ABSTRACT
After the First Congress of the USSR People’s Deputies, the floodgates of glasnost opened at last and crowds of journalists from various periodicals, both Soviet and foreign, rushed to the Narodichi District. Not infrequently, they turned for assistance to the working group on environmental safety at my public consultation office headed by Dr. Yuri Reznik. Every time we implored them not to go to Narodichi, not to go there now. The whole country and the entire world had already learned about that long-suffering area. After the Congress, I finally managed to get published a series of articles on the life and suffering of people in the strict radiation-monitoring areas, in the popular weekly Nedelya (“Week”) and in the journal Selskaya nov’ (“Country Novelty”—here, my Chernobyl essay was named the article of the year). The Paris-based Russkaya mysl (“Russian Thought”) also published my article. (The editor of Ogonyok had come up to me after my emotional outburst at the Congress, saying, “So, why don’t you give us your article; we’ll print it right away,” but I no longer wanted to have anything to do with that magazine.)
