La stella Černobyl’. Narrare la catastrofe nucleare

Abstract

From the Apocalypse: «... there went down from heaven a great star, burning like a flame, and it came on a third part of the rivers and on the fountains of waters. And the name of the star is Wormwood».Another word for Wormwood in Russian is “Cernobyl’”. Once Soviet scientists maintained that nuclear power stations were «stars in the heavens of progress» that the government would disseminate within the URSS territory. Behind this pun, one can see the tragedy of the nuclear power station which after it explosion on April 26, 1986, is still nowadays spreading death, ruin and diseases. Is it an omen of the fall of the Soviet Empire? Is it a warning for humankind against its continual exploitation of the resources of the earth?This essay analyses the novel by the Russian dissident Julija Voznesenskaja The Star Cernobyl’ (1987) in particular, comparing it with Christa Wolf’s novel Accident (1987), Vladimir Gubarev's drama Sarcophagus: a Tragedy (1986) and Nobel Prize Svetlana Aleksievic's Chernobyl Prayer: A Chronicle of the Future, written ten years after the catastrophe. It is possible to analyse this novel from a feminist perspective: not by chance the main characters are three sisters who, through their testimony and sacrifice, contribute in keeping alive the memory of the tragedy.