^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
He went to public school. It is not his fault.

quote:

Originally posted by downtownv:

quote:

Originally posted by FN in MT:
I find it interesting how communism and the lackadaisical atmosphere that results, can bring us these disasters.

The workers can care less about quality control. Yet they build nuclear subs , nuclear bombs, etc.

Even years later viewing the Chernobyl disaster, so SCARY. Amazing that most of that part of the world wasn't fatally contaminated.

Hence the expression in Communist Countries
The Government pretends to pay you.
You pretend to work.

It certainly is a scary thought...

Back in the late 70's when Poland opened up to tourism a little, my Parents went back to see where their Parents were born. My Dad tells the story of seeing hundreds of women waiting in a long, slow moving line in Gdansk. He asked one of the women "What are You waiting for"?

Turns out it was a grocery line. She stated; "Either chicken or toilet paper". My Dad always found that hilarious.

We had a group of recently emigrated Russians living near us in NJ when I was a young adult. Several went to our HS. I found the parents to be very depressing. As if they were simply hanging around, waiting to die. A sad bunch of people.

The black & white epilogue at the end was really fascinating, learning what happened to all of the players afterwards. Amazing that the 3 divers that went in to release the water actually survived, 2 of them still being alive. Unbelievable that the official death toll, that is still being reported by Russia, is 31.

And here Russia comes to perfectly prove part of the point that was being made in Chernobyl. Gotta love it.

Russian TV to air its own patriotic retelling of Chernobyl story
Russian version will revolve around role of a CIA agent before the nuclear accident

Andrew Roth in Moscow
Fri 7 Jun 2019 07.24 EDT

Russian state TV is set to air its own drama about the deadly 1986 Chernobyl disaster – but unlike the HBO series, which has transfixed viewers around the world, this version will claim that a CIA spy was present for the worst nuclear accident in history.

Chernobyl, which will air on Russia’s NTV channel, appears to fulfil a demand from tabloid columnists and state TV news for a more patriotic retelling of the story.

Craig Mazin, the creator of the HBO series, famously obsessed over minor details such as shoelaces and telephones, and adopted first-hand accounts of survivors to authentically recreate the Soviet Union of the 1980s.

NTV’s Chernobyl, filmed in Belarus, takes far more liberties. A description of the show says that the plot revolves around a CIA agent dispatched to Pripyat to gather intelligence on the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and the Russian counterintelligence agent sent to track him down.

If it sounds like fiction, that’s because it is. But the director, Alexey Muradov, said the show “will tell viewers about what really happened back then”.

“There is a theory that the Americans had infiltrated the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and many historians do not deny that on the day of the explosion an agent of the enemy’s intelligence services was present at the station,” Muradov told the tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, which said the show “proposes an alternative view on the tragedy in Pripyat”.

State-run television and Russian tabloids have accused the HBO series of bias by papering over the heroic acts of Soviet emergency workers, the so-called “liquidators”.

“Chernobyl did not show the most important part – our victory,” ran one headline in Komsomolskaya Pravda, the country’s most popular daily.

Another article by the prominent war correspondent Dmitry Steshin in the same paper claimed the show was filmed in order to sabotage overseas sales of nuclear energy technology by the Russian state company Rosatom.

Russia fetes its military veterans like few other countries do, but far less attention is paid to the Chernobyl liquidators. Ilya Shepelin, a Russian journalist, wrote in the Moscow Times that “the fact that an American, not a Russian, TV channel tells us about our own heroes is a source of shame that the pro-Kremlin media apparently cannot live down”.

Link

These Russkies crack me up.

Now it was the CIA that wanted to irradiate half of Europe and render the other half uninhabitable for centuries? Yeah right, Comrades.

I think the HBO series conveys a VERY patriotic retelling of the event. It took HUNDREDS, if not thousands, of dedicated heroes during that time to limit the loss of life and disaster beyond what it was, TO THEIR OWN DETRIMENT! I would think the Russian population would applaud the efforts of HBO to tell the factual account. But then again, NOTHING in the USSR/Russia has ever been based on fact or truth.

"And so we will dig as our fathers did"

How the F do you get more patriotic than the telling of the story of the miners. The telling of the story of the workers who sacrificed themselves to try to turn on the water, nurses, fireman, OMG the firemen, and finally the story of the three guys who went into the watertank.

If Russia cannot separate (even after the fall of communism) the destructive nature of tyrannical ideology, then they are just as stupid as the politicians in 1986. I love how HBO shows the PEOPLE of Russia doing what is needed, but also that ultimately the system was at fault.

quote:

. But then again, NOTHING in the USSR/Russia has ever been based on fact or truth.

I think that the story about Catherine the Great and a horse might be true. LOL

quote:

Originally posted by erj_pilot:
I think the HBO series conveys a VERY patriotic retelling of the event. It took HUNDREDS, if not thousands, of dedicated heroes during that time to limit the loss of life and disaster beyond what it was, TO THEIR OWN DETRIMENT! I would think the Russian population would applaud the efforts of HBO to tell the factual account. But then again, NOTHING in the USSR/Russia has ever been based on fact or truth.

I agree. I know they weren’t radiating Russian patriotism out their asses (mostly because they were Ukrainian, and lived bleak lives, not to mention all the shit the Ukrainians ate over the years from the Russians) but the people did what they had to do to “fix” things as best they could. Makes me proud to be of Ukrainian heritage. Fuck Russia though.

For those who were followers of the accompanying Chernobyl podcast, a bonus episode was just released. Coincidentally it comes just days after another nuclear accident in Russia that initially kept pretty hush hush.

"Peter Sagal and Craig Mazin are back for a special bonus episode. They’re joined by actor Jared Harris (Valery Legasov) to discuss filming Chernobyl, Harris’s experience portraying Legasov and the global reaction to the miniseries."

https://castbox.fm/vb/177100480

Or search for it on whatever podcast platform you use.

Just watched the Netflix replay of a Nova episode on building the megadome over the reactor. Very interesting to watch, what a mess. In another generation we will probably have to fix that too.

20,000 years of cleanup.

I watched the series after some prodding from a friend of mine, born 6 years after the event. I myself was 24 and remember it well as far as what was presented in the western news.

The technical events presented of the incident are true, as per some side reading I did about the series. But other items are over dramatized; it's not reality, but makes for good television - as some other reading on the series mentioned.

The series was ok, overall. It certainly gives today's youth not familiar with the Soviet system, an insight in how the Soviet system functioned. At least based upon my friend's reactions to the series.

Of course not so recent events in Japan and a nuclear reactor incident there, and their 'handling of information' about it, certainly does not make the Soviet's handling of information on Chernobyl all that much worse.

I suspect if we had a serious incident like this here (3 mile island might fit here?), the government would try to suppress information to avoid population panic. It's not right, but it is what it is.

As far as the Ruskies making their version of Chernobyl? If they will be honest about it, perhaps it might be good, since they have all the 'real' information, including the personalities involved - something the makers of Chernobyl did not have in detail.

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:
For those who were followers of the accompanying Chernobyl podcast, a bonus episode was just released. Coincidentally it comes just days after another nuclear accident in Russia that initially kept pretty hush hush.

"Peter Sagal and Craig Mazin are back for a special bonus episode. They’re joined by actor Jared Harris (Valery Legasov) to discuss filming Chernobyl, Harris’s experience portraying Legasov and the global reaction to the miniseries."

https://castbox.fm/vb/177100480

Or search for it on whatever podcast platform you use.

I too listened to the podcast. Very well done

Reviving this, in hopes that anyone who hasn't seen this yet might be reminded about it.

This flew under my radar, when it was released. A friend told me about it about a month ago. Shoooooweeeee, what a great miniseries!

I wasn't super familiar with the disaster. I knew of it, insomuch as I was aware of a nuclear powerplant disaster in Russia, and the resulting exclusion zone. I was born in '88, so it pre-dated my existence.

I was glued to the screen. Episode four was a bit less magnetic than the rest, but still incredible. This series oozes quality and gives the impression that the creators and producers really gave a darn.

Man, the series really made Dyatlov look like a total fucker. Seems he wasn't quite as hateable in real life.

I wish the miners had gotten a bigger finale in the main body of the series. Their contribution was commended in that part before the final credits, but I thought they were underappreciated in the body of the series.

The part before the end credits of the final episode was seemingly good at clarifying stuff about the real-life events, and explaining why the show changed some stuff.

Reading through this thread again, it is obvious the Ruski's (the officialdom) didn't like how they were portrayed.

As I recall they didn't much care for the portrayal of the USSR/state when HBO did 'Citizen X' back in 1995 either.