 meters - it works perfectly in any part of the zone. Moreover, in many places Ukrainian mobile operators are also caught.

Sometimes poachers visit the zone. Every year there are fewer and fewer of them - fines have increased significantly, the practice of confiscation of vehicles has begun, and security has begun to work better.

Unlike Ukraine, where so-called “Chernobyl tourism” is developed - organized excursions to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and visits to Pripyat - there is no such thing in Belarus, and there are no plans yet.

Those who need it for work, including journalists (not all), and also for the purpose of burying the deceased in their native places, are allowed into the zone with special permission. However, once a year anyone can visit the zone, as described below.

Babchin

If in the Ukrainian part of the Chernobyl zone there are relatively big cities Chernobyl and Pripyat, Railway, then in Belarus there are only villages in which there were not even churches.

If in Ukraine the central entrance to the Chernobyl zone is the Dityatki checkpoint, then in Belarus it is the Babchin checkpoint, 20 kilometers from Khoiniki.

Posted here scientific laboratories reserve, hotel for scientific personnel, a fleet of vehicles for work in the zone.

A variety of animals and plants capable of surviving in this climatic zone were brought into the reserve under strict protection - a kind of “Noah’s Ark”, where scientists conduct research, studying life in conditions of increased background and minimal human intervention. The value of such research is unique; there is no other place like it on Earth.

Movement in the zone is carried out along several routes. highways, who are looked after by the administration.

The remaining roads have fallen into disrepair over more than a quarter of a century, not without the help of the reserve’s workers in order to prevent outsiders from entering. So, on some liquidated roads there is a chance to run into specially hidden harrows with their teeth pointing up - a surprise for poachers.

But the existing roads in the zone are asphalted and in good condition. Their distinguishing feature- lack of markings.

Chernobyl bison

A few kilometers from Babchin to the center of the zone there is another checkpoint with the Ukrainian name “Maidan”. There is a bison sanctuary located nearby.

After the creation of the reserve, bison were brought here from Belovezhskaya Pushcha, and over the following years they multiplied several times. In the Chernobyl bison sanctuary there is a fenced-off forester’s house, around which forest dwellers gather in winter.

About the sad

All villages in the zone have long been plundered. They were robbed mainly by former residents, some of whom were resettled to nearby relatively clean places.

They robbed us gradually. When the population was evacuated in 1986, they explained that they would return home in a few months. Families often left with small bags, leaving their homes and possessions behind the protection of a padlock and a paper sticker stamped by the local police.

Some settled nearby in Khoiniki or Bragin, others - 400 kilometers away in the north of Belarus, and some were carried to the Moscow region.

Later, those who settled near the Chernobyl zone had the opportunity, legally or not, to remove their property from there. Along the way, they also seized the neighbors' property.

Thus, a resident of Khoiniki, talking about Chernobyl displaced people and pointing to the houses, she explained: “This one took a dozen bicycles from there, that woman dragged chandeliers, from that house she dragged several refrigerators and televisions...”.

10-15 years after the disaster, home-cooked wines could be seen in the cellars of abandoned villages. Now they are gone too.

Some houses manage to remove the galvanized sheet from the roof. And what remains of the situation is something that is of no practical value to the local population.

Closer to the center of the zone, houses were looted a little less. The remains of the situation show when life ended here - newspapers from the first days of May 1986 with holiday congratulations from the CPSU Central Committee, vodka bottles with a price of 5 rubles were left in the houses. 30 kopecks, glass bottles of milk, Pepsi-Cola, etc.

It was very interesting to find abandoned photographs, and sometimes negative black and white films, which recorded the life of the village.

From items folk life I often come across ceramic jugs, and in the pantry I once saw bast shoes and a skein of bast.

Museum

The resettled villages are marked with memorial stones indicating the name, the number of people living there and the time of resettlement.

On their own initiative, the staff of the reserve made an excellent museum in Babchyn from household items. It’s a pity that it is formally located in a restricted area, and you can’t visit it without a special pass.

Chernobyl cemeteries

If the villages in the zone are dead, then some cemeteries are active. They bury those who once lived in these places. Once a year, several days on Radunitsa - the day of remembrance of the dead - is a day off in Belarus; cemeteries in the zone are open to free visits from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

When entering the checkpoint, the data of the driver, his car, the number of passengers is copied and, according to the driver, the name of the former is written down. settlement, where the car is heading.

The latter is done for the safety of visitors. If something happens to the car, the administration will know where to look. Cellular communications in the zone at human heights are practically ineffective.

These days, employees of the reserve, the police and the Ministry of Emergency Situations are on duty at the cemeteries of large villages, whose main task is to monitor fire safety.

Formally, during the days of Radunitsa, it is allowed to visit only cemeteries without the right to walk around the abandoned village. But in reality, the days of Radunitsa are the only opportunity for most people to see the Belarusian Chernobyl zone.

The reserve's staff constantly maintains military graves in order. Moreover, in this matter they go a little overboard - sculptural compositions They decorated them with colored paints, making the monuments resemble giant children's toys.

When leaving the zone - dosimetric control vehicle. If the background level is exceeded, the car is sent to the reserve's car wash. Another inspection of the trunk - it is prohibited to take anything out of the area. However, everything valuable was removed long ago.

On Radunitsa, in the cemeteries of abandoned villages, those who once lived here gather, and who are now scattered across different parts of Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia. Others have not seen each other for a quarter of a century. Someone brings children, or even grandchildren, showing them the huts where they once lived, and where only distant generations will be able to live safely.

I remember how a man took his granddaughter around the khmyznyak, telling him that here was the main street of the village of Borshchevka. Showing the looted house, he said that her grandmother lived here. Entering another looted house, wiping away a tear, I remembered how, as a child, I loved to lie on this stove.

And when from some house I brought a man a marriage certificate with a photograph of a girl, he beamed: “I once courted her!”

Krasnoselye

For more than a quarter of a century in the forbidden zone, nature returned to its original state without human intervention.

Rural courtyards are overgrown with weeds so that in summer the houses are practically invisible. On the road you can often see wild boars, roe deer, foxes, wolves, and moose. There are a lot of snakes and vipers.

Noticed here interesting feature- storks do not settle in uninhabited villages. From the territory of Ukraine, where poachers had more freedom due to weak security, several Przewalski horses, which were once brought to Ukraine, moved to Belarus across the Pripyat River.

But no one has seen the famous Chernobyl mutants with which “couch travelers” like to scare people.

When I talked about this topic with biologists of the reserve, they said that under conditions of increased radiation, some organs in animals begin to work differently. When asked whether it was good or bad, they answered that it was neither good nor bad, but simply different.

The closer to the epicenter of the zone, the higher the radiation level. If at the border of the zone in Babchin the radiometer shows about 50 μR/h, then in the area of ​​the village of Krasnoselye it is about 200 μR/h, and in some places up to 1000 μR/h.

Krasnoselye is located on a small sandy hill near Pripyat. On the hill there is a geodetic signal, from where in the distance you can see the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and several high-rise buildings in the city of Pripyat, which are 23 kilometers away.

There is a warning sign at this location indicating high levels of plutonium contamination. Plutonium-241 gradually decays into americium-241, which is highly soluble in water.

Standing on the observation deck of a 30-meter tower and surveying the vast plain, unsuitable for human life in the coming centuries, which was made by such a power unit barely visible on the horizon, you begin to realize that the peaceful atom is not a toy.

Masanas

Masany was the name of a small village on the very border with Ukraine, which runs along the edge of the village. Before the disaster, 21 families lived here. The Nazis tried to destroy Masan during the war, killing almost all the inhabitants. The village survived the war.

Once upon a time, some residents rode bicycles to work at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant or to Pripyat. From Masanov to the fourth power unit there are no more than 14 kilometers. If decontamination took place near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant with the removal of the top layer of soil, then in the Masanov area the hot particles remained untouched. It has one of the highest levels of radiation pollution on planet Earth.

And it was here in 1994 that it was decided to create a scientific station to monitor the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. A preserved house was chosen, the top layer of soil was removed from the surrounding area, and clean soil was brought in its place. A water well was drilled and conditions were created for a relatively safe life. A meteorological site was also built.

With the closure of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, the priority of the Masany station became observation of flora and fauna. The area surrounding Masana very successfully combines everything existing features Belarusian Polesie: near the Pripyat River with small channels and coastal lakes, swamps, low sand dunes, pine and deciduous forests, a field.

Constantly in Masany on a rotational basis Two scientists live 10-12 days a month. Despite having their own well, they prefer to use imported water.

Previously, the village of Masany received electricity from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Now the station is powered by solar panels and a gas generator. Electricity is mainly needed for lighting, running a small TV, radio station and laptops. Due to the low power supply, all equipment and lighting at the station are switched to 12 V.

In addition to scientists, a dog and a cat permanently live at the station. They are periodically visited by wild boars and other wild animals.

Employee Andrey Razdorskikh

From the observation tower, especially in the afternoon, the buildings of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, the houses of Pripyat, and the huge receiving antenna of the abandoned Chernobyl-2 over-the-horizon station are clearly visible. At night, in a dark, uninhabited area, the glow of lighting above the Chernobyl nuclear power plant looks especially bright.

And among other things, the observation tower in Masany serves as a place to access the Internet - a kind of Internet cafe" high level", where you need to climb with a laptop.

Conditions for scientific station The masans are unique, and so is the humor.

The paths along which employees often move are paved with wooden flooring. On the porch in front of the entrance to the house there is a depression with water for washing off dust from shoes.

The background here is one of the highest in the Chernobyl zone, higher than next to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The fact is that the territory immediately adjacent to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was thoroughly decontaminated. The contaminated soil is buried and clean soil is brought in its place. The same is done with asphalt. The high background near the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant produces gamma radiation penetrating through the walls of the “shelter object” - the sarcophagus.

And at a distance of several kilometers from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, hot particles of the reactor contents remained untouched in the upper layer of soil. In other places in Masany, my radiometer showed 5000 microR/h.

The record background, according to scientists - I did not go to measure it myself - is 15,000 microR/h a few hundred meters from the research station near a dried out small oak tree, where a microscopic hot particle lies. This oak tree is well known to Belarusian radiologists who visit the zone. And in the first days after the disaster in the nearest villages, the background was much higher.

One of the scientists once said that when he really wanted fresh fish, despite its high radioactivity, he caught it in a small lake. Due to the fact that strontium-90 is not excreted from the body, it was necessary to carefully clean it from the bones where strontium accumulates.

The fish exceeds the norm for cesium-137 by tens or even hundreds of times. But cesium is well removed from the body, especially by consuming pectin. The lover of fresh fish had to rely on marshmallows and marmalade for two weeks.

If you bring elk antlers from these places, scientists advise covering them with varnish. When asked, they are surprised: “Is it really not clear? The horns are full of strontium, which produces beta radiation, and it is reduced in this way.” How did you not guess this yourself? However, for greater safety, experts advise keeping such horns at a distance of one and a half meters from you.

Tulgovichi

The village of Tulgovichi, Khoiniki district, has long become a landmark and place of pilgrimage for filming journalists.

The village is located more than 50 kilometers from the nuclear power plant and was resettled in 1991. But eight, mostly elderly residents, refused to leave their homes. The authorities did not insist.

The village has a working power line, a wired telephone connection, a car shop comes here once a week, a postal car bringing pensions, and their doctor regularly visits them.

Legally, that part of a large village where people live is not a Chernobyl zone forbidden for free access. Also, formally, residents of Tulgovich do not have the right to leave their “island” without the appropriate pass.

To visit Tulgovich, relatives of the “aboriginals” living there also have to obtain passes. And the villagers themselves don’t go out much - their age shows, leading an ordinary village life - they work in vegetable gardens, tend to livestock, fish on a small river flowing through the village, or go fishing in Pripyat.

Grandfather Ivan Shemenok became famous for making excellent moonshine, which the reserve’s employees regularly bought from him, and in such quantities that the management of the reserve had to fine his grandfather.

In Tulgovichi, I had a chance to see domestic pigs grazing among abandoned houses; judging by their thick fur and large fangs, one of the parents was a wild animal.

About 10 years ago, an Orthodox priest from Khoiniki tried to make a church out of an empty house in Tulgovichi. The candlestick replaced a basin of sand, the icons were from the printing house, and the towels were local.

Due to the small number of parishioners, the temple did not provide income; it was inconvenient for the priest from Khoiniki to travel here. As a result, the church was empty.

The background radiation in Tulgovichi is about 100 microR/h, with the norm being 20-25. This is not much for the Chernobyl zone. Food products grown here and the meat of local animals are above the norm, but this does not prevent visiting relatives from taking away local delicacies “from their grandfather.”

During the post-Chernobyl years, the population of Tulgovich decreased by two people. In 10-15 years this village will become non-residential.

In 2013, the population of Tulgovichi decreased to three people. - Approx. website.

Borschevka and Dronki

And these are photographs from the village of Borshchevka. In the photo with snakes there is a common and rare black viper.

And now - the village of Dronki. This woman saw her home for the first time in more than 20 years. The house has no roof, it was stolen.

Radunitsa in Dronki. The graves in this area are decorated with towels. Firefighters make sure that there are no fires on this day.

About the present and the future

Several more people formally live on the territory of the Chernobyl zone, but these are in villages bordering the zone. In the late 1980s - early 1990s, during the turbulent times of the collapse of the USSR and interethnic conflicts, many empty houses on the outskirts of the Chernobyl zone were inhabited by refugees from many regions of the former USSR.

Then the authorities did not pay attention to the legality of residence - the village needed workers. Among these refugees there were many good specialists, including doctors.

The mysterious self-settlers secretly living in abandoned villages deep in the Belarusian part of the Chernobyl zone do not exist. It’s enough to look at the condition of those houses to understand that you won’t live there for long.

Only a professionally trained person can live secretly for a long time in the depths of a zone without power supply, without roads, taking serious measures to conceal himself, but older people cannot do this.

Otherwise, Robinson will be deported very quickly by the reserve's guards. And it’s easier to hide from the state in other places than in a protected area, where the smoke of a fire immediately attracts the attention of the guards.

The probable future of the Belarusian part of the Chernobyl zone seems like this. In some places the area will be reduced due to a decrease in the background. After a quarter of a century of desolation, fields are being plowed up near the very border of the zone; in adjacent villages, abandoned houses are completely demolished using the “green lawn” option according to the improvement program.

More polluted places will remain uninhabited for many generations.

Masao Yoshida died of esophageal cancer at age 58.

Abandoned garment factory former club, a school, a kindergarten, a village that “moved” with its entire population... There are no signs that people fled in a hurry - this is a targeted resettlement zone, where they lived and worked in the early nineties. For several years they tried to overcome the radiation by washing the roofs of houses and cutting off the top layers of soil. But the radiation still won – the houses were empty.

TUT.BY visited the resettlement and exclusion zone in the Chechersky district of the Gomel region. The density of pollution there – 15 to 40 curies per square kilometer, in some areas – higher.

“The collective farm bosses learned about the accident through the Voice of America.”

These days, in Radunitsa, in the resettlement and exclusion zone it is probably noisy - remember your ancestors here. For several days you can enter the territory without a pass, then the barrier at the checkpoint at the entrance is lowered again. We visited there in early April, when the area was completely quiet.

The resettled lands here occupy more than 24.6 thousand hectares, and this is a fifth of the Chechersky district. Before Chernobyl, there were strong collective farms here, and there was even a garment factory in one of the villages.

– When the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, my friend and I were walking to the bus, – An employee of the Administration of Exclusion and Resettlement Zones tells TUT.BY journalists Alexander Pipko. – I was still studying at a vocational school then. We walked through the stadium and saw a wall of dust. We returned to the school building, waited, and left. Then we went to practice in a neighboring area, where the collective farm bosses learned about the accident through the Voice of America. They came and said that a nuclear power plant exploded in Chernobyl. Well, then, a few days later, we had messages too.

In the first years they hoped to get by with less bloodshed – In all private farmsteads, courtyards of schools and kindergartens, the top part of the soil was removed. The buildings were treated with a special compound. They began to evict people from here only when it became clear that the level of pollution in the entire area was too high to remain. But thanks to that decontamination, there is noticeably less “fonit” in the former farmsteads.

Buried villages. "This is the strip – there was a village, Krasnoe"

Total under the control of the Administration of exclusion and resettlement zones in the Chechersky district – 32 resettled villages. Some of them have been buried in recent years.

– This strip - there was a village, Krasnoye, – Administration employees point somewhere away from the road.

In addition to Krasnoe, the village of Lukomskie Poplavy was partially buried and almost the entire – Rudnya-Dudichskaya. Money for the burial of villages in the resettled zone is allocated under a special state program.

– The fact is that the remains of buildings still attract citizens who are trying to dismantle them and use them either for their own purposes or for sale. Brick, concrete bases, blocks– something that can be transported not with large equipment, but with passenger cars. Burying the remains of buildings will prevent such facts, – explains the deputy head of the Gomel Regional Administration of exclusion and resettlement zones Alexander Pershko.

However, it is quite legal to remove the remains of buildings with the permission of local executive committees. For example, dilapidated farms and structural parts can be reused on the farm. If a sanitary inspection shows that the level radioactive contamination future building materials are acceptable.

The wall of a former garment factory in a resettled area. The building had a dual purpose. In case of war, it could be converted into a hospital in a matter of days. During decontamination after the Chernobyl accident, military personnel lived in the factory building

– The chairman of one farm wanted to take away the slabs from one of the administrative buildings for reuse,– recalls a representative of the Administration of the Exclusion and Resettlement Zone of the Chechersky District Grigory Gerashchenko. – No matter how much they measured– The level of pollution is still there. He brought the sanitation station and paid money for the examination. They explain to him: it’s impossible, it’s overpriced. He: “Oh, it’s so overpriced, look how many days it’s been raining- washed away a long time ago." Dear, such snow has been falling for almost 30 years- and no way, and you say that the rain will wash it away!

Photo of Sebrovichskaya's class high school, 1967. It seems that the Chernobyl disaster occurred during these guys’ adult years. Sebrovichi was a rich village. They say that its inhabitants all moved together to another place, somewhere near Gomel, and recreated their former Sebrovichi way of life there.

It is recommended to plant forests on the site of buried villages and former fields. Last year, 300 hectares of forest were planted near the resettled village of Shepotovichi. This year they want to sow more.

One of the cemeteries in the resettled area. During Radunitsa, cemeteries are transformed. Specialists from the Administration of Exclusion and Resettlement Zones say: there is a program for the improvement of local cemeteries. In recent years, many people have replaced old wooden fences with reinforced concrete ones. They look neat and don’t age so quickly

Revived fields

- This is a rehabilitated field - it’s clean,- they show us. – But across the road there is more than 15 curies of pollution. Spots– just like radioactive fallout.

The land used for agriculture in the resettled zone of the Chechersky district is about eight thousand hectares. Work to rehabilitate some areas was carried out back in 2008.

– A package of documents is collected, hyprozem takes samples and takes measurements. Documents are submitted to the Department for Elimination of Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident. Lands with low levels of radiation are considered possible for introducing into crop rotation and growing products with acceptable levels of radionuclides. Only certain types of crops can be grown on these lands: sunflower, corn, rapeseed. They are mainly used as livestock feed.– says Grigory Gerashchenko.

The last monitoring was carried out in 2012. Not a single hectare of clean land was found either then or later. The specialist adds with a laugh:

– One director came to us - we really need to rehabilitate a piece of land. We say: “So your indicator is too high!” He replies: “So we still cut the corn high- all the radiation is below.” We say: “Is this a concept for you?” heavy metals"means that they are so heavy that they do not rise up, but remain with the root system?".

About metal producers and poachers

Previously, there were three permanent checkpoints in the resettlement zone, but now there is only one left. The rest of the territory is controlled by a mobile post. The fine for being in the resettlement zone without a pass is 10 basic.

“There are still tempting places here for some.” We conduct daily patrols. So, sometimes you leave the car and walk around the village. It also has its advantages. The man, so to speak, “on the lookout” looks out for the car, and you quietly approached on foot. And suddenly you hear the question: “What are you doing here?” He sits himself, prepares metal and asks me why I came, - Grigory Gerashchenko laughs.

Destroyed building kindergarten. They say that once upon a time Japanese specialists came to Chechersk to share their experience. One of the Japanese went down to the basement of the kindergarten (at that time it was not completely filled up), found abandoned children's toys there - and began to cry

Not often, but poachers do occur here. When they are detained, they are also punished under environmental provisions. There are plenty of animals here: local administration specialists have dozens of photographs of moose and roe deer walking through the fields.

The fishermen are causing headaches for the organizations protecting the resettlement zone. We are shown a lake that is connected to the Sozh River. The water in the lake is polluted, but this does not stop fishermen.

In summer, the lake is very picturesque; at one time, a certain enterprising citizen even fought to organize a recreation area here - with gazebos and other amenities. Micro-roentgens did not frighten people. However, as expected, the entrepreneur did not receive permission

– They enter by water from a clear area and penetrate here- They fish and poach. Duck hunting is already open - sometimes they shoot.... But there is a problem. There used to be a base where we could order watercraft. Now interdistrict bases have been reduced, it is no longer possible to attract watercraft as before. In our region the main water body – Pripyat– the main focus of patrolling is concentrated there,- say experts. – Fortunately, we are being assisted by the Presidential Inspectorate for the Protection of Flora and Fauna. They have boats and inspectors– they protect their facilities and help us.

Alexander Pershko notes that there are problems with the equipment in the park of the Administration of Exclusion and Resettlement Zones. The one that exists is worn out, and the territories that need to be protected are very large:

– The roads along which our daily patrols travel have long since fallen into disrepair– they also render transport unusable. There is not enough fuel and lubricants. Funds for these purposes are decreasing annually.

The Last of the Mohicans

Experts say that sometimes they are on duty in the contaminated area for several days, with an overnight stay. They say that after such races you begin to feel a dry throat and a mild headache.

However, people still live in three villages in the resettlement zone. There are only six of them in a huge space. We will tell you about one family from the resettlement zone in a separate report.

“A paramedic station comes to them, they bring mail and a pension. The food truck comes twice a week. Orders for household appliances are being fulfilled- They also bring it.Several people are still registered in own homes, – says Alexander Pipko. – In winter we clear the snow. They are not abandoned by us.

And this is a bell and its “tongue”, left after a big fire. In 2002, an ancient church burned down in the village of Rudnya-Dudichskaya. Locals they say that it was built in 1600, but in open reference books there is information about the construction of the first half of the 19th century. In any case, the wooden building was ancient.

Amazing story this bell and the church itself can be read in a few days in a report about life Sofia and Nikolai Klyuchinsky. These are residents of the village of Rudnya-Dudichskaya, who were never able to leave their land.

The place where the church was is carefully fenced

Nails that held the temple together

A cross with a message that a church stood on this site

Despite the fact that in the resettlement zone it is prohibited to collect berries and mushrooms, which accumulate radiation well, in response to our question whether the last residents collect them, Grigory Gerashchenko says:

– The human factor is human. Of course they do. How can you restrain him, how can he not go if he’s right outside the garden?- forest? If he says: I walked when I was a child, I walked when I was young... You can’t pull a wire, you can’t tie a person.

“Who said the Earth is dead?
No, she hid for a while...
…
Who said the earth doesn't sing?
Why is she silent forever?
V.S.Vysotsky

Continuation of the study of the consequences of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Previous parts: , This time the report included the village of Bartolomeevka, located in the largest closed zone in Belarus - the Vetka exclusion zone.

There is no village of Bartolomeevka on modern maps, and a modern navigator will not show the way how to get there. If you drive along the Svetilovichi - Vetka road, then here too the village will be hidden from view. In summer, the skeletons of houses are covered with lush greenery; in winter, gray-sand buildings merge with tall growth of young trees.

The village of Bartolomeevka, located in the Vetkovsky district, was evicted only five years after the explosion of the fourth power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
Vetkovsky district is one of many districts of the Gomel region that suffered from the consequences of the Chernobyl accident. A large number of villages and villages found themselves in the zone of mandatory eviction. Some of them were later restored, but most remained a terrible monument to the tragedy. According to the Department for Elimination of Consequences of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Republic of Belarus for 2011, the density of cesium-137 contamination in the settled area in the Vetkovsky district ranges from 15 to 70 curies per square kilometer.
The territories and surroundings of Bartolomeevka are archaeological monuments: it was a site of people during the Mesolithic era, and there were settlements here during the Stone and Bronze Ages. More modern mentions of the village are found in written sources (L.A. Vinogradov calls the Bartolomeevskaya Church “Bartholomewskaya” - one of the forms of the name of the village), dated 1737. After this, a chronicle of the population was kept. The population varied, but until the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant it remained a fairly large rural town: 1775 - 392 inhabitants; 1909 - 197 households, 1350 inhabitants; 1959 - 844 inhabitants; 1992 - 340 families (resettled).

1. Map of the density of contamination of the territory of the Vetkovsky district with cesium-137
as of 2010

2. A few kilometers from Bartolomeevka there is the village of Gromyki, also evicted in 1992 as a result of the Chernobyl disaster. Gromyki is buried in the forest and connected to the highway by a country road, which in winter can only be driven by a tractor or a Ural or Kamaz truck. The Besed River (a tributary of the Sozh River) divides the village into two parts: Old and New Gromyki. The village is known primarily for the fact that Andrei Andreevich Gromyko was born here - in 1957-1985 - Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, in 1985-1988 - Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, twice Hero Socialist Labor, Doctor of Economic Sciences.

3. Bartolomeevka.

6. Someone’s small homeland, “grimy” from radiation.

7. The traditional craft in the village was turning.

10. “The sky was choking from the deadly poison escaping from the crater of the drilled reactor. Meanwhile, heavy rain fell in Bartolomeevka. Puddles appeared on the streets. The water in the puddles did not look the same as usual - yellowish at the edges.”- a resident recalls former village Natalya Nikolaevna Starinskaya.

11. On the side of the road in a strange way the parking sensor behaved. He began to squeak.

12. Most likely the room was used as a refrigerated warehouse.

15. The fine for entering the contaminated territory is 350,000 Belarusian rubles.

17. On many roads leading to the Chernobyl nowhere, old monuments to soldiers who died during the war have been preserved. During the Great Patriotic War, 50 people died in the battles for the village and surrounding area on September 28, 1943. Soviet soldiers(buried in mass grave in the center of the village), 210 residents died at the front. Photo source - vetka.by

18. After the eviction of Bartolomeevka, self-settlers periodically returned here. Ivan and Elena Muzychenko lived here. The last mention of Baba Lena is found on the website of the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.
- All the old people who moved have already been in the cemetery for a long time. But we live and don’t know hospitals. Homesickness eats away faster than radiation.
- And where is that radiation, it’s not visible! “That means it’s not scary,” the husband interrupts the old lady. - The Japanese came and measured the background at the well. They said more than in Hiroshima after the explosion. And we drink water from there - so what?
People live by subsistence farming, sometimes they get to a bus stop on the highway - they go to the regional center for bread and wine.
“It’s fun here: wolves, roe deer, wild boars,” the grandfather does not lose heart. - There are plenty of fish in the river, plenty of everything!
They have already given up on the aborigines: no one is kicking them out of here. But a few years ago, the police, they say, fought for a long time with one woman. They took her out of the zone, and she again returned as a self-settler to her native village. And so on several times. Until the house was burned down, so there was nowhere to return. Photo source: AP Photo/Sergei Grits.

19. The forest is the source of the greatest radioactive contamination, since trees “raise” radioisotopes from the ground, creating a decent background radiation. Because of this, the forest area in the zone received the nickname “ringing” forest.

Bartolomeevka was destroyed by the Chernobyl tragedy. This village is one example of hundreds of similar villages that have died out; whose residents were forced to leave their usual lives.

Other reports about Chernobyl sites:
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But in addition to two cities, the Chernobyl disaster covered about 230 villages in the Kyiv and Zhytomyr regions and about the same number in Belarus. And while on the Belarusian side the infected villages were mostly demolished and buried, on the Ukrainian side most of them still stand, overgrown with forest. But here and there in these empty villages you can see well-kept houses with painted shutters and tropics at the gates - these are “self-settlers”. This is the name given to people who voluntarily returned to the Exclusion Zone from evacuation, bypassing checkpoints along partisan paths, most of them old people who remembered the war and did not forget the skills of living in a land that suddenly became “foreign.” The word “self-settler” seems offensive and cynical to many, because these people live in their own homes and on native land. There were a little more than a thousand of them, now less than two hundred remain, and the rest died mainly from ordinary old age or even decided to retire Mainland. Two - an old man and an old woman - live even in a 10-kilometer zone.

Abandoned villages in the Exclusion Zone come across all the time, especially if you turn off the main road, and frankly speaking, their appearance will not surprise a person who grew up in the Russian Non-Black Earth Region. Yes, this statement is completely in the style of hysterical top bloggers, but it is true - the Pskov or Kostroma outback is visually very similar to Chernobyl. But the roads here are very unusual - almost without potholes, but with grass growing through the asphalt, and you can’t see any garbage on the sides:

We stopped for half an hour in a village with the extremely Polesie name Rudnya-Veresnya on the way to the abandoned pioneer camp “Fairytale”.

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Polesie is a special region in general. It’s not Ukrainians or Belarusians who live here, but “tuteishi” (“local people”) - people with a very memorable appearance and an incomprehensible dialect. The atmosphere of rural Polesie is very accurately conveyed by Kuprin in his “Oles”, I don’t even have anything to add. The forests in the Pripyat floodplain are so dense that even the Wehrmacht armies could not unite because of them. And in general, Polesie villages seem to me like a collective image of the East Slavic civilization. This kind of footage could well have been filmed in Ukraine, and in Belarus, and in Latgale, and in the Komi Republic, and on the Volga, and in the foothills of Altai.

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There are even houses with carved platbands:

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It is interesting that the Chernobyl land was also one of the “Old Believer enclaves” - three of them (also Vetka in the Gomel region and Starodubye in the Bryansk region) formed a large “archipelago”, which was the cradle of fugitive priesthood (that is, Old Believers-priests who did not accept in the 1830s Belokrinitsky consent and in the twentieth century united into their own, Novozybkov consent). Old Believers in the vicinity of Chernobyl made up 15% of the population, living mainly on the left bank of the Pripyat, where in the former village of Zamoshnya an archaic-looking cemetery and the ruins of a monastery were preserved.

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Once a year, the Zone is opened to everyone - “for the graves,” that is, on the days of remembrance of the dead in mid-May. The cemeteries here are well-kept and not forgotten, and I would say they look much better than many cemeteries on the mainland. For many evacuees, these graves are the last link connecting them with their native land.

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But there is a suspicious hole on the edge of the churchyard - apparently, some decided to break this “thread” and reburied their relatives on Mainland. By the way, pay attention to how sandy the soil is in Polesie - it is very infertile, hence the desolation of Polesie. And alas, the “Chernobyl trace” became the same integral part Polesie, like forest farms, witches, partisans and wooden churches.

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The last point of our entire journey to the Exclusion Zone was the village of Kulovatoye on its southeastern edge - the broken road there seems endless. Kulovatoye, together with neighboring villages, was part of a large state farm, and as the organizer explained to me, Kulovatoye itself was “clean,” but other villages of the state farm were “polluted,” and the authorities considered it easier to include Kulovatoye in the Zone and evacuate the entire former state farm . Nowadays 18 people live here, that is, every tenth is a self-settler.

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The hostess met us at the open gate. We called her by her first name and patronymic, but I forgot her patronymic, and from the first minutes to myself I called her nothing other than Baba Ganya. While leaving Kyiv, we bought food and medicine - for example, I was carrying a large pack of tea and a bag of rice. But you should have seen with what sincere joy Baba Ganya greeted us and rushed to hug everyone who got out of the minibus! It's very lonely for these people to live here...

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Typical Polesie hut:

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The interior is similar to ethnographic museum, and that it’s not the 1950s, only the TV in the second room reminds us:

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On the couch next to the Russian stove is the second grandmother, quiet and inactive. Her face is not very pale - maybe she just barely goes outside, or maybe she has leukemia (leukemia)...

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The self-settlers were “legalized” only in 1993, and I still don’t understand why they weren’t deported earlier, maybe there were some legal subtleties, or maybe there was simply no time for them. The first years were the most difficult - without electricity, without pensions (or rather, pensions came to the mainland at the place of evacuation), without regular medical care. Then Ukraine came to terms with their presence - they restored communications, issued a radiotelephone to each village, and put them on all kinds of records at their actual place of residence. Self-settlers receive pensions (with a “Chernobyl” supplement), a mobile store comes to them once a week, and even mobile phones have replaced radiotelephones. However, they live mainly by subsistence farming (“don’t buy them potatoes or berries - they’ll be offended!”). Well water:

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Utensils, zucchini and chickens - larger livestock, however, are not kept here:

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Table with dosimeter - Chernobyl still life. However, these products smell less than store-bought ones in Kyiv.

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This is the farewell buffet. Which, by the way, was also attended by other villagers - here another grandmother peeks out from behind Baba Ganya:

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They say that recently “self-settlers” have begun to appear in the Zone - that is, people who arbitrarily seize empty land. Security periodically catches blueberry and mushroom pickers, who collect all this not for themselves, but for sale - keep this in mind in the Kyiv region! They also say that recently drug addicts and drug dealers have gotten into the habit of growing hemp here. There is even a rumor that Kyiv residents are also buying land in these forests." the mighty of the world this" and are building their own dachas here - it’s not difficult for me to believe this; those in power in our country are quickly getting bogged down to the point that they cease to take into account not only legal, but also natural laws. But however, I did not observe any signs of all of the above in the Zone, so that I do not presume to assert the legitimacy of these rumors.

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Finally, we decided to take a walk around the village. A bus stop is overgrown right behind the fence of Baba Ganya’s house:

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The vast majority of huts are still abandoned:

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Behind the outskirts of the partisan-looking swamp - I can’t help thinking that at least one “German fascist invader” found his death in it in 1941-43. In the memoirs of self-settlers, a comparison of the Chernobyl disaster and the Great Patriotic War can be seen as a red thread, especially since in remote farmsteads, others have never even seen a Fritz:

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I wonder what kind of building it is and when it was built? The yellow wall seems even pre-revolutionary:

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Behind the fence, under the pine trees, the cemetery:

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The village itself. In one of these courtyards, a couple of other old people waved to us, inviting us to visit, and I felt sorry to refuse them. There are a lot of cats here, but I don't remember any dogs.

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The air here is amazingly clean, and the silence is not dead, as in Pripyat, but ringing, iridescent, natural. After Pripyat, after the abandoned stations, kindergartens, pioneer camps, everything just gave the eye a rest.

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And this is the paradox. For example, we calmly left the minibus without locking it. In the Exclusion Zone, you somehow very quickly cease to be afraid of people. Yes, invisible death is lurking under our feet here, but people... No one is the enemy.

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Another aspect of the Zone that I won’t write anything about because I haven’t encountered it is the stalkers. I couldn’t even ask anything intelligible about their “urban folklore”, which of course should exist, like any subculture... however, “so far no one has died among the stalkers, so there is no legend about the Black Stalker here.” They say that they consider lost and forgotten things to be “tribute to the Zone.” With them you can get to many objects that are closed to legal inspection - such as