Meltdown in Chernobyl Songs
These two Ukrainian-language responses to Chernobyl show how quickly the disaster became a vehicle for political grievance no longer voiceable in Russian. Mykhailenko's lament moves from universalized grief over the children of the planet toward a sharper accusation: that in the Chernobyl cauldron seethes the atomic core of imperial willfulness. Three years later, Petrynenko's "Чорнобильська зона" expanded the term from place to verdict, asking whether the Chernobyl zone was not in fact the Soviet future itself. He performed it openly in 1989 at the first Chervona Ruta festival, the moment Ukrainian song reclaimed its political voice.
Mykhailenko: Song of Chernobyl / Пісня про Чорнобиль (1986)
Music: Oleksandr Osadchyi (Олександр Осадчий) / Lyrics: Mykhailo Tkach (Михайло Ткач) / Performer: Lidiya Mykhailenko (Лідія Михайленко)
Petrynenko: Chernobyl Zone / Чорнобильська зона (1989)
Music and lyrics: Taras Petrynenko (Тарас Петриненко) / Performers: Taras Petrynenko and the group Grono (Гроно)