Ukraine struggled with the devastating consequences of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in April 1986. On my first visits to the Chernobyl region in 1990 – 1991 I went to Pripyat, a city that had been purpose built for Chernobyl workers but was eerily abandoned. I wrote about this in Chapter 4 of Picnic at the Iron Curtain. Later, in 1995 or 1996, I visited an evacuated village in the forbidden zone surrounding the plant with a group of returnees. They were on an annual visit to tend graves (scroll down to see the pictures). Click on a picture to see a slide show with captions.
Susan Viets 