Voices From Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

As for me, nothing happened there to my soul or my mind. That’s all a lot of nonsense.
This one thing stuck in my memory. That one thing. No one had a single bullet, there was nothing to shoot that little poodle with. Twenty guys. Not a single bullet at the end of the day. Not a single one

­self. We always say “we," and never “I." “We’ll show them Soviet heroism," “we'll show them what the Soviet character is made of." We'll show the whole world! But this is me, this is I. I don't want to die. I'm afraid.

But that’s also a form of barbarism, the absence of fear for oneself.

I read in a book—it was by Father Sergei Bulgakov—“It's certain that God created the world, and therefore the world can't possibly fail," and so it's necessary to “endure history courageously and to the very end."

Another thinker says, I don’t remember his name, but in effect he says: “Evil is not an actual substance. It is the absence of good, in the way that darkness is simply the absence of light."

I sat in a trench. Shot my rifle. Got buried by an explosion. They dug me out half-alive.” That’s it.
And back then, my wife left me

But the thing is, if they'd given me the flag then, and told me to climb up there, I would have

Place of Achievement.” “The Reactor Has Been Defeated!” “Life Goes On.” We had political officers, they'd hold political discussions with us. We were told that we had to win. Against whom? The atom? Physics? The universe? Victory is not an event for us, but a process. Life is a struggle. An overcoming. That's why we have this love of floods and fires and other catastrophes. We need an opportunity to demonstrate our “courage and heroism.”

The dead are allowed to. But the living can only come at night, through the forest.”

There used to be Communism instead of God, but now there’s just God. So we pray.”