Category: Eastern Europe

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Fukushima and the Right NOT to Return: Nuclear Displacement in a System for “Hometown Recovery”

Dr Liz Maly, Assistant Professor in the International Research institute of Disaster Science (IRIDeS), Tohoku University On March 11, 2011, the 9.0 magnitude Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE) unleashed a massive tsunami devastating over 500 square kilometers of Japan’s northeast Tohoku coast. This region has experienced tsunamis every 30-40 years, but the size and impact … Continue reading Fukushima and the Right NOT to Return: Nuclear Displacement in a System for “Hometown Recovery”

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The ‘uncanny’ in Fukushima’s nuclear aftermath: anxiety-provoking attachment to home

Yohei Koyama, doctoral researcher in the Department of Languages and Cultures of Japan and Korea, SOAS, University of London, UK. “I’m afraid to say it, but we love Chernobyl. It’s become the meaning of our lives. The meaning of our suffering” (Alexievich 1997, 215), says Natalya Roslova. She is one of the voices in Svetlana Alexievich’s … Continue reading The ‘uncanny’ in Fukushima’s nuclear aftermath: anxiety-provoking attachment to home

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Chernobyl and Stalker: ‘Splinters of the Soviet Empire’

Dr Nick Rush-Cooper, Teaching Fellow in the Department of Geography, University of Durham, UK.   We are in pitch darkness. Maxim, the lead tour guide, leads the group of visitors from the front and takes us down a short corridor within the ruins of ‘Energetik’; the cultural centre of Pripyat, the town built to house the … Continue reading Chernobyl and Stalker: ‘Splinters of the Soviet Empire’

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Poetry from Chernobyl

Professor Sarah Phillips, Professor of Anthropology, Director of Russian and East European Institute, Anthropology Department, Indiana University   Professor Sarah Phillips has published several academic articles about Chernobyl, including research on post-Chernobyl food practices and ‘Chernobyl’s Sixth Sense‘.  She has also published two Samotosphere articles on nuclear issues, one reflecting on the 25th anniversary of Chernobyl … Continue reading Poetry from Chernobyl

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The Berdichev Leather Factory in the Wake of the Chernobyl Accident

Professor Kate Brown, Professor of History, Department of History, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), USA This sentence in a document sent to Kiev a few months after the Chernobyl accident could read as criminal: “In the month of May [1986], the meat factories of Zhitomir, Korosten’, and Novograd-Volynsk processed livestock received from the 30-km zone … Continue reading The Berdichev Leather Factory in the Wake of the Chernobyl Accident