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SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE CHERNOBYL CATASTROPHE IN BELARUS

Дата публикации: 04 мая 2014
Автор(ы): Yuri Shevtsov Centre for European Humanitarian Studies, Minsk →
Публикатор: Научная библиотека Порталус
Рубрика: ЭКОЛОГИЯ →
Источник: (c) "БЕЛАРУСЬ В МИРЕ" No.001 01-01-98 →
Номер публикации: №1399202714

Yuri Shevtsov Centre for European Humanitarian Studies, Minsk, (c)

In 12 years after the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power station, the long-term consequences of this catastrophe have come to the forefront. Probably, the most destructive result of the accident is the creation of a special social-cultural situation in areas that were exposed to and contaminated by radiation. In those regions one can see a deterioration and even the destruction of certain elements of traditional social structures and society in general.

Those who have higher education are leaving contaminated areas and in some places everyone with higher education has left. According to the official Belarusian press 1 , in the areas of Belarus that suffered most from radiation the number of people with higher education decreased by half-down to 200- 400 people per 17-30 thousand of total population. The first to leave are doctors, teachers, and cultural workers. The young specialists who are sent by the government to work in these regions have lower qualification than those who left, and, importantly, the young are not eager to settle in these dangerous areas. According to information in the Belarusian press, even collective farms, not to mention smaller agricultural units, in the most contaminated regions are headed by people who do not have specialised higher education.

The social-economic and cultural situation that has formed in the contaminated areas of Belarus is typical for all regions of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia contaminated by radiation. However, it is Belarus where approximately 70% of contaminated areas with radiation levels above one curie per square kilometre are located. 2 Unlike Ukraine and Russia, in Belarus patches with high levels of radiation are not distributed compactly but are scattered over a large territory.

In Belarus it is typical that next to 10 villages where the residents have been resettled to other areas, there are 5 villages or towns where people conti-nue to live, then-5-10 empty villages, then again-5-10 villages where people live. In conditions where about 90% of radiation get into the organisms of people who live in contaminated areas with food from "dirty" gardens, "dirty" forests, rivers and lakes, with dust and smoke, people who live in "clean" villages and are located next to the "dirty" ones also receive significant doses of radiation. 3 Including the residents of "clean" areas, the population of the region where people are regularly exposed to small doses of radiation totals about 3-3.5 million.

In terms of Belarus, we are talking about a region which takes up about 22% of the national territory. However, if we include "clean" patches among "dirty" ones-this becomes 30% of the country's territory. 1.8 million people live in the area where the radiation level is above one curie per square kilometre. 130 thousand people were resettled to "clean" areas where they were provided with free housing. In addition, there are those who were involved in clean-up works in dangerously contaminated zones and other workers, who in the process of performing their professional duties received significant doses of radiation and now permanently live in "clean" territories. 4 Altogether, there are 4 million people in Belarus who were exposed or are continuing to be exposed to radiation, that is, about 40% of the population.

The social-cultural consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe manifest themselves most amongst country people and in small towns in contaminated regions of Belarus. The process of "depleting" the most educated and the young from these regions started well before the Chernobyl accident. In this part of Belarus urbanisation began in the 1950s. This is the region where the second and third largest cites of the country are located-Gomel with a population of 500 thousand, and Mogilev with a population of 360 thousand. Even before the Chernobyl catastrophe, elderly people and those about to reach the age of retirement made up 50-70% of the countryside population. Now the percentage of old people in "dirty" areas has risen to 60-80% of the population.

The consequences of the Chernobyl accident intensified the process of social degradation of the countryside and speeded up the transformation of this part of Belarus into a "social sink". In principle, in the course of rapid urbanisation, social degradation is not untypical. Rather, it is a normal demographic phenomenon. 5 The growth of the cities is usually accompanied by a rapid degradation of the village. However, at a certain stage the city "returns" to the village with new investments into agricultural production, tourism, infrastructure, and then the situation stabilises and the socially degraded rural areas come back to life.

In the case of the Chernobyl zone, this phenomenon of general urbanisation does not apply. One cannot expect a widespread "return" of the city to the countryside when the territory is enormous by European standards. The Chernobyl contaminated zone is equal in area to Austria, or the Czech Republic, or Switzerland. One therefore would expect that the social degradation of the society in "dirty" areas will continue well into the future.

Today, it is in these contaminated areas where the highest levels of crime are registered, although an enormous volume of goods are flowing into Russia and to the West through the Brest and Grodno border regions, places where criminals would seemingly expect a better prize. It is in contaminated areas where the highest number of murders per capita, including serial murders, has been recorded. The Mogilev region, part of which is contaminated by radiation, is the leader in Belarus's crime statistics with the highest toll of murders. The Chernobyl region is the area where an outbreak of the AIDS epidemic occurred. Of the approximately 1,000 officially registered individuals in Belarus infected with the AIDS virus, about 800 live in areas contaminated by radiation. Practically all those who have AIDS are drug addicts.

"Dirty" territories are the ones where organised crime grows especially quickly. Moreover, criminal groups are very rapidly getting into drug dealing, which previously was very rare in Belarus, and even into the manufacture of narcotics. In the course of legal proceedings against a "bandit group" from the city of Svetlogorsk, the defendants testified that they placed orders to cultivate narco-tic plants cultures with the people living in the villages located close to the Chernobyl 30 km exclusion zone. This is probably the first time that law enforcement officials registered an attempt to cultivate and process drugs on the territory of Belarus on such a large scale.

It is in areas contaminated by radiation, where traditional social structures and, first of all, the family, are rapidly collapsing. The most urbanised Eastern Belarusian regions had high divorce rates even before the Chernobyl accident. However, in 1997 the number of divorces in the Mogilev region was 76% of the total number of marriages. This is the highest divorce rate in Belarus, while the lowest one of about 35% was registered in the Brest region. On average, the divorce rate in Belarus is about 52%. The Chernobyl accident intensified the natural crisis of traditional social structures and relationships in an urbanising society. At the same time, it seems that there are no reasons that would stop "social degradation" in those areas.

One should expect a "new wave" of long-term consequences of the Chernobyl accident which are connected with the beginning of an independent life by a generation of children who were born after the accident and grew up in the conditions of a deteriorating social environment. The "Chernobyl" children were exposed to an enormous number of all types of diseases. The most complete information on this problem has been collected by Academician V. Nesterenko. 6 In our opinion, the most dangerous phenomenon is the increase in occurrence of mental illness and deviations in psychic development. According to data gathered by Professor V. Kondrashenko, about 42% of the children born between 1986 and 1996 in radiation contaminated areas are psychically retarded, something that results later in an underdeveloped intellectual capacity. 7

Undoubtedly, not all illnesses are directly caused by small doses of radiation, even though a child's organism is especially sensitive to any abnormal radiation doses. In addition to radiation, the children are crippled by the deteriorating social environment in which they live. Broken families, village poverty, low levels of education, medical service, elementary hygiene and practically all forms of organised spiritual life-these are the most evident features of this environment. 8 The children grow up with an atmosphere of "permanent mortality" around them. Imagine the life of a village where out of 200 houses only 100 are occupied (the rest have been abandoned because of radiation) in which 300 people live, 200 of whom are retired and 20 are children. These children travel to Italy each year for two months where they live with a middle-class Italian family, go to La Scala with their hosts, eat ice cream near the Coliseum, and later-during a period of ten months almost every week walk by empty houses that are falling apart, to go to the funeral of yet another old man or woman and watch the usual village drinking-bout. It will be even more difficult for this new generation of the "Chernobyl people" to adapt to modern society than for the elderly majority that today makes up a significant part of the Belarusian electorate.

A special problem which was created by the Chernobyl accident is the growth in crime among administrative-management staff in contaminated areas. Substantial government expenditures that were earmarked for the liquidation of the consequences of the accident were not used for the purpose for which they were allocated. The President of Belarus A. Lukashenko regularly and convincingly talks about this. The harshest statement about widespread violations in the use of the Chernobyl funds was made during the 1996 trip of A. Lukashenko to the Dribin district of the Mogilev region, which was created especially for the people who were resettled from the "dirty" villages. Almost all villages in reality turned out to be unfinished or ransacked. A large part of cleared villages has not been destroyed and buried, houses in good condition and auxiliary buildings were taken apart and sold outside Belarus. In total more than 400 Belarusian villages were cleared and their population resettled. 9 It is difficult to calculate the total amount of resources and property that have been misused. Nevertheless, it is possible to estimate the extent of potential misappropriations: for 12 years the government of Belarus has been spending approximately 20-25% of its budget on the li-quidation of the consequences of the accident.

The Chernobyl accident gave rise to two new types of crime in the areas contaminated by radiation-nomenclature-related, which formed at the time of the accident when the scale of the accident was covered up, and common organised crime. This combination of crime with the continuing background of a degrading social environment, all on a vast territory, can bring about the most destructive impulses. Today the most evident of these impulses may be a large-scale production of narcotics for export or the continuous supply to a "regional criminal market" of penniless poorly educated young people, angry at the entire world and ready to commit any crime.

From all the above, one can conclude that the social environment has rapidly degraded in contaminated areas in the Chernobyl affected regions. The potentially destructive influence of this phenomenon can lead to the emergence of a new source of instability in this region. Belarus has been most affected in social terms by the Chernobyl catastrophe. The challenges of degrading social environment and the related asocial trends are so enormous that Belarus alone cannot meet them.

International large-scale efforts are needed not only to liquidate the consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear accident and to provide adequate health care to radiation- affected people, but also to neutralise social consequences of the catastrophe. Unfortunately, international organisations, the media and science community have not shown a visible interest in addressing social after-effects of this catastrophe.

 

1 Sovetskaya Belorussia, December 22, 1997.

2 Consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe in the Republic of Belarus. National Report. Ministry of Emergency, National Academy of Sciences. Minsk, 1996.

3 Yevgueni Babosov, Chernobylskaya tragedia v ee sotsialnykh izmereniakh, Minsk, 1996.

4 Yevgueni Babosov, Chernobylskaya tragedia v ee sotsialnykh izmereniakh, Minsk, 1996; Yuri Shevtsov in Belorusskaya delovaya gazeta, September- October 1997, see at ; A. Khvezhenko in Belorusskaya delovaya gazeta, September 1997-March 1998, see at .

5 G. S. Kozlov, Chelovecheskoye razvitie, Geopolitika, CEGI, 1997, see at .

6 V. Nesterenko, Radiatsionnaya zashchita naselenia, Minsk, 1997, see at ; V. Nesterenko, Radiatsionnyi monitoring zhitelei i ih productov pitania v Chernobylskoi zone Belarusi, Informatsionnye biulleteni No. 1-8, Pravo i economika, 1997-98, .

7 V. Kondrashenko et al., Psikhicheskie rasstroistva, svyazannye s Chernobylem. Report at the 3d International Congress "World after Chernobyl", Minsk, 1996.

8 The areas most polluted by radioactive substances are those located in the least religious regions of Belarus, where one district has 1-5 poorly visited churches. To compare, in Western Belarus one district has, on average, up to 30 churches of different confessions .

9 Yevgueni Babosov, Chernobylskaya tragedia v ee sotsialnykh izmereniakh, Minsk, 1996.

Опубликовано на Порталусе 04 мая 2014 года

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