Tell us more about being a Kyivan *who was there*.
Thanks for your ask, I сertainly will)
I was 8 in 1986. April 26 was a schoolday and, of course, all children not only in Pripyat, but in Kyiv too went to school. It was a usual day, exept for one thing, which I still remember though it was so long ago. In the USSR we had something called “political information lesson”, the lesson where teachers spread their Soviet propaganda to us, and that day after the lecture our teacher asked if we had any questions. Then my classmate asked if she knew there was some kind of accident at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The teacher said, no, she didn’t (I believe she said the truth, it was too early to know). I returned home and told my mom about it, but, of course, we couldn’t understand the importance of this information, so we forgot about it.
Next Monday, April 28, my classmate was not at school and had not returned till October or November, her parents had sent her somewhere as quickly as possible. As I learned later, they were from the KGB (that’s how she knew). And that’s how I know they all knew everything from early on (Gorbachev is a big fat liar).
Then, April 28, was the day they finally said about the “accident” on TV - as if this was not big deal, minor accident, nothing to worry about (it was recreated in Chernobyl HBO). So we still knew nothing and continued to live as if nothing had happened.
I don’t remember anything special about May Day parade - just that I was there.
May 1, 1986, Kyiv, Khreshchatyk. I’m the girl with balloons)
Then, next day, I became ill. It was something like flu, but the cause was clearly radiation. Mom’s friend called from Moscow and he was the first who explained to her about the danger and gave general recommendations (to shut the windows, not let me play outside, clean the flat and take iodine pills). That day I was at home alone, because my mom tried to buy those pills, but it was already almost impossible: somehow everyone became aware and full scale panic soon began.
I recovered in a week, but it was already absolutely impossible to buy a ticket anywhere at all. My mom had good connections, so she finally bought tickets to Uzhhorod, where our relatives lived, but not sooner than May 15. I lived in Uzhhorod till September, but my mom had to return to Kyiv, she had to work.
In 1988 we finally had managed to exchange our flat in Kyiv and moved to Uzhhorod (people could not buy flats in USSR, only exchange them with one another, so it was not very quick process). That winter I started to cough severely (that HBO!Shcherbina’s coughing was so familiar to me), so I think that was very timely move, and after some years I’ve fully recovered. So, we really have gotten off easily.
