Returning to Pripyat 20 years later
In 2006, 20 years after the accident, there was an opportunity to visit my home again.
I wanted to walk down my native streets again, to see the places where I wandered as a schoolboy with the girls, to see the familiar view from the window of my room...
I took my son, who knew Pripyat from my endless stories. I even wanted to ask my parents for the key to our apartment...
Road.
In the early May morning we approached a convoy of buses that were taking the Chernobyl veterans to Pripyat.
Many residents of Pripyat were already going as usual. It is obvious that they have been there more than once. They brought bags with booze and food.
1987. I'm going on watch to the Chernobyl NPP.
Two decades ago, I also used to fly to Kiev by plane from Odesa, get to the subway station Komsomolskaya (now Chernigovskaya), and a convoy of buses would rush to the north of Kiev region, to Chernobyl.
At that time there was the same blinding May, the apple trees were in bloom, but the work to liquidate the accident was in full swing. Convoys of vehicles were driving to the zone, there were signs "Don't stop - radiation" on the sides of the road, dosimeter checkpoints and vehicle decontamination points were frequently encountered. And it was especially difficult to get used to empty houses along the road, not overgrown yet, not looted, but padlocked by the careful owners...
Buses go fast on the excellent road.
Familiar sights around. Passing Dymer, Ivankov. Life has clearly returned to these places. New mansions are being built around, there is no emptiness anywhere that was 20 years ago.
At the bus station in the district center of Chernobyl, which gave its name to the nuclear power plant, there are more buses than there were before the accident. There are, of course, many buses of pilgrims who came to visit their family graves, but there are also many shuttle buses.
Chernobyl, located 15 km from the plant, is quite inhabited. Numerous organizations serving the zone are located in the evicted houses. Shops are open, people walk down the street in ordinary clothes.
Three huge concrete plants were built near Chernobyl after the accident. Nearby were the loading points from "clean" vehicles to "dirty" mixers. There was one route for these "dirty" concrete carriers: loading point — Sarcophagus.
Somewhere nearby was also our platform for transfer from "clean" buses to "dirty" ones. And there were endless "partisan" tents around, huge lots of different vehicles, helicopter landing sites. All of this was very similar to the front line...
Remains of the concrete loading point.
There's not much left along the road now. There was no trace of the military camps and concrete plants. Soon scrap dealers will take apart these remains as well.
Stele at the entrance to Pripyat.
ChNPP — Komsomol shock construction project. I remember the beating of students hearts when after a three-hour road from Kiev, this sign was seen.
And it means that home soon, mom's pirozhki, meetings with friends, night walks on "Broadway"...
And now you have the same feelings, but at the same time you realize that everything has changed. The hillocks on the right and on the left are buried houses in the Kopachi village, nearest to the plant.
Trees in the forest are too small...
And suddenly you realize that these are young trees that grew on the site of the buried "red forest", and you pass through those places where in 1986 you could only move on an armored personnel carrier...
This is what the red forest looked like in 1986. That's the road we're taking.
Entrance to Pripyat from the side of Novye Shepelichi village.
We loved our city very much. Around the mighty forests of Polesie with a sea of mushrooms. Nearby is Belarus, where we went to "shopping", as they say now.
Winding river Pripyat, where it was so great to sunbathe on the sandy shores. The city was very clean because of the sandy soil. Rainwater was leaving quickly.
Same place after the accident. Photo from the Internet.
So the bus is approaching the railway bridge. Now I will see my city...
View of Pripyat in the early eighties.
The slogan on the right — "In the name of the fatherland, with our own hands, we are building a beloved city on Pripyat".
This is how we first saw the city when we moved from Siberia.
This is how I saw the city coming back from the watch, when in the early 80's I worked at the Chernobyl NPP as a dosimetrist.
This is how I saw it from the Icarus shuttle bus "Kiev-Pripyat"...
Entry into the city. Nature takes its.
I expected to see rows of barbed wire, I expected to see ruins, such as in the pictures of cities after nuclear strike.
But I saw a green reserve where buildings could barely be seen! Nature simply heals the wounds that people have inflicted on her...
City view before the accident.
We got off the bus and along the narrow paths, that used to be the central avenue, we went home...
There were quite a lot of people and cars around, somewhere music was playing, there were quite urban sounds. But all this happened like in a dream, when a nightmare turns familiar places into fantastic landscapes.
Next, I had a date with my home...
Near the home.
This is the view from the roof of my house at 28a Lesya Ukrainka Street, in Pripyat city in 1984...
Our 3rd microdistrict people called "little Chicago" because of the abundance of multi-storey buildings. The first two microdistricts consisted mainly of five-storey buildings.
On the rooftops we, pupils, were sunbathing and preparing for exams. From above, the rooftops with groups of friends, resembled islands in the ocean against a bright sky.
The road to the home went through the forest.
Thick pine needles completely cover the path.
The microdistrict was built in a young pine forest, the trees were left between buildings. Now there is a dense century-old forest around, with pits left by boars. There is no trace of the paths I used to run to school.
Only the bench makes it possible to recognize this place.
Through the thick thickets we enter the yard.
This is what the entrance to our house looked like in the winter of 1985.
Now it is not visible in the thickets, only a children's slide is visible.
The question revolves around: how do all the apartments have open windows?
On the adjacent nine-storey building, the lianas climbed to the roof, crawling into the rooms.
Roof view of our house in 1984.
And that's what the yard looked like in 2006.
1985. I brought my young wife to the roof, to show the places of "battle glory". You can see the slogan on the building: "Let Atom be a worker, not a soldier!"
The coat of arms has remained, and the slogan has already been removed. And the trees have grown ten meters.
From the parents' bedroom you could see the houses with two-storey apartments. Do you see the sixth floor on the left of the house?
The plant is located no more than three kilometers in a straight line. So on April 26 my parents from the bedroom saw a glow from the ruined reactor.
There's our apartment, on the 6th floor!
My son is standing in the same place from which the previous photo was taken.
And this is the view from my room. On the right, the "Jupiter" plant.
Before the accident, the construction of the city KGB building began.
The KGB building is still standing unfinished.
This path leads to Lesya Ukrainka Street, and we go to the city market.
And now we're going home along the same path 20 years later.
Our apartment.
We received an apartment in Pripyat at the end of December 1977. Happy, we celebrated New Year in an empty apartment with only a couple of mattresses and a table with snacks.
This is where I lived my youth. This is where I used to return with thrill from my student wanderings. I even brought a foreign friend from Panama here once.
Here I stand with my young wife among my relatives who came to my parents silver wedding in summer 1985.
And so I stand at my entrance 20 years later. Now I will go in and see what I have seen in my dreams so many times.
All windows are still intact, there have been no evacuations or looters.
Parents take us to the bus station. February 1984.
My son sits in the same place on the wreckage of the furniture that was taken to the burial ground in 1986.
Now even bad photos are priceless, because you can see the familiar corners of Pripyat.
Not much has changed. Only the paint almost climbed. And the light bulbs and elevators are off for some reason : )
And here is our apartment. The door of course is knocked out and the electricity meters are taken off. Welcome back!
1985. My parents silver wedding. We welcome our guests in the hallway near the door.
The same hallway 20 years later. And who needed to take the upholstery off the door? Probably looked - not an armored door? At that time there were still calm times and almost no one had iron doors...
Our cozy living room. The sister schoolgirl is proud of her college-student brother. In the sideboard there are dishes for numerous feasts and souvenirs brought from different trips.
On the table in the living room there are gladioluses grown by my mother at the dacha.
Now only a miraculously preserved stripe of wallpaper reminds of those times.
My parents have masterful hands. My father built a dacha in Siberia, then in Pripyat, and now near Kiev. Mom has a magnificent garden and we always had fresh flowers in summer.
Now all I have to do is drink cognac for those quiet times.
My sister sits on the sofa in the living room.
This piece of sundress is all we could find from clothes left in Pripyat in April 1986.
My friends and I have tea in the living room, sitting on this very couch. There are peacock feathers on the wall. Mom is a veterinarian by education, worked in the Siberian city zoo.
Only this sofa with torn upholstery is left of all furniture.
Well, we looked at the living room, so let's move on.
There were six-meter loggia in the Pripyat nine-story buildings and from the living room you could go into the kitchen.
The surrounding forests of Polesia are famous for their white mushrooms.
Through this loggia "partisans" dumped all things into trucks, when in winter 1986-1987 centralized cleaning of apartments was carried out.
Mom in the kitchen. Makes something delicious for eternally hungry students : )
Someone gently removed all tiles from the wall and unscrewed the plumbing. Probably someone's got it hanging on the wall right now : )
1985. My young wife shows to mother-in-law that she also knows how to wash dishes : )
It's strange but the frosted glass in the kitchen door has been preserved.
Morning. My wife walks into our room. You can see the marks on the platband with my height.
And here only a strip of wallpaper reminds about those times.
And for some reason there's still my piano. Also there was an electric organ "Ionica". My parents took it in the autumn of 1986, when it was allowed to go to Pripyat to pick up things. Now electric organ stands at my house.
And now my son is portraying me in my stormy youth.
Photo from the silver wedding celebration of my parents.
We had a lot of books, they were in several bookcases in different rooms. In autumn 1986, Dad had to make many runs from the sixth floor to the first floor to take them down to the car.
And many acquaintances never visited Pripyat, so their family archives and old books were lost.
Some of the furniture is left in this room.
Uncle Volodya makes a toast. The company is illuminated by the same luminaire from above, which is in the hands of my son in the previous photo.
By the window were mattresses removed from the bed. When trying to move them apart, they just crumbled into a dust like mummies of pharaohs : )
And we also found our doorbell!
Sisters with a neighbor in the hallway near the front door in 1986.
Despite the fact that there are three floors above us (we lived on the sixth floor), the ceiling leaks and the wooden floor in the corridor rots and falls under your feet. Just a little more, and it will be like that with the whole Pripyat.
All we have to do is drink cognac, say goodbye to the apartment and quietly leave...
And now we will meet our favorite places in Pripyat...
Favorite places.
I was a undergrad when the accident happened. That is why I remember Pripyat as a schoolboy and a college student who liked to go out and has little understanding of adult problems.
We were ordinary teenagers of the 80's, walked in the evenings on our Broadway - central avenue, did not miss dancing on the city dance floor, had fun in restaurants and cafes, sometimes fought with "rexes" (builders from dormitories), rode motorboats on the Pripyat river, listening to Boney M and ABBA, Mashina Vremeni (Time Machine) and Yuri Antonov...
Few of these sculptural compositions can still be found in the bushes.
We liked to gather behind the Palace of Culture - there were benches in a hiding place.
At my son's age, we used to gather here.
No trace of the aluminum window frames of the Palace of Culture was left.
Polissya hotel restaurant. My friends musicians were playing there. At that time, students could afford to go to a restaurant.
Everything flows, everything changes...
And this is our main gathering point - cafe Pripyat on the wharf.
There were two halls: a children's cafe closer to us and a bar closer to the wharf. That's where we were "hanging out" (except there was no such word at the time : )
Now it's a popular place for stalkers.
It is difficult to recognize in these ruins the familiar bar counter where we bought cocktails and liqueurs : )
My buddy Andrey in checkered "arithmetic" pants. And carbonated drink that cost 3 kopeks...
I wonder where these vending machines are now? Have they been taken away by scrap dealers or are they standing at someone's "museum"?
In 1980, I was the best man at my friend's wedding. Here we are attaching the traditional doll to the front of the car.
After twenty years, I hardly found his house. Here's the same entrance.
1979. Graduation in our school №2.
The school is the saddest place I saw in today's Pripyat. All things have been taken out of the apartments, so the houses look like just resettled. And schools and shops were left with all the property, which was then trashed by vandals...
And such was the school 25 years ago. Beautiful and modern.
Here are two tenth-grader friends standing by the pool near the school. Flat collars, flared pants, square-toe shoes, colored laces...
Same pool in the Pripyat jungle...
And here is school №3 in the third microdistrict. My sister studied here.
This school is overgrown too, but it's still intact.
Sister first-grader on the doorstep of the school.
And the same entrance in 2006.
Soviet pioneers on the background of happy Soviet childhood in the form of a free swimming pool.
I didn't even come in here, I didn't want to get upset...
We wandered around the abandoned city for a long time and gradually realized that there would be no past, that all this remained only in our memory and in digitized photos...
I don't want to go back to Pripyat anymore, let the extreme seekers and fans of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R game come here. Our city is gradually turning into myths and legends that have nothing to do with the life we lived...
Source:
https://rusakkerman.livejournal.com/
https://rusakkerman.livejournal.com/1293.html
https://rusakkerman.livejournal.com/1765.html
https://rusakkerman.livejournal.com/1939.html
https://rusakkerman.livejournal.com/2109.html
Translation and photo editing by chernobyl_archive