The Spectator

From the archives: Chernobyl, as seen from Minsk

It was this week in 1986 that the Soviet Union admitted there was a nuclear accident in Chernobyl. We’ve dug out this fascinating account by Samuel Phipps, who caught in Minsk when the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded. 

A sudden evacuee, Samuel Phipps, The Spectator, 10 May 1986

Minsk
‘You’ll be national heroes when you get back to England,’ said one of our Russian friends in Minsk, as we sat outside the hostel, waiting in the evening sunshine for our fates to be determined. Sure enough, pictures on Friday lunchtime television showed a relieved mother pouring champagne over her relieved Sloane Ranger daughter at Heathrow. In the studio afterwards, the girl somehow got the conversation around to Pepsi-Cola and cucumbers which she had been ‘absolutely craving for months’. It was strange to see how quickly the media latched on to the old clichés. In fact, Minsk had an abundance of Pepsi and cucumbers.

It is true that the first we heard of the Chernobyl disaster was from an embassy telegram on Tuesday afternoon.

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