[osm3000]

I've mentioned her article. I think she barely touched the topic of Chernobyl itself. Her points was about what the Soviet life was back then, and some depictions of this was incorrect.

For example (for her article)

> In Episode 2, for example, the Central Committee member Boris Shcherbina (Stellan Skarsgård) threatens to have Legasov shot if he doesn’t tell him how a nuclear reactor works. There are a lot of people throughout the series who appear to act out of fear of being shot. This is inaccurate: summary executions, or even delayed executions on orders of a single apparatchik, were not a feature of Soviet life after the nineteen-thirties. By and large, Soviet people did what they were told without being threatened with guns or any punishment.

Her point was: this is not the Soviet way back then. My point is: these two people barely interacted directly, and one of them at least (Legasov) had a lot of respect for the other from the very beginning

[tptacek]

Again, it's weird, because Legosov isn't even the primary source for the series, which is an explicitly fictionalized recounting of what happened. As Gessen points out, your thing about Legasov being part of a team is literally a character in the series!

[osm3000]

> because Legosov isn't even the primary source for the series

I think it was explicit that the series framed the tapes as the "revelation"; the honest message of a dying man to the world to expose what actually happened

[tptacek]

I think you're over-reading what was really just a dramatic framing for the series. The author was explicit that he used composite characters and multiple sources.

It's not a documentary! That doesn't mean you can't criticize it (Gessen sure did). It's that a lot of the kinds of criticisms you make don't make sense given what the show is.