A general view of the deserted town of Pripyat, some 3 kilometers (1.86 miles) from the Chernobyl ... [+]
May 1 was one of the biggest holidays in the Soviet calendar—the worker's festival. In 1986, celebrations across the Soviet Union were overshadowed by what had happened just days before: the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The Soviet leadership's unsure response was to cost lives and, arguably, hasten the end of the USSR itself.
On the night of 25-26 April, there was an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power station, in what was then the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, one of the 15 constituent republics of the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). The explosion released large amounts of deadly radioactive material that then dispersed far beyond the disaster zone itself.
The Kremlin Tried To Cover Up Chernobyl Disaster
The Soviet authorities initially attempted to cover up the catastrophe. It was not until April 27 that the 30,000 inhabitants of the nearby town of Pripyat were moved from their homes. But the scale of the danger was such that it could not be kept quiet. Within days, unusually and worryingly high levels of radiation had been detected in Scandinavia. The secret could be kept no more.
The Kremlin tried still to remain silent—but their efforts were in vain. On April 29, the London Times front page—citing reports from Stockholm, Sweden—warned of a "Huge nuclear leak At Soviet plant."
Western correspondents in Moscow soon realized what was unfolding beyond the confines of the Soviet capital. The Soviet authorities had to respond—however reluctantly. "They were deliberately trying to obscure what was going on," Philip Taubman, then in Moscow as a correspondent for the New York Times, told me in an interview for my book, Assignment Moscow: Reporting on Russia from Lenin to Putin.
In fact the Soviet leadership was now caught in a trap at least partly of its own making. Under the reform programme—known as "perestroika", or "reconstruction"—that had been launched by Mikhail Gorbachev when he had become Soviet leader the previous year, journalists were encouraged to be frank about the shortcomings of the planned communist economy.
"Angry At The Lack Of Candor"
This extended to questioning official statements in a way that was unprecedented in a society where the Communist party controlled the media. Taubman remembered a news conference on Chernobyl as one of the first times he saw Soviet reporters "angry at the lack of candor" in official statements.
FILE - In this photo taken May 1, 1986 in Ukraine's capital Kiev, people rally to celebrate the May ... [+]
May Day Parades Go Ahead
With hindsight, one of the most troubling aspects of the initial cover up was the Moscow authorities insistence that the May Day parades in Kyiv go ahead as normal—to try to convince people that nothing was wrong. Those celebrating the holiday in the streets put themselves at risk from radiation.
But this kind of callousness had a price. It undermined confidence in the authorities' ability to lead. One of the most striking subsequent accounts of the disaster can be found in the numerous interviews conducted by the Nobel prize-winning author Svetlana Alexievich for her book, Chernobyl Prayer (also translated as Voices from Chernobyl).
Alexievich's work was one of the sources used by creators of the HBO series about the disaster, Chernobyl. "It really impressed me," the author said of the TV dramatization in a 2019 interview with RFE/RL.
Protest—And The End Of The Soviet System
"Chernobyl unleashed a mass protest movement against the authorities," wrote the Harvard historian, Serhii Plokhy, in his 2014 book, The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union itself collapsed in 1991. The explosion in the reactor was a crack in the USSR that not only cost countless lives—the nature and delayed effects of radiation mean that the true death toll may never be known—but also contributed to the demise of a political system.
