Midnight in Chernobyl

by Adam Higginbotham

  “Tell him less about your successes”: Legasova, author interview, 2017.

  When he arrived: Margarita Legasova, Academician Valery A. Legasov, 113.

  Despite the fine weather: Read, Ablaze, 96–97, 197; Legasov, account in Shcherbak, Chernobyl, 414.

  The first of the planes from Moscow: Grigori Medvedev, Truth About Chernobyl, 142; Shasharin, “Chernobyl Tragedy,” 80; Drach, author interview, 2017; Anzhelika Barabanova, author interview, Moscow, October 2016.

  When he landed, Prushinsky learned: Prushinsky, “This Can’t Be—But It Happened,” 312–13.

  The shell-shocked director: For example, Vladimir Marin, who supervised the nuclear energy sector in the Central Committee apparatus in Moscow and arrived in Pripyat by early evening on April 26, writes that at five o’clock on Saturday afternoon, Brukhanov reported that the reactor was under control and being cooled (V. V. Marin, “On the Activities of the Task Force of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee at the Chernobyl NPP” [О деятельности оперативной группы Политбюро ЦК КПСС на Чернобыльской АЭС], in Semenov, ed., Chernobyl: Ten Years On, 267–68).

  It passed from the General Department: Dmitri Volkogonov and Harold Shukman, Autopsy for an Empire: The Seven Leaders Who Built the Soviet Regime (New York: Free Press, 1999), 477.

  “An explosion occurred”: “Urgent Report, Accident at Chernobyl Atomic Power Station,” April 26, 1986, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, Volkogonov Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Translated for NPIHP by Gary Goldberg, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/115341.

  The second—more senior—wave: This party also included Alexander Meshkov (deputy minister of Sredmash) and Viktor Sidorenko (vice chairman of Gosatomenergonadzor, Sredmash’s nuclear energy oversight committee) (Shasharin, “Chernobyl Tragedy,” 80–81; Sklyarov, Chernobyl Was . . . Tomorrow, 33.

  “Don’t try to frighten us”: Grigori Medvedev, Truth About Chernobyl, 154; Sklyarov, author interview, 2016.

  Bumping down on a dirt airstrip: Sklyarov, Chernobyl Was . . . Tomorrow, 37–39; Shasharin, “Chernobyl Tragedy,” 80–81; Colonel General B. Ivanov, “Chernobyl. Part 2: Bitter Truth Is Better” [2: Лучше горькая правда], Voennye Znaniya 40, no. 2 (1988): 22.

  Conducting a radiation reconnaissance: This radiation surveillance work had been hampered by the continuing secrecy surrounding the station. When Logachev, the civil defense lieutenant responsible for scouting the power plant, was given his orders, he pointed out that Unit Four didn’t appear to be shown anywhere on the schematic he had. Malomuzh himself took a pen and scribbled a rough outline of the reactor in an otherwise blank space in the middle of the map (Alexander Logachev, author interview, 2016). Logachev’s dosimetry map of Chernobyl station from April 26, 1986, is in the archive of Chernobyl Museum.

  Circling the reactor at low altitude: Prushinsky, “This Can’t Be—But It Happened,” 315.

  Fomin finally conceded: Gennadi Berdov, Ukraine’s deputy minister of internal affairs, testimony in Voznyak and Troitsky, Chernobyl: It Was Like This, 199.

  Worse news was to come: Karpan, Chernobyl to Fukushima, 28.

  His armored personnel carrier: The vehicle’s top speed and weight are given in Logachev, The Truth.

  “You mean milliroentgen, son”: Logachev, interviews by author and Taras Shumeyko, 2016; Logachev, The Truth; Logachev, dosimetry map of Chernobyl station, Chernobyl Museum.

  7:20 p.m. on Saturday evening: Alexander Lyashko, The Weight of Memory: On the Rungs of Power [Груз памяти: На ступенях власти], vol. 2 in a trilogy (Kiev: Delovaya Ukraina, 2001), 351.

  They were greeted by a delegation: Legasov Tapes, Cassette One, 5.

  Boundless levels of marsh: Author visit to Pripyat, April 25, 2016.

  But in Pripyat, Scherbina: Drach, author interview, 2017; Sklyarov, Chernobyl Was . . . Tomorrow, 40.

  Intelligent, energetic, and hardworking: Drach, author interview, 2017; Sklyarov, author interview, 2016; Scherbina’s date of birth is given as October 5, 1919, in Andriyanov and Chirskov, Boris Scherbina, 387. This description also draws on Kopchinsky and Steinberg, Chernobyl, 53.

  Respect and admiration: Drach, author interview, 2017.

  “So, are you shitting your pants?”: Sklyarov, Chernobyl Was . . . Tomorrow, 40; Sklyarov, author interview, 2016.

  “We have to evacuate the local population”: Prushinsky, “This Can’t Be—But It Happened,” 317. In spite of this exchange, and a weight of conflicting testimony from others, Prushinsky records that the issue of evacuation was resolved “without any delay” at the meeting that followed.

  The first meeting of the government commission: Description of the crowd, tension: Vasily Kizima, author interview, Kiev, February 2016. Description of the room, smoking: Alexander Logachev, interview by Taras Shumeyko, Kiev, June 2017. Legasov gives the time of his arrival as around 8 p.m., and Prushinsky writes that the first meeting began two hours later (Prushinsky, “This Can’t Be—But It Happened,” 317).

  Academician Legasov listened: Legasov Tapes, cassette One, 5.

  They said only: Ibid., cassette One, 4.

  Scherbina divided the members: Ibid., 5.

  Like the station’s own physicists: Shasharin, “Chernobyl Tragedy,” 85–86; Karpan, Chernobyl to Fukushima, 78.

  But the Rovno station director was reluctant: Sklyarov, author interview, 2017; Sklyarov, Chernobyl Was . . . Tomorrow, 41–42.

  At the same time, Legasov realized: Read, Ablaze, 105–6.

  Everyone knew that something must be done: Kizima, author interview, 2016.

  They found the figures alarming: Logachev, interview by Taras Shumeyko, 2017.

  “They never evacuated people there!”: Drach, author interview, 2017. This account is confirmed by Legasov and General Berdov: Voznyak and Troitsky, Chernobyl: It Was Like This, 218.

  According to the state document: The document (Russian name “Критерии для принятия решения по защите населения в случае аварии атомного реактора”) is cited in Voznyak and Troitsky, Chernobyl: It Was Like This, 219.

  Even the regulations: Geist, “Political Fallout,” 115–16.

  He had little reason to believe: Less than a year earlier, a radio station in Kiev conducting a training exercise had accidentally broadcast a recorded message announcing that the city’s hydroelectric dam had burst, and urged citizens to gather their belongings and immediately leave their homes for higher ground. The announcement was met with inaction and indifference. Such was Kievans’ distrust of official news sources that, instead of fleeing the supposed catastrophe, more than eight hundred people phoned the radio station to ask if the report was true. Nigel Raab, All Shook Up: The Shifting Soviet Response to Catastrophes, 1917–1991 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017), 143–44.

  By daybreak on Saturday: Esaulov recalls hearing about the KGB order to cut off the phones from his boss, Pripyat ispolkom chairman Vladimir Voloshko, sometime in the early morning (Esaulov, City That Doesn’t Exist, 16–17).

  The plume of vapor from the reactor had been drifting: Read, Ablaze, 101–2; Akhromeyev and Korniyenko, Through the Eyes of a Marshal and a Diplomat, 100.

  It would bring down radioactive fallout: Zhores Medvedev, Legacy of Chernobyl, 141.

  He resolved to wait until morning: Ivanov, “Chernobyl. Part 3: Evacuation” [3: Эвакуация], Voennye Znaniya 40, no. 3 (1988): 38.

  A ruby glow: Karpan, “First Days of the Chernobyl Accident,” 2008.

  Taking samples from the coolant canal: Kopchinsky and Steinberg, Chernobyl, 65; Armen Abagyan (head of VNIIAES), account in Voznyak and Troitsky, Chernobyl: It Was Like This, 213.

  “He’s a panicker!”: Sklyarov, author interview, 2016; Sklyarov, Sublimation of Time, 105–6. In the author interview, Sklyarov recalled that Scherbina used the phrase “ska
ndal na ves’ mir,” which may be literally translated as “a scandal before the whole world,” but skandal in Russian carries a combined meaning of a “humiliation” and a “mess.” In Sublimation of Time, Sklyarov explains that he had first included an account of this episode in the manuscript of his 1991 memoir Tomorrow . . . Was Chernobyl but removed it before publication at the request of Vladimir Ivashko, who by then had succeeded Scherbitsky as Ukraine’s Communist Party chief.

  8. SATURDAY, 6:15 A.M., PRIPYAT

  It was sometime after 3:00 a.m.: Alexander Esaulov, author interview, Irpin, July 2015; Shcherbak, “Report on First Anniversary of Chernobyl Accident,” trans. JPRS, pt. 1, 30.

  There was always something going wrong: Esaulov, The City That Doesn’t Exist, 11–12.

  On the phone was Maria Boyarchuk: Ibid., 16.

  But then another ambulance sped past: Eventually a total of four ambulances were involved, according to Vitaly Leonenko, director of Medical-Sanitary Center No. 126 (author interview, Vepryk, Ukraine, December 2016). Arkady Uskov (account in Shcherbak, Chernobyl, 69) would remember passing two ambulances on his way to the plant at four thirty, and Piers Paul Read writes that by five o’clock, the vehicles were performing “a shuttle service” (Ablaze, 85).

  Esaulov began to suspect: Esaulov, author interview, 2015; Esaulov, City That Doesn’t Exist, 16.

  “Good morning, Boris”: Andrei Glukhov, author interview, Slavutych, Ukraine, 2015.

  Glukhov climbed to the top floor: Glukhov, author interview, 2015; author visit to Toptunov’s apartment in Pripyat, April 25, 2016.

  The Pripyat hospital: Leonenko, author interview, 2016; author visit to Hospital No. 126, April 27, 2016.

  Formally diagnosed radiation sickness: Ibid.; according to Angelina Guskova, the staff of the hospital initially reported to her that the injuries were the result of a chemical fire. Angelina Guskova, interview by Vladimir Gubarev, “On the Edge of the Atomic Sword” [На лезвии атомного меча], Nauka i zhizn, no. 4 (2007): www.nkj.ru/archive/articles/9759.

  The men and women arriving from the plant: Tatyana Marchulaite (medical assistant at Hospital No. 126), account in Voznyak and Troitsky, Chernobyl: It Was Like This, 202–5.

  At first, Dyatlov refused treatment: Read, Ablaze, 85–86.

  “You don’t vomit at fifty”: This account was shared by Alexander Yuvchenko in Vivienne Parry, “How I Survived Chernobyl,” Guardian, August 24, 2004, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/aug/24/russia.health.

  Burns and blisters covered his body: Read, Ablaze, 85.

  “Get away from me”: Marchulaite, testimony in Voznyak and Troitsky, Chernobyl: It Was Like This, 205. Shashenok’s time of death is specified by Nikolai Gorbachenko (radiation monitor at ChNPP) in Kiselyov, “Inside the Beast,” 46.

  It was not yet 8:00 a.m.: Natalia Yuvchenko, author interview, 2015; Read, Ablaze, 85 and 91.

  Around the corner, at home: Maria Protsenko, author interview, Kiev, September 2015.

  When persuasion wouldn’t work: Anatoly Svetetsky, head of technological safety systems reactor and turbine departments of Units Three and Four, Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, interview by Taras Shumeyko, Kiev, May 28, 2017.

  “proletarian aesthetics”: For an exploration of the role of proletarian aesthetics in Soviet energy-related construction, see Josephson, Red Atom, 96–97.

  As many as two hundred thousand people: Sich, “The Chornobyl Accident Revisited,” 204; Igor Kruchik, “Mother of the Atomgrad” [Мати Атомограда], Tizhden, September 5, 2008, http://tyzhden.ua/Publication/3758.

  “We’re going to chase away the shitiki!”: See the interview with Vasily Gorokhov (Chernobyl deputy director for decontamination from July 1986 to May 1987) for evidence that liquidators, too, believed in shitiki: Alexander Bolyasny, “The First ‘Orderly’ of the First Zone” [Первый «санитар» первой зоны], Vestnik 320, no. 9 (April 2003): www.vestnik.com/issues/2003/0430/koi/bolyasny.htm.

  “You’ve got a phone call”: Protsenko, author interview, 2015.

  Hundreds of members of the militsia: “Background information on the Town of Pripyat,” April 26, 1986, Pripyat militsia, File on Special Measures in Pripyat Zone, 14, archive of Chernobyl Museum.

  An emergency meeting: Description of the city administration meeting on Saturday morning: Protsenko and Esaulov, author interviews, 2015.

  Warming up for an afternoon match: The fixture, part of the semifinal competition for the top soccer teams in the Kiev region, was canceled later that day (“Soccer in Pripyat: The History of the ‘Builder’ Soccer Club” [Футбол в Припяти. История футбольного клуба «Строитель»], Sports.ru blog, https://www.sports.ru/tribuna/blogs/golden_ball/605515.html., April 27, 2014.

  Malomouzh had arrived: Parashyn, account in Shcherbak, Chernobyl, 76; Zhores Medvedev, Legacy of Chernobyl, 37.

  “There has been an accident”: Protsenko, author interview, 2015.

  In the meantime, he explained: Shcherbak, “Report on First Anniversary of Chernobyl Accident,” trans. JPRS, pt. 1, 48.

  Naturally, there were questions: Ibid., 37.

  “And please do not panic”: Protsenko, author interview, 2015.

  A solitary armored car: The time of the column’s arrival is given in Vladimir Maleyev, Chernobyl. Days and Years: The Chronicle of the Chernobyl Campaign [Чернобыль. Дни и годы: летопись Чернобыльской кампании] (Moscow: Kuna, 2010), 21. Additional details: Colonel Grebeniuk (commander of the 427th Mechanized Regiment), interviews by author and Taras Shumeyko, Kiev, July 2016. By this time Senior Lieutenant Alexander Logachev’s machine, which had suffered brake failure on the road from Kiev, had been replaced at the head of the column by another vehicle; in an attempt to catch up with his comrades, Logachev drove directly toward the station instead. (Logachev, author interview, Kiev, 2017.)

  Controlled tightly by the KGB: Kotkin, Armageddon Averted, 42.

  Protsenko sat down: Protsenko, author interview, 2015.

  225th Composite Air Squadron: Sergei Drozdov, “Aerial Battle over Chernobyl” [Воздушная битва при Чернобыле], Aviatsiya i vremya 2 (2011), www.xliby.ru/transport_i_aviacija/aviacija_i_vremja_2011_02/p6.php.

  In the pilot’s seat: Sergei Volodin, author interview, Kiev, July 2015.

  An airborne radiation survey: Colonel Lubomir Mimka, author interview, Kiev, February 2016.

  On the way there: Sergei Volodin, unpublished memoir, undated.

  And although he and his crew: Volodin, author interviews, 2006 and 2015.

  Volodin knew Chernobyl well: Ibid.; Volodin, unpublished memoir.

  At the construction headquarters: Kovtutsky, author interview, 2016.

  From her desk in the White House: Protsenko, author interview, 2016.

  A manager working on the Fifth and Sixth Units: Grigori Medvedev, Truth About Chernobyl, 88–89 and 149–51.

  The technician’s next-door neighbor: Ibid., 150.

  Knowing that the KGB: The engineer was Georgi Reikhtman (author interview, September 2015), who told his wife to pack all of the family’s winter clothing. Because it was late spring, she thought he was talking nonsense and ignored him.

  Another persuaded Director Brukhanov: This engineer was Nikolai Karpan: Chernobyl to Fukushima, 32–33.

  Arriving at Yanov station: Veniamin Prianichnikov, author interview, Kiev, February 2006.

  Militsia officers everywhere: An internal Ukrainian Interior Ministry memo specifies that by nine o’clock on Saturday morning, 600 militsia troops and 250 authorized “civilian persons” were deployed to the Pripyat area from local and regional bases. “Background Information on the Town of Pripyat,” April 26, 1986, File on Special Measures in Pripyat Zone, 14, archive of Chernobyl Museum.

  Prianichnikov suspected: Prianichnikov, author interview, 2006.

  When the civil defense major returned: Volodin, author interview,
2006. The time of the first helicopter flight for air radiation reconnaissance on April 26 is specified by Major General M. Masharovsky in “Operation of Helicopters During the Chernobyl Accident,” in Current Aeromedical Issues in Rotary Wing Operations, Papers Presented at the RTO Human Factors and Medicine Panel (HFM) Symposium, San Diego, October 19–21, 1998, RTO/NATO, 7–2.

  On his right, he could see the village: Ibid.; Volodin, unpublished memoir.

  Natalia Yuvchenko had spent all morning: Natalia Yuvchenko, author interview, 2015.

  Vodka, cigarettes, and folk remedies: Read, Ablaze, 87–88.

  Alexander said: Natalia Yuvchenko, author interview, 2015.

  At 4:00 p.m., the members of the OPAS medical team: Voznyak and Troitsky, Chernobyl: It Was Like This, 207.

  “Many are in grave condition”: Esaulov, City That Doesn’t Exist, 23–24.

  After some debate: Leonenko, author interview, 2016.

  Second Secretary Malomuzh summoned Esaulov: Esaulov, City That Doesn’t Exist, 25.

  By nightfall on Saturday: Protsenko, author interview, 2016; David Remnick, “Echo in the Dark,” New Yorker, September 22, 2008.

  When the boxes were silenced: Protsenko, author interview, 2016; Kovtutsky, author interview, 2016.

  And then officials: Author interviews: Natalia Yuvchenko, 2015; Natalia Khodemchuk, 2017; Alexander Sirota, 2017.

  Alexander Korol had spent: Korol, author interview, 2015.

  It was past 9:00 p.m: The time of the convoy’s departure is given by Esaulov as ten at night (City That Doesn’t Exist, 27) and confirmed by Valery Slutsky, bus driver, author interview, Pripyat, February 2006.

  Two red Ikarus buses: Esaulov would recall later that although there weren’t too many passengers during this first trip—twenty-four people who could ride upright (plus two others who couldn’t and were transported by ambulance)—he requested a spare Ikarus bus just in case, for fear that one might break down along the way. Esaulov, City That Doesn’t Exist, 26–27; Shcherbak, “Report on First Anniversary of Chernobyl Accident,” trans. JPRS, pt. 1, 31.

  Sheets of plastic: Leonenko, author interview, 2016.