ABSTRACT
The mayor roars with laughter, refills the finger glasses with amber brandy from the mountains in the east and toasts his new town, carved from the deep forest. In a windowless booth of pine, more akin to a sauna than a roadside restaurant, cold soup, hot mustard and grilled pork accompany jokes about politics and people, and reflections on the more serious challenge of reviving Slavutych's economy. Volodymyr Udovychenko is civic leader of Ukraine's newest town, created in the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, and one that is now struggling with the subsequent closure of the remaining reactors and loss of jobs. Later, back on the dark road, the great trees crowd against the roadside for a hundred kilometres or more, and trucks with swaying trailers lumber north towards Russia. Slavutych eventually appears like an oasis, with wide streets and bright sodium streetlights, a town of 20,000 people linked by sixty kilometres of the iron road to the Chernobyl complex to the west.
