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| Irina Malenko |
…They are the people who are not known in the West. They are the people who are barely known in Russia itself. Yet, they are the people to whom so many of us – the entire Europe, to be frankly – are obliged our very lives. The people who tried to save the world from the Chernobyl’s disaster – and are still paying by their own lives for it.
In Russia we call them "likvidatory" – the Terminators. Their numbers are not exactly known. People recon that there should be around 300,000 of them left alive by now. The age they can reach in life, is seldom over 40. Some of them were serving in the army 14 years ago when they were sent "to terminate" the fire and the nuclear leaks at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant – they were not even told where they were going to, on many occasions. The others went voluntarily – because they wanted to help. Because they cared. They didn’t realize at the time that, just as Arni Schwartznegger’s Terminator in part 2, they will be slowly melting in fire – incurable fire of the nuclear diseases – for the very short rest of their lives… The Russian attitude towards life in general is; "Well, that just needs to be done, and somebody has to do it. So, I went and did it. Why me, you ask? And why should it be somebody else?"
Back in my native region alone there were 2650 people who were sent to Chernobyl in 1986. Most of them were miners, most of the miners went there voluntarily.
"I spent there 2 weeks under the damaged reactor," – says Vladimir Ustenkov. "We, 'guerillas', as the conscripts were called then, were brought there with weapons, so that it would look like the war time emergency. In 10 days 27 helicopter crews were "burnt" by the radiation. In Tula region alone over 2600 people have the Terminator’s status. Including retired officers, 1650 of them are now officially registered as disabled."
It seems only reasonable that the State would take care of its heroes – those who didn’t spare their health or even their lives for the sake of all the rest of us. And so the State did. But that was the Soviet state. The contemporary "free" and also "democratic" Russia doesn’t give a damn neither about its children, women and pensioners nor about disabled – even those disabled who became like that for this country’s sake.
The law about the social protection of the Terminators was a reality for them just for over a year – from 1991. According to one of Tula Terminators, the consequences of the tragedy have only become visible 4 or 5 years after the dangerous work: in Tula region alone 260 of them have died already, all younger than 40 years of age. But there were also those who decided to commit suicide: they couldn’t cope with sufferings, both emotional and physical, anymore. The most well know was the tragical story of the Ukrainian Terminator Vladimir Sergienko who was so tired of living in poverty (most of the Terminators are now too ill to work – and yet, they have families to feed!) that he took a hand grenade and went with it to the local social benefits office. He was demanding 50.000 dollars so that his family could live normally when he will be gone. When he was refused it, he blown himself up…
What is the daily reality like for these people? The answer can be found easily in the very fact that last year – another fact that is not known in the West!- Tula’s Terminators went on hunger strike. One of them, 45 year old Nikolay Savelyev, died after a few days. His death was virtually unnoticed even by the Russian media.
The reason for this first hunger strike among the Russian Terminators was the Government’s decision to diminish drastically their disabled pensions. Most of them, according the new legislation, would receive not more than 500 rubles (35 rubles are approximately 1 pound) per month. More than that, even in order to get these 500, they would need to bring in a medical statement confirming that the sickness that they have is caused by Chernobyl’s radiation, or a document that this person 14 years ago was working in "zone 3" (the most dangerous one). But, as by a miracle, all the documents about it have "disappeared" from the archives of the Russian Genshtab… The benefits were fully left only for those who was working in Chernobyl directly in 1986 – like if the situation there has improved so drastically that it wasn’t dangerous anymore to go there in 1987 or in 1989…
"We had no other choice, but to begin the hunger strike,"- says the Chairman of the local branch of the organization "Soyuz-Chernobyl" Vladimir Naumov, who went on hunger strike together with his comrades. He told the journalists how the Terminators have tried to address the Ministry of Labor about this issue – not just themselves, but also with the help of the Tula’s region administration, including its head, Vassily Starodubtsev. But the Ministry wasn’t prepared to listen to "the voices from below". More than that, according to Naumov, the civil servants of the Ministry have started a campaign of lies about the new legislation in the media in order to fool the public opinion. "They were calling out all kinds of fantastic amounts of money that we were supposedly receiving – these numbers were purely mythical!" Especially angry were the Terminators when they heard the Minister Valentina Matvienko herself from TV screen saying that they are getting "up to 530.000 rubles per month"! In fact, only one Terminator in Tula region is receiving 19,600 rubles. The rest are getting much less – and after "the reforms" they would be receiving up to 2-7 times less than what they were getting before… For example, in the town of Yasnogorsk where 18 out of 32 Terminators are disabled now, only 6 of them would keep their benefits at the previous level. 12 of them would be getting less money: for example, Aleksey Dyachenko – 599,58 rubles instead of 4362,28; Aleksandr Kovarskih was getting 2290,41, and Victor Selishchev-2042,94 rubles – and now both of them would be getting just 467,54 …
In general, the Russian State will "economize" in Yasnogorsk alone 58,4% of the money that were supposed to go to the Terminators and their families! 1/3 of Tula Terminators will "save" the budget around 500.000 rubles per month. The most affected are the ex-soldiers who were working in Chernobyl from 1987. Legally, there is nothing they can do against the authorities because this new legislation is based on a new Russian law called "About Social Protection of the Citizens Affected by Radiation as a Result of Chernobyl Power Plant Disaster"…
The first hunger strike has begun 23rd of August last year and has lasted for 10 days. 185 Terminators have taken part in it in Tula city, and in the whole region – over 200 disabled "Chernobyl veterans" in region’s 5 main cities have joined them . The hunger strike then spread over from Tula to the other regions: Lipetsk and Sverdlovsk. The Terminators of Ryazan, Kaluga, Volgograd, Rostov, Stavropol, Belgorod and Nalchik have declared that they are prepared to support them and to join too. The telegrams of solidarity were received from the Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova. Over 30 of the hunger strike’s participants were hospitalized in Tula alone, one of them died.
The minister Kalashnikov (not related in any way to Russia’s pride Mikhail Kalashnikov!) came to see them on the 11th day. The hunger strike was taking place in the office of the mentioned here "Soyuz-Chernobyl". The minister was forced to speak to the hungering heroes, sitting at an old mattress on the floor : most of them were so weak that they couldn’t even sit anymore…. But still strong enough to express their outrage at their treatment by the Russian bureaucrats!
"I don’t accept the blackmailing!" – was the minister’s cynical response. "Our whole country has the right to go on hunger strike. It depends solely on us, if we will go the schizophrenic way of the all-Russia hunger strike or will decide on issues the civilized way." But what exactly didn’t let him to "decide on issues the civilized way" in the first place, before the hunger strike began? Maybe the reminder of the fact that another decision of the Russian Government back in December 1997 has taken "the Chernobyl bonus", as they bitterly call it, away from the inhabitants of over 700 towns and villages in Tula region alone – by declaring them "safe" while they weren’t? At the moment the Government is preparing another document that will deprive of this "bonus for the dead men walking" ALL the inhabitants of the affected areas of the Tula region (except for Plavsk area where the authorities were purposely artificially "discharging" the clouds coming from Chernobyl area into direction of Moscow)…
The first hunger strike has ended "in compromise": the legislation was temporarily halted" until "further clarification of the disputable moments" in it. But it wasn’t abolished. The name of Nikolay Savelyev who died in Tula, was forgotten. "Maybe he would have died anyway!" – people were saying.
…And now, a year and a few months later – a new tragedy. The price of the minister’s "compromise". 80 disabled Terminators of Shakhtinsk in Rostov-on-Don region have begun their hunger strike already 3 months ago, but it went virtually unreported in the media. Until the death of the 50 years old Pyotr Lyubchenko who died on hunger strike while waiting for the ambulance. The doctors couldn’t come because they didn’t have petrol…
Rostov-on-Don region in Southern Russia is taking second place in the country by the numbers of Terminators (mainly miners) living here. There are more than 6000 of them here. Not counting those 2000 who, in 14 years since the Chernobyl disaster, .have already died… At the moment hundreds and hundreds of those who are still alive, are on hunger strike. According to its participants, this will be the biggest hunger strike in Russia in recent years. The numbers of those who are ready to join in Ukraine, can not be counted even by their main organization- "All Ukraine Soyuz Chernobyl".
In Rostov itself, the Terminators are hungering in the building that was, ironically enough, given to them as the place for the museum of their memory.
The folding beds of the hunger strikers are standing within the walls decorated with photographs of the events of 1986. The ambulance is arriving to this building several times per day – the condition of most of the strikers is very poor. The doctors have forbidden the majority of them to participate, but they still continue…
This is the only protest they can do against their miserable existence – they can’t even call it "life". The pensions that they are receiving, aren’t enough even for their medications; most of them can’t do any work. "There are just 300.000 of us in the whole country – and most of us will not even make it to their 50s. All we want, is for them to give us a decent last couple of years of our lives, and to take care of our families", according to one of the strikers in Rostov.
The Terminators are on hunger strike in other regions too – for example, in Karachaevo-Cherkessia in Northern Caucasus. Here since 1998 the local administration owes them over 9 millions rubles in benefits that were never paid. The Terminators have declared that this time they will go to the bitter end and are giving their medals received for Chernobyl back to the State….
"…How long shall they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look?",- are the lines of the famous Bob Marley’s Redemption Song – one of those songs that are truly universal. How long? Probably very long… What I am trying to do by this article, is to make people here aware of what is happening to those to whom we all – not just Russians, but fellow Europeans as well - should be so grateful. Because the world doesn’t know. Amazing amount of work is being done in Europe for our "Chernobyl Children" – I am myself involved in one of the charities bringing Byelorussian kids every summer to Ireland and I know all the kind-heartiness and generosity of the people who are doing this work.. "All the best to the children" was the motto of our Soviet State too. But what about the adults? Will we just let them die – because " they would have died anyway"?
The Russian Terminators do not want the charity – when the only Western journalist who wrote about it, Jean-Pierre Tiboda from the French "Liberation" came to Tula to meet them, he found that these very weak physically people are still full of the desire and the hope to work. "We do not need humanitarian help", these proud people have told him: "We hope to get work as we heard that Renault will build a factory in Tula. But nobody wants to hire the disabled. They only remember about us during the elections – all of them, communists, fascists, and democrats… All the same. But we are not hoping on them. We are trying to help ourselves."!
At the same time when the Russian Government does not have the money for these slowly and painfully dying men who saved so many lives, apparently it does have the money for sending over a 100 of "the most successful" rich Russians – bankers, businessmen and politicians, including 2 ex-prime ministers (we’ve had so many of them hat we can already start exporting them!) – to Dublin, for a specially organized during the Sunday and the Monday 22-23/10 at the request of the Russian Lower Parliament Chamber, the State Duma "2 day conference about transmission of the Russian economy towards the free market model". This wasn’t even an international conference as the only Irish prominent person to speak there, was the Tanaiste Mary Harney to invite whom to Moscow would have been a much cheaper option than to bring over a hundred of Russian "fat cats" to Dublin -one of the most expensive European capitals, to rent the facilities and the catering for this conference and to let these people to stay in the most expensive hotels here! But nobody here in Ireland even seems to be asking questions on why these Russians have decided to have this nice little cozy weekend in Dublin paid by the taxpayers money! It seems that as long as the Irish organizers do get this money from them for providing these facilities, they simply don’t care where it comes from: "money doesn’t smell" as the Russian proverb says…
Russian "democracy" is a funny thing: I wouldn’t be surprised if the next time our Parliament will decide to go all together for the next session in Bahamas – and to let the State to pay the bill. But is the Irish democracy very different? Until I will hear the Irish people starting asking loudly the questions about why are the Irish authorities providing these facilities to those Russian officials who are allowing our Chernobyl Heroes to die slowly and painfully on hunger strike – the very same officials who drove them into such despair that they are prepared to die – I will not think so.
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