This meant that as far as Guskova and Baranov were concerned, the work of Gale and his team was done, and as an expression of gratitude, the team was offered a two-day excursion to Leningrad. By now Gale’s wife, Tamar, had joined him from Los Angeles, and with Dick Champlin and Yair Reisner she left for Leningrad on the night train. But Paul Terasaki had to leave Russia to deliver a lecture in Paris, and Gale himself declined the offer for the high-minded reason that he did not want to abandon the victims of the world’s worst nuclear disaster to go sightseeing in Leningrad.
He also had a new role in mind. Before leaving the United States, Armand Hammer had impressed two things upon him: first, that he must convince his Soviet colleagues that he was only there to help them; second, that he must not speak to the press. When he had arrived in Moscow, his hosts had also asked that he not brief reporters, and when he had been called by journalists at his hotel he had kept his word. But to Gale, this reticence was emphatically un-American. A disaster of this magnitude in the United States would have brought out an army of reporters, photographers and television cameramen. There would have been regular briefings from the hospital, with Gale himself probably appearing on all the networks.
The Soviet government had released some information. On 6 May there had been a press conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs where questions were answered by, among others, Boris Scherbina, the chairman of the government commission; A. M. Petrosyants, chairman of the State Committee for the Use of Atomic Energy; Dollezhal’s deputy from NIKYET, Ivan Yemel-yanov; and Yuri Israel’s deputy from the State Committee of Hydrometeorology, Y. S. Sedunov.
Questions on casualties and the condition of the victims were handled not by Andrei Vorobyov but by his namesake, Yevgeny Vorobyov, deputy minister of health. Before he spoke, Scherbina had already mentioned ‘with satisfaction that Professor Gale and Professor Terasaki, who had arrived from the United States, are helping Moscow specialists.’ Later in the conference, Yevgeny Vorobyov reported:
… only two people were killed. One of these died from heat burns. The burns covered eighty per cent of his body, but in spite of all the measures that were taken, he died. These burns were absolutely huge. The other person died from injuries incurred from things falling on him. Those are the two people who died in the first twenty-four hours of the accident. A mere two hundred and four people were taken to hospital after being diagnosed with radiation sickness – two hundred and four people, that is, with varying degrees of contamination from radiation … Of these two hundred and four people, eighteen people were diagnosed as having a severe degree of contamination.
Vorobyov also announced:
… with satisfaction that Professor Gale from the United States has arrived in the Soviet Union and is giving consultative help. He is a great expert in the field of bone-marrow transplantation. We hope that Professor Gale, apart from his own experience, will be able to give other help to the victims, including a number of medicines.
For Gale, such reticent announcements were not enough to dispel the rumours of catastrophic casualties that were rife in the United States, and he felt that he, Robert Gale, was in a unique position to set the record straight. While his wife was away in Leningrad with Champlin and Reisner, he raised the matter with his minder from the Ministry of Health, Victor Voskresenski. He conceded that he had agreed not to talk to the press, but he felt that by keeping silent indefinitely he and his team were losing all credibility. Surely the time had come for a conference of some kind? It would be the best way to reassure the outside world.
Voskresenski passed on Gale’s suggestion to his superiors on 12 May. Since no one thought that the American could be relied upon to exercise the same discretion as a Soviet doctor, the question had been raised the day before at the meeting of the medical commission, which was chaired by the deputy minister of health, Shepin. The commission already faced a plethora of problems – the setting of intervention levels, the decontamination of radioactive milk and foodstuffs, further evacuation from an extended zone. In addition, there were dangerous symptoms of growing panic caused by the setting up of dosimetric checkpoints at railway stations and airports, and there was a scarcity of trained specialists to reassure the population.
In such a crisis it appeared imperative to control the flow of information. The commission discussed the question of how much and what kind of data should be disclosed. It was agreed that A. M. Petrosyants, from the atomic energy committee, and Andrei Vorobyov, the haematologist who sat on the commission, should act as spokesmen. They should admit the deaths that had taken place in Hospital No. 6, because the American specialists already knew about them, but any further information the Soviet press possessed must not be published without first being cleared by the Ministry of Health.
On the morning of 14 May, Gale attended a meeting with Ivan Nikitin, chief of protocol at the Ministry of Health, together with Nikolai Fetisov, an official from the ministry, Voskresenski and Professor Vorobyov. He was told that he and Vorobyov could answer written questions, but the idea that Champlin and Reisner should appear on stage was turned down. That afternoon Vorobyov reported to the medical commission that Petrosyants had refused to take part in the press conference; therefore the commission had decided to leave it in the hands of Professor Vorobyov. The deputy minister, Shepin, repeated that only information about patients in Hospital No. 6 was to be released, since Gale knew it in any case. Vorobyov reported that Armand Hammer wanted to visit the hospital, Shepin said that this was undesirable, but that the question should be settled by those who had invited Hammer in the first place.
7
That evening, 14 May, nearly three weeks after the event, Mikhail Gorbachev spoke to the nation for the first time about ‘a misfortune that has befallen us: the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant’. In describing the accident and its aftermath, he occasionally strayed into areas of wishful thinking and when it came to casualties he was economical with the truth. He told his audience that ‘The inhabitants of the settlement near the station were evacuated within a matter of hours,’ and that nine men had already died.
Two died at the time of the accident – Vladimir Nikolayevich Shashenok, an adjuster of automatic systems, and Valeri Ivanovich Khodemchuk, an operator of the nuclear power plant. As of today two hundred and ninety-nine people are in the hospital diagnosed as having radiation disease of varying degrees of gravity. Seven of them have died. Every possible treatment is being given to the rest. The best scientific and medical specialists of the country, specialized clinics in Moscow and other cities are taking part in treating them and have at their disposal the most modern means of medicine.
Gorbachev also expressed
our kind feelings to foreign scientists and specialists who showed readiness to come up with assistance in overcoming the consequences of the accident. I would like to note the participation of the American medics Robert Gale and Paul Terasaki in the treatment of the affected persons, and to express gratitude to the business circles of those countries which promptly reacted to our requests for the purchase of certain types of equipment, materials and medicines.
Having thanked Gale and the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Hans Blix, Gorbachev turned in fury on the media and the governments of the West, which had used Chernobyl as a pretext to launch ‘an unrestrained anti-Soviet campaign’:
It is difficult to imagine what was said and written these days – ‘thousands of casualties’, ‘mass graves of the dead’, ‘desolate Kiev’, that ‘the entire land of the Ukraine has been poisoned,’ and so on and so forth.
All this black propaganda Gorbachev saw as a pretext
to defame the Soviet Union, its foreign policy, to lessen the impact of Soviet proposals on the termination of nuclear tests and the elimination of nuclear weapons, and at the same time to dampen the growing criticism of the U.S. conduct on the international scene and its militaristic course.
He suggested that the accident at Che
rnobyl and the reaction to it were a test of political morality that ‘the ruling circles of the U.S.A. and their most zealous allies’ – particularly the West Germans – had failed. How could they suggest a Soviet cover-up when
Everybody remembers that it took the U.S. authorities ten days to inform their own Congress and months to inform the world community about the tragedy that took place at Three Mile Island atomic power station in 1979.
Gale therefore prepared for his press conference the next day in an atmosphere of ideological animosity. The first obstacle was Armand Hammer, who wanted to visit Hospital No. 6. At first the Soviets refused. Hammer insisted, the Soviets relented, and the chairman of the medical commission, Oleg Shepin, was there to receive him.
Hammer, Gale and their entourage of officials then drove to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It had been decided at the last minute that Hammer also should appear on the platform with Gale and Andrei Vorobyov. Sitting centre stage, Gale commended the work of his Soviet colleagues, Professor Vorobyov, Professor Guskova and Dr Baranov. He gave the number of patients treated and transplants performed, while Vorobyov described the medical monitoring service in the area around Chernobyl. Vorobyov named a dose of 100 rads as that ‘beyond which there is a health danger. Only persons in the immediate vicinity of the Chernobyl reactor at the time of the explosion received radiation exposure in excess of one hundred rads.’ Vorobyov also reassured the journalists that they were holding nothing back. ‘We report everything we know in this field to the IAEA,’ he said, ‘and everything we report can be easily checked.’
There was applause when Hammer said that the equipment that had been flown to Moscow was his gift to the Soviets, and some interest when Gale announced, in answer to a question, an item of news that he himself had just received: that he and Hammer were to meet Gorbachev himself later that day.
From a Soviet perspective, the conference went well. Given their constant and continuing struggle to persuade public opinion in the West of the dangers of nuclear war, it was valuable to hear from Gale that ‘people who believe meaningful medical assistance is possible for the victims of a nuclear war are mistaken.’
The invitation to visit Gorbachev had. been sprung on Gale in a note handed to him during the press conference by Nikolai Fetisov. He was not averse to the role he now seemed cast in as a pawn in a diplomatic game of chess. His friendship with Hammer had introduced him to the trappings of wealth and power. When he had first travelled in Oxy One, Hammer’s private Boeing 727, he had observed the three separate bathrooms with gold taps and marble-topped sinks, the well-stocked refrigerator and microwave oven in the galley, and the comfortable sofas and armchairs in the different lounge areas, as well as a dining-room table that could seat eight. So, too, in Moscow, he had noticed Hammer’s beautiful paintings and furniture, as well as the Western television and video recorder, all in stark contrast to the penurious simplicity of even the most senior Soviet citizen’s living quarters.
Yet Gale was neither spoiled nor intimidated by his sudden promotion, and even when giving a press conference in the Soviet Foreign Ministry, or as he walked down the ultimate corridor of power in the Kremlin, he wore his wooden clogs over bare feet. Well might the two army officers who escorted him look askance at such flagrant expressions of what a man could get away with in the land of the free.
A number of photographers stepped forward to take pictures as Hammer and Gale were greeted by the man Gale considered the most powerful person in the world. Wondering with a doctor’s professional interest why a man with such influence did not have a simple skin graft to remove the birthmark on his forehead, Gale took a seat at a long conference table and listened to Gorbachev thank him and Hammer for their help. Whatever the original motive for accepting Hammer’s offer, it was politic now to contrast the humanitarian help of individual Americans with their government’s dastardly exploitation of the tragedy for Cold War propaganda.
Hammer did his best to explain that in the United States the government has no control over the press. Gorbachev was not satisfied. Secretary of State Shultz had accused the Soviets of lying about the casualties, Gorbachev felt President Reagan himself wanted to ‘poison the hearts of the world against the Soviet people, and divert attention from warlike American actions in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Sidra.’
It seemed to Gale that Gorbachev was genuinely angry. Gale tried to placate him by saying that his presence was proof that the American people took no pleasure in the suffering of innocent people. ‘But what if Chernobyl had been in space?’ Gorbachev went on. Was it not a warning of what could happen if the Americans continued with the development of their Strategic Defense Initiative?
When Hammer suggested a meeting with Reagan, Gorbachev countered that there was no point in meeting if there was nothing to discuss. The hour allotted to the meeting drew to an end. As they rose to leave, Hammer raised the question of the plight of the Jews in the Soviet Union. ‘These people don’t want to be in your country. They’re giving you a hard time and a lot of bad press. Why don’t you let the Jewish people go?’
‘Dr Hammer,’ Gorbachev replied. ‘Jewish citizens like it in the Soviet Union. In many countries, they are discriminated against, but here there is no anti-Semitism. Our people are happy. Whatever else you hear is Western propaganda.’
That evening on Soviet television the news programme ‘Vremya’ gave wide coverage to the meeting between Gale, Hammer and Gorbachev and was followed by a broadcast of the entire press conference that had been held that afternoon. All at once Gale was a celebrity: he returned to his hotel musing that never before had a private American citizen received as much exposure in the Soviet Union as he had that night.
The next morning Gale went to Hospital No. 6 to take his leave of Guskova and Baranov. They had watched the press conference on television the night before; so too had the patients, and hearing Gale say ‘We anticipate more deaths’ had done nothing to improve their morale. For the doctors and nurses, it was work as usual: both Guskova and Baranov wore their white physicians’ coats. Gale told Guskova how wonderful it had been working with them and they said how much they had appreciated his help. They shook hands and Baranov escorted him down to his car. ‘Thanks a lot,’ he said in his halting English and with one of his habitually mournful smiles.
Later that day, Gale flew off to California with Tamar, Gail Reisner and Armand Hammer in the marble-topped, gold-plated luxury of Oxy One.
8
Guskova and Baranov had less reason to feel elated than Robert Gale. Among the patients under their care, the dying continued. That very day, the young Victor Proskuriakov, who had been sent by Dyatlov to lower the control rods, died from his skin injuries and post-transfusion shock. So too did Lopatuk, who had so courageously helped Lelechenko repair the electrical circuits. There followed a lull of only a single day before another engineer succumbed to his thermal and radiation burns. On 18 and 19 May, three more men followed.
Besides the suffering of the patients, Guskova, Baranov and the team of doctors were faced with the anguish of their relatives. Their presence at the bedside of the dying was left to the doctor’s discretion. One operator’s pregnant young wife asked Guskova if she could see her husband. He was suffering terribly from the effects of radiation, with heavy haemorrhaging in the thorax and the abdomen. Guskova was afraid of how she would react to such a terrible sight and told her to come back the next day.
‘Will you give him this magazine?’
Guskova took the magazine. When the girl left, the doctor returned to her patient. Suddenly he opened his eyes. ‘Was that my wife?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did you tell her?’
‘To come back tomorrow.’
‘Good.’ A few moments later he died.
Beyond the emotional stress of witnessing so much suffering and sorrow, Guskova and Baranov felt considerable professional disappointment as their patients died one after another. With the help of Gale, Champlin
and Reisner they had performed thirteen bone-marrow transplants, six with embryo liver cells. Some had been done despite the original prognosis that death was inevitable after a dose of six hundred rems; Akimov’s dose, for example, was over fifteen hundred rems. It was thought better to do something than nothing, particularly after the arrival of Gale and his team with their sophisticated equipment; yet the whole process caused stress to the donors, and in six of the cases, where there were severe beta burns, it turned out to have been a wasted effort.
Some who had not been badly burned died from the damage done by radiation to their internal organs. Between 20 and 25 May, two patients died from suffocation and one – a female security guard – from heart failure. On the 29th, more than a month after the accident, Anatoli Sitnikov succumbed to a post-transplantation immune depression that left him unable to resist an infection.
Sitnikov’s death was particularly disheartening to all those from the Chernobyl nuclear power station. His wife, Elvira, had been the mainstay of the younger wives, and Sitnikov himself was much liked and admired. When sent by Fomin to inspect the damaged reactor, he had looked straight into the crater from the roof of the water-treatment plant and had received a massive dose of gamma radiation. Vladimir Chugunov, Sitnikov’s friend from Komsomolsk, lying seriously ill in a different ward, was convinced that Sitnikov had died as a result of the bone-marrow transplant. Chugunov had bad beta burns on his legs, had lost all his hair, and his weight had fallen to 88 pounds, but he was nevertheless convinced that he should resist the disease with his body’s own resources. The doctors complained to his wife that he was an intolerable patient, refusing to take the pills they prescribed and being fussy about his food.
Sasha Yuvchenko, who in the wake of the accident had first helped his superior, Valeri Perevozchenko, to open the valves in the fruitless attempt to get water to the reactor, had bad beta burns on his arms where his skin had come into contact with the radioactive water. Fortunately he had built up considerable muscle from rowing on the Pripyat, so in performing skin grafts the doctors were able to cut out tissue 3 to 4 centimetres thick and thus save his arms from amputation. Razim Davletbayev’s condition grew worse; his temperature rose, he felt weak and he was constantly shivering with cold. Sores appeared on the inside of his mouth; blood seeped out of his nose. His hair turned grey but did not fall out.
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