"What is the cost of lies?" This question, posed by scientist Valery Legasov (Jared Harris) opens HBO's Chernobyl and is the central focus of this television event.The series (created/written by Craig Mazin, directed by Johan Renck) follows the efforts of Legasov, Boris Shcherbina (Stellan Skrsgard), and Ulana Khomyuk (Emily Watson) to respond to the . Tagged: Chernobyl, Anatoly Dyatlov, Labor Camps, Prison. [I began] to speak about the necessity of the next generation of reactors to be safer; say TTER reactors or liquid salt reactors that I was trying to present as the next steps towards safer reactors. For some reason, many believe that my father was disappointed by the fact that he wasnt awarded. In the early days of the series' production, actors auditioned with vaguely Eastern European accents. Slowly, once the most powerful in the country, they began to lose the standard of modern equipment. As a young man he attended School No. In "Chernobyl," starring Jared Harris and Emily Watson, the creators imagine confrontation where it was unthinkableand, in doing so, cross the line from conjuring a fiction to creating a lie. This Scribbling and formalism have reached such a scale that it is already difficult for science to bear this cross. In Chernobyl, which was created and written by Craig Mazin and directed by Johan Renck, the material culture of the Soviet Union is reproduced with an accuracy that has never before been seen in Western television or filmor, for that matter, in Russian television or film. [1] Ustynyuk called Legasov at 22:30 on the same day saying he might still prevail with support from other top scientists that had not been consulted on the decision. Lead was included as a radiation absorber, as well as sand and clay, which it was hoped would prevent the release of particulates. Press J to jump to the feed. It was Dyatlov who was trying to find out the truth and get it out to the world for as long as he lived. It smelled like burnt piles of collected leaves, the cough of a newly revived chimney, roasted chestnuts, the scent of a man's hands after hours spent in a wood shop. Physicists make up the majority. Some in the Ministry of Medium Machine Building (Sredmash) opposed his appointment, fearing Legasov would be difficult to control, since the nuclear establishment wanted to divert blame to others if possible. [5] When on trips to other regions, sometimes as part of his scientific duties, he often visited the nearby cultural, artistic and religious sites. One of the most remarkable facts about Chernobyl is that the narrative vacuum had persisted for that long, and, in fact, it has persisted since: Alexievichs book came to prominence, both in Russia and in the West, only following her Nobel Prize win. Legasov, with only a few anomalies. Whatever they are, they are not the truth. We hardly see any of the evacuees at all, and we are given only one indication that some people resisted and refused to leave: an old woman who, at the beginning of Episode 4, obstinately continues milking her cow after she is repeatedly ordered to move. Legasov flew to Chernobyl after the No. MagicalQuote. It was the system, made up primarily of pliant men and women, that cut its own corners, ignored its own precautions, and ultimately blew up its own nuclear reactor for no good reason except that this was how things were done. And here is a completely different situation everything inside me is burned"[5] and on another occasion "I'm now, like the mythical Midas, only he turned everything he took into gold, and as for me everything turns into air, even worse, into a vacuum. His life was never the same. [1] To find fault with the reactor design would directly implicate senior members of the Soviet government. 'Chernobyl' creator and writer Craig Mazin discusses depicting the 1986 nuclear disaster, the HBO miniseries' slow-burn success and how the story resonates with climate change denialism. When asked, by the prosecutor, why the reactor was designed this way, Legasov cites the same reason that other safety precautions are ignored and other corners are cut: Its cheaper. He seems to be damning the whole system. [13] Working on reactor design was taboo for a chemist in the institute but he focused instead on related technologies, as well as assisted with the management of the institute. The best part of those tapes are his admission that the roots Chernobyl disaster lies in a systematic fault in Soviet science and bureaucracy, along with his interview with Adamovich. By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising. The truth doesnt care about our needs or wants - it doesnt care about our The Soviet system of propaganda and censorship existed not so much for the purpose of spreading a particular message as for the purpose of making learning impossible, replacing facts with mush, and handing the faceless state a monopoly on defining an ever-shifting reality. There was such unpreparedness, such disorder, such fear. There are so many different interpretations of how and why this happened, that it is . I know who I am, and I know what Ive done. https://legasovtapetranslation.blogspot.com/, https://www.reddit.com/r/chernobyl/comments/1198y6j/how_many_of_valery_legasovs_quotes_from_the_hbo/. )", "Chemist, investigator of Chernobyl nuclear accident dies at 51", "Legasov suicide leaves unanswered questions", INSAG-7 The Chernobyl Accident: Updating of INSAG-1, "A bust of Hero of Russia Valery Alekseevich Legasov will be installed in Tula", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Valery_Legasov&oldid=1140547362, Chief Scientific Advisor of the commission investigating the Chernobyl disaster, This page was last edited on 20 February 2023, at 15:52. Enjoy reading and share 14 famous quotes about Valery Legasov with everyone. #ValeryLegasov #Chernobyl #ChernobylHBO. No carafe, no vodka in the workplace in front of a hostile stranger, and no boasting Im in charge.. He led the commission that investigated the catastrophe. There was a vacuum. [3]Entre 1949 e 1954, ele frequentou o ensino mdio na escola Nmero 56 em Moscou e se graduou com uma medalha de ouro. Neither Tass nor the evening television news broadcast Vremya on Friday gave the cause or place of death. Even the house pets left in the exclusion zone after people are evacuated are shown through the eyes of men who are sent there to execute them. All because, it seems, he wants a promotion. The Belarusian scientist Ulyana Khomyuk (Emily Watson) is even more confrontational than Legasov. he was barely eating or sleeping. and the parade took place just days after the explosion. He allegedly committed suicide. The real conflict was between Legasov and another senior scientist not shown so far in the show. It being television, and very well-received television at that, it is the series, rather than the books, that will probably finally fill the vacuum where the story of Chernobyl should be. Misha: [later] No! This caused serious jealousy among his colleagues. June 3, 2019. Privacy Statement But in the past year two books, one by a historian and the other by a journalist, have attempted to tell the definitive documentary story of the disaster. [1], Legasov attended a turbulent meeting with the Politburo, on 3 July in which the causes of the accident and flaws in the RBMK reactor were discussed. He discovered what . Soviet-born Americansand, indeed, Soviet-born Russianshave been tweeting and blogging in awe at the uncanny precision with which the physical surroundings of Soviet people have been reproduced. [28] He was very disappointed that he was the only member of his Chernobyl team that did not receive the award "hero of socialist labor". He graduated from the Mendeleev Moscow Institute of Chemistry and Technology. He was named Person of the Year in Europe and was included in the list of the top 10 scientists in the world. Posted just six days ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/chernobyl/comments/1198y6j/how_many_of_valery_legasovs_quotes_from_the_hbo/. Legasov himself was a beneficiary of that systemic corruption; although he was talented enough to deserve his position, his rise to his office was in no small part due to being the protg of one of the biggest names in Soviet Nuclear science. Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. He was a physical scientist who determined what caused the Chernobyl disaster. At that time, Legasov went ahead and masterfully absolved Soviet science in front of the world in Vienna conference by being somewhat transparent about the operations of Soviet nuclear industry. HBO Of course, that sentence is doubly unfair. I swear we get this question once a week on this sub No, the cost of lies quote is fictional. Legasov was . Legasov also tried to stop the May Day Parade in Ukraine, And cut the phone lines. The case of Valery is mysterious and unsettling to this day. [7] Legasov reassured Gorbachev by phone that scale of contamination was understood and the reactor was not a continuing threat to other countries. This is a lie. His apartment in the film looks like apartment of an alcoholic mover in a provincial soviet store, not like apartment of soviet academic, Winner of Lenin and S. 56 in Moscow and graduated with a gold medal. In private he campaigned for reactor safety and institutional reorganization. Is this really the way it all works? character commits real-life suicide. Legasov was 51 years old. 1989. [19], In the public sphere, he still kept to the official position that nuclear power was safe. 2023 Cond Nast. (She lied about it.) But resignation is a depressing and untelegenic spectacle. They'll deny it, of course. [22] The report ran to 388 pages and was presented by Legasov to the conference in a 5-hour presentation, which many in the audience found disturbing. An uninformed, arbitrary decision that will cost who knows how many lives that is made by some apparatchik, some career Party man? Yes, of course this is the way it works, and, no, he hasnt been in his lab so long that he didnt realize that this is how it works. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. So, even if he didn't necessarily speak about that, did he say any notable things in his tapes? I am writing an informative speech on Chernobyl. Legasov worked without rest, often not paying attention to the dosimeter, a device that measures dose uptake of external ionizing radiation. But it is always there whether we see it or not, whether we choose to or not. Her baby lived for four hours after birth; she had apparently absorbed the radiation, saving her mothers life. This plan was rejected on 26 April 1988, the day before his death. there, and was exposed to 100 REM (Roentgen Equivalent Man) - four times the allowed maximum of 25 REM. Although not a reactor specialist, he became a key member of the government commission formed to investigate the causes of the disaster and to plan the mitigation of its consequences. The relevant passages in Higginbotham's 'Midnight in Chernobyl' with respect to the Vienna Conference say:. I know that it can be difficult; you need to endure, wait it out. quotes delayed at least 15 minutes, all others at least 20 minutes. A scientist was needed to join the state commission and all Alexandrovs deputies from the Kurchatov Institute were unreachable. Tula, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union, Educated At: In the great-men version of history, only the powerful have speaking parts. Midnight in Chernobyl Key Figures. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. I witnessed all this, but it was hard for me to intervene in the process purely professionally while general declarations on this subject were received with hostility. And there is still so much to do! He was hospitalized with severe radiation poisoning, and I know you'll try your best.". "[5] That afternoon, he briefly visited his daughter. Up until Chernobyl, he was being groomed to be the de facto leader of the Soviet scientific community - a place full of politics and nepotism. "[28] In spring 1987, a vote was held by the Kurchatov Institute to their Scientific-Technical Council with Legasov standing at the insistence of his mentor Anatoly Alexandrov. And when I visited the Chernobyl station after the accident and saw what was happening there, I myself drew a precise and unequivocal conclusion, that the Chernobyl disaster is an apotheosis, the pinnacle of all the mismanagement that has been carried out for decades in our country. From that moment on, a working friendship, which then grew into a deeper friendship, was formed with him and with other comrades. Even though one was only allowed to spend a maximum of two weeks at the site, Legasov spent four months (!) The army was slowly built up in the jungles of eastern Cambodia during the late 1960s. That is how we keep the people from undermining the fruits of their own labor. This statement has everything: the bureaucratic indirectness of Soviet speech, the privileging of fruits of labor over the people who created them, and, of course, the utter disregard for human life. When one considers the chain of events, it is impossible to find a single culprit, a single initiator of events, because it was like a closed circle.. I dont believe any of the many lines said by the character were said by the real person. [7] Nikolay Antoshkin, an air force general involved in the liquidation remembers: "I met Valery Alekseevich as soon as he arrived. He wasnt meant to be in Chernobyl. From a safety point of view, it even stood out as being better, as I understood from the discussions. Bryukhanov was accused of mismanagement and that operator error was the primary cause of the accident, while design flaws were also a factor. single initiator of events, because it was like a closed circle, To be a scientist is to be naive. This is not a good thing. Before you were Deputy Secretary, you worked in a shoe factory. First, shed never say this. [1] He also considered the possibility of ground water contamination to be extremely low, but precautionary work was initiated to cool the reactor using an underground system. 28k followers [5] Since December 1978, the Legasov family kept a high-bred pet chow-chow. No one leaves. It was the stories of those who suffered that most interested Alexievich. They thought for days how to address the fact that the main day. His report was 400-pages long, and he presented it during a five-hour This is the great-men (and one woman) narrative of history, where its a few steps, a few decisions, made by a few men that matter, rather than the mess that humans make and from which they suffer. cover up the causes of the disaster. I must resign. [12]:261 He received the degree of Candidate in 1967 and his doctorate in chemistry in 1972. [7][1] The team began to be concerned with small areas of reactor activity, as well as the integrity of the concrete pad. [37], On 20 September 1996, Russian president Boris Yeltsin posthumously conferred on Legasov the honorary title of Hero of the Russian Federation, the country's highest honorary title, for the "courage and heroism" shown in his investigation of the disaster. "[5] At one point, Antoshkin scolded Legasov for taking too many personal risks when he was key to the operation. Valery Legasov Real Quotes & Sayings. Harris' character is based on the real Legasov, a Soviet Union nuclear physicist who . Read more quotes from Valery Legasov. During their first day in Pripyat the commission encountered shortages of respirators and personal dosimeters. Father checked the numbers over and over again. Valery Legasov Real Person Mixed Historical Accuracy. daughter Inga, he knew from his first day on the scene he would eventually die. [7] Legasov and Anatoly Alexandrov described the meltdown scenarios, and Legasov agreed with the plan to tunnel under the reactor to provide cooling. I have to start the part where I create my memoir. So the creators of Chernobyl imagine confrontation where confrontation was unthinkableand, in doing so, they cross the line from conjuring a fiction to creating a lie. In the first episode, for example, during an emergency meeting of the Pripyat ispolkom, the towns governing council, an elder statesman, Zharkov (Donald Sumpter), delivers a chilling, and chillingly accurate, speech, urging his compatriots to have faith. We seal off the city, Zharkov says. Chernobyl is a 2019 HBO miniseries based on the nuclear accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. and effects of the Chernobyl accident. When one looks at the chain of events, why someone acted in this way and another in that way and so on, it is impossible to point to a single culprit, an initiator of all the unpleasant events that led to the crime. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. [3] A escola atualmente possui seu nome e um busto de bronze na entrada, ostentando sua imagem. For the work in this field (most notably for the Bartlett-Legasov effect) Valery received numerous state awards. (There are tiny errors, like a holiday uniform worn by schoolchildren on a non-holiday, or teen-agers carrying little kids school bags, but this is truly splitting hairs.) The deputy director of the Kurchatov Institute, Valery Legasov is among the men selected to travel to Chernobyl in the immediate aftermath of the explosion as part of a government commission to contain the effects of the disaster. (Its English title, depending on the translation, is Voices from Chernobyl or Chernobyl Prayer.) The reason, she said, was that none of her interlocutorspeople who lived in the area affected by the disasterknew how they were supposed to talk about it. Valery Legasov is most famous for being the deputy chief engineer of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. A happily married father of two grown children, Valery Legasov was 49 years old at the time of the accident and approaching the pinnacle of his career at the top of the Soviet scientific . Obviously " you'll be begging for that bullet by the morning" And along those lines of how quickly death would arrive. April 26 was Saturday. [36] Legasov's daughter commented "It was not an emotional breakdown, it was a deliberate, thoroughly considered act. Our drinking water - Is the world drying up? He was eventually released and returned to [25], I did not lie in Vienna but I did not tell the full truth. Tatiana Ignatenko was a collective farm fieldworker, and Ivan Ignatenko a tractor, and later truck . Legasov was also the person who delivered a five-hour oral report on the causes of the disaster at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna - an honest and detailed report that calmed down the international community but angered colleagues at home. With hundreds of free documentaries published and categorised every month, there's something for every taste.