Skip to main content

Revisiting Chernobyl: 'It is a huge cemetery of dreams'

The 1986 nuclear disaster blighted Ukraine and changed the world. Serhii Plokhy, who won the Baillie Gifford prize for his history of the tragedy, returns to the once sought-after Soviet town

‘These buildings are the tombstones of the dreams and lives that were lived here. It’s a huge cemetery of dreams, if not of people.” From the top of an old Soviet apartment block, Serhii Plokhy looks over Pripyat. “On the one hand it looks like a normal city; on the other hand you see windows without glass, streets without people and town squares taken over by forests.” Now the ghost town is used by the Ukrainian army for sniper practice and has also become a tourist attraction.

It’s a far cry from the Pripyat founded in 1970 to support the Soviet Union’s burgeoning nuclear industry. Then, the city had a population of 50,000 and supplied the construction workers and operators for the nearby Chernobyl plant, which opened in 1977. “The nuclear power plant was a major technological innovation at the time,” says Plokhy. “It was the way to go for the entire world, a symbol of the future of humankind.”

Continue reading...

from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2IGXKgL
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tracey Emin decorates Regent's Park and a celebration of Islamic creativity – the week in art

Emin and others survey the state of sculpture, Glenn Brown takes his decadent imagination to Newcastle and artists offer northern exposure – all in your weekly dispatch Frieze Sculpture Park Tracey Emin, Barry Flanagan and John Baldessari are among the artists decorating Regent’s Park with a free survey of the state of sculpture. • Regent’s Park, London , 4 July until 7 October. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2IDCpPV
Post a Comment
Read more

When Brooklyn was queer: telling the story of the borough's LGBTQ past

In a new book, Hugh Ryan explores the untold history of queer life in Brooklyn from the 1850s forward, revealing some unlikely truths For five years Hugh Ryan has been hunting queer ghosts through the streets of Brooklyn, amid the racks of New York’s public libraries, among its court records and yellow newspaper clippings to build a picture of their lost world. The result is When Brooklyn Was Queer, a funny, tender and disturbing history of LGBTQ life that starts in an era, the 1850s, when those letters meant nothing and ends before the Stonewall riots started the modern era of gay politics. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2H9Zexs
Post a Comment
Read more