Chernobyl

Template:Two other uses 51°16′N 30°13′E

Chernobyl area. Taken from the Russian Mir space station in 1997. Chernobyl Satellite Map

Chernobyl (Chornobyl, Ukrainian: Чорнобиль, Russian: Чернобыль) is an abandoned city in northern Ukraine, in the Kiev Oblast (province) near the border with Belarus (51°16′N 30°13′E).

The city was evacuated in 1986 due to the disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, which is located 14.5 kilometers (9 miles) north-northwest. The power plant has been named after the city, and was located in Chernobyl Raion (district), but it was not the residence of power plant workers. At the time of power plant construction a twin city of the plant, Prypiat was built closer to the plant to be home for power plant workers.

Nowadays, even though the city is basically uninhabited, a few people still live there. The occupied houses are not so distinguishable from the rest, and there are signs on them stating that the "Owner of this house lives here". Also, workers on watch and administrative personnel of the Zone of Alienation are stationed in the city on term basis. Before the accident, the city was inhabited by about 14,000 residents.

Name origin

The city name comes from a combination of chornyi (чорний, black) and byllia (билля, grass blades or stalks); hence it literally means black grass or black stalks. It may be named after the Ukrainian word for the plant mugwort. The reason for this name is not known. Folk etymologies have appeared after the 1986 nuclear accident, which represent attempts to link the accident to prophecies in the Book of Revelation in the Christian New Testament. For these, see Chernobyl in the popular consciousness.

History

Chernobyl first appeared in a charter of 1193 described as a hunting-lodge of knyaz Rostislavich. It was a crown village of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 13th century. The village was granted as a fiefdom to Filon Kmita, a captain of the royal cavalry, in 1566. The province containing Chernobyl was transferred to the Kingdom of Poland in 1569, and then annexed by the Russian Empire in 1793. Prior to the 20th century Chernobyl was inhabited by Ruthenian and Polish peasants, and a large Jewish community.

Chernobyl had a rich religious history. The Jews, who were brought by Filon Kmita during the Polish campaign of colonization, have included Chasidim as well as other Orthodox Jews. The traditionally Eastern Orthodox Ukrainian peasantry of the district was largely forced by Poland to convert to the Greek Catholic religion after 1596, and returned to Russian Orthodoxy after Ukraine's unification with Russia.

The Dominican church and monastery were founded in 1626 by Lukasz Sapieha, at the height of the Counter-reformation. There was a group of Old Catholics, which opposed the decrees of the Council of Trent. The Dominican monastery was sequestrated in 1832, and the church of the Old Catholics was disbanded in 1852.

In the second half of 18th century, Chernobyl became one of the major centers of Hasidic Judaism. The Chernobyl Hasidic dynasty had been founded by Menachem Nachum Twersky, also known as Rabbi Mordechai from Chernobyl. The Jewish population suffered greatly from pogroms in October 1905 and in March–April 1919 (by ataman Struk), when many Jews were killed and others were robbed. In 1920, the Twersky dynasty left Chernobyl, and it ceased to exist as a Hasidic center.

Since 1880, Chernobyl has seen many changes of fortune. In 1898 Chernobyl had a population of 10,800, including 7,200 Jews. In World War I the village was occupied and in the ensuing Civil War was fought over by Bolsheviks and Ukrainians. In the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-20, it was taken first by the Polish Army and then by cavalry of the Red Army. From 1921, it was incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR.

During the period 1929–33 Chernobyl suffered greatly from mass killings during Stalin's collectivization campaign, and in the Holodomor (famine) that followed. The Polish community of Chernobyl was deported to Kazakhstan in 1936 during the Frontier Clearances. The Jewish community was killed during the German occupation of 1941–44. Twenty years later, the area was chosen as the site of the first nuclear power station on Ukrainian soil.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Chernobyl became part of Ukraine, an independent nation.

Chernobyl disaster

Main article: Chernobyl disaster

On April 26 1986, the fourth reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, exploded at 01:23 AM local time. The workers were performing an experiment with the reactor's safety systems. Problems occurred when during the tests, the reactor did not receive enough coolant, and had built up too much poison in the core, and had fully withdrawn control rods, all of which contributed to very unstable and unpredictable reactor operation. When the control rods were reinserted in an attempt to regain control of the unstable reactor, there was a sudden increase in reactivity, caused by the design of the RBMK reactor and its control rods, a uncontrollable run away reaction occurred. The reactor produced tremendous amounts of steam, eventually causing a steam break/explosion, which destroyed part of the reactor. Graphite fires broke out, due to the high temperatures of the reactor and that the graphite was exposed to oxygen, causing it to burn, which occurred after the reactor was damaged from the steam explosion. Radioactive debris was flung several miles, and smoke containing radioactive contaminants from the burning graphite, traveled as far as Belarus. All permanent residents of Chernobyl and Zone of alienation were evacuated because radiation levels in the area had become unsafe.

The Chernobyl City and its surrounding suburbs are now home to nuclear scientists, maintenance officials for the Chernobyl Power Plant, Liquidation Officials, doctors, physicists, and most of all, radiation physicists. Although Pripyat, a neighboring city to Chernobyl remains unmaintained, Chernobyl has been renovated and is now home to more than 2000 people, including visitors to the Zone of Alienation who stay at a local lodge in the Chernobyl suburbs.

External links

• Chernobyl Accident at Curlie
• Hell on Earth The Guardian April 26, 2006
• Chernobyl Legacy, 20 years after.
• Lost City of Chernobyl Photoblog of the abandoned city
• Chernobyl: the unreadable sign Twenty years after Chernobyl, Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich talks to Sonja Zekri about the new face of evil and the lessons to be learned from the reactor catastrophe.
• The Eternal Winter New Statesman Special Report by Andrey Kurkov
• The Exclusion Zone photographs by Dr. David McMillan
• My Journey to Chernobyl: 20 Years After the Disaster — a photo journal by Mark Resnicoff
• Chernobyl — Myths and Reality