Tschernobylkinder

Text in German. After the Chernobyl disaster, more than a million children and young people were sent on trips with thousands of accompanying persons in order to recover from radiation exposure, but increasingly also from everyday life in the (post) Soviet collapsed society. A dense transnational network of NGOs and private individuals formed around these "Chernobyl children". It took on more and more tasks that the state could no longer perform. The worldwide commitment that began with the opening of the Soviet Union contributed to making the nuclear accident, which in large parts of the world was initially considered to be "typically Soviet", as a transnational catastrophe, making the reality of the catastrophe visible and perceptible in everyday life hundreds of thousands of people in Europe and North America. Arndt shows how the "Chernobyl Children" became both witnesses and representatives of a declining political system and the dissolution of the bipolar world order.