Testaments from Kiev

By Leo Burstyn and Wilf Hurd

In the spring of 1986 in Kiev the blooms were on the flowers; the emerald-green leaves on the trees were multiplying and the sun was gathering strength, warming the earth and the hearts of the City's two million people. The end of another long winter buoyed the spirit of just about anyone living in Ukraine at the time. And Kiev is truly wondrous in the early spring. The vast Dneiper River flow through parts of the City and although temperatures are still cool, the greenery, walkways and blue water of this dominant waterway create a natural pastel of color. Yet as April receded and in the early months of May the biggest issue for residents was a serious shortage of Geiger Counters. They were as scarce as information about the best way of escape from the City, and what lingering health effects might occur if they stayed. For in the early morning hours of April 26, 1986, an explosion of steam in its core blew the cap off the main reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in nearby Prepyat. In addition to a plume of dangerous radioactive smoke and dust, the resultant open-air graphite fire burned for days. But worse, the blown main reactor #4 created an updraft which lasted for another nine days. This lofted a plume of fission contamination into the atmosphere that exceeded the release from the original explosion. This radioactive dust would coat Kiev and nearby towns and eventually blanket Western Europe. So in the span of a few hours, every speck of dust, insect or pollen in the springtime air became a potentially lethal toxin. For computer engineer and programmer Leo Burstyn, wife Tanya and their children, life as they knew it came to end on that day. It was the catalyst for their eventual emigration to the West, first to Calgary, Alberta and then to British Columbia. But the aftermath of this nuclear-reactor meltdown also triggered in Leo a burning desire to write about the history of his family throughout the Ukraine. It was a story of generations of a family that endured wars, famine and disasters like Chernobyl. Yet it brought home to him in the most jarring way that a lack of information; official indifference and breathtaking incompetence and malfeasance from the Soviet authorities could place an entire City at risk and ultimately imperil his family, which was so dear to him. Theirs is a compelling story of survival, triumph but also of great suffering and loss. And "Testaments from Kiev" is the result.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leo Burstyn
• Release date: Apr 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463259788

Book preview

Introduction: Lifting the Iron Curtain

the immigrant’s story.

North Americans and Western Europeans have a strong sense of their family histories and how they fit into the big-picture events of the 20th century. The Great War of 1914­–18, the Roaring ’20s and the Great Depression, the Second World War years, the Fabulous ’50s and the Turbulent ’60s—all are interwoven with family events and personal stories.

This intimacy between historical events and our families continued through the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s and even to the present day. And while we may have occasionally thought about how people in other parts of the world lived during this same period, for many of us, it remained for the most part a curiosity.

But, of course, millions of families were formed, children born and family histories forged in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union during the same decades so familiar to us in the West. One such family, the Burstyns, carved out their own family circle and individual stories, linked to the great events of Russian history and 30 years behind the Iron Curtain. These are their stories and recollections of tragedy, survival and triumph amid the historical and cultural influences of the Ukraine.

The Burstyns were among the large Jewish populations that lived throughout the Ukraine in the 20th century. Their large extended family resided in cities like Kiev and in small rural villages in the south-central Ukraine. They were farmers, small-business people, factory workers, university professors and scientists.

Yet the quiet successes and events within their family circles were played out against the backdrop of anti-Semitism that permeated Europe during much of this period. This omnipresent hostility manifested itself in all manner of events, ranging from career limitations and individual acts of prejudice in streets and businesses; to the great tragedies and criminality of the Holocaust and many anti-Jewish pogroms in the Ukraine.

However, their endurance of these struggles only strengthened the Burstyn family tree. They achieved what they could within societal and governmental constraints, they made many contributions to Ukrainian society, and they drew on their collective strength to build lives of many fond memories and the joys only a close family can create.

The 1980s were a cathartic time for the Jewish populations of the Ukraine. Even in the final years of the Communist government of the USSR, immigration to Israel and the West was picking up. Officials were not opposed to this emigration, presumably because they felt it would result in reduced tension and potential unrest in the Ukraine.

The other history-changing event for Jewish Ukrainians was the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant near Kiev and the subsequent evacuation of towns and villages even to the outskirts of Kiev.

Officials kept the populace, including the Burstyn family, completely in the dark about the dangerous conditions at Chernobyl, and evacuations were slow and sporadic. Many families felt their own welfare was being rated as far less important than the insatiable need of the Communist regime to control its messaging to the outside world.

It was shortly after these events that Leo Burstyn and his family, including wife Tanya and their boys Uri and Igor, came to the West. They arrived in Canada and after settling in Calgary, came to live in Kamloops. They currently reside in Vancouver.

The Burstyns have a remarkable family tree. Their stories make for compelling reading and help us fill in the blanks in our collective sense of global history. We can appreciate that as human beings, our history is not only built on the events of politics, war, famine, economic depressions and cultural beacons. History is also forged on the individual struggles of families and their resiliency, their capacity to survive and prosper, no matter what the odds or circumstances.

The late 20th century changed the Ukraine forever. There are fewer Jewish families populating the Ukraine now than in the last century. With the collapse of the USSR and the shredding of the Iron Curtain—and the emergence of Ukrainian independence—many families saw an opportunity to emigrate. They departed for Western Europe, North America and, of course, Israel.

Yet the echoes of their century-long struggles on the Ukrainian steppes remain. And their stories are as compelling today as they were a half-century ago. They serve as a reminder that while even the great watersheds of history will fade in time, the family unit remains a pillar of, and the foundation for, all humanity.

Foreword

This book started from conversations between Wilf Hurd and myself in the small conference room at our workplace office in Kamloops, British Columbia.

My family had imm igrated to Canada from the Ukraine where branches of our family had lived for many generations. We were Jewish and the struggle to lead a peaceful life was interrupted by war, economic recession and the persecution and discrimination many Jewish people faced in Eastern Europe over many years.

Our project started when I began sharing stories and recollections with Wilf that we agreed were so compelling, we needed to record them. We would get together after work, and Wilf would type everything into a small Apple 2 computer.

For me these conversations had kind of a therapeutic effect. My family and I were building our new life in Canada, but memories of the past were holding me back. It was important to make some sense of our family’s previous life.

When we came to Canada, I was surprised by the apparent lack of interest in the Ukraine from the outside world. The No. 1 question I was asked: What kind of food did you have in the Ukraine? My answer: Anything you can get in a store. This often left people puzzled, but it was an honest one based on the hardships we often faced in accessing even basic necessities.

The No. 2 question: Was it easy to find a job in the old country? Again, my answer was difficult to comprehend for Canadians: It was easy to find a job in the USSR, but it was difficult to survive on the regular wages.

When I saw Wilf’s reaction to my stories, I realized there is not enough understanding among the Western public of ordinary life in the Ukraine.

I hope this book will give readers a chance to look behind the headlines of the Cold War era, and view ordinary life behind the Iron Curtain. Based on my conversations with Wilf, as well as our further research, the book includes a mixture of diary entries, personal memories, observations from my perspective as a newcomer to the West in the early 1990s, and factual accounts of Soviet history, politics and culture.

It is a personal story, but it reflects the great transformation of Jewish life in the 20th century, from the Holocaust to mass emigration from the Soviet Union.

Leo Burstyn

Vancouver, Canada, 2017

Part 1:

Turning Point, 1986-1988

Chapter 1

Leo’s Reflections: Time to Go

The Chernobyl disaster occurred on April 26, 1986, at 1:26 a.m. Approximately 500 square metres of the roof over the reactor was blown off, spewing a radioactive cloud hundreds of metres into the night sky. This immense cloud, charged with radioactive particles and debris, was wafted by prevailing winds in bands throughout the northern Ukraine. It was soon to drift hundreds and then thousands of kilometres toward neighbouring Eastern European states.

Although it would be weeks, even months, before the full extent of the disaster was known, I believed from the beginning that this event would be one of the most significant events in the history of humankind. In my personal life it was also a critical turning point. It forced me to look beyond my fears, my self-satisfied feelings of comfort and my own philosophy, which was, as for so many of us in the Soviet Union, a mixture of subservience and timidity. It forced me to confront the apathy that coloured my own life, my country, my family and my surroundings, and above all my future.

The overbearing emotional stress brought on by the disaster, combined with the scant information provided about the event, was so perplexing that my brain had trouble processing just what was happening. I was concerned about my family, my friends and my city. Everything in my life was under threat. We were in a state of psychological siege. It was if my own world had fallen apart, even as the fire still raged following the Chernobyl explosion. As a matter of personal therapy, and to record my innermost feelings, I started to keep a diary.

To this day I am not sure why I chose to do this. I am not a chronicler of events by nature. I was an uninterested student of history, and I certainly never worshipped it. Yet as I look back now, it was as if I were compelled to keep this record of events and fears, real and imagined. I knew my life and that of my family would be changed, but the path we would follow was not yet in focus.

I had more questions than answers. What was going on with my country and with the entire world? We had long conversations with friends and relatives, but it was still not enough. Some things I had to explain to myself. I had to write them down, to help me understand myself during this time.

When I went to the railroad station and witnessed the thousands of people fleeing, it reminded me of the history of my race, of my country and that of my family. Above all it was a swift reminder of our racial standing. These incidents were not new for us, or the society we were part of. It was an instant reminder of events during the Second World War, when Jewish people were never told their lives would be in danger if they stayed in their homes while the Germans occupied the neighbouring towns and cities.

These were not only my own impressions. Elderly people who remembered the war told me the feeling after Chernobyl was the same. It was like the summer of 1941. Outwardly everything had changed in our lives as Soviet citizens, but in reality nothing had really changed for Ukrainian Jews. We knew the entire world had evolved over the past 40 years. Everyone knew it, felt it. Yet now we sensed that this new-found confidence and security had in the end passed us by, as it always would.

I furiously scribbled for hours in my small, brown diary. By August 9, 1986, I had reached a decision. I could no longer keep my family in this place that had been my home. I had reached the same conclusion as my mother’s family so many decades ago in the village of Stara-Ushitsa when they lost everything during the Russian Revolution. It was my turn to come to grips with the fearsome knowledge that I was defenceless against my own government. In the final analysis, without the truth you cannot save yourself, much less your family. We tried to find a place to go, but in vain. We did not have any savings even after 24 years of work and could hardly afford to go anywhere. So many legal obstacles existed. So many places required special permission to live there even temporarily. We feared it would be impossible to find a new home, with the housing shortage so critical in large and small towns.

It seemed impossible that our lives could be in danger in a city like Kiev. Its architecture, parks and fountains belied their impermanence. They had stood the ravages of war and economic collapse, but the city was no match for radioactive particles spewed into the atmosphere. With our belongings on our backs we joined a steady flow of Kievites trudging to the railroad station—their lives in shambles as well.

In these moments of crisis and personal despair I returned to my diary. Finally, on October 4, 1986, I got a phone call from my brother Chaim in Calgary, Alberta. The news is out, Leo, it is bad. What can I do to help you? he asked. Could he send money? My response was: I am looking now for a safe place to live for my family. God, help me get out of here. Can you help me now?

He said very quietly: If you are serious about it, I will help you to move to Canada.

My brother had been in the West for 14 years, and we had not seen each other since 1972. We corresponded regularly, every two or three weeks. We talked about all manner of family matters. But one subject was never discussed—my immigration to the West. Chaim understood that if our family were to emigrate, I would have to make the decision. He trusted me. He knew that if I had not left the Soviet Union, I must have had a reason for staying.

I cannot personally explain why I stayed so long. Even now, as I look back, I cannot comprehend it. Many of my friends in the Soviet Union knew I had a brother in the West. They knew I could have left anytime. You have relatives there, good training and skills. Why do you stay? This is a question I always look back on with a mixture of regret and wonder.

I did my best to adjust myself to society in the country of my birth. Yet upon reflection, I knew that I had always been a stranger in my own land. I had not seen it because every day you are surrounded by people in the same situation. You are surrounded by the same alienated strangers. It is the norm, this mixture of worry, defeatism and lowered expectations. Yet after Chernobyl I lost all hope. I could see no future for myself, and even less for my family. I would often sit alone at night to re-read my diary. The events were laid out for all to see. The official silences and lies, information of vital importance for people to save themselves—denied to us when we needed it most.

It was the thread of existence that ran through generations of Burstyns, as we struggled to establish roots in the Ukraine. Those efforts would always be in vain. For in 1987, yet another generation of Burstyns would live in the shadow of the State. Our roots were without foundation, our hopes and efforts for a better future ground down by an absence of truth. Nothing had really changed, only a revised sense of illusion.

I re-read my diary another time and for the hundredth time. It convinced me it was time to go.

Chapter 2

Leo’s Reflections: Chernobyl and Reminders of the Past

In the days that followed the destruction at Chernobyl, there was, of course, little hard information. Yet people were not fooled. I was told by reliable sources that 130,000 people had been evacuated from the surrounding region.

How naive we were. I have since filled my life reading and researching stories about Chernobyl. I now know that reactor fires burn with an intensity of 600 to 800 degrees Centigrade. Fighting this fire by conventional means would be all but impossible. The reactor had to slowly cool down, and only then could it be extinguished.

For days after the disaster it was impossible for anyone to leave Kiev. The streets were cordoned off, and travel beyond city boundaries was restricted to military and medical personnel.

Yet the authorities continued to assure us that no one was in any danger. They offered no explanation as to why we were not permitted to leave the city. Of course, this satisfied few of us. And it didn’t stop people from trying to flee during those first few days, some of them successfully.

As I review these events, I now recall there were two incidents that convinced me that I, along with my family, needed to leave as soon as possible. On May 6, fully 11 days after the disaster, I received a BBC broadcast. The BBC reported that satellite photos confirmed the Chernobyl reactor was still burning and spewing potentially deadly radiation into the air.

This piece of news was followed almost immediately by a television speech from the chairman of the State Committee, Mr. Sylaev. Again he assured us the radiation danger was over. We therefore had a clear choice about who to believe: the Soviet authorities or the BBC. In reality, it was no choice at all.

Our illustrious party official Mr. Sylaev could not explain why life as we knew it in Kiev had halted. Our children could not go to school and had to stay indoors. He could not explain why workers were being tested or why radiation levels were monitored constantly. Of course, I had seen the chairman of the State Committee giving his speeches many times. The subject was always without much import. Yet it was his speech about Chernobyl that alarmed me most. He was not telling the truth! Why? What purpose could be served by not telling people to leave the city in as orderly a fashion as possible?

There were well-documented rumours that some of the ranking Party officials in Kiev had already sent their children to Moscow. We knew some people were leaving. If you had influence, there were ways of circumventing official orders.

For me it was a time of increasing anxiety and hostility. Perhaps for the first time, I believed I knew what my parents and grandparents had faced before me in this land of contradictions. We were a part of the underclass. We were Jews. We were expendable. In the end, when it was obvious to everyone that by the simple act of leaving the city we could protect our families, the information we needed was not given to us.

Many times I have told people, it is not the injustice of growing up a Ukrainian Jew that roused me to anger and despair. We had lived with discrimination for so long. In the end we endured it because we worked for our families. It was their future, and we vowed it would be better than ours.

Yet these humble dreams were no match for radiation exposure and the lack of truth. I was aware that after all these decades, nothing had changed. The authorities were doing to us yet again what they had always done. Just as the Nazis advanced in the heat of the summer of 1941, so too was the radiation now spreading through the countryside 45 years later.

We could not have saved ourselves without the vital information we needed. The danger was different in 1986 than it had been in 1941, but the real enemy the same. Instead of advancing armies, it was advancing radiation. Those who knew, or who had wealth or Party connections, saved themselves, as they had in 1941. For the rest? It was left for us to waver between anxiety and regret; and to try to read between the lines of the official dispatches and wonder if we, too, should go at all costs.

Our grandparents had once been forced to deal with the same anxieties. I am sure they had been warned. Rumour always travelled fast in the Ukraine. But they were old. The same officials had probably told them they would be safe if they stayed out of the way of the advancing armies. They would have been urged to give their armed occupiers provisions when demanded and endure occupation until liberation came.

As Jews we would say to ourselves that this is now 1986. Things are different for us in Kiev. But we knew in the bottom of our stomachs and in our bitterness, that they were not. We were as expendable then as now. This was my own darkest despair during the Chernobyl period. You cannot save yourself when those who hold your destiny in their hands do not think enough of you or your family to give you the information you need to save yourself.

Slow Evacuation

Although largely unchronicled in the West, surely the slow evacuation of Kiev between May and September of that year must have been one of the strangest exoduses in human history. Not one word of warning was ever heard from officials. The lushness of spring and the sweetness of the air and the earth felt as they always had. The traffic moved in the same looping patterns. An orderly city at every season of the year, Kiev’s facade was an impenetrable mask that would not easily slip.

But the real story of this Ukrainian spring was at the airports, bus stations and railroad stations. In the days that followed the disaster, tickets were impossible to come by. Trains swayed out of town, bearing passenger loads that gave lie to the appearance of normalcy.

Officially, nothing had changed—but everything had changed. The people knew. I knew. The authorities certainly knew. The employees in my building at the Central Statistical Bureau of the Ukraine were being tested by medical officials. You are in fine shape, Leo, they would say to me. Go home and relax, but just to be sure, we will test you next week.

I was determined there would be no next week. We had decided. We would leave to stay with family friends in Kharkov, on the eastern boundary of the Ukraine. Our odyssey was to begin on May 6. We—my wife Tanya, our boys Uri and Igor, and I—would board the train.

We knew simply purchasing a ticket to Kharkov would be impossible. Our strategy to overcome this was to go station-hopping on local trains. We would switch trains at strategic stations, taking us more or less directly out of the city. We would reach Yagotin station, where we could purchase a train ticket directly to Kharkov.

I was an experienced train traveller and confident our strategy would work. Yet there were dangers. Each train remained in the station for no more than two minutes. Those on the platform, even those with tickets, would be left behind if they could not crowd their way on.

Seeing the huge crowd gathered on the platform in Kiev, I was worried. Our youngest son Uri was only seven and Tanya is not a big person. We would have to move fast, and be aggressive, when the car doors opened.

The elements of my anxiety all came together at our next stop, Yagotin. First there were no tickets available for this part of the line. We could not stay, nor could we go back. The train eased to a stop on the platform and a great crowd of people, soldiers on leave, families in flight like ours, and others leaving for the holidays, surged forward. My son Igor and I were both strong. Leading the way, we pushed and struggled, and wedged ourselves in the back door of the car.

The train began to move. I looked desperately for Tanya and Uri. But I was struck dumb by fear at what I was seeing. There they were—still on the platform and unable to move in the crush of people!

But at the last second, Uri and Tanya finally made it through the doorway of the last car.

It is unbelievable to me now to think back on it. We were on different cars of a hopelessly overcrowded train. We had no tickets, and there was every chance we might be ejected. Yet I believe it was perhaps the most exhilarating sense of success I have felt in my lifetime. For at least now we were moving in a direction away from the danger. I thought of my father Isaak, who had once journeyed to Mariupol in his truck to try to remove his in-laws before the advancing Nazi armies.

Had Uri and Tanya—the Burstyn heirs of the 1980s—stayed on the platform at Yagotin, the sense of history repeating itself would have been too painful to deal with. I would have seen them before my eyes, much as my father must have seen those dear people from his truck window, as he made his way back to the front. It was the last time he would ever see them alive.

Of course, there was no such finality about our predicament. I knew even if Tanya and Uri had been separated from us, we would have seen them again. Yet the loss to me would have been a symbolic one. Once again, our generation of Ukrainian Jews would have been rendered unable to meet the challenge of mastering our own destiny. For inevitably, our family would have faced a period of separation. We would not have known whether they could have made their way back to Kiev, or we to Kharkov.

How my father must have wondered about the fate of his own parents and his wife Toyba’s parents in 1941. He lived his entire life with the knowledge that he might have saved them. Instead of a train station platform, it was a Nazi execution squad. I am sure that at times he looked at his own children with the same sadness I have at times looked at mine. I think of the photos of those relatives they will never know. Despite all his medals, his honours from Stalin and the Soviet Union, my father could not save many of the people who meant the most to him.

You cannot imagine the elation I felt as the train swayed out of the station. I—we—had succeeded after this long a time. We had fled the advance of the enemy. We had not submissively accepted the fate that was ours from the time of my grandmother and my grandfather’s birth in the Ukraine. In time we might return to Kiev. But it would be on our terms, and only when we felt it was safe.

We would know the answer to this question of personal safety ourselves, not be told by some chief medical official or the local Party official. We had done what we felt we had to do to survive.

Endless Journey

Misery is too weak a word to describe our crowded train trip from Yagotin to Kharkov. There was hardly room to shift one’s foot. The cars became unbearably hot, but the conductor warned us anyone opening windows would be reported to the police. I learned later there were fears that the top of each car was coated with radiation dust that could blow inside the train. So we suffered, in our sweat and our fatigue, as children cried and the cars sweltered.

Many stood morosely, gazing at a landscape that for all its spring beauty had now become a no-man’s land. Every flower, tree and field could harbour radiation levels hundreds of times higher than the levels to which atomic workers would be exposed under the worst conditions.

Here we were in our sweltering island of hope, fleeing from misery and fear. Outside, the cool hands of nature caressed the land with summer-like breezes, oblivious to the blight humankind had inflicted on it.

The inequity in this disaster was that not only people had been deemed expendable. What of the birds, bees and animals? Cows could not provide milk that could be consumed. Wild animals could die from radiation diseases they did not have the instincts to understand. Perhaps, upon reflection, they were the lucky ones. They might suffer the same fate as a generation of Ukrainian farmers in the countryside. Yet they would never have to live with the knowledge they might have saved themselves had they fled when they first became aware of the danger. They would raise their young and hunt for their food, blissful in their instinctive seasonal rituals of life. A generation of human beings might not be so blissful in the Ukraine.

Although we made good our escape from Kiev and from the dishonest officials, we were to learn that the milk of human kindness would be as popular as the milk from Ukrainian cows. It was a time when, for many Ukrainians, the bonds of family and friendship were sorely tested. Relatives in Moscow suddenly would not be able to receive their relatives from the Ukraine. We are redecorating, and after that, we are holidaying. It is the May holidays, you know. You cannot come now.

Families actually said this to other family members. The excuses were particularly cruel. Those in Kiev knew that their relatives were not willing to risk receiving their own blood relations for fear of radiation contamination.

Sadness Recalled

As youth we cannot appreciate the tragedy and irony of our family tree or life in earlier times. This is as it should be. When I would ask my father, How many Germans did you kill? he would laugh but never answer.

We ask our parents many questions. What happened to my grandmother, who seems so youthful in the family albums? What kind of man was my grandfather? Even when we are told of their passing or the manner of it, in one of humankind’s darkest times, we see it in our youth as no burning tragedy.

I can say, however, there is one family photograph that has had a greater impact on my life than any other. Although I have seen it many times—the photograph of the Burstyn