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

It's a drama, of course it has inaccuracies, it's supposed to be entertaining. But then again, what is there to screw up? The reactor blew, the soviets tried to cover it sloppily, people got various degrees of radiation poisoning. I will say this, it's still made by westerners who just assume that human life is intrinsically valuable. USSR bureaucrats didn't care about human lives much because they had the press, radio and TV under their control. Remember how in Venezuela they defeated malnutrition... by forbidding doctors to make such a diagnosis? Similar fate happened to those who were poisoned by radiation so there wasn't much drama among bureaucrats going on. We will just write them off, what's the big deal?

That article is garbage

I haven't seen the miniseries yet, though I plan on it, but I was wondering if I should pitch it to my dad. He's in some ways very pro-Russian but in other ways not, and I don't really know where he stands. On the other hand he also worked on the cleanup of the Chernobyl NPP as a summer job so I thought it would be interesting for him to see it. Definitely a bit of topic, just felt a little like sharing. Oh he also works at a NPP so it's all up in the air (not that I am against nuclear or anything)

There will probably be a scene like this; The heroic KGB agents have managed to apprehend all but 1 villainous CIA agent. All of a sudden, they notice movement on their hyper-advanced camera system which was totally available in the USSR back in '86. The brave agents all run to the core but they only reach the upper catwalk when they spot the murderous CIA agent running towards the entrance with a bundle of dynamite...on fire... on a stick. The awesome KGB pull out their pistols and they all start shooting the wicked CIA agent. Unfortunately, no matter how powerful their guns are, the immoral American devil's body manages to fall over into the core and detonate the explosives. So basically that one scene from The Two Towers, https://thumbs.gfycat.com/LateCompassionateBoubou-size_restricted.gif That way, they can claim they did everything they could, but the Americans still managed to carry out the sabotage through sheer luck.

This article totally misses the point of the show, but its criticism of the characterization of the "dramatic spike" in cancer rates is somewhat well-founded. The science on this is far from settled, and as the show alludes to, we will never truly know anything close to the exact number. Chernobyl is estimated to cause around 30,000 cancer cases over time, although most of them are easily treatable, such as thyroid cancer. But the rate of increase is practically negligible; compared to cancers caused by things other than Chernobyl, the Chernobyl cases make up around 0.01%. Again, the scientific consensus on this is much less clear. Generally, there is, indeed, no clear evidence that Chernobyl caused an increase in birth defects. The level of radiation that unborn fetuses were exposed to was not sufficient to show provably increased rates of birth defects. Some scientists explicitly throw the media under the bus for sensationalizing anecdotal evidence.

Birth defects happen normally as well. Posting random photos of such does not prove any sort of connection to Chernobyl. That's just an infantile argument.

Bollocks. You can say a lot about the Soviet Union, but it was surprisingly self-reliant. It had economy of its own, shitty as it was. Putin's Russia doesn't have an economy at all, where Soviets opened factories and created industries (like Russian oil industry as we know it was pretty much created in the 80s, funnily enough, by Scherbina) Putin's oligarchs only seek means to extract quick buck and then close everything down. Russia pretends to be a competitor on the market while it buys everything it has in Europe, China and US. Look at the state our space industry is, it's awful. And how about Russian elites' kids living almost universally in Western countries? Even Soviets weren't that hypocritical, and that says a lot by itself. Make no mistake, Russia has pretty much nothing in common with USSR. Soviet Union was a terrible totalitarian state, but it wasn't blatant kleptocracy.

It's kinda sad because during the USSR days there where a ton of great movies, novels and even music being made in Russia. I can't think of a single modern Russian movie or artist/band of note and I can only think of a handful of decent novels coming out from there. Feels like Russian culture just kinda stagnated and died after the fall of the union.

Look no further than the mouthpiece of the Russian Gov. itself, RT, for their attitude towards it: https://www.rt.com/news/460878-chernobyl-hbo-fake-soviet/

Wow that's actually a surprisingly decent article. I don't agree with it, but there's an argument to be made about artistic liberties taken by show's authors. The picture they painted is indeed quite naive - they decided against "Russian accents", but decided to keep people constantly addressing each other as "comrade", which all but vanished completely by 60s. The "I will have you shot!" threat is also pretty jarring for the Soviet bureaucrat circa '86. The thing is though, the showrunners didn't set out to paint an authentic picture of the Soviet society and blaming them for failing to do that is completely unfair.

But you have to realize the reason they invested so heavily in nuclear power wasn't for the energy infrastructure. It was because they're needed to make nuclear weapons.

This is one of the sources HBO used to make the series: https://youtu.be/jV45AFCwcUc it's Ukrainian and I think it's decently accurately portrayed on the series.

I keep hearing mixed things about this comrade part. the HBO podcast said the original draft didn't have any as he thought it was a tired trope, but when he had people who were there at the time read over it they told him where he should be adding it. Again I've read the same mixed replies with reviews on how accurate the use of comrade is.

Also the part with the baby dying of exposure to an irradiated firefighter is pretty goofy. That's not how irradiation works, it's not a virus. Sounds to me like this kind of misrepresentation could reinforce irrational fears over nuclear power by making it seem like another accident could lead to some sort of epidemic.

That's a different kind of authenticity. There's visual, which is absolutely amazing in Chernobyl, then there's... uh, social, I guess. Now, the "comrade" thing is awkward. By the end of the Soviet Union it was primarily used when formally addressing a higher-up, and even then - in cases where for some reason you couldn't use standard "name+patronym" formula. Specifically, it's pretty jarring for technicians and engineers at the station to address each other like that in the show. In that kind of environment "Anatoly Stepanovich" would be used instead of extremely official "comrade Dyatlov". That's kind of hard to explain properly, it's something you have to have a feeling for. "Comrade" was never fully analogous to "sir".

I'm assuming it is mostly for how it translates and going for the best compromise that works in English rather than super realistic social representation.

Let me guess, there's no proof people died in Auschwitz of anything but common illnesses, the moon landing was recorded in Area 51, and 9/11 was a hologram?

Absolutely, that's why RT article's criticism is missing the point. Yeah, sure, Chernobyl simplifies a lot of things, but that's just reality of fiction. You have to make sacrifices to highlight what's most important.

Seems like they might not want people to think about how they still have like 5 RBMK's located near some pretty major cities

Yeah. The idea that Soviet communism made true art impossible was probably the single biggest lie in the Red Scare narrative that America cultivated during the cold war. The material that was produced within the USSR was not universally state sanctioned anti-western propaganda. Not even close. In fact, some of what was produced there has aged better than some of the one-dimensional anti-communist films produced in the US during the same time period. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnJbtbh4tDE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LNHYz89sNc

I haven't seen the miniseries yet because I don't really want to pay an HBO bill, but it sounds like maybe the "comrades" are there more for atmosphere than accuracy. Us being a bunch of Westerners, most of us have a hard time grasping the true differences between '80s America and '80s USSR besides "they say comrade and eat pirogi"

Because in Putin's Russia, the government is right about everything. Their theories are right, Putin is right, Their clocks are right and the rest of the world is wrong. There are a lot of Russians I know that don't buy this rubbish, but when you got a man that has no problem with silencing his own people when they stand up to him, what can you do? The Kremlin is filled with nothing but pro-political liars and corrupt politicians.

Now I'm some conspiracy loony for saying that random unsourced images aren't proof? I don't claim to know whether Chernobyl is attributed to birth defects or not, but you can see that Snowmew posted a study that states it did not while the those who seem to disagree do not bother to post evidence or actual arguments whatsoever.

I'm not certain on the specific accuracy of how they explained the baby absorbing all the radiation from the mother (in reality It seems both the mother and baby would absorb radiation, with the mother taking the brunt of it. With the baby also absorbing radiation through the mothers blood and contaminated things necessary for development) lyudmilla ignatenko was a real person and she was pregnant and her baby did die of radiation induced congenital heart disease and liver cirrhosis.

as i remember . the baby wasnt exactly a conduit of radiation. its that the baby and the mother both received the radiation. but the developing baby's stem cells kept the mother alive, but at the same time, killed the child. A baby will provide stem cells if a mother has an internal organ injured for the sake of its survival. but given the high amount of radiation involved, the infant died in the process. the fetus basically sacrificed itself for the mother. Which makes it much more tragic.

Not denying that babies did die to radiation exposure, but IRL was the catalyst for that really the exposure to an irradiated (but washed) fireman?

If you think it's dumb, you're more than welcome to clear things up with an explanation. I'm only asking a question here.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/radiation-sickness/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20377061 Treatment The treatment goals for radiation sickness are to prevent further radioactive contamination; treat life-threatening injuries, such as from burns and trauma; reduce symptoms; and manage pain. Decontamination Decontamination involves removing external radioactive particles. Removing clothing and shoes eliminates about 90 percent of external contamination. Gently washing with water and soap removes additional radiation particles from the skin. Decontamination prevents radioactive materials from spreading more. It also lowers the risk of internal contamination from inhalation, ingestion or open wounds. Sounds like most of the danger is from exterior contamination but there may be internal contamination if they've been inhaling it. (Seems likely for a fireman) Also saw somewhere else that if you're internally contaminated there's a risk of contamination through your bodily fluids. So that's a possibility. After reading a bit more in ARS I almost feel like contact is more dangerous to the patient due to their fucked up immune system and susceptibility to infection. Though I imagine a pregnant person would probably want to err in the side of caution in general. Who knows how well those patients and surroundings have been decontaminated. There was like 70 patients there the nurse said. Probably a place you'd do good to be careful in. I do feel like the bulk of her radiation exposure was from being in Pripyat. But I'm not a doctor so I really can't say for sure.

Given that it was only months after the disaster, Is it not also plausible that the idea of 'the baby absorbed the radiation' was just simply what they believed at the time? I'm honestly not sure how strong an understanding they had back then of the effects radiation has on the human body, but I feel like it's plausible that that's simply what they knew at the time, and we've only come to realize that it's wrong after the fact.

The fact that we're even debating this is proof enough for me that the show is dangerously misleading about the dangers of radiation for the general public.