[chemotaxis]

This is a really weird post. The thrust appears to be a contrarian desire to portray the Soviet government as capable and competent, and I wonder if it's the author's naivete or some sort of an agenda. The post latches on small discrepancies, but somehow ignores the entire impetus of Legasov's tapes. He sure didn't record them to praise the government:

"And when I visited the Chernobyl station after the accident and saw what was happening there, I myself drew a precise and unequivocal conclusion, that the Chernobyl disaster is an apotheosis, the pinnacle of all the mismanagement that has been carried out for decades in our country."

The show is obviously a "based on a true story" dramatization that invented personas, added tension where little existed, and so forth. But the overall thesis checks out: it was a massive failure of governance before the disaster and during it, including the well-documented fact that the Soviets were initially withholding information from the rest of the world and turning down aid.

[belZaah]

Not telling the population for days on end and drafting people to deal with the consequences without informing them where and why they would be going does not constitute an adequate government response. I lives in the USSR at the time and remember it well. And the consequences for the people who came back.

[amiga386]

Yes, this is a very odd take. There are many other things in Legasov's tapes but not the miniseries, that very much get to the heart of the Soviet system of government. Where in the article is there space to discuss points like these?

> The fault of Anatoly Pavlovich Alexandrov is that he, albeit reluctantly, consented. He was against it, objected to it together with the experts, but then went on to meet the stubborn requirements of State Planning Committee and the Ministry of Energy, that stations can be built without containments.

> Sidorenko Viktor Alekseyevich, the director of the Department of Nuclear Reactors at our institute, the author of this doctoral dissertation and this book, was expelled from the institute. He had to leave the institute. Because his own colleagues didn’t understand him. But why didn’t they understand him? Because his colleagues got bonuses from the Ministry; because the institute was part of the Ministry of Medium Machine Building. Do you understand? They see the director, who is a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences, and their [own] salary is lousy. If he doesn’t get a bonus of 100 roubles, he will survive. But I get only 180 and for me, a bonus of 100 roubles is important. If I “squeal” about the cost of these containments, then I will not get a bonus. If I say something wrong, I will not be published and my dissertation will fail.