Lost Places - Chornobyl Zone

The Kyiv area. ChZO (the Chernobyl Zone of Alienation)

The left river bank of Pripyat.

Koshivka, Starosillia, Kryva Gora, Zymovishche, Krasne.

 

1st of June, 2006. After visiting ChNPP we come back to Chornobyl to have dinner, and take a rest. Its hot... Near the hotel of ChII whole "rookery" of local cats. Attempts to "get acquainted" were rejected at one stroke... Local imposing " beasts" contemptuously hissing on us and have left in other place.

Lets go!

We go on the left coast of Pripyat to villages of "Northern track".

Before a check point of "Leliv" we are turned on the right, we move the bridge through Pripyat and we are approached on a check point "Paryshiv". The militiaman with some doubt looks at us and on our admission and unhurriedly goes to open a barrier which is in 50 meters from a post. Our road goes on left, directly the road in the Belarus part of Zone. A very narrow path as a streamlet covered with the asphalt rests.

The first stop - village Koshivka. It is typical woodlands tiny village. On some doors even the rests of the paper seals have remained - "Ministry of Internal Affairs of USSR in Chornobyl district of the Kyiv area". The manor is sealed up...

The following stop village Starosillia.

Lovely silent woodlands... In houses a lot of different wooden utensils, about purpose of which our generation can guess only...

We pass Kryva Gora and we are driven in Zymovishche.

We stop cars and we leave near a local cemetery... Gamma background level nearby 300 mcR/h.

We pass further by village and we get on local MTS – machine-tractor station. A lot of old "Soviet" agricultural machinery – combines, tractors, lorries.

Gamma background up to 500 mcR/h.

 

We pass a railway crossing and after us in a Slavutich direction electric train is rush past, carrying shift of the ChNPP from work home. Interested looks of passengers follow us - probably not often in these places it is possible to meet people.

Here local "natives" - marsh turtles. Leisurely with calmness of Buddha creep over road... One, two, four... Six... How much of them are here! We stop to "get acquainted"... Turtles are very pompous and obvious and barefaced in their behavior snobbery appears. Near road in sand the rests of the turtle egg layings are visible.

We say goodbye for a while to turtles (on the way back we will meet them again - to creep over road is not fast business :) and we drive to village Krasne - an ultimate goal of our trip. Winding on a very narrow path we reach to the centre of village and we go to look the main local sight - wooden church. However, in difference from the burnt down church in Tovstiy Lis, this is a typical enough rural church of the end of XIX, the beginnings of XX-th century. And though on its facade the proud tablet with date "1800 year" hangs it is unconditional cannot concerns the given structure (this moment researchers from R.Omeljashko’s group mark also). It is visible that church recently visited - obviously here in funeral days come the former inhabitants of the village. In a box for donations lies some petty paper money - Ukrainian grivnya and Belarus rubles.

The church has not caused personally in me any emotions and interest, but I have for a long time got stuck at local school - small one - on 4 offices, directly near church. The whole fount of artefacts of the past epoch - albums for drawing with "princesses" and dark blue elephants, writing-books on the Ukrainian language and mathematics, cover with crossings-out by a resolute hand of local teacher. Curriculum for 1986... Textbooks... And school desks!.. Wooden with cut under an inkwell and leaning back covers. I saw such only in old Soviet movies and on pictures where on precisely the same school desk small Volodja Ulyanov sat (for young generation - he is the one who then becomes V.I.Lenin :). Something bewitching is in this preserved, stopped human time in the Zone. The human time. TIME, this, the real one, continues to flow, day is replaced by night, winter – by spring... But at school of village Krasne now and always there will be a spring of 1986...

On woodlands evening softly falls. I sit down on a trunk of the tumbled down tree and I try to be dissolved in this silence and calmness. There at school is spring of 1986, and here in the street... And here in the street there is no time. There is a season - summer... The sun is set down... In my opinion now there will be a rain. That’s all.

ChNPP CR-4< Prev		Next >Alienation zone