Chernobyl

For information on the 1986 nuclear plant disaster, see Chernobyl disaster. For all other uses, see Chernobyl (disambiguation).

51°16′N 30°13′E

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

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 abandoned in 1986 due to the Chernobyl 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 the city and the plant were not directly connected. At the time of power plant construction a twin city of the plant, Prypiat was built for power plant workers.

Even though the city is mostly uninhabited,a few people still live there. The occupied houses are not so distinguishable from the rest, and you can see texts on them saying "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 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 is also the Ukrainian word for mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris), which is "chornobyl". -- though no parts of mugwort or wormwood are black. The plants are pale green, and wormwood has a whitish tinge from a fine fuzz on the bottom of its leaves. The "black grass" may refer to the ground being burned prior to cultivation.

On occasion, Chernobyl has been translated controversially to mean simply "wormwood" (which most commonly refers to Artemisia absinthium), with consequent apocalyptic associations, that spread as far as Poland before Serge Schmemann of the New York Times published "Chernobyl Fallout: Apocalyptic Tale", July 26, 1986. The article quoted an unnamed "prominent Russian writer" as claiming the Ukrainian word for wormwood was chernobyl.

In fact, there are tom over 160 kinds of Artemisia, and the terminology is not generally accepted. Some sources refer to Artemisia vulgaris as "common wormwood", while others claim that "common wormwood" is Artemisia absinthium.

Wormwood is a different (but related) plant, Artemisia absinthium, Полин (Polyn). "Polyn" has no English equivalent, but corresponds to the botanical genus Artemisia. Botanically, mugwort is "Common Polyn" (Ukr. Полин звичайний); while wormwood is "Bitter Polyn" (Ukr. Полин гіркий).

Still more confusion comes from the fact that the word "wormwood" is used in the English text of the Apocalypse, whose usage as the name of a plant does not necessarily match that of the original Greek.

Chernobyl bears poetic connotations in folklore, for a number of reasons. Its strong smell is evocative of the steppe, as various species of Artemisia are widespread there—though the town of Chornobyl is in the wooded and swampy Polissia region, quite far from the steppe. Chernobyl roots were used in folk medicine for deworming and to heal neurotic conditions, although an overdose could lead to neurological disorders, including memory loss. In Ukrainian folklore, it is used to banish the mischievous water nymphs called rusalky.

The word "Chernobyl" is also sometimes used as slang to describe certain nuclear installations, as well any grossly oversized or misshapen vegetable or fruit, jokingly implying that radiation affected its growth.

History

Chernobyl first appeared in a charter of 1193 described as a hunting-lodge of knyaz Rostislavich. Some time later, it was taken into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, where it became a crown village. The castle was built for defense against marauding Tatars. In 1566, three years before the Grand Duchy's rule, Ukrainian provinces were transferred to the Kingdom of Poland and Chernobyl was granted in perpetuity to a Captain of the royal cavalry, Filon Kmita, who thereafter styled himself Kmita Czarnobylski. In due course, it passed by marriage to the Sapiehas, and in 1703 to the Chodkiewicz family. It was annexed by the Russian Empire after the Second Partition of Poland in 1793.

Chernobyl had a very rich religious history. The Jewish community, which formed an absolute majority, would probably have been imported by Filon Kmita as agents and arendators (rent farmers) during the Polish campaign of colonization. Later on, they would have included Chasidim as well as Orthodox Jews. The traditionally Eastern Orthodox Ukrainian peasantry of the district was largely forced by Poland to the Greek Catholic (Uniate) 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, who opposed the decrees of the Council of Trent, just as the seventeenth century saw the arrival of a group of Raskolniki, or "Old Believers", from Russia. They all escaped the worst horrors of the Chmielnicki Uprising of 1648-54 (also known as Polish-Cossack War) and those of 1768-9, when one of the rebel leaders, Bondarenko, was caught and brutally executed by Jan Karol Chodkiewicz's hussars.

The Dominican monastery was sequestrated in 1832, the church of the Raskolniki in 1852. Since 1880, Chernobyl has seen many changes of fortune. In 1915, it was occupied by the Germans, and in the ensuing Russian Civil War, was fought over by Bolsheviks, Whites, and Ukrainians. In the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-20, it was taken first by the Polish Army and then by the Red Cavalry of the Red Army. From 1921, it was incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR, and experienced the mass killings of Stalin's collectivisation campaign and Holodomor. The Polish population was deported during the Frontier Clearances of 1936.

In 1898 Chornobyl had a population of 10,759, including 7,189 Jews ([1]). Among Chornobyl Jews, 651 were artisans of whom 419 owned shops, 192 were wage-workers, and 40 were apprentices. The prevailing trade was tailoring, that engaged 165 persons; 167 Jews were journeymen, and 120 were employed in local paper mill. Several cheders, and a Talmud Torah with 45 pupils, were the only educational institutions in Chornobyl. The Jewish community of Chornobyl was killed by the Nazis during the German occupation of 1941-44. Twenty years later, it was chosen as the site of one of the first Soviet nuclear power stations.

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. All permanent residents of Chernobyl and Zone of alienation were evacuated because radiation levels in the area had become unsafe.

See also

• Chernobyl disaster
• Prypiat, Ukraine
• Zone of alienation

Template:On Google Maps*[2]

External links

• 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, Belarussian 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