Contemporary history; Ukraine, Soviet Union, Chernobyl; nuclear explosion

Abstract

This essay is an interpretation of the memory associated with the effects caused by the nuclear accident in Chernobyl in 1986, which was classified as the most devastating in history. From the accounts contained in the work Voices from Chernobyl, written by Svetlana Alexievich, the disenchantment of a science that had promised well-being was first approached by the development of the civil use of atomic energy; second, the inevitable change in the life of a society stunned by the dantesque impact of an unparalleled explosion; third, the persistence of authoritarian structures, intent on concealing and deceiving people about what happened; and fourth, the cost of heroism embodied in firemen, liquidators, and soldiers who gave their lives to avoid greater misfortune; and the cries of the innocent, suffering in the face of adversity, understood only within the immediate family. Finally, the existential dilemmas expressed by the witnesses of the Ukrainian disaster, which was a prelude to the debacle of the Soviet Union, an agonizing empire as it progressed in the 1980s, are outlined.