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Plokhy's book is strongest where he presents the engagement of Ukrainian leaders in the post-disaster decision-making process (especially chapter 18): he evokes the confusion, frustration, and resentment among those grappling with decisions that affected the public, for example, whether or not to hold a May Day parade in Kiev, while the radiation situation was unclear at best, and dangerous for human health at worst. [...]there were many channels for criticism within the Soviet system, including the KGB and the Communist Party—Viktor Sidorenko, one of the leading architects of the country's nuclear industry, has reconstructed many of them in his edited volumes (Istoriia atomnoi energetiki Sovetskogo Soiuza i Rossii, five volumes, Moscow, 2001–4). Overall, with the exception of the final section (part VI), this volume does not add much to the vast existing scholarship on Chernobyl; in fact, by overlooking so much of it, Plokhy's narrative presents a skewed view of the disaster's origins, powerful impacts, and lasting implications for the future of the world's nuclear industry, and for the Ukrainian state.
Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe. By Serhii Plokhy. New York: Basic Books, 2018. 404 pp. Notes. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. Maps. $32.00, hard bound.
In “Chernobyl,” History Professor and Director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, Serhii Plokhy, presents yet another definitive story of the worst nuclear disaster in history, arguing that Chernobyl was the straw that broke the Soviet Union's back, and laid the groundwork for Ukrainian political independence. Plokhy maintains that his account is based on new sources, which unfortunately are completely hidden in the endnotes, as the volume lacks a bibliography. The author spends a majority of the book's evocatively titled twenty-one chapters on recounting the events of April 1986 and beyond, in order to show that the Chernobyl tragedy was a direct result of Russian mismanagement. The book is written as a novel, which makes it readable, but also allows for a fair amount of poetic license. Some readers may enjoy this, others, myself included, cringe at the imprecision this technique encourages.
Plokhy's book is strongest where he presents the engagement of Ukrainian leaders in the post-disaster decision-making process (especially chapter 18): he evokes the confusion, frustration, and resentment among those grappling with decisions that affected the public, for example, whether or not to hold a May Day parade in Kiev, while the radiation situation was unclear at best, and dangerous for human health at worst. The book's major weakness is the author's apparent lack of familiarity with the expansive scholarship on the disaster, and his reliance on a few, dated sources to retell a story that has been revised and rewritten many times since. Furthermore, where the author attempts to address technical issues, his narrative is full of errors—a flaw that could have been prevented by consulting existing literature or a technically trained editor.
In terms of methodology, Plokhy combines some new primary sources with documents from online repositories, as well as published monographs in several languages. Apparently, the realization that the KGB would at times produce nuanced information came as a surprise to him. In fact, there were many channels for criticism within the Soviet system, including the KGB and the Communist Party—Viktor Sidorenko, one of the leading architects of the country's nuclear industry, has reconstructed many of them in his edited volumes (Istoriia atomnoi energetiki Sovetskogo Soiuza i Rossii, five volumes, Moscow, 2001–4). As far as I can tell, Plokhy has not conducted any new interviews. The “eyewitness testimonies” that enliven his story are second- or third-hand citations from published sources, unlike the compelling, first-hand accounts presented in, for example, Olga Kuchinskaya's The Politics of Invisibility (2014) and Adam Higginbotham’s Midnight at Chernobyl (2019).
Plokhy's insider perspective as an ethnic Ukrainian, certified former Soviet citizen, and Chernobyl “downwinder” is both an asset and a curse: his lived experience gives him an easy familiarity with esoteric Soviet traditions and renders his account instantly credible. But he often does not grasp the intricacies of the Soviet system he was born into, for example, what role science and technology played in the Soviet economy, industry, and politics. None of the scholarship produced at Harvard and elsewhere on this topic (suffice it to mention Loren Graham's extensive oeuvre here) is referenced. In following Legasov's memoirs closely, he also misses on the fact that the IAEA's International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group had to fundamentally modify its initial report on Chernobyl, INSAG-1, which was based on Legasov's account. Their revised report, INSAG-7, came out in 1992 and benefitted from more comprehensive accident investigations published in the years since.
When it comes to technical details, Plokhy's story is particularly shaky. To give just one example, he uses the terms “safety” and “security” interchangeably, not realizing their distinct meanings in the nuclear context (279, 280; 322; 325; 342). He also struggles with the differences and overlaps between civilian and military applications of nuclear energy, and reproduces western clichés about how Chernobyl could have been prevented had only the military taken charge of nuclear power plants. Most unnerving, however, are unfounded safety comparisons (66, 131); offhand assessments of how nuclear expertise was distributed across Soviet ministries (19); and the striking unfamiliarity with the literature on the history of the Soviet nuclear sector (David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, 1994; Paul Josephson, Red Atom, 2005; Sonja Schmid, Producing Power, 2015).
Overall, with the exception of the final section (part VI), this volume does not add much to the vast existing scholarship on Chernobyl; in fact, by overlooking so much of it, Plokhy's narrative presents a skewed view of the disaster's origins, powerful impacts, and lasting implications for the future of the world's nuclear industry, and for the Ukrainian state. The accessible style in which Plokhy presents his narrative will appeal to readers who engage with the disaster for the first time, and unfortunately, it offers them a partial, technically inaccurate, and at times outdated perspective. Readers with familiarity in the matter will likely dismiss this volume as expendable.
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