I will say at once, I am not a tourist and not a traveller, and far-away distances did not attract me, nor hot exotic countries either. I am a homebody. And for me there must be a weighty reason to set out on the road. And this Chernobyl catastrophe, which happened on 26 April 1986, forced many, including me, to set out with two small children in evacuation to the nearest relatives in Moscow and the Moscow region. To this day I remember this hard time with a shudder.
From 26 April to 1 May there was a terrible heat, degrees toward 30 in Kiev. The younger son was only 3 years old. No information about radiation, among the population there were only talks about how to protect oneself from this misfortune: close the windows, the transoms in apartments and wash the floors every day so that dust would not accumulate in the rooms, and also remove all carpet coverings. I think since then I have had a prejudiced attitude to carpets.
And so I sit in my apartment with two small children of 3 and 5.5 years, having closed all the windows, and do not know what to do. The younger one demandingly yells: “Walk!” And how to explain to him that it is dangerous to walk, that it is better not to walk. The elder son grew up calm and demanded nothing. And of course, thank him! I tried to say that when papa comes from work we will go for a walk. But papa was on duty 12 hours and had signed a pledge not to leave. Then they took such pledges from all men, so that at any moment they could be mobilised to liquidate the consequences.
Already somewhere after the May Day holidays active stirring began among the population about evacuation from Kiev. Each family solved this problem independently. True, schoolchildren were sent to pioneer camps, but with preschoolers it was harder. Mainly mamas or grandmothers could leave with their children, and even then it often ran up against money problems, and also standing in long queues at the ticket offices.
Thanks to my relatives, tickets were bought for me and my children on an extra train to Moscow, and only on 8 May could we leave. It was hard to pack. I did not know what to take with me and for how long we were leaving. I think mama’s own sister, who lived in Moscow, and my own grandmother, who lived in Bolshevo, did not experience great joy from the fact that I was coming to them with two small children and it was still not clear for how long.
I remember very well Kiev station and that terrible moment of boarding the train. My mother-in-law was seeing me off, and when we found ourselves on the platform, such a gathering of people I had seen only in films about the war. For each adult on the platform there were two or more children, prams, things…. To walk along the platform was impossible neither right, nor left, nor forward. How long we stood like that I don’t remember. I held the younger one by the hand the whole time, and my mother-in-law the elder. We waited for the train to be brought up. They brought it late, it was already about 11 in the evening.
On the ticket 16th carriage was marked and …. oh horror! In the train several carriage numbers were missing, including our 16! Everyone in panic, rushing about, the way to the ticket offices is already “closed,” nobody can run there to find out, there is no information on the radio and the train must leave according to the timetable in about 15 minutes. I grab my three-year-old child, approach the nearest carriage, show the conductress the ticket. She naturally does not let me in. I silently lift my child in front of me and “go for a ram.” The conductress turned out to be impenetrable and unshakeable. I say to her: “Let me in! When they hitch our carriage, we’ll move there, but now let me in!” She did not let me.
But the train did not leave according to the timetable either, and after half an hour extra carriages were after all hitched and they loaded everyone, even those who had no ticket. Such a “hare” turned out to be my younger sister (she was already then 23, and my mama decided to send her to Moscow too, if only for a while. And since my mama always does everything unplanned, quickly and “at the last moment,” in this case too they found themselves on the platform before the train’s departure. So my sister travelled on the upper third bunk of a platskart carriage.