Comment by hkpack | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hkpack | Hacker News Reader

I think we need to also debunk the debunking.

You know, some of us were already living then and it is not some distant event we have no knowledge of.

For example:

> Re: The soviet government did not want to evacuate the town of Pripyat

> Debunking: Legasov indicated the opposite. He said that the decision to evacuate was made quickly, even though the levels of radiation in the town were not considered to be dangerous.

WTF? The level of radiation was not considered to be dangerous when your reactor was blown open? Are you fucking kidding?

> Re: The government made an effort to conceal everything regarding the accident and what was happening.

> Legasov stated that this was not the case, and that information was not provided at the time because it didn't exist. The situation was very confusing, and information was scarce, coming from multiple conflicting sources and estimates, making it difficult to collect, filter, and access the correct information.

The accident happened on 26 April 1986, and on the 1st of May, _4 days later_ there was a celebration of Labour Day - a mandatory parade in Kyiv within just 100 km. And no-one knew about the disaster from the official sources. Only people with access to foreign radio knew about the disaster, others were happily marching with red flags on the streets breathing polluted air.

And so on, and so forth...

He claims that they had all the equipment ready and knew the actual levels, but at the same time were confused and information was scarce, and the level of radiation were not that bad - it this some type of propaganda for the dumb?

I agree there are some claims in this article that should be further scrutinized but it's true that the levels of radiation were not as high as one might assume. The direction of the wind during and immediately following the disaster slowed the spread of radioactive material over Pripyat (this is also why southern Belarus was hit so hard). The prevailing winds in that region are north east and the Chernobyl power plant was on the north side of the city. By the time of the May day parade the winds had shifted such that Kiev was downwind from Chernobyl.

The KGB did their best to contain information about the disaster in general and the USSR wanted the May day parade to go on as-planned to make it look like things were fine. Even those with enough power or connections to be aware of the danger were pressured to participate. The May day parade was later often referred to in infamy by the Ukrainian independence movement following the disaster.

Most of my information comes from what I remember of reading "Midnight in Chernobyl" and "Chernobyl the History of a Nuclear Disaster"

I think too often these historical "debunking" exercises are really just exercises in overzealously uncharitable interpretation. Some of the distinctions drawn are asinine especially in the context of a dramatic presentation. And some are even importantly wrong, as you've now pointed out which I wouldn't have thought of on a skim-by reading.

Just like we have functional literacy and information literacy, there should be such a thing as Debunking Literacy. Are you actually debunking or just uncharitably interpreting?

If we dismiss the possibility that the post itself is a part of Russian propaganda to whitewash the soviet legacy (which they are engaging now at scale), then the next best explanation is that the author lacks the context of living in the USSR to correctly interpret the recordings.

In USSR everyone lied. Telling anything against the party will put you and your family in grave danger - it is basically a suicide. There were no free press, no activism, and all information was filtered by the party with complicated process of deciding what should be published and when and who gets punished for what.

People in the west have no understanding what it means to live all your life in such conditions so they try to interpret people as if it happened in their country.

It can be that the person was trying to make amends with the party to ease the social ostracization for his family, friends or colleagues. It doesn't mean the person is telling the truth at all, it means that he show loyalty to the party line by telling that the system was efficient and all his higher-ups were doing the best job.

Wholeheartedly agree, this is good analysis. I think there's a strong tankie tradition online and it's rather distinct in how anti intellectual it is, and would not write off the possibility of apologetics, but I completely agree that if true it's next explained by an institutionally fundamental culture of fear.

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