I was rewatching ep 23 of Well Theres Your Problem podcast, they were talking about the Chernobyl exclusion zone and Alice said "The wildlife were returning they were sitting on barrels playing balalaikas" I was so enamored by that image I had to draw it
Stained glass windows in the administrative building of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant was one of the largest in the Soviet Union and the poster child of the Soviet nuclear power industry. As such, little expense was spared on details like these windows.
The Soviet Union often used motifs in abstract art to promote Communism and laude their successes.
When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there, but it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth.
Today is a 37st anniversary of the Chornobyl Nuclear Plant disaster. It's hard to talk about one unprocessed national tragedy while living through another.
The Chornobyl disaster was totally preventable and it took away countless lives of people living in the region, especially in Ukraine and Belarus - both the liquidators and the civillians. Despite the very air and dust being literal poison, the soviets had not only hid this information from the people, but forced everybody to partake in the May the 1st parade - because god forbid we lose our face before the international community as a working class paradise! If not for the nuclear scientists in Sweden who raised the alarm about the dangerous levels of nuclear particles coming from northern Ukraine, who knows what would have happened. It definitely would have been swepped under the rug and forgotten by the international community, together with its victims - just like Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan is barely known abroad.
With russia constantly threatening to turn Zaporhizhzha nuclear plant into second Chornobyl, the wound caused by this tragedy is cut open again.
We all love the HBO Chornobyl series, and I genuinely am grateful to Craig Mazin for the amount of empathy and respect he brought to the series; but for today I indulge you to watch something made by ukrainians, to try to understand what this tragedy means to us and how it influences our lives even today.
For the documentaries, my favourite series by this day remains the "Dragons live here" by Your Underground Humanitarian School Youtube channel, which, unfortunately, can only offer automated english subtitles - they should, however, be sufficient.
youtube
youtube
youtube
As for the feature films, I recommend "Gateway" (you can stream it online with english subtitles here). And here is the official english trailer:
a folk song from chapayevka village, chornobyl region
this type of song is called голосіння (holosinnya — "keening"), and they are usually sang by women over the dead body during the period between death and funeral. in this song, the woman is mourning both her dead son, and the land that they were forced to leave due to the chornobyl disaster.
Starring: Jared Harris as that one guy who knows what’s going to happen and is trying to tell you but you don’t wanna listen to him because it’s inconvenient and doesn’t fit your narrative of supremacy and blind devotion