The Soviet economy, after decades of spending on the Cold War arms race, was now staggering under the burden of the botched market reforms of Gorbachev’s perestroika, the high price of withdrawing and demobilizing troops from Afghanistan, and the collapse in the international oil market. And the financial cost of Chernobyl—the irradiation and destruction of equipment, the evacuations, the medical care, and the loss of factories, farmland, and millions of kilowatts of electricity—continued to rise.
