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From: nrh@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Orphaned Response
Message-ID: <117200232@inmet>
Date: Thu, 9-Oct-86 19:49:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: inmet.117200232
Posted: Thu Oct  9 19:49:00 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 16-Oct-86 06:30:55 EDT
References: <705@qantel.UUCP>
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Nf-From: inmet.UUCP!nrh    Oct  9 19:49:00 1986


>/* Written  1:56 am  Sep 29, 1986 by gabor@qantel.UUCP in inmet:talk.pol.misc */
>/* ---------- "Volunteers for a Clean Chernobyl" ---------- */
>No news (so far) about brand-new labor camps for the cleanup crews around 
>Chernobyl but there is this little item from the Party paper in Estonia:  
>it reported a spontaneous strike by hundreds of young Estonians conscripted 
>for decontamination of the Chernobyl area.  The paper mentioned grueling 
>14-hour workdays in gas masks "with some falling sick from radiation exposure
>and others anguished that they may return sterile to wives and fiancees". The
>article talked about the brutality in the handling of the conscripts as they
>washed down trees and dug up contaminated topsoil. [NY Times 8-31-86]
>
>These 18-year old Estonian kids are part of the roughly 1 million Soviet
>construction troops, subject to Army discipline and treated even more 
>atrociously than the average Soviet conscript. They exist in part because
>of traditional fondness for forced labor and in part to rough up / keep tabs
>on non-conformists and unreliables. (Estonians are unreliable by definition.) 
>These construction troops are usually included in East-West force comparisons
>even though they spend their years in uniform without ever being allowed near
>weapons or live ammunition.
>

Gary Hart was proposing a similar idea (not, of course, including the 
brutality and radiation-exposure)  He called it "National Service" and 
appeared to think it was one of his new ideas.

I heard a radio editorial in favor of it on one of the Boston Radio
stations.