152 Tanja Penter
the sick tried to stay sick in order not to lose their vital privileges. What
influence did the reparations programs have on the development of civil society? On the one hand, the Chernobyl laws engendered new and democratic
forms of civic organizing and opportunities for non-governmental action in
Ukraine. On the other hand, according to Petryna, they became one of the
state’s most notorious mechanisms of corruption. 57
Aid for Chernobyl victims also had a transnational dimension: the governments of the then Soviet republics Belarus and Ukraine were the first
to turn to the international community in 1990 with requests for help and
assistance. Aid from abroad was of central importance, especially for Belarus.
Using the example of the Chernobyl children, about one million Belarusian,
Ukrainian, and Russian children and adolescents who had been sent to other
regions of the Soviet Union and abroad for weeks and months, Melanie
Arndt draws in her study the transnational history of a nuclear catastrophe. 58 Around the Chernobyl children, a transnational network of NGOs
emerged, which took over tasks of the state social systems in the post-Soviet
states. As a result, innumerable initiatives (initially often with a Christian
background) were launched not only in the West but also in the East itself,
in the field of Chernobyl aid. Arndt uses the example of the Chernobyl children and the global networks of concern emerging around them to draw a
new picture of the decentralization processes in the outgoing Soviet Union.
However, the window of opportunity for the development of the NGO
scene in Belarus remained very small, because since Lukashenka took power
in 1994, the possibilities for NGOs to operate in Belarus (in connection with
the general curtailment of freedom of opinion and freedom of the press) have
been clearly reduced to the point of a ban on sending Chernobyl children
abroad. Thus, the wave of social mobilization for humanitarian engagement
and the general mood of optimism in the East and West remained limited
to a small window of opportunity in which “everything seemed possible
in the East and West beyond the borders of the dissolving Cold War bloc
confrontation.” 59
In Ukraine, even stronger than in Belarus, the recognition of Chernobyl
victims became an important part of the nation-building process: in the
Ukrainian culture of remembrance, Chernobyl and its consequences for man
and nature were combined with the experience of extermination in the great
famine of 1932/1933, better known as the Holodomor. 60 Representatives of
the Ukrainian national movement equally regarded not only the Holodomor
but also the Soviet Chernobyl policy as a “genocide” against their people.
The thesis of an inherent connection between Holodomor and Chernobyl
as decidedly anti-Ukrainian measures by Moscow goes back to the Kyiv
opposition writer Ivan Drach, who first expressed this at a congress of the
Ukrainian Writers’ Union in 1986. 61 But while under President Viktor
Yushchenko, the Holodomor was in 2006 acknowledged by law as genocide
against the Ukrainian people, nothing similar took place so far with regard to
the Chernobyl disaster. 62 However, Chernobyl has become an integral part of
the sick tried to stay sick in order not to lose their vital privileges. What
influence did the reparations programs have on the development of civil society? On the one hand, the Chernobyl laws engendered new and democratic
forms of civic organizing and opportunities for non-governmental action in
Ukraine. On the other hand, according to Petryna, they became one of the
state’s most notorious mechanisms of corruption. 57
Aid for Chernobyl victims also had a transnational dimension: the governments of the then Soviet republics Belarus and Ukraine were the first
to turn to the international community in 1990 with requests for help and
assistance. Aid from abroad was of central importance, especially for Belarus.
Using the example of the Chernobyl children, about one million Belarusian,
Ukrainian, and Russian children and adolescents who had been sent to other
regions of the Soviet Union and abroad for weeks and months, Melanie
Arndt draws in her study the transnational history of a nuclear catastrophe. 58 Around the Chernobyl children, a transnational network of NGOs
emerged, which took over tasks of the state social systems in the post-Soviet
states. As a result, innumerable initiatives (initially often with a Christian
background) were launched not only in the West but also in the East itself,
in the field of Chernobyl aid. Arndt uses the example of the Chernobyl children and the global networks of concern emerging around them to draw a
new picture of the decentralization processes in the outgoing Soviet Union.
However, the window of opportunity for the development of the NGO
scene in Belarus remained very small, because since Lukashenka took power
in 1994, the possibilities for NGOs to operate in Belarus (in connection with
the general curtailment of freedom of opinion and freedom of the press) have
been clearly reduced to the point of a ban on sending Chernobyl children
abroad. Thus, the wave of social mobilization for humanitarian engagement
and the general mood of optimism in the East and West remained limited
to a small window of opportunity in which “everything seemed possible
in the East and West beyond the borders of the dissolving Cold War bloc
confrontation.” 59
In Ukraine, even stronger than in Belarus, the recognition of Chernobyl
victims became an important part of the nation-building process: in the
Ukrainian culture of remembrance, Chernobyl and its consequences for man
and nature were combined with the experience of extermination in the great
famine of 1932/1933, better known as the Holodomor. 60 Representatives of
the Ukrainian national movement equally regarded not only the Holodomor
but also the Soviet Chernobyl policy as a “genocide” against their people.
The thesis of an inherent connection between Holodomor and Chernobyl
as decidedly anti-Ukrainian measures by Moscow goes back to the Kyiv
opposition writer Ivan Drach, who first expressed this at a congress of the
Ukrainian Writers’ Union in 1986. 61 But while under President Viktor
Yushchenko, the Holodomor was in 2006 acknowledged by law as genocide
against the Ukrainian people, nothing similar took place so far with regard to
the Chernobyl disaster. 62 However, Chernobyl has become an integral part of