Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster

by Adam Higginbotham

It was only then that Legasov had finally recognized the true scope of the decay at the heart of the nuclear state: the culture of secrecy and complacency, the arrogance and negligence, and the shoddy standards of design and construction.

Slowly at first, but then with gathering momentum, the Soviet public began to discover how deeply it had been misled—not only about the accident and its consequences but also about the ideology and identity upon which their society was founded. The accident and the government’s inability to protect the population from its consequences finally shattered the illusion that the USSR was a global superpower armed with technology that led the world. And, as the state’s attempts to conceal the truth of what had happened came to light, even the most faithful citizens of the Soviet Union faced the realization that their leaders were corrupt and that the Communist dream was a sham.

He told the delegates that the origins of the Chernobyl disaster lay in a combination of “scientific, technological, socioeconomic, and human factors” unique to the USSR. The Soviet nuclear industry, lacking even rudimentary safety practices, had relied upon its operators to behave with robotic precision night after night, despite constant pressure to beat deadlines and “exceed the plan” that made disregard for the letter of the regulations almost inevitable.

But he concluded that it was no longer constructive to allocate blame—whether with “those who hang a rifle on the wall, aware that it is loaded, or those who inadvertently pull the trigger.”

“Ukrainians are a strong people,” he said, “that can overcome even the nuclear demon.”