The author in front of the Chernobyl location sign. Photo used with permission.

By Ihor Krychuk 

This story is part of a series of essays written by Ukrainian artists entitled “Regained Culture: Ukrainian voices curate Ukrainian culture.” This series is produced in collaboration with the Folkowisko Association/Rozstaje.art, thanks to co-financing by the governments of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia through a grant by the International Visegrad Fund. The mission of the fund is to advance ideas for sustainable regional cooperation in Central Europe. It has been translated from Ukrainian by Iryna Tiper and Filip Noubel.

April 26, 1986, marked the date of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, which Soviet authorities tried to silence. But folklore exploded in that information vacuum with folk poems, anecdotes, and fables. I had to hear a lot of them: I lived in Kyiv for the entire year of 1986. My mother, Oleksandra Yaroshchuk, worked in Chernobyl, and her friends often visited our house. Later, I met Maria Dotsenko, the chief architect of Pripyat, where the nuclear power plant personnel lived. I also met Viktor Bryukhanov, the former director of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, who served prison time for “criminal negligence.” 

Nowadays, as the Russian-Ukrainian war continues, brochures for paramedics contain this advice: “More jokes to relieve tension.” After the Chernobyl accident, people also understood how laughter can heal trauma and circulated poems and anecdotes:

I know the Ukrainian nation:

We don't give a damn about radiation.

There's vodka, beer and crayfish:

Radiation is a pain in the ass!

Witty people played around with the harmful effects of radiation on male potency: “If something’s wrong with your dick, contact the IAEA! (the International Atomic Energy Agency).” 

The Chernobyl disaster accelerated the collapse of the USSR. There is a famous joke made by dissidents about the crowded May Day celebration on May 1, 1986, organized by the Communists in Kyiv:

‘Do Kyivans participate in the May Day celebrations?’

‘Yes! Very actively. In the stands and in the columns — radioactive Kyivans! The streets energetically radiate love for the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.’

The strange pine shaped into a trident (one of Ukraine’s national symbols), which the liquidators saw in the Red Forest around Chernobyl, was carved into the nation’s soul. It is also the place where, 36 years later, Russian occupiers would dig trenches. Back then, the tree with its unusual shape was perceived as a promise of Ukraine’s independence.

People saw the scale of the catastrophe: liquidators — the civil and military personnel tasked with cleaning up after the disaster — became affected by radiation, died, and were evacuated; this became common. The accident inspired an outbreak of apocalyptic awareness: A new interpretation of the prophecy about the deadly “Star of Wormwood” from the “Apocalypse of John” began spreading as having been a warning about the Chernobyl accident, because “Chernobyl” is the Ukrainian name for the herb wormwood.

Ukrainians remembered the fresco “Angel Rolls Up the Sky in a Scroll,” which marks the end of the world, from the 12th-century St. Cyril's Church in Kyiv. The concept of “black pain” (“cherno” means “black”) is mentioned in its prayers. A new type of religious icon appeared: the “Chernobyl Savior,” featuring, next to Christ, a pine trident, the Wormwood Star, and the liquidators — martyrs.

Painting by Vasyl Skopych. Photo by Ihor Krychuk. Used with permission.

On one such type of icon, the painter Vasyl Skopych depicted Leonid Telyatnikov, the commander of the fire department that was the first to arrive to extinguish the reactor. Telyatnikov is portrayed as a giant in the guise of Saint George, who casts down a dragon. It climbs out of the broken wall of a nuclear power plant, but instead of a spear, the snake charmer holds a fire hose.

Another tribute to modern mythology is the church “Memory of the Victims of Chernobyl” in Kyiv on Tatarka Street, built in the 21st century (between 1991 and 2011) by architect Mykola Zharikov. Its structure is made of a massive concrete box that resembles the contours of the sarcophagus above Unit No. 4 of  Chernobyl’s nuclear power station. 

In the last years of the USSR, during the late 1980s, the idea of Ukraine’s independence matured, so people started joking about the concept of statehood. One such joke talks about a state whose capital is Chernobyl, and that goes by the name of “Pomyraniya” (from the word “to die,” consonant with “Pomerania”). It possesses all the attributes of independence, including an anthem based on the Chilean protest song “Venceremos,” which declares: “We will not be defeated!” The joke here relies on a play between “Venceremos” and the Ukrainian “Не всеремось” — “Ne vseremos,” which translates as  “We won’t shit ourselves!” — a comic expression of resilience under pressure, mocking the solemnity of anthems and slogans.

The birth of new mythical creatures

The accident near Kyiv, in ancient Polesia, appeared to be a deliberate crime against the Ukrainian people, like the Holodomor from the early 1930s. Thus, Chernobyl became a factor in the struggle for Ukrainian identity. The land of Polesia, where the Chernobyl nuclear power station was built, is an area of ​​settlement of Ukrainians, where numerous ancient beliefs have been preserved. Since 1994, ethnographic expeditions have explored the region, collecting towels, icons, fishing gear, ceramics that display an archaic consciousness, and rituals evoking paganism.

One of the most famous places there is called the “Bridge of Death.” It is located three kilometers from the Chernobyl power station. On the night of April 26, 1986, people watched the fire at the station from a distance, but inhaled large doses of radiation and later died.

There are also popular stories about “radioactive puddles” that glowed at night, tales of “elephant's feet” — masses of solidified lava from the reactor that were deadly to anyone who approached them — and legends of an artificial cooling pond that is home to a giant, mutant catfish. There are stories about werewolves in the Red Forest and ghostly people in gas masks appearing in the abandoned city of Pripyat. In these tales of anomalous phenomena, one can recognize the proto-Slavic spirits and demons described by ethnographers Oleksandr Geishtor or Volodymyr Hnatyuk.

One of the most common themes is stories about creatures that supposedly emerged because of radiation exposure. The basis for such tales is partly Hollywood movies, but also the work of Maria Prymachenko (1909–1997), a famous representative of naive painting. She lived 50 km from the nuclear power station in the village of Bolotnya. Maria's drawings are bizarre: a sunny lion-flower with a human face, anthropomorphic birds, and never-before-seen animals. The artist depicted them brightly and childishly, but she was not afraid to evoke difficult social topics. She painted several works in memory of Valery Khodemchuk, the operator of the Chernobyl power station, who was also her relative, and one of the first to die in the radioactive flame. 

This series of two videos provides an introduction to Prymancheko's art:

Instead of titles for her paintings, Prymachenko wrote lengthy, emotional captions: “This bird is flying, looking for her husband, but he is nowhere to be found …” There is no longer a local history museum in the town of Ivankiv, where 14 paintings by Primachenko used to hang; the Russians destroyed it with a rocket in February 2002. Regardless, her works were pulled out of the ruins by her fellow countrymen, and in September 2022, an exhibition entitled “Rescued” was organized in Kyiv, and I was lucky enough to see it.

Recently, a mystical headline circulated in the Ukrainian media: “Maria Prymachenko Donated $500,000 to the Armed Forces of Ukraine from the Other World.” The money was raised through the sale of her painting “Flowers Grew Near Unit Four” (1990) and transferred to the army.

Chernobyl folklore, both ancient and modern, is being reinterpreted by Ukrainian art. Poems, oratorios, and songs have been written about various aspects of the Chernobyl tragedy. Folk craftsmen make ceramics and amulets. The Onuka music group has a track, “ARKA,” dedicated to the construction of a safe confinement sarcophagus. The group’s soloist, Nata Zhyzhchenko, has traveled through the exclusion zone more than once and sung there.

“Chernobyl is my kingdom,” Nata says. “I would even like to have a wedding there.” Historical and cultural memory does not want any kind of “exclusion zone.” Because 10,000 years of radioactivity is too long and timeless.

Immediately after the accident, sensitive philosophers described  Chernobyl as a mental “end of the world”: the collapse of ideas of progress, media, time, and space. However, the birth of art, folklore, legends, tales, songs, and material artifacts that arose in the context of the Chernobyl disaster shows that culture can sprout even in ruins.

In Chernobyl, the nation has been baptized by radioactive flames, and the deep roots of national consciousness have emerged. The folklore of the atomic era combines opposites: The apocalyptic fear of God and pagan memory, horror and beauty, humor, sarcasm, and hope. It helps to heal the trauma of the disaster, as the terrible becomes sublimated, turns into pathos. Folk art seems to add yet another aspect to the perception of one of humanity’s most memorable events: the Chernobyl disaster.