“THE 1986 WORLD CUP WAS On, SO
PEOPLE TALKED A LOT ABOUT SOCCER.
In THE AFTERMATH OF THE DISASTER,
FOOTBALL WAS THE OnLY COMFORT”
In 1978, after graduating from school, Litvin began working as an
engineer at Chernobyl. Like most Pripyat players, he was paid a small
football allowance – two roubles and 50 kopecks (worth about £3.25
today) for district games and five roubles (£6.50) for regional matches- on top of his power plant wage. But some of his team-mates were
ringers, brought in from around the region specifically to play football.
“These were called ‘snowdrops’,” says Litvin. They were named this
because, like the flowers, they arrived late in winter. “They received
salaries from the power plant and were listed on the payroll, but they
didn’t do any work.”
Backed by the power plant, and with snowdrops among their ranks,
Pripyat pushed for promotion to the professional fourth tier. In 1981,
they appointed former USSR striker Anatoliy Shepel, a league and cup
winner with Dynamo Kiev, as manager. “That was the moment when
our team began to take shape,” says Litvin, who became the captain.
Pripyat, playing in white shirts and blue shorts, won the regional cup
competition in 1981, 1982 and 1983, but struggled in the league and
remained stuck in the fifth tier.
In 1986, the club built a new ground, the Avangard Stadium, with
better facilities, floodlights and a large covered stand. Once finished,
it would hold 11,000 fans. At the time, the authorities were planning
to build a fifth reactor at Chernobyl. “The stadium is as important for
the city as the reactor,” stated Vasily Kizima. The ground was due to
officially open on May 1, 1986 but before that, Pripyat were scheduled
to play a cup semi-final against Borodyanka on April 26.
At 1.23am that morning, Chernobyl’s No.4 nuclear reactor exploded.
People in Pripyat saw a flash and heard a bang. A raging fire could be
seen through the darkness, and firefighters were dispatched.
This was not the first incident at Chernobyl (a partial core meltdown
had occurred in 1982) and it was assumed that it would soon be over.
The locals stood outside to watch the fire as ash dropped from the sky.
After sunrise, with the fire dampened, residents got on with their lives.
They went shopping, made preparations for the May Day parade, and
headed to the football ground for the big match.
Valentin Litvin had spent the night with family in Yampol, several
miles away. His wife was in hospital in Pripyat due to complications
following the birth of their second child, and the family was looking
after the baby. He returned to Pripyat for training at 9am and was
stopped by police at the entrance to the town. “I asked them what
had happened, but they didn’t know anything,” he says. “So I crossed
the bridge and went to the stadium.”
The sun was shining, and Litvin recalls seeing people strolling past
with their children. A street vendor was selling vegetables. They were
unaware Chernobyl had experienced the worst accident in the history
of nuclear power. The only real indication that something was wrong
was the sight of slow-moving vehicles from the plant, spraying roads
with decontaminant. Pripyat would not be evacuated for 36 hours.
At the stadium, Litvin met the other players and coaches, who told
him Borodyanka’s squad had been stopped well outside of Chernobyl.
So Litvin went to the team headquarters to find out if the match was
off. The headquarters were located in a nine-story tower block. Shortly
after he got there, one of the coaches turned up and told Litvin about
the helicopter landing on the pitch, and Litvin went up onto the roof.
“I could see the nuclear power plant,” he says, “and the smoke rising
above the ruins of Reactor No.4.”
Litvin’s thoughts switched from football to his wife. He rushed over
to the hospital, where she told him what had happened the previous
night. “Of course, she had not seen everything,” he explains. “There
was noise, fuss, doctors running across the building looking for infusion
sets, which they were short of, and victims arriving one after another.”
His wife couldn’t be discharged, so “we had to stage an escape” and
Litvin helped her climb out through a ground floor window. “We saw
patients from the hospital standing on a hill, where they had a good
view of the plant and could watch as helicopters dropped materials
into the destroyed reactor.”
The pair left Pripyat on a motorcycle, passing long queues of empty
buses. “They were waiting for the command to come into town andLeft and below Pripyat
face Ros Bila Tserkva in
1985, months before
disaster struck Far left
The Avangard Stadium
now looks more forest
than football ground
Above right Ex-Pripyat
captain, Valentin LitvinFourFourTwo September 2019 51CHERn OBYL
FC