ack at Chernobyl, there was a lot of important work to be
e. Both Alexander Vishnevsky and Valentin Litvin acted
liquidators’ during the recovery and clean-up operation.
in helped decontaminate the power plant’s basements,
ere high radiation levels allowed only a few minutes of
osure, and deadly pieces of graphite from the exploded
ctor core fell from the roof above.
he liquidators carried radiation maps and dosimeters to
limit their exposure, but Litvin says they often had to exceed
safety limits to get the job done. Around 600,000 men and
women were involved in the clean-up, which was brave and
dangerous work that ultimately saved much of Europe from
becoming uninhabitable.
One liquidator, helicopter pilot Eduard Korotkov, recalled
circling over the damaged reactor for two hours each day
that summer, then watching football on television at night.
“The World Cup was on,” he revealed in oral history book
Chernobyl Prayer, “so we talked a lot about soccer.”start the evacuation,” says Litvin. “The background radiation level
was already very high. The buses didn’t arrive until noon the following
day, April 27.”
The Soviet Union tried to keep the accident at Chernobyl a secret,
even from its citizens. “The information, apart from being unavailable,
was unbelievable,” continues Litvin. “I, like many others, believed the
reactor simply could not explode.”
The outside world eventually heard about the accident on April 28,
when high radiation levels were detected 800 miles away in Sweden.
The Chernobyl disaster released at least 400 times more radioactive
material than the Hiroshima bomb. A 19-mile exclusion zone was set
up around the plant and the people of Pripyat were never allowed to
return to their homes, with many relocated around 30 miles away to
the town of Slavutych.
Several Pripyat players, including Alexander Vishnevsky, set up a new
club called FC Stroitel Slavutych. Valentin Litvin ended up in Obukhov
and began playing for FC Zarya Vladislavka.
Another evacuated footballer was future Milan and Chelsea striker
Andriy Shevchenko, then a nine-year-old at Dynamo Kiev’s academy.
Kiev was the nearest major city to Chernobyl, so Shevchenko and the
rest of the kids were taken 250 miles south to a training camp on the
Black Sea coast. Despite everything, football continued.
On May 2, less than a week after the accident, Dynamo Kiev played
Atletico Madrid in the European Cup Winners’ Cup final in Lyon. “As
far as the events of Chernobyl go,” Dynamo coach Valeriy Lobanovsky
told the press, “my players were aware of it but not disturbed in their
preparation for the match.” Dynamo, with a side including Soviet stars
Oleg Blokhin, Vasili Rats and Igor Belanov, beat Atletico 3-0.Below Kids from the
Pripyat youth sports
school, who had to be
evacuated and could
never go back home
“THE SUn WAS SHInInG AnD PEOPLE WERE
STROLLInG ALOnG WITH KIDS, UnAWARE
CHERnOBYL HAD EXPERIEnCED THE WORST
ACCIDEnT In nUCLEAR POWER HISTORY”
CHERnOBYL
FC