You're reading: ‘Babushkas of Chornobyl’ see no reason to leave homes

When U.S. author and documentary maker Holly Morris came to film a story on the new structure that is to cover the ruined reactor No. 4 at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant, she was surprised to see smoke rising from the chimneys of houses in nearby woods.

After the reactor exploded at the Chornobyl plant in 1986, the authorities evacuated 130,000 people from all villages within 30 kilometers of the disaster site. The radioactively contaminated area was dubbed the Exclusion Zone, and officially nobody is supposed to live there.

But as Morris discovered, around 100 elderly women have returned to the zone over the years, the yearning for their homes overriding their fear of radioactivity.

Her documentary, entitled “Babushkas of Chornobyl,” tells the story of three of these woman in particular — Hanna Zavorotnya, Maria Shovkuta and Valentyna Sachenok – who live in the villages of Kupovate, Opachichi, and Teremtsi in the exclusion zone.

While Morris spent a total of just 10 days filming in the Chornobyl zone, she spent almost five years on research for the documentary, tracking down its elderly subjects, and editing the movie. The resulting film, which was released in June 2015 and is to be screened in Kyiv in May, has been nominated for several awards. A schedule of international screenings can be found at www.thebabushkasofchernobyl.com. The film is premiering in Ukraine at the ’86 Film Festival in Slavutych on May 6.

The film has been screened more than 30 times at various festivals in the United States and London, including the Woodstock Film Festival. Morris gave the Ted Talk that had more than a million views.

The elderly women who returned to the zone and live in isolation from the rest of the country, seem to thrive on the camaraderie that has built up among them. Surviving on pensions brought to them by social workers, and some supplies from plant workers or scientists who study the effects of the radiation, the women also grow vegetables and collect mushrooms and berries.

Holly Morris first came to Chernobyl in 2010 to cover the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. (www.thebabushkasofchernobyl.com)

Although radioactive contamination is found throughout the exclusion zone, it is not spread evenly, and some areas are relatively safe. However, the nucleotides from the explosion, some of which will emit radiation for thousands of years, migrate around the soil and in groundwater, as well as building up in vegetation and animal life. So areas that were “clean” after the disaster can become contaminated, and vice versa.

But all of the women say they had to return to the zone because of their deep connection with this land. The worst nuclear accident in the world is just one of the calamities that has struck their lives.

Zavorotnya, 83, was a child when Joseph Stalin unleashed the Holodomor famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933, killing between 2.5 million and 7.5 million Ukrainians by starvation. Less than a decade later, she faced Nazi occupation and, after that, the grim, post-war period.

Even so, the women who came back to their abandoned homes tend to live longer than the villagers who moved away, Morris says.

Heroines gather every year to celebrate an Easter holiday (Yuli Sollsken / www.thebabushkasofchernobyl.com)

 

She puts the babushkas’ longevity down to psychological factors, including avoiding the stress that comes from resettlement. In interviews with people who fled the Chornobyl zone, Morris found out they often face higher levels of anxiety, depression, alcoholism, unemployment and stress from the disruption of their social networks.

“Those who left are worse off now. They’re dying of sadness,” 69-year-old Sachenok says in the documentary. Sachenok was a medical worker when the Chornobyl reactor exploded, and she received a high dose of radiation that affected her health.

Meanwhile, the babushkas of Chornobyl live out their remaining years in a poisoned paradise – the evacuation of the bulk of the human population has unleashed nature in the zone, with animals, birds and vegetation rebounding in the absence of people. Only the disconcerting bleeps of Geiger counters, and fenced and guarded areas indicate the invisible radioactivity in the zone.

Babushkas of Chernobyl

Zavorotnya and other heroines returned to exclusion zone endangering their health. (Yuli Sollsken / www.thebabushkasofchernobyl.com)

 

And when the babushkas are gone, the zone will finally be abandoned, and could remain so for decades and even centuries.

“Now, radiation or not, these women are at the end of their lives,” Morris said. “In the next decade, the zone’s human residents will be gone, and it will revert to a wild, radioactive place, full only of animals and the occasional daring scientist.”