all the best, victory and peace to you, friends, good luck! espresso-interview on the tv channel espresso itself. here we talk about the most important events of the week, but also discuss the most interesting ones. things that also concern retrospective issues, here we are discussing actual events that happened once, that happened in ukraine, and what our future depends on. today we will talk about a very sad date in ukrainian history, april 26 every year is the day of remembrance of the victims of the chernobyl disaster, it is the day... when on

unfortunately , there was an explosion at the chornobyl nuclear power plant, and we still have many questions and want to hear answers to these questions. we have in the studio today volodymyr vyatrovych, historian, author of the bestseller ukraine, history with grif secretly. he discovered and is exploring the archives. the kgb, in particular, writes about the chernobyl disaster. head of the ukrainian institute of national remembrance in 2014-2019, people's deputy of ukraine. mr. volodymyr, i congratulate you. good day. mr. volodymyr, ot even today, after so many years after this terrible catastrophe, is it important to talk about these things, is it important to talk about...

the truth that was hidden from us even in the times of the soviet union, and even very often, in fact, before the revolution dignity we are aware that many archives, many things were tried to be hidden even during, during independent ukraine, after the restoration of the independence of our state. undoubtedly, it is necessary to talk about it, because it seems to me that the chernobyl story is a story about how to hide the truth. can in literally costing people their lives, and this is the story of how the desire to hide the scale of this disaster resulted in people simply not being given the right information, and people who trusted the authorities, who believed that it was necessary to do what the authorities said , probably suffered the most, that is , it is a very instructive story in the context, probably even of world history, in the context of the history of the soviet union, because for me it was the chernobyl disaster that probably

became such a trigger that started the process of the collapse of the soviet union, but it is very an instructive story for us for our time , when we live in a world where perhaps they don't hide the truth so much as simply cover it with tons of lies, and even now it is worth remembering this chernobyl story in order to still understand the value of the truth and to understand, that it is really possible and certainly necessary to dig deeper, you have emphasized a lot in your works on the issue of the fact that the kgb actually knew about a whole series of problems at the chernobyl nuclear power plant, about negligence, about the actual problems during of construction, that in principle such a catastrophe could happen, all this was clearly hidden from the public, just like any similar things during the soviet union.

in your opinion, could it still have been avoided then, or if this information had been more open, more people knew about it, even the same soviet officials, how much could it have been avoided, or is this catastrophe the essence was already laid by the very existence of the soviet soviet union, i absolutely agree with your thesis, because indeed, this disaster was laid by this system itself. in which it took place, because to talk about if there was more open information in the soviet union is like a complete moron, because the entire soviet union was built on the secrecy of information, on the inaccessibility of information, on lies, propaganda, on the fact that those people, who wanted to know the truth, even persecuted and physically destroyed, therefore, unfortunately, it could not be otherwise in the soviet union, and it is interesting to understand that the kgb documents actually show that the leadership of the soviet state. knew the truth

about what is happening from the very beginning with this chernobyl nuclear power plant. i must say why there are so many documents of the kgb about this object, it was there. was from the very beginning considered an object of strategic importance and from the very beginning of its construction in the early 1970s was under very careful supervision of the kgb, to the point that they studied all the inhabitants of the nearby villages, towns, pripyat, made lists of who which of them have relatives abroad, who even found someone there, whose relatives were in the ukrainian insurgent army, all these people were under very close scrutiny, under very close supervision by the kgb. but precisely because it was considered to be an extremely important object not only for soviet ukraine, but for the entire soviet union, and among other things, it must be understood that this object was subordinated directly to moscow, i.e. not by the ukrainian ministry, not by the ukrainian of the soviet socialist republic, namely that of moscow, and that is why

we have such a large number of documents, so it is very easy to reproduce from these documents that everything went wrong from the very beginning yes, the very process of building this... nuclear power plant was accompanied by constant violations of the norms that had to be observed, taking into account the fact that it is not even just a power plant, it is a nuclear power plant, this is one of those not-so-frequent experiences in the soviet union construction, and the kgb constantly informed the party that whatever material was stolen, it was replaced with something of poor quality, the first cracks had already appeared, but all this was looked at with narrowed eyes, because the most important thing... was to be in time to the next anniversary of october, before the chernobyl nuclear power plant was launched in 1977, as an example of such great achievements of the communist government and the entire soviet regime, it was launched, of course,

but literally immediately after that, again, according to the documents of the kgb, we see constant reports about problems with operation of this power plant and initially a smaller one. reactor, then as the operation of new power units of this power plant became more and more operational, its problems grew, until in 1982 one of the accidents took place, which was accompanied by such a significant emission of radioactive substances into open space, and again only those who were the warehouse workers from there, that is , the chekists themselves, the kegibists and those whom they laid down, and they lay down the table exclusively.. members of the communist party, people who lived and worked there, who, unfortunately, were obviously poisoned as a result of these exits, could not and should not have known anything about it, and i think that this was the practice of covering up information. ,

it should have been according to the management of the communist party was also applied to the disaster that occurred on the night of april 26 , 1986, the only thing that prevented it was its scale. of this catastrophe, the scale of which was so powerful that its results were learned hundreds, thousands of kilometers away from ukraine, for the first time it was understood, something significant happened on the territory of sweden, where an increased radiation hazard was recorded at a local nuclear power plant, and they thought that it is possible that some kind of accident happened in them, then they realized that no, that it was about what the wind brought... some air that was poisoned by radiation, this was the beginning of this, in the literal sense of this leak, which spilled into an information leak, which ultimately forced the authorities, well, at least very dryly, without any details, to say something about the fact that the accident happened, at least state the fact that

it did happen. for the first, probably, one, two, three weeks, the soviet authorities tried to do everything so that people did not find out anything, even... in those regions that were essentially tangential to the kyiv region, you said that in fact they started talking about it only after europe, the european states spoke up, started to strike the bell. if this had not happened, would ukrainian society or residents of other union republics have known at all that... such a catastrophe had occurred, or would the soviet union have managed to avoid such a spread of information in this case and it would have been possible to hide it all, it is difficult to say unequivocally whether it was completely hidden, because we are still talking about 1986, that is, this is already the time when there is a new leadership of the communist

the party headed by mikhail gorbachev, who already then launched the thesis of the proclamation, that is, the system was already a little shaky, the system was no longer as integral as under gorbachev's predecessors. that the goal is to do everything quietly so that a minimum number of people learn about the threats that... accompanied by an accident, this goal was usually set and this goal, this is very clearly visible from how long the evacuation of people was delayed, even from this the most affected, then defined as a 30-kilometer zone, the evacuation began just on april 28, eh, because it was thought that, well, let's wait, maybe everything is not so terrible, i remember this first document that was put on the table of volodymyr cherbyskyi, the head of the communist party at that time. about the fact that an accident occurred at night, which was accompanied by such and such radiation leaks, and accordingly there are

specific indicators of those, this radiation, which, which accompanies the accident, the state at this moment, to which volodymyr cherbytsky absolutely sincerely encouraged the resolutions on the document, что это means, that is, he did not understand at all what it was about, well, probably, obviously, how a man... let's say, party upbringing, he was not obliged to understand physics, but it was unfortunate that he, completely not understanding physics, not understanding the threats of what happened, in the end made the decision that will continue to be done, so the person who said what this means absolutely did not understand the threat of what happened, because he did not understand what it meant , so the question of evacuating those people who were in the greatest danger was delayed, moreover, everyone already remembers this one from kyiv history, because it all happened on the eve of may 1, well, of course, the leadership

of the communist party of ukraine could not refuse the may day demonstration, that is, it would probably be considered some kind of great sacrilege, and we have in the documents interesting measurements of the radiation state in kyiv as of noon, when the children went out on the gristle during this parade, we can see just the peak. of this threat to those people, but nevertheless, this did not deter the leadership of the communist party, because in fact, they believed that everything should happen as it happened, and that any unusual steps, any unexpected steps, well, they simply threaten their system, that is, it was just, you know, such a vivid manifestation of an already dying system, which is afraid of any -what steps even for... my own grandson, and in the end, i think that just this, what

happened then at the chernobyl accident, and this completely unsuccessful attempt to hide its scale, it became such a shock that launched a little over the entire system and led to its collapse. after orange revolution, and then after the revolution of dignity, in fact, ukrainians began to gain access to the archives. kgb to those materials that were, unfortunately, unavailable before, and which shed light on the chernobyl disaster. a lot appeared, including scientific works, there appeared, conditionally speaking, your articles, yes, which formed the basis of research after the chernobyl disaster, these were published under the auspices of the ukrainian institute of national remembrance, published these archives were published. was one of the books that contained a lot information that i read back in 2019,

please tell me why until now, until 2004, and then during yanukovych's time, they essentially tried to hide information about the chernobyl disaster, because, for example, the then head of yanukovych's security service ukrainy khoroshkovsky, he removed it, in fact, from the site. service, and under yushchenko we remember that for the first time the archives were opened, for the first time people got access, scientists got access, why even yanukovych's government tried to hide this information, i think that they hid not so much information about chernobyl, about the consequences of chernobyl, the consequences of the disaster, because it was already more or less known, in particular from some foreign publications, they hid kgb documents, because they were documents... that contained information about hiding information, about methods of hiding information, that is, it

was more important for them, methods of discrediting some people who provide information, methods of trying to invent some fake news, how journalists were brought from abroad, initially journalists of communist publications there from of western europe, who wrote that nothing bad actually happened, everything is fine, then even... journalists of western publications who were sponsored by some nuclear plants in the west, who wanted less panic, let's still say that nothing nothing terrible happened, that... the panic was exaggerated, we will extinguish this panic, so it seems to me that precisely in the times of already independent ukraine, especially in the times of yanukovych, they were more embarrassed by this, more embarrassed that ukrainians did not see, did not understand these methods these techniques because well representatives of this government also wanted to use these methods and techniques very actively, i

remember very well when in 2008 i became the head of the archive of the security service of ukraine. how much resistance there was even within the system of the security service of ukraine, the essence of this resistance was that we cannot expose the methods of operation of the communist special services, because they can be useful, can be used everyday, it just shocked me then, because i, as the historian knew very well what the methods of action of the communist special services were, and it is obvious that to talk about the fact that something similar can and should be used in independent ukraine is a... to admit that ukraine is definitely far from a democratic state and is not going to move towards some european and democratic state, therefore one of the first steps of the new government in in 2010, under the leadership of yanukovych, the new head of the khoroshkovsky security service, there was an attempt to bottle this genie again,

to close these archives again, literally the first press conference of valery khoroshkovsky, at which the thesis that... the truth was sounded , which is necessary was to open, we already opened enough on this, and then systemic work began, not just stopping the further opening of the archive, closing it back, a special commission was created, which reclassified documents, including documents that also related to the chernobyl disaster, so i am very happy , that after the victory of the revolution of dignity we still managed to complete this work, we prepared as a ukrainian site of national memory, a whole package of laws on decommunization, one of them precisely related to the opening. in the kgb, they were adopted in 2015 year, and actually the book you are talking about is the book chernobyl dossier, a two-volume book of kgb documents, which was published in cooperation with the archives of the security service of ukraine and the ukrainian institute of national remembrance, these are wonderful documents, of which, for me personally, the most interesting there are those documents, not those that tell about what happened before the accident, what happened during

the accident, but what happened after the accident, that is, how the whole thing went. the communist special services tried to restrain the spread of information and, on the contrary, launch some fakes about the fact that nothing terrible actually happened. very often, by the way, the methods that mr. volodymyr talks about, the actual concealment of information, are paralleled with methods similar to those used during the soviet regime's three famines. here, for example, in one of the articles. one of your articles about chornobyl, to be more precise, is called first information, radiation, then, so you actually analyzed in detail the extent to which this information blockade took place, that is, to what extent in each city, in each village, in each streets, every street was actually occupied by kgb agents who collected information and

tried to ensure that it was disseminated among society, and by the way, this did not only happen, relatively speaking, a month, two or three after chernobyl disaster, this happened systematically during the following years, until the collapse of the soviet union. first of all, is it correct that we are talking about parallels with the holodomors, and yet, if we are saying that, did the soviet union use, for example,... foreign journalists or some foreign specialists in order to hide this information about the consequences of the chernobyl disaster, which in fact is completely similar to the methodology, that is , it was reduced to two goals, one is to restrain the spread of true information, the second is to direct the information in a way that is necessary

for the regime channel, i.e. to fill it with all kinds of fakes and disinformation. the only difference is that, when we talk about the holodomor, it happened in a completely totalitarian state, which was just formed, which was completely controlled, all manifestations of citizens' lives were controlled by the authorities, while we are talking about chernobyl - it is still a very late soviet union with cracks covered, covered by some initiatives even from the very top, from mikhail gorbachev. about democratization, glasnost and so on, so these technologies, which which worked, worked effectively in suppressing the truth about the holodomor, in the widespread lies about the holodomor, in... the issue of the chernobyl accident, were also used, but they simply did not work effectively , there were cases when journalists were transported specifically to show that

there is no real threat, i.e. that people can return, that it will be possible to live here, but again, this is still the period of 1986, the period when the soviet power was also weaker , and opportunities to obtain some information. and in ukraine, even from the west, the same radio, the same so-called enemy voices, radio liberty, or the voice of america, was much larger, this was not the case in the 30s, and in the end, despite those colossal resources, the efforts that the communist government made to spread the truth, on to stop the spread of true information, to spread actual fakes, they did not work, and if as early as 1987 we have kgb documents that talk about... hasty attempts to interfere with some rallies that were being prepared for the anniversary of the chernobyl accident, in 1987 it failed

for various reasons kind of activists, then in 1988 the kgb failed, in 1988 the first rally unauthorized by the soviet authorities took place on the anniversary of the second anniversary of the second anniversary of the chernobyl accident, and it is very symbolic that this event was one of the first. such democracies have already discovered in ukraine, why did this happen, why did this environmental topic, the topic of the disaster, become such a powerful force for many people to reject the soviet identity, because it became clear that the government was lying, it became clear that this lie can just kill, and it became clear that this is such a conditional social contract that existed in the soviet union that... well, we give you our freedom, you take our freedom, but in return you give us some sense of security, that he violated by the authorities, that the people who put up with

the fact that they do not have freedom of access to information, but believed the authorities and did what the authorities said, they suffered the most, they were the ones who were sure that nothing terrible happened, they were those who thought that the government would protect them, and actually this did not happen, these people suffered and this and that happened. a terrible blow for many residents of then still soviet ukraine, who understood what a world of lies, what a dangerous lie they live in, and these first rallies since 1988 led to the fact that that a powerful ecological component appears in this opposition to the soviet power russia, moreover, these were exclusively political, that is , some dissidents, former political prisoners, but the appearance in this narrative. of the struggle against the soviet authorities, the environmental movement gave it a very powerful push forward and brought it to the world level, because

the world started talking about the trouble that happened in ukraine, because ukrainians started talking about the trouble that happened in ukraine far outside the borders of ukraine in order to remind again that this trouble happened precisely because the ukrainians do not have their own state, this trouble happened because there is a totalitarian occupying soviet government, so that in fact ukraine is occupied, but here is a very interesting thing: we come to the fact that the chernobyl disaster actually became such a trigger for the collapse of the soviet union, you agree with this thesis, of course, without diminishing the essence of the actions of, for example, our dissidents, the sixties, the liberation movement, we do not diminish, we do not diminish, but it is necessary to understand that the movements, these political movements, dissidents, participants of the national democratic movement, since mostly poles... no movements, well, they were not mass, that is, they were people, intellectuals and gathered around themselves, rather such people, intellectually prepared and ready

for some such radical steps, because they perfectly understood that what it meant for them, instead, the chernobyl disaster mobilized many more people, it pushed them to protest against the authorities that betrayed them, lied to them, ordinary people who would probably never... specifically get involved in any political processes, that's why she really added to this anti-soviet national-democratic movement a kind of mass that was not there before in this movement, it was just gaining momentum and it was this impetus that gave it much, gave him the opportunity to reach another level, and in one of the lectures you called this catastrophe named after lenin, or rather, even your lecture was called the chernobyl catastrophe named after lenin, please explain this name, why you still like that

marked, well, first of all, chernobyl itself. the official name of the nuclear power plant is the chernobyl nuclear power plant named after volodymyrach lenin, that is, it was customary in the soviet union to call everything after lenin. if we are talking about why the catastrophe named after lenin, then it is because , for sure, if you look very deeply into the roots of this catastrophe, they begin with lenin, that is, this person who created this system, a totalitarian system, this communist regime, the logical consequence of which there was also this accident, which could not be avoided to be, as we said at the beginning of our conversation, given the way we approached... this power plant and the consequences of this accident, that is , they are also a logical consequence of this system created by vladimir lenin, a completely closed system that did not foresee only some dissemination of information, which was not closed for a long time even to any help from the outside, i.e. for a long time the soviet union rejected any support from the capitalist and allegedly harmful for people west, and considering. that he can

handle this problem himself, in the end, how how, how, as time has shown, no, no, the soviet union did not cope with this problem either from the point of view of politics or from the point of view of ecology, and only the fact that this problem has already begun to be solved at the world level made it possible to at least partially overcome consequences of this disaster. as a historian, a public figure, you have devoted a lot of time, years... to rethinking the narratives and views on the chernobyl disaster and on the date of commemoration of the victims of the chernobyl disaster. as we have to perceive over the years actually this date, this catastrophe, this terrible event in the history of mankind, because in the 90s we perceived one thing at a time, in the 2000s we perceived it differently, and today... already in

times, including the great war, including the occupation of one of the nuclear power plants by the rashists. how to perceive it today, how to present the correct narrative to society, what it is, how it is, how to explain it to people, including future generations? i think that, as one of the, unfortunately, natural consequences of the functioning of the totalitarian system in ukraine, this is no accident, that is, it... the result of all this system work and as an example of what can happen to people in a system that completely neglects people, and you absolutely rightly reminded that even now one of the nuclear power plants, unfortunately, is under the russian occupiers, this is very serious a warning, because, as history shows, these people do not count human lives,

and... it is extremely important for us, talking about the chernobyl disaster of 1986, to warn the world against the one in whose hands such a powerful and threatening mechanism, like a nuclear power plant, and why the whole world should unite now to make sure that chernobyl never happens again, because as long as there are russians, russian troops, russian authorities, guarantees that... not unfortunately, it will not happen again. you and i mentioned the zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, now it hurts many people, all of us, because we do not know what can happen at any moment, in fact, this is the attitude of the russians towards the situation at the zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the attitude towards people, who work there, in general the absolutely negligent, negligent attitude and

constant provocations that... carry out, can this be considered as a certain succession even here in russia, in relation to the soviet union? absolutely, among the materials that we published, there is obviously the material of the investigation into the causes of the accident that happened on april 26, 1986, and in the end all possible theories about some terrorist attacks and so on were rejected and came to a simple, but a very specific conclusion that... uh, the accident was the result of employee negligence, the result of a completely careless culture, there is even such a word used, which prevailed among the workers, who considered it possible to do some things that ultimately led to the accident, what is happening now, unfortunately, at the zaporizhzhia power plant, it is also obvious that the language it's about the same culture, but unfortunately, maybe in some respects the situation and...