THE CHERNOBYL EXCLUSION ZONE... IN BELARUS!
06/05/2022
For a few years now, visiting the Chernobyl exclusion zone has become a dream for many urbexers. The zone is a military administrated territory created a day after the Chernobyl accident on the 27th of April, 1986. It actually covers Ukraine and Belarus over a total of 2600km², as the powerplant is located at the border with Belarus.
As I was in Belarus, I've contacted Peter Philon (@peter_philon), a pionner of urbex tourism in his country whose work I've known online before. Peter delt with the permission documents and proposed a 3-days tour including a day in a part of the zone that was opened to tourists for the very first time - which means Peter also didn't know what we were gonna find there!...
I a night train from Minsk to Gomel - which are very comfortable and affordable - and waited for Peter at the train station of Gomel with another tourist. Peter came with two soldiers in a military van, which would be our company and vehicle for the three coming days.
The zone is divided into the 10-Kilometer radius and the 30-Kilometer radius areas from the powerplant, both guarded by military checkpoints. The zone prevents humans from the radioactivity damages and is also a natural reserve called the "Palieski State radioecological reserve". A friend from Mogilev, a city located more than 200km upper north, explained me that she and her family had to undergo regular x-ray check ups as they're in a wider zone that is still considered as at risk regarding the radiation exposure.
Belarus and Ukraine were mostly agrarian, so the zones mostly are as well. The Belarusian zone covers 95 abandoned villages and only one city known as Sunnytown, a smaller Prypiat (major city of the Ukrainian zone) that we didn't get the chance to visit. We first visited a seed and hay factory and a pig farm, as breeding pig was a common agrarian activity.
The signs in this factory were written in Belarussian (the letter "i" doesn't exist in Russian). It is a bit surprising considering Russian is now the most widespread language in Belarus and maintains the Russian influence over the country.
Tragically, the Chernobyl disaster happened a few days before the International Workers' Day which was a significant celebration in USSR. The 1st of May was still celebrated in the scools since the evacuation started a few weeks after the accident. In a village, a sign shows "Happy 1st of May!".
We then hop on our van again and visited a city hall.
In post-Soviet countries, world war 2 is known as the "Great Patriotic war". Just like Western countries, the post-war narrative was a major element of the narrative of USSR. Monuments to commemorate the war in the zone are very well-maintained. In the city hall, I've also found a postcard with a USSR stamp and the picture of a solider who died during the war printed at the back.
We then visited a theater of a bigger village.
There was a small harbour on our way to visit a secondary school.
In a supermarket, a sign mentioning the quantities in kilograms of food products (bread, cereals...) allowed by person, shows that people had to ration.
On the second day of the tour Peter gave us a ride around Gomel with a Lada he purchased for his customers. Lada was the most popular brand of car in USSR and is still today a public owned Russian company.
On the car, we also checked Peter's Atlas of USSR dating back from the 1960s. The famous Pripyat wasn't on the map since it was built in the 1970s for the workers of the power plant which opened in 1977.
Outside of the zone, we also passed by several monuments commemorating the deads of Chernobyl.
Many builings around the zone also got abandoned after the collapse of USSR. In the middle of a small forest, we found an abandoned summer camp of the Komsomol with typical Soviet murals.
Some villages around the zone also were abandoned after the disaster. Some remains of them can be found in the forests such as this hammer and sickle sculpture and the chimney of a sugar factory.
On the third day we went back to the zone to visit the part that was never opened to tourists before... I was honestly surprised that most of the items and settings were untouched in the area we'd already visited. It's even truer in the area we visited the first and we made very exclusive discoveries.
We found the calender below inside a house and it still contains the page from the date of the accident. It's honestly one of the most impressive item I've ever found while urbexing.
Most of the historical items in the already opened areas have actually been stolen. Peter actually decided to hide it in the house to be able to show it to his next clients.
In this school we also found an edition of the newspaper Комсомольская правда, literally translating into "Pravda of the Komsomol". Pravda was a Soviet newspaper founded by Lenin and edited by the Communist Party. The newspaper edited by the Komsomol was named after the Pravda. This edition was released on the 15th of April, 1986, eleven days before the accident.
One of the escorting soldier grew up in one of the village of this area and guided us to his school where he remembered being a bad student. We followed him across the long grass and he showed us the cinema where the village used to gather.
We also visited houses including his teacher's one, that he recalled to be a very nice person. The soldier then showed us the house where he grew up. In the storeroom of his house was the following coffer. He explained that those were common in USSR to store jars, especially since food storage was most likely to happen. I've also seen many jars cellars in rural parts of Georgia so it seems that the jars storage culture is still something in post-USSR countries.
Another stunning discovery was a Soviet passport dating from 1961, way back from the Chernobyl disaster.
We ended the day by leaving the zone and sitting along the quiet Pripyat river. I recall this significant moment - when the soldier sat and started eating an apple that he grabbed from the apple tree from his former house, and added: "It's mine.".
