Chernobyl is often associated in memory as a nuclear disaster. It is, however a location: a city in Ukraine with a history and a group of people living in its space. After the nuclear meltdown, most people think of the unused dead zone. One film maker turns his attention from the famous Prypyat city to a lesser known but ultimately far more socially interesting Slavutych: a city built overnight.
The events of April 1986 divided thousands of lives into “before” and “after”. The explosion, the tragedy, the disaster, the zone, and the radiation still define the bitter chain of associations in the collective memory. The departure point for these memories have always been the ghost-city Prypyat’. This is where Soviet power engineers were urgently evacuated from after the Chernobyl disaster.
1986 is also the year when Slavutych was founded — the new living space for nuclear experts, and the youngest city in Ukraine. Architects and city planners from eight Soviet republics – Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Ukraine and Russia – took part in it’s planning and construction. Every block has its own national colouring, and the city itself reminds you either of Scandinavia or of the unaccomplished Soviet utopia. Apartment dwelling buildings share the space with pine forest, streets sound with silence not the cars, the air is so clean that the proximity of the Zone is hard to believe in.
In the past 20 years a new generation of people has grown in Slavutych. They have their own view on Chernoby: not knowing Prypyat’, they have dealt with it’s ancestor. “The city without past” provides a new viewpoint towards 1986, both as a year of a big end and as of a year of a great beginning.
What does this city, which was built overnight say about today’s Ukraine? What is this city’s identity?