Yaroshinskaya, 39, was one of four recipients of the Right Livelihood Award, which honors people and organizations that have found practical solutions to the world's problems. The award, announced in Sweden, was timed to coincide with the annual Nobel prizes, which will be awarded starting Thursday.
Yaroshinskaya is the author of numerous articles published in the former Soviet press that reveal the extent of the Communist government's coverup of the 1986 accident at the Chemobyl nuclear power plant, which spread radiation over a large area of Europe.
Her book "Chemobyl With Us" was published in Moscow in 1991. An expanded version, "Chemobyl: Top Secret" contains documents from the Communist Party archives on the world's worst nuclear accident and is to be published later this fall.
A native of Zhitomir, Ukraine, which lies 180 kilometers from the accident site, Yaroshinskaya began writing about Chernobyl in her local newspaper shortly after the April 26, 1986 explosion and fire.
"I couldn't stand by and watch people complain to the local authorities while the newspaper kept saying everything was fine", she said in an interview Wednesday.
Yaroshinskaya was elected to the Soviet legislature in 1989, and served on several government commissions investigating Chemobyl. Through her work on these committees and continued publications in Izvestia, Komsomolskaya Pravda and other newspapers, she convinced the government to devote more attention and resources to the cleanup.
"The government's cleanup program was a disaster", she said. "They would evacuate people from homes in one area and then settle others there".
Yaroshinskaya says she so angered local government officials by exposing their secrets that she cannot return to her native Ukraine, where many of the same officials remain in power. She has remained in Moscow and is now head of administration at the Russian Press and Information Ministry.
"I am what you might call a political emigre", she said.
Yaroshinskaya continues to publish on numerous topics. She received a letter of thanks from President Boris Yeltsin this week for publishing an open letter in Nezavisimaya Gazeta to Anatoly Lukyanov, the former Soviet parliament speaker who awaits trial on charges of plotting the August 1991 coup.
Yaroshinskaya, who was surprised but unfazed by the news of the prize, says she will donate her prize money to help children who suffer from the effects of radiation from the disaster.
"It was a nice surprise", she said. "There I was, just going about my daily life, running from here to there, and all of a sudden there was a phone call from Stockholm".
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