The TV series Chernobyl from HBO. True and false.
Dedicated to the 35th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster and the memory of the heroes who saved our planet…
35 years ago, the whole world was shocked by the terrible news about the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. In a short time, the name of the small Soviet city of Pripyat became the personification of a terrifying man-made disaster for the whole world.
On April 26, 1986, at 01: 23, an explosion and fire occurred at the 4th power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which completely destroyed the reactor. The building of the power unit partially collapsed, and a fire started in various rooms and on the roof. Subsequently, the remains of the core melted, a mixture of molten metal, sand, concrete and fragments of fuel spread through the sub-reactor rooms.
The consequences of the disaster threatened the complete destruction of life in the vast territory of Eastern Europe and catastrophic consequences for the ecology of the entire planet.
Honoring the memory of all the heroes who, without exaggeration, saved the whole world from the consequences of this global catastrophe, I decided to review the HBO series Chernobyl and write something like an article in which to discuss the truth and lies shown to us by the authors of the series.
What is the price of lying? It’s not that we confuse it with the truth. The most dangerous thing is that if you listen to a lie for a long time, you will completely forget what the truth looks like. (quote from the film)
To watch the series of the famous HBO studio, which has already given the audience a lot of well-shot exciting stories, I approached with some trepidation. Telling the story of one of the most devastating man — made disasters in history is not a trivial task, and I was certainly extremely interested in how American filmmakers would cope with it.
Moreover, the topic is extremely interesting for me personally, because I live in a secret until recently, but still closed small town in the center of Siberia, which recently was not on the maps-because here, before the collapse of the USSR, the nuclear production of the defense industry operated. And shortly before the closure, we even had a small accident at a nuclear facility associated with the release of radioactive substances.
A brief reference about my hometown I already gave in one of the first articles of this blog, you can see the link:
In Russia and Ukraine, too, feature films were made on the topic of the Chernobyl man-made disaster. Definitely a strong impression on me was made by the film “Aurora” in 2006 about the tragic fate of a little girl from Pripyat. The film stars famous actors Dmitry Kharatyan (Russia) and Eric Roberts (USA)
But the film “Disintegration” of 1990 is not recommended for review, despite the good cast, unfortunately it turned out to be another blackie from the nineties, when the directors suddenly rushed to shoot something, just as dirty and disgusting as possible, without any regard for objectivity and common sense. This is the price of the “freedom” brought, alas. The film, especially in the second half, is replete with completely idiotic shots such as the copulation of some drunks under the walls of a church, in a crowd of frightened people, which do not carry any artistic plot value and only pursue the goal of giving out more nastiness in the frame.
There is a completely fresh film “Chernobyl”, which is currently in theaters in Russia, but I have not seen it yet. The trailer is nevertheless interesting, I will definitely watch this movie.
Well, not quite in the subject, but I will mention here the TV series “ Chernobyl. Exclusion zone”. There are a lot of science fiction films around the resonant theme, and there are some good video games on the topic. This is certainly not all historical, but it is quite authentic.
However, let’s finally return to the topic of this post.
Dozens of books, hundreds, if not thousands of articles, reports, and the like have been written on the Chernobyl topic today. And already familiarity with the first series leaves no doubt: the authors of the series have read a significant part of this material. However, they used the knowledge they received more than strangely. But-about everything in order.
Already by the trailer, there are definitely questions about the quality of the dialogues, which smack of undisguised Americanism. For some reason, I immediately remembered the American film of 1995 “Citizen X” about one of the bloodiest maniacs in the history of the USSR Chikatilo (by the way, I recommend to watch a new Russian TV series on this topic, it came out literally just now and came out very good) — despite the strong cast in the dialogues and the behavior of people in the film, it was strongly through alien turns, intonations. Well, the Soviet people did not communicate with each other like that, but it is very similar to the heroes of American films.
However, the advantages of the film are also obvious — excellent quality picture, dynamic scenes. Over the entourage very much tried. The trailer undoubtedly convinced me to watch the HBO series. And I’ll show my cards right away — I liked the picture. A great movie, but with some caveats.
I will try to make out what the creators of the series we are discussing did unreliably.
The article turns out to be long, so I will write the two main disadvantages of the series personally from me immediately and then go to the details.
The first is the stereotypical and Americanized communication of the characters. The pain of almost all Western films with characters from the post-Soviet space. Soviet people do not speak to each other in such a tone, do not address each other almost with full passport names, and even more so with surnames. The latter — in general, the wildest Americanism, looks more severe and stupid only everywhere-the inappropriate address “comrade”, which was very limited in use and the filmmakers simply do not understand these subtleties, where it is appropriate, and where it is absolutely not. I immediately remember the Red Heat with Schwarzenegger from the late 80s, which was disassembled by the audience into memes. “Kakie vashi dokazatelstva (What is your proof)?!” The Soviet people communicated extremely tactfully with others, colleagues, when addressing them, they called them by their first name and patronymic and abbreviated name when they got to know each other closely.
In the mentality of the Soviet citizen, in principle, there is no number of Western concepts, the tapa “you will pay a high price for this”, what the Americans use this phrase to, as a rule, is not associated with the words payment, price in the Soviet person at all. These are things of a completely different level. Or here are the Tula miners talking to the minister. I have a feeling that these are some kind of cowboys in disguise from a rollicking Western-a completely detached picture from reality.
And the second: the authors are trying hard to sell the viewer the basic idea of the bad USSR, the evil KGB, cruel stupid soldiers, autocratic bureaucrats and officials and try to pull this fantasy hedgehog objective reality, and inconsistencies and lies at the same time climb out of all the cracks.
If you are prepared that this is an American movie with an assortment of typical Western stereotypes,then you will definitely like the series. But if you get hung up on the constant such blunders of the creators. then the movie will become annoying… Next to the blunders themselves:
The first shots of the series are the events of April 27, 1988, when a professor of chemical sciences, Academician Valery Alekseevich Legasov, committed suicide in his apartment in Moscow. By the way, the personality of this person is close to me. Valery Legasov worked for some time as an engineer in my secret city, which at that time had the internal name “Tomsk-7”, and equipped a nuclear reactor at a secret production facility. On the facade of the house at 61 Kommunisticheskiy Prospekt, where he lived, a five-story brick apartment building in the center of the “ old “ city, there is a memorial plaque to the hero of Russia (the title was awarded posthumously in 1996) To Valery Alekseyevich Legasov. I have an idea to write a separate blog article about this person… Dear reader, are you interested in this?
Let’s go back to what we saw on the TV screen. The film shows how he finishes speaking on a dictaphone a certain confession about what happened in Chernobyl, after which he hides the recorded tapes in a trash can from the KGB agents watching the house and climbs into the noose, not forgetting to leave a supply of food for the cat.
Yes, Legasov did commit suicide, but later than indicated in the film, on the second anniversary of the Chernobyl accident. And this was the third attempt to take his own life, the first two were stopped by doctors-Legasov was treated almost all the time and was in deep depression — radiation sickness was killing him. Indeed, the academician left behind several audio cassettes with his memories and arguments about those events. However, of course, Legasov did not hide these cassettes at the trash can, so that KGB agents would not get to them. These recordings were not a secret, they were partially published immediately, and today anyone can read their texts. And it would be illogical to hide them: one of the cassettes, for example, is a recording of an interview with the journalist Ales Adamovich, the other is a kind of collection of recommendations to colleagues at the Kurchatov Institute: it dictates the theses of a generalizing scientific article about the causes and consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. To hide, to hide these records for Legasov made no sense.
By the way, you can find the digitized content of these cassettes in Russian at the link.
https://www.pseudology.org/razbory/Legasov/00.htm
The final, fifth series generally surpassed all the thresholds of logic and sanity: it claims that settling accounts with Legasov’s life was a political act. The suicide allegedly allowed to draw attention to some truth contained in the secret records of the hero (which in fact were in absolute public domain) and to begin the reform of the Soviet nuclear energy, which for some reason was blocked by the bloody evil “ KGB “ and Soviet bureaucrats. Logic? No, you haven’t…
Then the events of the film are transferred two years into the past — on the night of April 26, 1986, that is, on the night of the Chernobyl accident. The events preceding the accident, the authors of the film do not describe: the action begins in the first moments after the explosion. He first hears, and then sees the burning station from the window of his apartment Lyudmila Ignatenko-the wife of firefighter Vasily Ignatenko, who really participated in extinguishing the fire and really died from a huge dose of radiation. Vasily leaves for the fire, and Lyudmila goes out into the street, where she sees hundreds of people going “to the bridge”, from where the fire at the station is “better seen”. Then there is a long dramatic scene on the bridge: residents of Pripyat with children, including infants, are fascinated by the fire, the camera of the part focuses on the radioactive dust settling on them…
In reality, of course, there was nothing like this. Most residents of the city learned about the fire at the station only in the morning, and those who somehow heard about some emergency situation, did not attach any importance to it at all, since there was no information. We are talking about Pripyat, the city of nuclear scientists, by the way, and in them lectures were regularly given in each training enterprise, trainings were held on evacuation to shelters, means of self-defense. Residents of nuclear towns are noticeably more informed about radiation — I live in one of these towns and I know what I’m talking about. And, of course, the inhabitants of Pripyat would definitely not run to faraway lands to look at the fire, and pulling children out of warm beds…
However, from an artistic point of view, the scene is magnificent, in addition, it is still based on the legend about the “bridge of the dead”. Yes, this is a fiction, invented later, when wild excursions to Pripyat became popular. And the reference to the” urban legend “ looks organic. The series in general frankly pleases with references to the cult entourage around Chernobyl and Pripyat, the same room with the clothes of firefighters in the basement of the hospital, and so on.
Here is an excerpt from an interview where one of the residents of Pripyat, Alexander Rubinsky, who was evacuated in 1986, smiled when asked about the bridge:
“They inflated the bike! In fact, few people went outside on the night of the accident. It was night outside! Almost 2 hours after midnight. In the morning, someone ran out, including me. But we didn’t stay long on the bridge. We were immediately chased away by the police. After that, no one died, but the guys had health problems. Not the fact that because of the bridge. And the name… In fact, the bridge was given a name even before the Chernobyl accident. The whole point is that it was an unfortunate section of the roadway. There were frequent accidents here. One day, two motorcyclists crashed on the bridge. Since then, people have nicknamed this place “The Bridge of Death”.
However, compared to the subsequent falsifications, this one seems still innocent.
The main character (perhaps we can say — antihero): Deputy Chief Engineer for the operation of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant Anatoly Dyatlov. The creators of the series did everything to paint his figure in as dark colors as possible: a tyrant, a tyrant, a despot, a schemer, a careerist, indifferent to the lives of people. It is Dyatlov in the film who rigidly imposes on the audience the version that the reactor, they say, is intact, that it is necessary to supply cooling water. He suppresses all doubts, threatens those who disagree with him with violence, and then, having caused trouble, hides in a safe bunker of civil protection, where he weaves a network of intrigues, trying to blame the accident on others, and from where, at the end of the first series, he is hospitalized with signs of acute radiation sickness.
The viewer (in theory) should immediately have a question: where, let me say, did Dyatlov manage to “grab” a large dose, if he acted as shown in the film?
The real Dyatlov was actually a tough, domineering and even despotic person, as the station’s employees recall. However, he certainly wasn’t as demonic a character as the film’s authors portray him to be. And certainly he did not run away in the first few minutes to sit in the bunker: together with the rest of the employees, Dyatlov in his position took everything necessary to localize the accident. However, in fact, its function was only to make sure that everything necessary was being done: the station workers were certainly not wandering around the station like zombies, exchanging long, tearful glances, as they do in the film. No: each of them clearly knew what they had to do, and they did it despite the difficulties and risks.
First of all, Dyatlov — yes, it really was-sends Kudryavtsev and Proskuryakov to manually lower the rods of the CPS (control and protection systems) into the reactor to finally shut it down. It was an impossible mission: the reactor control system was destroyed along with him, but this was not known at the time. This moment in the film is shown almost honestly.
However, it was not without nonsense here: along the way, Kudryavtsev and Proskuryakov meet a representative of the Chernobyl commissioning company Pavel Palamarchuk, carrying a burnt Vladimir Shashenka (the names in the film are not named, but, judging by all the circumstances, we are talking about them). They ask Palamarchuk to show them the way to the reactor, and he … just puts the dying comrade on the floor and goes with them. There, he receives the strongest dose of radiation and in another scene sits sadly on the floor, smoking a cigarette and telling a colleague that “everyone is finished”.
In reality, of course, nothing like this happened. First, Kudryavtsev and Proskuryakov, the current operators of the block, had no need for a “guide” to the station, which they knew much better than Palamarchuk. Secondly, Palamarchuk, of course, did not throw Shashenka in the middle of the station, but carried him first to the BSHU-4 (the block control panel, the same room with devices in which the main actions take place), and then to the medical unit and, finally, to the ambulance. He did this, by the way, not alone, but together with a colleague, dosimetrist Gorbachenko. Subsequently, they go around the station, trying to determine the level of radiation. Without success: Gorbachenko’s weak dosimeter can measure fields of up to 1,000 microrentgens per second-millions of times less than it was at the station. By the way, the twists and turns with dosimeters in the film are shown almost correctly. And then Palamarchuk and Gorbachenko will be taken to the hospital. Both will survive, although Palamarchuk received about two lethal doses of radiation.
But back to the Dyatlov (real, not a movie), who runs to the engine room (the room where there are turbines, generators, and similar equipment) to assess the situation. In the hall (in real life), there was a complete hell. Broken communication lines, wires, fragments of structures. Oil gushes out of the ruptured pipelines. In the cooling system of the turbo generator — explosive hydrogen. Here and there, fires break out: combustible materials ignite from contact with hot fragments of fuel, they are ignited by electrical discharges from torn electric mains. If this is not stopped, there will be a catastrophe: the fire can spread to the third power unit.
However, Dyatlov has nothing to do here: employees under the command of Deputy Chief Razim Davletbayev are already fighting the threat. They de-energize systems, isolate broken oil pipelines, displace hydrogen with safe nitrogen, and extinguish individual islands of fires. And they win, don’t let the accident get any worse. Many of them will pay for their feat with their lives. This battle with the “peaceful atom” is perfectly described in many books and more than one hundred articles. But the authors of the film show it to my regret apparently uninteresting, it does not fit into the picture they invented of how the exploded reactor aimlessly wander or panic-senseless run pathetic, frightened, confused and broken people.
From the engine room, Dyatlov tries to go to the reactor room, but he does not succeed. He goes a different route than Kudryavtsev and Proskuryakov went, runs into a blockage and is forced to return. Then he goes to the control panel of unit №3, makes sure that the unit is shut down, its cooling system (the reactor continues to heat up after stopping) is working normally. He returns to the shield of the fourth power unit, takes the printouts of the Skala information system (the most important proof!) and with them already goes down to the bunker, where he almost immediately becomes ill and is taken away by an ambulance.
The authors of the film show that Dyatlov is the author of the theory that the reactor is intact, and that it is only a hydrogen explosion in one of the tanks outside the reactor. They say that it is Dyatlov, trying to save his reputation, imposes this idea on the rest of the staff, who do not dare to object to the authorities. In fact, from the entire staff (at least, the part of it about whose thoughts on this topic we have an idea), only the shift manager of the reactor shop №3, Valery Perevozchenko, held such an opinion from the first minutes. The fact is that at the moment immediately before the explosion, he was on the balcony above the reactor №4 and saw the beginning of the process of its destruction — the very beginning, of course, on the BSHU-4, he ran in even before the explosion. However, what he saw was more than enough for him to understand that it was the reactor that had exploded. But they didn’t believe him.
Alexander Akimov, the shift manager of unit №4, also did not believe it. In the film, he is shown as an “average” employee of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant: a weak-willed, cowardly, indecisive layman subject to the influence of others, unable to take a step without orders and even threats from Dyatlov. The real Akimov, of course, was completely different: he was an experienced, brave, determined and confident professional. Yes, Akimov made a lot of mistakes on April 25 and 26, which eventually cost him and other people their lives. And the decision to consider the reactor as existing and to engage in the struggle for its survivability was one of such mistakes. However, he was definitely not a coward or a rag.
There was not, and certainly could not be, a scene in which Dyatlov orders Akimov to call the staff of other shifts to the station, and the latter at first refuses, but then, under the influence of Dyatlov’s threats, retreats. It was not and could not be because the emergency lifting of the personnel of other shifts in the event of an emergency of a high level of danger is a completely standard mandatory action at any station.
However, the authors of the film try to pass off this absolutely necessary measure as another act of Dyatlov’s cannibalistic tyranny, the harmfulness of which Akimov understands, but is forced to submit out of fear for his own skin. I will add that such cowardice is shown by the very Akimov who (and this, by the way, is shown in the film!) after a few tens of minutes, he personally goes knee-deep in radioactive water to unlock the valves on the pipelines of the reactor’s emergency cooling systems — he goes to almost certain death! He doesn’t seem to be afraid of death, but he doesn’t dare to contradict his superiors. “Soviet” — what to take from it…Another lack of rudiments of logic.
Describing the collision of people with radiation, the authors of the film are in many ways extremely accurate, demonstrating all the symptoms that eyewitnesses say: the taste of metal in the mouth, nausea and, of course, asthma, “nuclear tan”, the consequences of radiation damage to the upper layer of the skin. And next to it-blatant nonsense: they say that a firefighter lifting a piece of graphite from the reactor, after a couple of minutes, screams in pain because of a radiation burn. It doesn’t happen that way. Application radiation burns appear 1–3 days after the lesion. However, in my opinion, this is quite acceptable cinematic convention, acceptable for adding dynamics and drama to the frame.
The most stupid scene of this part of the film: the director of the station Bryukhanov sends the deputy chief engineer for operation Anatoly Sitnikov to the roof of block 4 to assess the degree of destruction. By the way, before this, another enchanting stupidity, when the viewer is shown that the station director dismissively waves to Sitnikov, as if asking, who are you anyway? The director of the NPP is not personally acquainted with the Deputy Chief Engineer…How so? They should practically intersect on a daily basis at production planning meetings, in addition to other working moments. Fierce nonsense, obviously necessary only to demonstrate the disgusting royal habits of the leadership. Sitnikov refuses, and then Bryukhanov literally forces him to climb to the roof at gunpoint. Literally means literally: Sitnikov is accompanied to the roof almost on the arm of some soldier (where did he even come from?!)
In reality, of course, there was no soldier. Sitnikov, an experienced atomic physicist, understands perfectly: there can be no more important task than to determine the real state of things. He walks around the entire block with his feet, climbs to the roof of the special chemistry block, from where he looks into the collapse of the reactor. After receiving a lethal dose, he returns with an unambiguous report: the reactor is destroyed. Sitnikov is not believed (yes, it really was). But why invent this mythical soldier, who, if he were over the collapse of the reactor with Sitnikov, would also receive a huge dose? Well, of course, for artistic effect: the Americans know that in the USSR all heroic acts were committed exclusively under the muzzles of machine guns! And bears walk the streets. Wearing earflaps and balalaika hats… The minute of stereotypes has arrived.
Another amazing moment: a meeting in the bunker of the members of the City committee of the party of Pripyat. One of the members of the city committee insists on the evacuation of the city. Bryukhanov objects, allegedly there is no danger.
In fact, it was Bryukhanov who first suggested preparing the evacuation of Pripyat. They did not listen to him — his own words about the radiation situation at the station did not give cause for concern. However, this violates the concept of the authors of the film. In it, the soulless careerist Bryukhanov is ready to risk the lives of the inhabitants of Pripyat, including his wife, just to curry favor with his superiors.
The dialog follows:
Member of the Executive Committee: The air is glowing in the city!
Dyatlov: This is the Vavilov-Cherenkov effect, observed with any radiation leak.
What, excuse me, was the air glowing in Pripyat on the night of April 26? And what does the Vavilov-Cherenkov effect have to do with it — the glow that occurs in dense transparent media when high-energy particles pass through them? You can observe such a glow, for example, in the coolant of an active reactor, where it really glows under the flow of neutrons bombarding it. Who do the authors of the film consider the audience to be?
But this is not enough. The floor is taken by a sinister old man, who, with the air of an old Italian mobster, brandishing a cane with a carved bone handle, conjuring the management of the station and members of the executive committee in the name of Lenin, orders to block the city, turn off telephone communication. People are nothing, the interests of the state are everything. Well, of course. And how else can a Soviet party functionary speak in an American film? And by the way, later he is already without a cane and in an ordinary bus is evacuated along with everyone else, although before that for some reason we were colorfully shown that the soldiers around him catch the slightest movement of his eyebrows and obviously this is no other than the Chairman of the Communist Party of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic or at least a person close to him. At least on his buttonhole the badge of the deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR is clearly visible.
Well, I would even be surprised if the film did not have such scenes. It is known that the Soviet officials only thought about how to kill more of their citizens for the sake of some great goal! And here is the second minute of sarcasm over stereotypes…
And the question is, why the bunker? Subconsciously emphasize that the leadership was hiding somewhere in a special bunker while the people were dying from radiation above? Theoretically, we can assume that the headquarters of the operational situation is shown in some “shelter”, and those were really massively built in the basements of houses in nuclear towns, since I myself live in such a place, I have repeatedly visited such shelters. However, then, as if behind the scenes, the information that these shelters were designed specifically for the mass population in the first place, there are many of them, the evacuation of the population in them is worked out by regular exercises. But there is no such information in the frame, and such a small thing looks somewhat ugly.
And in general, in fact, there was no “secret meeting of the city committee” in the Chernobyl bunker on the night of April 26 (and then, by the way, there was also no). There were no orders to close the city, which is confirmed by the banal fact that many residents, especially those who had their own cars, successfully left Pripyat on the same day, and no one stopped them. More precisely, they stopped those who were driving towards the station and the most infected areas. The entrances to the station were cordoned off by the military police. But those who left far away, did not interfere. Radiometry points on the roads appeared later, after the decision to evacuate and worked exclusively to check the radioactive background of the outgoing transport. This, by the way, is mentioned by Legasov (real): they say that they did not have time to put dosimetric and washing posts, many left, spreading radioactive “dirt” throughout the USSR, he complains in the same allegedly secret records.
A similar scene: in the early morning, Academician Legasov (kinoshny) gets a call from the Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, Shcherbina, and tells about the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Legasov tries to convince Shcherbina to conduct an urgent evacuation, but he forbids the scientist to talk about anything other than purely scientific issues and hangs up.
The scene is completely fictional. And the authors of the film can not be unaware of this, because in their films Legasov (real) describes in detail the circumstances under which he learned about the accident. It happened at a meeting of the party active of the Kurchatov Institute, of which he was deputy director. Almost immediately, I was instructed to go to the government commission and fly to Pripyat.
And on what basis, in fact, can Legasov (kinoshny) talk about the need for evacuation? After all, he had just been told: the reactor was intact, the radioactive contamination was moderate. He simply does not have any other information on the basis of which he could come to some dramatic conclusions!
Here is how Legasov (real) describes the discussion on the evacuation of Pripyat:
“On the evening of the 26th, the radiation situation was still more or less favorable. Measured from millirentgen per hour to the maximum values-tens of millirentgen per hour, of course this is an unhealthy environment, but it still allowed, it would seem, some reflection.” And further: “Medicine was limited by the established procedures, instructions, according to which the evacuation could be initiated if there was a danger for the civilian population to receive 25 biological X-rays per person during a certain period of time in this zone, and such evacuation became mandatory only if there was a threat of the population receiving 75 biological X-rays per person during their stay in the affected zone. And in the range from 25 to 75 X rays the right to make a decision belonged to the local authorities”
Then he remembers:
doctors and civil protection specialists insisted that the evacuation was not necessary, while physicists, who foresaw that the situation would deteriorate, believed that the evacuation should be carried out. “At 10 or 11 o’clock in the evening on the 26th of April, Boris Evdokimovich, having listened to our discussion, made a decision on mandatory evacuation
Isn’t it true that the memories of Legasov (whom the authors of the film are trying to expose as a kind of truth-teller, but at the same time they do not give him a word, alive and real!) they paint a completely different picture: it turns out that in fact there are no communist officials-autocrats who ignore the words of scientists and are ready to sacrifice people for the sake of abstract ideals. On the contrary, it is scientists, each in their own field and within the framework of their own reasoning, who come to contradictory conclusions; but, having the opportunity to choose one of two opinions, Shcherbina chooses evacuation, that is, acts exactly the opposite of how the authors of the film show.
However, this clearly contradicts the concept invented by the authors. And if so, then the truth is replaced by a diametrically opposite fiction.
Ulyana Khomyuk is a nuclear physicist from the Belarusian SSR, one of the three main characters of the series. This is a fictional character. Well, a feature film, why not.
Take the scene with her visit to a certain high-ranking official in Minsk. He is shown as a very unpleasant, indifferent and stupid official with a gold watch, depicting his extreme degree of completeness, as if the director was trying to emphasize the audience’s negative attitude towards him. This figure is also made up. And everyone understands that it embodies the director’s idea, the hated USSR, filling the head of the audience with this slag, too. At the same time, the film is positioned as “honest and truthful”. A trifle, but it is very revealing and clearly exposes the desire of the creators to denigrate the Soviet system in the first place. This is too much, the very moment when you have 22 in your hands, and you continue to drag card after card… This is exactly what the “PROPAGANDA” looks like, and it looks stupid.
The person who wrote the scene in the helicopter on the way of Shcherbina and Legasov to Pripyat asks for a separate medal of the “Dreamer of Lies”. Shcherbina demands from Legasov information about how the nuclear reactor works, threatening to throw the academician from the helicopter in case of “silence”! Lord, where did the author of this heresy get this? Have you read about Pinachet? Why is there any banditry here? Even if we hypothetically assume the possibility of such a conversation and the desire of a party leader to put pressure on the scientist, it would be a quiet, calm hint at the opponent’s party ticket, and believe me, it would be worse than the black mark itself.
And then Shcherbina demands to fly closer to the reactor, well, like to see. The pilot, of course, does not really want to. Because Boris threatens the helicopter pilot with execution!
This episode is a silly cranberry and a fiction from and to. But it is extremely important for the further development of the plot. After all, in the course of the series, Boris Shcherbina (exactly the character) gradually turns from a heartless, indifferent official into a responsible citizen, a real hero.
Which by all means contributes to the elimination of the terrible consequences of the accident. And he is getting closer to Academician Legasov. Watching this process is terribly interesting, especially since the actors were picked up by strong ones.
I think that I have given enough examples of the authors ‘ misunderstanding of the Soviet mentality and distortion of history, coupled with just lying for the sake of attracting the plot to the stereotypes about the enemy USSR that are pleasant to the Western audience.
Such plot blunders and inaccuracies can be written a few more pages. And some of them may well be justified for the sake of dynamism and brightness of the plot — after all, this is a feature film, not a documentary. But the deliberate lie aimed at programming the negative attitude towards Soviet values in the viewer is certainly depressing.
Then quickly and without describing in detail, offhand a few more comparis:
The bosses in the series go in suits and ties — in fact, this was not the case: everyone went in the same clothes. Therefore, it was impossible to tell who was in front of you: a brigadier, a worker or a general. Everyone wore work pants and a jacket. Below is a soldier’s underwear. The clothes were changed every day, and sometimes twice a day. Usually the fabric was white, but it could be either blue or black.
The footage of soldiers walking behind the Cherbina on the sides with machine guns, signs showing to what line it is possible to approach it — stupid nonsense.
Naked miners in the frame-this was not the case, clothes soaked from the heat were removed, but no one stripped naked. As there was no toilet-a bench under a canopy, or rather there was a summer toilet, but the booths in it are still divided. Moreover, it should be understood that the tent camp with Spartan conditions was only at the very beginning of the operation, and by June-August, a whole town of capital buildings was erected for the rescuers, although not the top of the amenities, but still clearly without a toilet-a bench under a canopy. The creators of the film for the sake of a shocking picture are happy to portray Soviet citizens as drunken wild cattle without a sense of decency.
Most of the plot of” Chernobyl “ is devoted to the tragic story of the Ignatenko couple. On April 27, firefighter Vasily Ignatenko and his wife Lyudmila were supposed to go to Minsk, but the Chernobyl disaster interfered with their plans. On April 26, at 01:30 am, Vasily Ignatenko was called to extinguish the fire. He, along with six firefighters, was one of the first to come to extinguish the radioactive flames. As a result, Vasily received severe radiation poisoning and was hospitalized. Lyudmila found her husband in the ward a few hours later: he was all swollen and with red eyes, he was constantly vomiting. She was not allowed to touch her husband. “Don’t hug or kiss. Don’t even go near him. You have half an hour.” The injured firefighters were sent to the radiological hospital №6 in Moscow on a special flight. Lyudmila went to get her husband.
In fact, the woman did not manage to get into the hospital ward in Pripyat, she found her husband already in Moscow. But it is very tragic and touching. I approve.
Two weeks later, Vasily Ignatenko died of radiation sickness. He was buried in a zinc coffin under cement at the Moscow cemetery. In her hands, Lyudmila Ignatenko held six red carnations and her husband’s shoes, which did not fit on her swollen feet.
At the time of the accident, Lyudmila was pregnant. She didn’t realize the threat her husband posed to the child. Her daughter Natasha lived only five days: she was born with a heart defect and cirrhosis of the liver.
I read that now Lyudmila has a son, and she lives in Kiev, quite poorly.
In the series, the leaders of the commission for the elimination of the consequences of the disaster Legasov and Shcherbina are looking for people who went down under the reactor and drained the water accumulated there. The scene is presented as a search for volunteers “who will die in a week” from the received radiation.
In real life, Alexey Ananenko, Valery Bespalov and Boris Baranov, who completed this task and became known as the “Chernobyl divers” or “Chernobyl divers”, survived the liquidation. Two are still alive, and Baranov died in 2005.
The meeting described in the film, where they were looking for volunteers, was not at all. Accordingly, the fiery speech from Shcherbina, too. This work was planned in advance. The government commission decided that it was necessary to remove the water in the tanks from under the reactor, and it gave instructions to the management of the nuclear power plant, and it replaced Ananenko, Bespalov and Baranov… They were not volunteers — they were told that it is necessary, they answered-it is necessary means it is necessary… Which doesn’t diminish their heroism at all.
Of course, they didn’t have scuba gear or bathyscaphes. There was a transparent plastic wetsuit, heads were open, there were ordinary respirators “Petal”, which do not interfere with talking . They were knee — deep in water… At some point, you had to move through the pipe to avoid contact with water. Indeed, their lights went out there — the Soviet flashlight failed. They groped for the right valve, and then the flashlight allegedly worked. Radiation levels were certainly high — well above normal conditions. But not catastrophic, they didn’t get radiation sickness there. Guided by the dosimeters, where necessary, they ran to reduce the impact of radiation. After that, they were awarded 40 rubles each, about a quarter of the salary. It is funny and sad to realize this now, but then people did not even think about money, it was important that “it is necessary”, who, if not us” and the respect of others.
Radiation in the series causes terrible wounds to people. A firefighter who grabs a piece of graphite from an exploding reactor gets a severe burn to his palm. An employee of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, leaning on the metal door of the reactor hall, immediately shows a huge bloodstain on his thigh.
Radiation is, of course, a terrible thing, but here we are clearly dealing with an artistic exaggeration. Firefighters who worked on the roof of the fourth power unit on the night of the disaster actually received burns — but not radiation, but heat. The fact is that the roof was covered with a thick layer of tar. The tar from the fire melted and stuck to the kirz boots. From this, they also began to melt and burned the firefighters ‘ feet.
Radiation sickness develops differently. Its main symptoms are weakness, nausea, dizziness, unhealthy blush. And it also does not kill immediately — the deaths among the firefighters from the legendary “Pravik guard”, who first arrived at the burning station and climbed to the roof, began only on the tenth day. The first deaths from radiation were among the station employees who were on duty in the block, the first to start rescue activities right in the epicenter of the disaster. And some of the firefighters from the “guard” are still alive.
In the series, at the suggestion of Legasov, a mixture of sand and boron is thrown off from helicopters on a naked reactor, the first helicopter, flying into a column of radioactive smoke, catches the crane cable with a screw and falls.
In fact, the only time a helicopter crashed in Chernobyl was in October — that is, just over six months after the disaster. The pilot actually hit a construction crane with a screw. Neither before nor after that, the helicopters did not fall there.
About the cleanup and relocation from the Exclusion Zone (the area around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant), I will allow you to quote the memories of the liquidator of the consequences of the accident, Vasily Bondarev:
…I got to Chernobyl a year after the accident. The order came: be there tomorrow. I took the tickets and went.
Of course, it was not without politics. Gorbachev somewhere publicly said that in October 1987, the third unit of the station will be put into operation. So that Gorbachev could keep his word, we worked in three shifts. That is, around the clock. They cleaned the premises.Seventy kilometers from the zone was the urban-type settlement of Polesskoye. The men left immediately after the accident, leaving only the old ladies. They wrote a letter to the Kremlin, to Ryzhkov himself. They wanted their Polesie to be cleared and they would live there in peace. The military was sent there, which carried out the decontamination. Roofs were changed, streets were washed. And so on several times. The activity is absolutely useless. Any wind — and all this work is for nothing. I then came to this Polesskoe. Imagine, a leaf on an oak tree-half a meter in length. The mushroom cap could reach a meter in diameter. In 1993, the Government of Ukraine decided to completely resettle Polesske. There are no such details in the series.
I didn’t get out of the station for two months, I spent a lot of time in the zone. I was amazed: in the village, the old people with the grannies live as if nothing had happened. And the grandchildren are right there with them. I ask. They answer: “We were resettled, but they did not receive us well. We decided to go back. Here’s an apple, eat it.”
About the scene with the cleaning of radioactive graphite debris from the roof — the source of the strongest radiation, says the liquidator of the consequences of the accident Ekaterina Kozlova:
when I came to Chernobyl for the first time — in June 1986 — there was no tragedy or mess, there was a business atmosphere. The scene shown with the cleaning of graphite from the roof was in the “Masha” zone. “Katya”, “Masha”, “Nina” — yes, parts of the roof were called by different names. Because zone “K”, zone “ M “and zone “H”. The entire cleaning process was led by Major General Nikolai Tarakanov in general, the liquidators were not forced to go up there — they were volunteers. All soldiers want to serve faster. And if you get 25 X-rays, you immediately get demobilized. And they did not hesitate to go forward.
But our team was working even before they started launching the soldiers. We figured out how to clean the roof remotely. All the robots that were brought there got up because of an electronics failure. Only the lunokhod from Leningrad functioned a little.
We came up with special glue grips. The idea was to dip a huge brush in a 300-kilogram tub of glue and lift it to the roof. Allow to dry and harden for a few days, and then peel off all the fragments together with the glue.This device was called a “blotter”. The size of one blotter is four by four meters. I was the head of the entire laboratory, my task was to work out the technology right on the spot, in the conditions of Chernobyl.
I’m not offended that the blotter was not shown in the series — this is just one part of a big story.
And the scene of the film showed the final cleaning of what was not captured with a Blotter. The soldiers gathered in a group immediately at the top, under the roof — they did not run 70 meters up the stairs. Protective clothing was also worn upstairs. But most importantly, they were clearly instructed and shown on the screen in advance who should run where and what to do. There was no such thing as you running out and rushing around in confusion. You had to come to a certain point, take a specific piece of graphite with tongs or a shovel, put it in a container or dump it in another place. In the series, they show that the wreckage was almost dumped into the blown-up reactor! By the way, I doubt that there were pieces of 40 and 50 kilograms.
..by the way, I read that the boom of the crane that lifted these Blotters from the roof is one of the most” phoney “ objects now in Pripyat.
We read the comments of the eyewitness further:
Legasov and Shcherbina in the series came out rough. After all, they are intelligent people, they should have softer, more intelligent faces. And in the series, they have stupid faces. And no one really spoke as rudely as they did in the show. Well, is this Legasov? The expression and manner of speaking are completely different. And then, here they show how Legasov always goes with Shcherbina. I doubt they ever saw each other that often, except on a government commission. They certainly did not walk all over Chernobyl and did not go among the miners.
By the way, the government commission met twice a day, and every day all current issues were resolved at it. And only then did the commission report everything to Moscow-Ryzhkov, although for some reason Gorbachev himself is shown in the series.
Ekaterina Kozlova comments on the scene of the film, where a young soldier shoots dogs:
As for the people who shot the dogs, the huntsmen were invited specifically for this purpose. They did not go to Pripyat, but in the vicinity of Chernobyl, and it was the flocks that they caught. In general, there were too many dogs living in the 30-kilometer zone, and the teams even fed them. We also had our own dog, which we constantly washed and deactivated. She lived there until 1990, even bringing puppies. There was no such atrocity as in the series. In addition, here they show a young boy who does not even know how to shoot, and this work was definitely done by professionals.
About the drunken dancing scene:
Here is a soldier with a bottle dancing-this is excluded. In Chernobyl, from the very beginning, there was a prohibition law. If they find alcohol, they’ll just send it back. And no one was forced to be there. But it was possible, of course, with a strong desire to get alcohol. In secret, of course, they drank a little, but there was no general and even more demonstrative drunkenness. I remember I lost my voice because of the radiation, and the doctors said I needed to drink some strong stuff. The next morning, the voice really came back. In general, by the evening everyone was so tired that there was no time for alcohol.
About the scene with radiation sickness in soldiers:
In vain here they show that a soldier vomits on the side of the road. You’d have to get a lot of radiation to throw up, and we were very closely monitored. All had “Pencils” (DKP-50A “Pencil” dosimeter). It’s also strange that they don’t wear protection right away in the camp — no one did that. They were only worn at the task site. When entering the 30-kilometer zone, they only wore respirators. Some people neglected to smoke, although without masks, radiation particles got into the body, which is much more harmful than direct radiation.
Another movie clip was noticed by fans of the series. The fact is that in the 4th episode, when the main square of Chernobyl appears in the frame, you can see a monument to the liquidators of the disaster standing nearby, which was installed only a few years after the events shown in the TV show.
The plastic windows that sometimes flash in the frame are probably not even worth mentioning, it is generally a trifle.
Further along the timekeeping, the number of terry cranberries (this is a term meaning the stereotypical representation of Russians by foreigners) only increases. Ministers moving around the station exclusively accompanied by machine gunners — absolute nonsense. Liquidators who drink vodka in liters right at the workplace (because everyone knows that the Russians only do what they drink vodka). And of course, the sinister and ubiquitous KGB, with which the film’s characters have to fight no less than with the radiation itself.
At the same time, the authors are extremely commendably accurate, and even meticulous in details that are not of fundamental importance. They definitely did a great job of studying how things unfolded. And this is the most striking thing: such an ugly distorted picture of events was presented to us by people who definitely and reliably know how everything really was. This is not “fiction”, when the authors fill in the gaps between the facts with their own imagination. No: the creators of the film deliberately distort reality, exposing the employees and managers of the nuclear power plant as incompetent and unscrupulous as possible, representatives of the authorities-cruel and irresponsible, and the residents of Pripyat — even if good-natured, but extremely stupid, illiterate and naive.
However, dear reader, understand the assessment of the film in the post-Soviet space correctly. I, and probably most viewers, liked the HBO series as a whole. He has a high-quality picture, painstakingly recreated visual entourage, good acting work, excellent casting, make-up artists. The film is shot dynamically, touchingly. There is a soul in it, the viewer feels the tragedy of people in the epicenter of the disaster, the tragedy of those who understand that the trouble is not only in the epicenter of events — the town of Pripyat, and this concerns millions of people. The creators of the series well conveyed the sense of disaster — that such an accident should not happen again on the planet, otherwise people will not survive.
I am used to the hypertrophied, crooked portrayal of Soviet citizens in most American films, and I feel comfortable “turning a blind eye” (a Russian proverb, meaning the degree of indifference when contemplating). Maybe it’s a bad habit. But I really liked the film for sure much more than those who can not calmly look at all these stereotypes and lies in the frame.
The authors do not care about the most complex problems of Chernobyl — scientific and technical, moral and psychological, and administrative and command issues. Facts are freely sacrificed for the sake of proper dramatic effect. To establish the truth, to understand what motivated people in April-May 1986 and to convey it to the readers, they do not even try. They have come up with a convenient version and present it to the reader. And if some real, reliably established facts do not fit into this version… Well, they will have to make room for fiction — in other words, lies.
I absolutely do not want to say that there are no negative facts with the USSR in general and in particular with the situation around the Chernobyl disaster, but the authors seemed to try to collect everything in one place at once, both objective and outright negative lies, to hide all the positive deeper and throw this mess on the viewer, convincing him of his own vision of “universal evil. It’s as if James Cameron, filming the Titanic, spent half of his screen time criticizing the British Admiralty, accusing them of inaction, lack of control, unprofessionalism and a malicious desire to destroy a thousand innocent souls… And I would also like to ask, quoting the Russian writer Griboyedov: “And who are the judges?”
And there are words in the final episode of the project that seem to me murderous in their cynicism. It turns out that there are no innocent victims. It turns out that the history of Chernobyl is replete with mass tragedies: first, there were Jews who were all killed during the pogrom (for some reason, it does not say who, but the construction of the phrase seems to hint at another lie), then there were Poles who were deported by Stalin (and what did the Poles do where the murdered Jews lived? Something doesn’t add up here?). In general, Chernobyl is such a reckoning… Mysticism in one word. And I want to ask the creators of the series, how do you live there on the land of Indian tribes, the descendants of proud democratic carriers of good, who did not find a place in the “Old World”.
Thanks of course to HBO for the movie. However, there is a question. Surprisingly, not a single television series about the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, which happened seven years before the events in Chernobyl, was filmed in the West…
Here it will be appropriate to quote the opinion about the series directly from the living participants in the elimination of this terrible disaster.
Leonid Sedov, dosimetrist, liquidator of the consequences of the Chernobyl accident:
“It seems that the TV series “Chernobyl” was filmed based on “Overheard in the smoking room”. Honestly, I wouldn’t have watched it if you hadn’t asked me to. The series should not have been called “Chernobyl”, but “Monsters”. The worst monster in the series portrayed the power of the Soviet Union, and only then the accident itself.
In addition to the fact that the government was portrayed as indifferent and ruthless to the people, the management of the nuclear power plant and the shift manager are incompetent. There was no such thing as a director throwing his subordinates like that and thoughtlessly sending them to the center of the explosion. There is a safety procedure, according to which the director of the nuclear power plant and the shift manager should first check what happened. No boss will send a lower-level engineer to the source of a fire at a nuclear power plant. As I myself heard from the employees of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the management of the station, on the contrary, tried to protect the employees.
I myself arrived at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on May 15 and stayed there for about a month. In general, I worked at the Rivne nuclear power plant. I remember how we entered the Chernobyl zone, and people were already evacuated, the houses were empty. So I was uneasy. Then everyone understood the scale of the fire, but there was no panic. Everything was well organized. We, the dosimetrists, took measurements. Everyone worked in shifts, stood at checkpoints.
All civilians were evacuated. No one knew, not even our management, how long people were being taken out. Everyone thought that they would put out the fire, and people would be able to return. No one could have foreseen such consequences.
I would ban the show altogether. There was a point where the liquidators agreed to work for a lot of money. That’s not true. Money was out of the question then. I, like many liquidators, came voluntarily, others were sent to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on a business trip. But we all had patriotism and heroism. We wanted to help.
It seems to me that the series was shot by people who had seen enough documentaries, and the rest came up with themselves. So I wouldn’t recommend watching it.
Let’s talk a little more about the authenticity of the main characters.
Academician Valery Legasov-outwardly the image is not bad, but the character could not be conveyed. In real life, Valery Alekseevich was a much more lively, punchy, characteristic man.
Boris Yevdokimovich Shcherbina (Minister of Energy and Oil Industry of the USSR) — outwardly, the creators did not get into the image. And the character in the series is also not the same, the real Shcherbina was more such a simple and sociable person, and you just can’t approach the cinematic image. Relatives of Boris Evdokimovich about the series say the following: the cinematic image is very different from the real one. For example, he smokes and drinks a lot in the series. In reality, this could not be, since the real Shcherbina in the north had pneumonia and earned asthma — there is no time for smoking.
However, this role is one of the most successful and lively in the series. The scene where Legasov listening to the conversation of Shcherbina with the head of the nuclear power plant suddenly understands. that in front of him, not a seemingly stupid random official, but a very smart, insightful, cunning person who is actually close to him in spirit, no matter how impossible it might seem a little earlier, immediately raises the script and the actor’s image of Shcherbina several levels higher.
In general, of course, it is wrong that all perhaps the leading characters except Shcherbina for some reason are depicted as some stupid pompous idiots. In the USSR, especially in such a position, the idiot was simply not able to sit.
And the scene where Legasov and Shcherbina discuss the evacuation, and Shcherbina suddenly realizes that a business trip to Chernobyl is not another career step with the success of the operation, but the last steps in his life in general is brilliant. Shcherbina did not even reach the term of their life, which was extremely indicated by Legasov — Chernobyl took all the health from Boris Evdokimovich. He died 4 years after he was sent to eliminate the disaster. However, this was not his last huge case. Two years before his death, he led the liquidation of the consequences of another terrible disaster — the strongest earthquake in Armenia, which destroyed the city to the ground and claimed a lot of lives.
When Boris Shcherbina died, there was so little money left on his savings book that there wasn’t even enough for a Zhiguli. This suggests that he never aspired to wealth and did not take anything from the state when he retired. Shcherbina’s daughter gave the savings book to the geological Museum of Tyumen.
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev-generally by. He was somewhat angular and baggy on the screen, and only once in his gestures and character did he look like a real person when he besieged the ministers at the meeting and invited Legasov to speak out. The real Gorbachev, as everyone around him knows, was a talker and liked to argue, but in the film he is afraid to open his mouth, and where he is supposed to be a king and god.
Now about the good, as I said, the image quality is at a very high level. The casting of the actors and the work of the makeup artists are wonderful, let’s take a look at a selection of comparisons of the actors and their real prototypes:
We tried very hard to choose the appearance, but unfortunately we couldn’t convey the character
outwardly not similar, the character is also inaccurate, however, as I said above, this is probably the strongest character in the film
Glasses and a spot Don’t Make Them Look Alike…
we tried to pick up nothing to say, commendable
complex, distinctive appearance, like two drops of water, bravo. Unfortunately, the role itself is dull and boring.
They tried to work on the appearance, but the facial expressions and behavior, the character did not correspond at all. Dyatlov was not an evil tyrant, he was really shunned by his subordinates, but because he was a very tough, strong-willed and extremely demanding person.
very bad, both in appearance and especially in the role, character. Just a character for ridicule, completely not corresponding to the real prototype, depicted so in favor of the obsession of the creators of the film to denigrate the USSR
This is probably all… it seems very few readers will be able to get to these words… “Chernobyl” is a great series, which I was happy to review, which gives rise to a lot of emotions in the soul and reminds of courage. fortitude, the exploits of the Soviet people. But unfortunately, it upsets with its rabid propaganda, stereotypes and sometimes lies.
And here, indeed, the opening words of the film are very appropriate:
