Behind the Scenes of "Chernobyl": The Story of Unparalleled Loyalty of Anatoly Sitnikov and His Wife Elvira

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The series "Chernobyl" confidently took the first lines of ratings. The work of British filmmakers is debated, inaccuracies are sought in the film, criticized and praised. In fact, the creators of the series achieved the main thing: they remembered this disaster. People who were participants in those tragic events were talked about publicly. Today we want to tell the story of a family in which loyalty was paramount: profession, duty, and then the memory of Anatoly Sitnikov, who died at the age of 46.

Loyalty to the profession

They lived in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Anatoly Sitnikov with his wife Elvira and two daughters. The head of the family worked at a shipyard since 1963, started out as a process engineer, and in 1975 was already head of the mechanics bureau of the main power plant. Already in the early 1970s, after courses where he studied to operate atomic installations, he fell ill with nuclear power. He taught formulas, studied the documentation, and at night he recounted all this to his wife until she fell asleep.

They did not want to let go of the shipbuilding Anatoly Andreyevich. The wife had to intervene, who persuaded her superiors to sign her husband's letter of resignation. Their girls were often sick, doctors advised to change the climate. In 1975, Anatoly Sitnikov passed the qualification exams and was admitted to the staff of the ChNPP under construction. The first two years he lived in a hostel, and in 1977 he received an apartment in Pripyat, where they began to live with the whole family.

Anatoly Sitnikov was so passionate about his work that he considered the time spent on fiction, rest in the country and watching TV lost. He read only technical literature, buying up new items in all stores. I watched exclusively the Vremya program to keep abreast of what was happening in the country. I went on vacation not when he wanted to, but when they let him go. When his wife Elvira blamed him for this, Anatoly only looked sadly and said: it hurt him to see the lack of understanding on the part of a loved one. The matter was the most important for him. Is always.

Fidelity to duty

He began his experience at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant as deputy shift supervisor of the reactor-turbine shop, and in July 1985 became deputy chief engineer for the operation of the first stage of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Anatoly Andreevich thought about work constantly. If something went wrong, he returned home whiter than chalk. Sometimes he woke up his wife at night and demanded to keep an eye on the off-scale device. In the morning I didn’t remember anything. And he was never afraid of responsibility, he carefully studied every document that was brought to him for signature.

On the night of April 26, 1986, a phone call rang in the Sitnikovs' apartment. The robot uttered the code words into the receiver: "AZ-5 on block 4". Anatoly Sitnikov immediately got ready and went on foot to the station, without waiting for the working bus. He might not go anywhere. The first block was his area of responsibility. But he could not not go.

Elvira Petrovna also worked at the station, but that day it was not her shift. She saw nothing dangerous in her husband's night call to the station. It happened quite often, my wife got used to it. I slept calmly until the morning, until the neighbors called with a story about a dangerous accident. She managed to get through to the station only at 11 o'clock. By a lucky chance, my husband answered the phone. He felt very bad, he was no longer able to reach the first-aid post.

Then Elvira Petrovna was able to see him already on the bus before leaving for Moscow. He felt bad, and his wife tried to distract him somehow. But she could not resist the question: why did he go to the fourth block? To which Anatoly Andreevich replied that he could not have done otherwise. Nobody knew the block the way he did. And the employees had to be taken out.

If the accident had not been prevented, other blocks could have exploded too. This would lead to the death of millions of people. Anatoly Andreevich felt very bad, and he already knew for sure: it was radiation sickness. Elvira Petrovna still did not believe, persuaded her husband to say that he felt bad only because he breathed in smoke. But Anatoly Sitnikov checked the block.

The bus was leaving, and a pipe glowed at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, like a rocket striving upward …

Fidelity to memory

Together with her youngest daughter, Elvira Petrovna left for Moscow, taking with her one suitcase and simple savings. The evacuation was already in full swing in Pripyat. She stayed in a dormitory with her daughter, who studied at the energy institute, and later secured a settlement in the hostel of paramedics from the sixth hospital, and with it the right of access to the hospital itself.

Elvira Sitnikova looked after not only her husband, but also other guys from the station. She brought them newspapers, simple gifts, letters from relatives, conveyed greetings from each other. They were in different wards, and she became a liaison.

Anatoly Andreevich was getting worse and worse. And one evening he began to persistently send his wife home. Elvira Petrovna resisted, because there, in an empty room, no one was waiting for her. But he explained: she needs to rest in order to help the guys again tomorrow. And he asked not to leave them when he was gone. On the morning of May 31, 1986, Elvira Sitnikova found out: her husband was no longer there. They buried him, like other first liquidators, in a zinc sealed coffin at the Mitinskoye cemetery.

She wanted to leave after her husband. But she thought about her daughters, who would be left all alone. Children helped the widow of Anatoly Sitnikov to cling to life.

And the day after the funeral of her husband, Elvira Petrovna was again in the hospital. Everyone already knew that Anatoly Andreevich was no more and were ashamed to look his widow in the eyes, to accept help from her. But the woman said that she was doing it at the request of her husband.

One of those who were taken to Moscow among the first was Sasha, she did not even remember his last name. He lost consciousness, and she tried to persuade him to hold on to life. And she told me: all the guys had already been transferred to a rehabilitation center, they all got out, only he was left. And even Anatoly Andreevich has already been transferred.

Elvira Petrovna and Sasha met a year later at the grave of her husband. Sasha lived another 20 years after the Chernobyl tragedy. After the death of her husband and her visits to the children in the hospital, Elvira Petrovna ended up in a neurosis clinic herself. I could not stand the most severe nervous tension. She was discharged two months later. And she returned to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

For two years she worked at the station on a shift basis, a month there, a month in Moscow. She had to live, raise children. Today Elvira Petrovna Sitnikova is 77 years old. Her pain didn’t subside, it just dulled. She has wonderful daughters, grandchildren have already grown up, and even has one great-grandson. But she always remembers her Anatolia and knows: she remained faithful to the memory of the one with whom fate measured her only 22 years of happiness.

Vasily Ignatenko was one of the first firefighters who arrived at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant to extinguish the fire. An ordinary fire, as they thought then. At home, his 23-year-old wife Lyudmila was waiting for him, who, a little later, would perform a real feat of devotion and dedication.