Резюме: | A compelling history of the 1986 disaster and its aftermath presents Chernobyl as a terrifying emblem of the terminal decline of the Soviet system These days, European travel agencies offer trips to Chernobyl for as little as €500. Tourists are promised safety, comfort and the ghoulish thrill of visiting the site where, at 1.23am on 26 April 1986, an explosion at the nuclear plant’s reactor No 4 created the largest peacetime nuclear disaster in history. The adjacent city of Prypiat, which grew up around Chernobyl, is a latter-day Pompeii. It has remained uninhabited since the Soviet authorities belatedly ordered the evacuation of its population 36 hours after the plant first began spewing lethal radiation into the atmosphere. When, in 2015, the Ukrainian parliament ordered the removal of all Communist party statues from the country’s streets and squares, Prypiat and the 18-mile radius exclusion zone around Chernobyl became a “time capsule” and a “communist preserve”. There, Lenin and co still gaze down triumphantly on the desolation. In this compelling history of the disaster and its aftermath, Serhii Plokhy presents Chernobyl as a terrifying emblem of the terminal decline of the Soviet system. The turbine test that went catastrophically wrong was not, he argues, a freak occurrence but a disaster waiting to happen. It had deep roots in the party’s reckless obsession with production targets and in the pliant nuclear industry’s alarming record of cutting corners to cut costs. Continue reading... |