The Russian government hates HBO's Chernobyl, vows to set the record straght - Sensationalist Headlines

And by "'setting the record straight," they mean making their own damn show that portrays the Chernobyl disaster as the result of a CIA plot. https://news.avclub.com/russia-hates-hbos-chernobyl-vows-to-make-its-own-serie-1835298424 We were huge fans of Chernobyl, HBO’s five-part miniseries about the 1986 nuclear reactor explosion. We weren’t alone, either; the series now has the—frankly, dubious—honor of being the highest-rated show on IMDb, having presumably bumped off The Shawshank Redemption. It has its critics, though. A compelling New Yorker piece criticizes “its failure to accurately portray Soviet relationships of power.” Less articulate is The Kremlin, who, per this piece from The Moscow Times, has used its media arm to launch a “mini-crusade” against the series, which has apparently become a source of fascination in Russia. “The fact that an American, not a Russian, TV channel tells us about our own heroes is a source of shame that the pro-Kremlin media apparently cannot live down,” writes the Times’ Ilya Shepelin. “And this is the real reason they find fault with HBO’s Chernobyl series.” Part of this crusade is a Russia-produced series from the country’s NTV channel. Directed by filmmaker Alexei Muradov, their project will focus not on the aftermath of the explosion, but instead on what Shepelin calls a “conspiracy theory” that inserts American spies into the narrative. Of his story, Muradov says, “One theory holds that Americans had infiltrated the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and many historians do not deny that, on the day of theexplosion, an agent of the enemy’s intelligence services was present at the station.” The heroes, then, will not be the scientists, soldiers, and civilians who helped prevent a further spread of radiation, but rather the KGB officers trying to thwart these CIA operatives. As Shepelin notes, Russia’s leadership rarely honors Chernobyl’s survivors. “Just go to the official Kremlin website to see how often President Vladimir Putin mentions the Chernobyl survivors—many of whom are still alive and suffer from a variety of radiation-induced illnesses,” writes the Times’ Ilya Shepelin. “Putin’s sole references to them occur on the major anniversaries of the Chernobyl accident. He last mentioned them in 2016, on the 30th anniversary of the disaster, and again in 2011, on the 25th anniversary.” Reading this, of course, just makes HBO’s series, which chronicles the ways in which Soviet leadership valued its own image above its citizens, resonate that much more.

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The Soviet Union may have collapsed but Russia never really changed, only the ideologies they use to keep the corrupt oligarchs in power, who never actually believed in the ideologies anyways.

I always like to say the USSR never died, just went into hiding.

With Putin in the reigns, Russia's a rebuilding USSR without the name at this point.

This could be a neat alternate-timeline kind of story. Might be cool. If you ignore the fact it was made because Russia was butthurt.

Russian government is so pathetic...

Why don't they just make a show about Three Mile Island instead of this? It's a good opportunity imo.

Chernobyl - The catalyst for the downfall of the Soviet Union Chernobyl TV show - The Catalyst for the downfall of the Russian Federation

Can someone tell me how accurate HBOs production is?

Because 90% of the film makers here are talent-less hacks. All government sponsored movies are utter trash. They are angry at western world, they sue critics if they give them bad reviews.

I'm assuming there are ulterior motives such as portraying to the people that the US are behind all the bad events in the world. No doubt this show will be portrayed as historical or factual to fool the population.

From what I've seen - reviews, articles, posts, tweets - its accuracy and authenticity have been praised by everyone from history experts to people who were (or whose close family were) directly involved in the crisis. Certain liberties were taken for the sake of better presentation as a TV drama (such as english acting without any stereotypical russian accents, a composite character to represent a myriad scientists, and so on) but they've clearly done their best to stick to all the historical facts that they could possibly get their hands on while filling in the blanks without straying too far into Hollywood style embellishment territory. It's still a dramatization of course, but one that clearly nails the balance between creative liberties and historical authenticity.

There are pages and pages of extremely positive reviews from Ukrainians and people from Belarus on IMDB, so I'm not surprised Russia is keen to create propaganda: https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/242634/b59b4c6c-e769-4c89-85fa-68051d15e0a3/image.png

What's up with Russians blaming the West or CIA for all their problems, serious question. That seems to be the tired scapegoat for every domestic and international issue in Russia just because it's convenient vice actually doing something about the problem.

You answered your own question. Same reason why, according to the POTUS, everything in America can be blamed on Hillary, Obama, Democrats, coloured people, illegal immigrants, or some combination of the above. It evades accepting responsibility and, consequently, the responsibility to do something about it. For example, consider when the Trump administration was caging immigrant children who've been separated from their parents. "BUT OBAMA!!!" and now everyone's talking about the deflection and not how the caging policy remained intact and nothing changed.

Putin trying to make very clear that he is the true baby man of the world.

I could understand if they had been complaining about factual inaccuracies which there are tons of but this is not what I was expecting. Theres even a podcast from the shows producer (or director? idk) where they talk about some of them but a lot of the main plot is over simplified or just flat out incorrect but american spies, really?

I've been a huge nuclear nerd for a while and had done a ton of reading on the "big three" disasters for years before this show was announced. I was super worried watching the previews because I figured it'd be just another hit piece on the nuclear industry to rile up fear again. Turns out it's pretty damn accurate to the actual events as they played out, especially in the hours before and after the explosions occurred. It's dramatized quite a bit of course, and is by no means a documentary, but it probably now ranks as one of my favorite shows of the last decade. There's a lot of inference as to what exactly happened in a lot of the scenes, because obviously we have no clue what actually went down in a good majority of the disaster, but at no point did I think "this isn't believable." I'd recommend everyone watch it if they haven't. The last episode in particular does an excellent job at breaking down the science of what caused the disaster.

The irony is that the show's message is aimed at politicians and leaders who cover up and downplay massive tragedies like Chernobyl to save face, and by spreading lies and misinformation, turn it into an even worse tragedy. This reaction of the Russian government just demonstrates that they are the same as they were 30 years ago. Shifting the blame and spreading propaganda in the face of humiliation.

Yeah, I'm no longer surprised about the insanely high IMDB rating. It seems like this miniseries is to the Chernobryl disaster what Schindler's List was to the Holocaust - except its being praised even more universally. There were some minor objections to Steven Spielberg's film early on, mainly on the basis that some Jews felt that was impossible to fully capture the evils of the Holocaust in the film format. There appear to be no such complaints about the Chernobyl minseries, in comparison. It's a modern day masterpiece that sets a new bar for screen dramatizations of real-life atrocities. People will be praising it for decades to come.

Maybe because Three Mile Island is heavily over-exaggerated. Anti-nuclear movement activists expressed worries about regional health effects from the accident.[7] However, epidemiological studies analyzing the rate of cancer in and around the area since the accident, determined there was a small statistically non-significant increase in the rate and thus no causal connection linking the accident with these cancers has been substantiated.[8][9][10][11][12][13] Also the narrative of spies being involved in Chernobyl suits their agenda pretty well nowadays

I'm definitely worried that people will watch it and take away "nuclear bad" instead of "nuclear bad if everything is half-assed". Chernobyl has already been used over and over again as an argument against nuclear even though the technology is incredibly safe now. I found this article which talks about how the series misrepresents radiation. Being honest about nuclear power is pretty important now, especially with climate change. Why HBO's "Chernobyl" Gets Nuclear So Wrong

Honestly right now there's no reason to not invest in Throrium since meltdowns with Thorium are basically impossible. The only problem is the start up cost for building a reactor but normal nuclear power plants had that problem too back in the day and it didn't stop them from being built.

I admit, when I saw trailers for this show, I had absolutely no interest in watching it. It looked like a generic drama series that seemed to be just another show based on an big event. Now hearing all this praise I really want to see it. It dethroned Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Planet Earth and Band of Brothers on Imdb, and that is saying something.

That is frighteningly accurate.

But what about those movies that always have "approved by the ministry of culture" thing in the beginning? Those are mostly amazing and show the government in a terrible light. Leviathan or The Fool, for example.

You know what's funny? Let's just assume for the moment that the CIA was directly involved in a plot to detonate a reactor. That would mean that the KGB failed to protect the Soviet People from a covert operation by a foreign power on their own soil. Even if you argue that the CIA wanted to turn the reactor into an actual nuclear bomb, rather than just blowing it up, the KGB still looks bad because they only 'mitigated' a disaster. It doesn't even matter that such assumptions are borderline insane because no matter how you splice it, any attempt to pin the disaster on anything other than gross Soviet negligence and corruption will simultaneously force you to acknowledge that the KGB failed.

They will be making it for old cranky soviet people. Nobody else watches the TV much.

>There is no good evidence that Chernobyl radiation killed a baby nor that it caused any increase in birth defects. This single line of text is enough to disregard the whole article, and is a perfect illustration of why forbes is a fucking rag that should never be taken seriously by anyone under any circumstance. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/108580/71a0de1e-2891-4875-a079-06a168f37e96/image.png https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/57151d5f52bcd044008bd62e-1334-890.jpg https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/57151d5f52bcd0320c8bd48e-1334-890.jpg http://chernobylplace.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Bezymyannyj-1.jpg