Protests, Telethon Mark Chernobyl Anniversary

Soviets joined widespread protests, a 24-hour telethon and a strike at a major factory Thursday to mark the fourth anniversary of the world’s worst nuclear accident, the reactor explosion at Chernobyl.

It was the Soviet Union’s biggest national commemoration of the 1986 disaster, and it followed years of state-encouraged passivity on the topic.

This year, the Ukrainian legislature designated Thursday as “Chernobyl Tragedy Day” and its Byelorussian counterpart passed a similar measure. Other government bodies in contaminated areas sanctioned demonstrations.

Official reports say 31 people were killed when one of four reactors at the Chernobyl plant, in the Ukraine, caught fire and exploded April 26, 1986. Unofficial reports say 250 died, and a Ukrainian legislator this week put the toll at 300. The blast spewed cesium, strontium and plutonium over a wide area of the Ukraine, Byelorussia and Russia and sent a cloud of radioactive gas around the world.

For the first two days after the accident, the Soviet Union refused to report it to the outside world and withheld information from its own people on the scope of the contamination.

Residents in the southwestern Soviet regions most affected by the partial meltdown organized demonstrations Thursday to demand better medical treatment, protection from radiation and punishment for officials who covered up the accident’s effects, activists said.

In Kiev, the Ukrainian capital 60 miles south of Chernobyl, 70,000 people gathered for Mass outside the 11th-Century St. Sophia Cathedral, reported Rukh Press International, a branch of the Ukrainian people’s front.

In a subsequent protest, drivers stopped traffic for five minutes and honked their car horns, the report said.

In the Byelorussian city of Gomel, most of the 35,000 employees of the GomSelMash industrial complex staged a daylong strike, said Alexander Korniev, a worker.

Their demands included prompt closure of the Chernobyl plant and criminal charges against all officials involved in the cover-up. Three of Chernobyl’s four reactors continue to operate.

The Chernobyl telethon, one of the Soviet Union’s first experiences with televised fund-raising, collected the equivalent of about $115 million in rubles, as well $5 million in U.S. dollars, organizers said.

The live broadcast from Moscow interspersed singing groups and interviews with gripping footage of Chernobyl rescuers and children from the contaminated zone suffering radiation-caused cancers.

Along with money, telethon pledges included donations of radiation-free fruit and 1,100 pounds of honey for children in the contaminated area.

In the Byelorussian cities of Minsk and Gomel and throughout the Ukraine, tens of thousands of residents gathered for church services and mourning protests, Soviet TV reported.