Collector of mutants

Geneticist Viacheslav Konovalov is one of a handful of Ukrainian experts who know the truth about Chornobyl’s impact on human and animal organisms. This scientist has studied plant and animal life in the Exclusion Zone for more than a decade. Still active in the field, he is on the academic staff of Kyiv’s Institute of Genetics and Animal Breeding. Prof. Konovalov is also the owner of the world’s only hair-raising collection of animal mutants.

“I spent many years working at Taras Shevchenko University in Kyiv. My line of research was very interesting, as it dealt with genetic experiments involving animal and plant cells. The Soviet military took an interest in our research. In the 1970s-1980s our laboratory started carrying out secret biological experiments ordered by the Soviet defense ministry,” says the scientist. Biologists exposed laboratory animals — mice and rats — to radiation. Their findings were flabbergasting, as the animals turned into horrible mutants. “All this experimentation was top secret,” continues Prof. Konovalov, “but after that power unit blew up in Chornobyl I realized that something terrible had happened, that from now on mutants would emerge not in laboratory conditions but in the lap of nature.”

The Kyiv-based professor could not ignore the terrible disaster that was unfolding in Chornobyl. Before long he had made up his mind and resigned from Kyiv University and moved to the provincial city of Zhytomyr, where he could study the Exclusion Zone at arm’s length. Konovalov was appointed head of a faculty at the local Institute of Agriculture. He soon found himself in Narodnytsky raion, where he studied contaminated plant and animal life. His first expedition stunned the scientist from Kyiv — and he would remain stunned for years to come, for he had discovered horrible plant and animal mutations in every village of Narodnytsky and other administrative districts within the Exclusion Zone.

“Plants growing in this zone have changed their genetic structures; this has never happened,” says the noted researcher, adding, “Dandelion stems and blossom clusters have increased six times. We also found empty pumpkins. There were no seeds inside!”

Much more horrifying were animal mutants whose births were recorded in every village on a daily basis. “The first mutant I spotted in the zone,” recalls Prof. Konovalov, “was a twin- headed piglet. I preserved its body in a jar of formaldehyde and brought it to the lab. Eventually, I realized that no one was trying to investigate such cases. Local peasants were simply burning these newborn mutants. On the other hand, every case like this is priceless scientific material! That was when I made up my mind to start collecting bodies of mutants and studying them.” With time the professor started being supplied illegally with material collected by his students: “We established contact with local village veterinarians, so whenever they had a mutant case, they would let us know; we would promptly pay a quiet visit to the village to collect the animals and bring them to Zhytomyr.”

The collection of mutants slowly being accumulated at the agricultural institute was not a sight for people with weak nerves. Among the items are a foal with eight legs, a two-headed calf, Siamese-twin piglets, and a cow with four horns. Prof. Konovalov’s estimates that after the Chornobyl explosion the incidence of animal mutants rose twofold.

Soon Prof. Konovalov’s formaldehyde jars had to be transferred to his apartment, because the institute’s administration, pressed by party authorities, forbade him to keep his mutant samples at the laboratory, considering them “monsters denigrating the Soviet system.”

The researcher’s apartment became the world’s only museum of Chornobyl mutants. The jars containing the bodies of small animals did not occupy too much floor space, but there were also calves and foals. Prof. Konovalov had to keep them in boxes in the basement and the balcony.

As time passed, it became increasingly difficult to store this collection. His neighbors kept complaining to authorities about the “mad professor.” Nor was his family overly enthusiastic about the items on display at home. In the end, the scientist packed his entire collection for safe storage and buried it in a reliable location.

“When the time comes, I will dig it up. So far no one seems to care,” says Prof. Konovalov, “bet the fact remains that no research institute has such a collection in Kyiv. These objects are of tremendous scientific importance. I’ve said on a number of occasions that we have no idea about the actual impact of Chornobyl on living organisms. Here is a small example. When I tested fruit flies, they had 40 generations of mutants after being exposed to radiation. Simple arithmetic shows that 40 fruit-fly generations make one year, whereas for man this number means thousands of years. This is the period of Chornobyl’s real impact on mankind.”