Turning the pages back...
April 26, 1996
On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Chornobyl accident, The Ukrainian Weekly released a special issue (which was followed by four more issues containing materials under the rubric "Chornobyl: the first decade"). Following are excerpts from the editorial in that issue, which serve as a reminder of what happened in the USSR in the aftermath of the world's worst nuclear accident.
* * *
Ten years ago, when the fourth reactor at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukrainian SSR exploded, spewing radiation into the atmosphere, the Soviet Union kept silent. ... [Soviet authorities] did not begin evacuating the residents of Prypiat, the nuclear station's "company town," until 36 hours later; and it did not make any public statement about the accident until 48 hours later. ...
The Soviet deception had begun.
May Day celebrations in Kyiv went ahead as planned, and Soviet television showed faces of smiling children marching down the Khreschatyk. Journalists, meanwhile, were not allowed to travel to Kyiv ... The USSR declined offers of international assistance ... Everything is under control, said the Soviet regime's spokesmen.
And the deception continued.
On May 14, Mikhail Gorbachev, general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, architect of perestroika and glasnost, uttered his first words about the Chornobyl tragedy - 18 days after the accident. He reported nine dead and 299 hospitalized with radiation sickness. Meanwhile, the secret minutes of the Politburo's Chornobyl working group indicate that thousands were hospitalized at that very moment.
The USSR had failed its first true test of glasnost, reverting completely to its well-honed policy of deception. ...
In the succeeding years, the truth slowly began to leak out about Chornobyl and its consequences, and the populace became increasingly more disillusioned with Soviet lies. A Green movement arose in Ukraine, and the first anti-nuclear protests took place in 1988. New political groups began to make their voices heard; soon, the issue became independence - for in an independent Ukraine, the people would have their say, they would determine their own future. Chornobyl, thus, was the beginning of the end of Soviet power. ...
Source: "Chornobyl continues" (editorial), The Ukrainian Weekly, April 21, 1996, Vol. LXIV, No 16.
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, April 25, 2004, No. 17, Vol. LXXII
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