In January 1986 the new issue of Soviet Life—a glossy, English-language magazine resembling the stalwart American title but published by the Soviet embassy in the United States—featured the Chernobyl nuclear power plant as the centerpiece of a ten-page report on the wonders of nuclear energy. The special section included interviews with the residents of Pripyat, the city “Born of the Atom”; color photographs of the plant; and pictures of smiling station staff. Legasov coauthored another essay in which he boasted, “In the thirty years since the first Soviet nuclear power plant opened, there has
...more
