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JOURNAL OF UKRAINIAN STUDIES David R. Marples: Chernobyl: A Six-Month Review Roman Solchanyk: Chernobyl: The Political Fallout in Ukraine Walter Huda: Medical Consequences of Chernobyl RpouJiaB ropflHHCbKHn: 2KiH0ue nHTaHHH b noBiCTi PajjflHCbKo'i YKpa'iHH (3aKiHueHHa) Stella M. Hryniuk: The Peasant and Alcohol in Eastern Galicia in the Late Nineteenth Century: A Note Marta Tarnawsky: Ukrainian Literature in English Published since 1980: Part 2 Book Reviews 20 SUMMER 1986 XyPHAA yKPAIH03HABMMX C1YA\V\ EDITOR Myroslav Yurkevich EDITORIAL BOARD Bohdan Bociurkiw, Carleton University • Oleh Ilnytzkyj, University of Alberta • Wsevolod W. Isajiw, University of Toronto • Bohdan Krawchenko, University of Alberta • Manoly R. Lupul, University of Alberta • Peter J. Potichnyj, McMaster University • Bohdan Rubchak, University of Illinois at Chicago Circle • Roman Serbyn, Universite du Quebec a Montreal • Myroslav Shkandrij, University of Ottawa • Danylo H. Struk, University of Toronto • Orest Subtelny, York University. The Journal of Ukrainian Studies is published semiannually, in the summer and winter, by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. Annual subscription rates are $10.00 for individuals and $15.00 for libraries and institutions. Cheques and money orders are payable in Canadian or American funds only to Journal of Ukrainian Studies. Please do not send cash. Subscribers outside Canada: please pay in U.S. funds. The Journal publishes articles on Ukrainian-related subjects in the humanities and social sciences. The criterion for acceptance of submissions is their scholarly contribution to the field of Ukrainian studies. The Journal also publishes translations, documents, information, book reviews, letters, and journalistic articles of a problem-oriented, controversial nature. Those wishing to submit manuscripts should observe the guidelines on the inside back cover. Manuscripts, books for review, and all correspondence regarding subscriptions, changes of address, and editorial matters should be sent to: Journal of Ukrainian Studies, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 352 Athabasca Hall, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2E8 © 1986 by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies ISSN 0228-1635 Typesetting by Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. Printed by Printing Services, University of Alberta JOURNAL OF UKRAINIAN STUDIES Volume 11, Number 1 Summer 1986 The Chernobyl Disaster David R. Marples. Chernobyl: A Six-Month Review 3 Roman Solchanyk. Chernobyl: The Political Fallout in Ukraine .... 20 Walter Huda. Medical Consequences of Chernobyl 35 flpOCJiaB rOpjJHHCbKMH. >KiH04e nHTaHHH B nOBiCTi PaflBHCbKOI yKpaiHH (3aKiHHeHHH 3 H. 19) 53 Research Note Stella M. Hryniuk. The Peasant and Alcohol in Eastern Galicia in the Late Nineteenth Century: A Note 75 Guide to Research Marta Tarnawsky. Ukrainian Literature in English Published since 1980: Part 2 87 Book Reviews Benjamin Pinkus, The Soviet Government and the Jews, 1948-1967: A Documented Study (Robert J. Brym) 109 William M. Mandel, Soviet But Not Russian (Stephen Velychenko) . .110 Bohdan Struminsky, Pseudo-Melesko: A Ukrainian Apocryphal Parliamentary Speech of 1615-1618 (George A. Perfecky) . .112 Osyp Zinkewych and Rev. Taras R. Lonchyna, eds., Martyrolohiia ukrainskykh tserkov. Tom II. Ukrainska Katolytska Tserkva (Andrew Sorokowski) 115 I.S. Koropeckyj, ed. Selected Contributions of Ukrainian Scholars to Economics (Gennady Ozornoy) 119 Contributors Stella M. Hryniuk is assistant professor of history at the University of Manitoba. She has been appointed research associate of the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Toronto, for the 1986-7 academic year. Walter Huda is a physicist specializing in nuclear medicine at the Department of Medical Physics, Manitoba Cancer Treatment and Research Foundation in Winnipeg. He has lectured and published extensively in his field. David R. Marples is a research associate at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. He is the author of articles in various journals, including Soviet Studies, Canadian Slavonic Papers and Nationalities Papers. In December 1986 he published Chernobyl and Nuclear Power in the USSR (New York: St. Martin’s Press; Edmonton: CIUS). Roman Solchanyk is a Senior Research Analyst at Radio Liberty in Munich. He is co-editor of the three-volume anthology Ukrainska suspilno-politychna dumka v 20 stolitti (1983). His articles and reviews have appeared in Slavic Review, Canadian Slavonic Papers, Soviet Studies, and other journals. Marta Tarnawsky is a librarian at the University of Pennsylvania and the compiler of several bibliographies. Correction In Bohdan S. Kordan’s article, “Ukrainians and the 1981 Canada Census Ethnic-Origin Question” (Winter 1985), Column B in Table 2 (page 9) was printed incorrectly. All negative signs in this column should be positive. The percentage change between the projected 1981 census figure (closed to migration) and the actual 1971 census figure for Ukrainian males and females should read 3.81, not 3.51. THE CHERNOBYL DISASTER* David R. Marples CHERNOBYL: A SIX-MONTH REVIEW Six months have passed since the explosion of the fourth reactor unit at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. During this period, our knowledge of the events of 26 April 1986 and the aftermath of the accident has increased considerably. Concerning the technical aspects of the disaster, the USSR State Committee for the Utilization of Atomic Energy filed a detailed 300-page report to a Vienna meeting of the 112-member International Atomic Energy Agency. This report was well received by Western scien- tists, many of whom have since commented publicly on what appeared to them a remarkable display of glasnost [openness] on the part of the Soviet authorities. In the eyes of some observers, the Soviet report helped to atone for their original failure to report the accident officially until prompted by several Swedish protests. One can appreciate the efforts of the IAEA to investigate the Chernobyl disaster, but the effects of the accident have been somewhat broader than reported in Vienna. Moreover, the Soviet appearance in that city was a sign that the event had acquired a truly international status rather than a manifestation of any new openness on the part of the Soviet leadership under General Secretary of the CC CPSU Mikhail Gorbachev. It should be stated at the outset that the Chernobyl accident has not * Editor’s note: Because the form “Chernobyl,” transliterated from Russian, has been used almost universally in English-language writing about the disaster, it has been adopted in the articles that follow. Journal of Ukrainian Studies 11, no. 1 (Summer 1986) 3 Journal changed the political or economic character of the Soviet Union, and it is only through a knowledge of that character that one can find a key to understanding the events following the disaster. To begin, one might ask who in the Soviet hierarchy has suffered politically as a result of Chernobyl. Mikhail Gorbachev? Ukrainian First Party Secretary Volodymyr Shcherbytsky? How about Kiev oblast First Secretary Hryhorii Revenko? For Gorbachev, the event has been integrated into a careful but evidently unsuccessful campaign that has the declared goal of removing all nuclear weapons from the face of the earth by the year 2000. Reykjavik marked the demise of the first attempt to gain a political victory from a nuclear accident. On Soviet television on 14 May, the Soviet leader emphasized—repeating countless TASS and Radio Moscow broadcasts of the previous days—that Chernobyl had demonstrated the futility of nuclear weapons build-up, providing an example of what would happen if even one small nuclear warhead were detonated. Soviet propagandists have pursued this line rigorously, but always with the proviso that nuclear weapons and the civilian use of nuclear power are not the same thing. Indeed they are not. I would agree and make the further deduction that the Chernobyl disaster concerns the operation of Soviet nuclear power plants rather than international arms control. Gorbachev has also used the IAEA in this political strategy. Before the accident occurred, the IAEA’s main role, in practice if not in theory, was to ensure that civilian nuclear power plants were not being used to produce plutonium, tritium and other elements for the nuclear weapons programmes. Soviet-IAEA cooperation has at least given the impression that the Soviets are interested and concerned about the IAEA role. In August 1985, the USSR permitted the first IAEA inspection of its nuclear facilities, although the sites in question, an experimental station near Moscow and the Novovoronezh “model” nuclear plant, which has containment domes over its reactors (constructed after 1980), were relatively innocuous. Gorbachev failed at Reykjavik, but it is safe to assume that his policy will continue and that Chernobyl has been a setback, not a catastrophe for the personal career of Mr. Gorbachev. Shcherbytsky’s future has been hotly debated. Kremlinologists in the West have continually speculated that as a holdover from the Brezhnev years, the 68-year-old Ukrainian party leader has been on the way out since March 1985, when Gorbachev took over the Soviet 1 leadership. Chernobyl was a convenient, even an ideal excuse, it was 4 }KypHaji claimed. These comments were fuelled by Shcherbytsky’s marked absence from the Chernobyl region in the days after the accident. On 2 May he had accompanied Soviet Politburo members Ligachev and Ryzhkov to