Prepared by Nataliia Slobozhanina of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, drawing on the two-volume edition The KGB’s Chernobyl Files and Serhii Plokhy’s Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe.
Ban on the dissemination of information about the incident within the country
In one of the first reports from the Kyiv City and Region Directorate of the KGB, sent to the KGB of the USSR on April 26, it was stated:
“To prevent the leakage of information and the spread of false and panic-inducing rumors, control over outgoing correspondence has been organized, and subscribers’ access to international communication lines has been restricted.”
Although the evacuation of residents from Prypiat and nearby villages began on the afternoon of April 27, the Soviet government, and accordingly the “most truthful” media in the world, remained silent about what had happened.
On April 28 at 21:00, the news program Vremya briefly reported that an accident had occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, that one of the reactors had been damaged, that assistance was being provided to those affected, and that a government commission had been established. This short announcement was meant to create the impression of a minor incident and that the situation was under control, leaving no reason for concern.
On April 29, 1986, an order was issued by Leonid Bykhov, head of the KGB Directorate of the Ukrainian SSR for Kyiv and the region, “to intensify the work of city and district bodies at enterprises and institutions in order to stop the spread of provocative and panic-inducing rumors, and to apply the most decisive measures against their instigators.” District departments were required to report twice daily, by 11:00 and 17:00, to the duty officer of the KGB Directorate on the number of identified “chatterers,” as well as the number of preventive conversations and individual warnings conducted.
On April 30, the newspaper Pravda broke the silence and published a short note, essentially repeating what had been stated on the Vremya program, adding that an evacuation from Prypiat had taken place and that radiation levels were being carefully monitored.
In a memorandum to Volodymyr Shcherbytskyi, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Chairman of the KGB of the Ukrainian SSR Stepan Mukha reported on the efforts of the security services ahead of May Day to ensure proper control “over the operational situation in the Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Zhytomyr regions in connection with the extraordinary events that occurred on April 26 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.”
International Workers’ Day was one of the most important ideological holidays in the Soviet Union, so the authorities could neither ignore nor cancel its celebration. Despite the fact that the wind was carrying a radioactive cloud toward Kyiv, the party-state leadership in the Kremlin ordered that a mass parade be held in the city.
“It was meant to serve as a signal to the international community that the situation was under control, that people were safe and felt protected,” writes Serhii Plokhy in Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe, “while Western media, by spreading false information about massive destruction and thousands of victims, were portrayed as part of a propaganda war. Footage of smiling Kyiv residents marching through the city center was intended to send a message to everyone – the Party is in control.”
At the same time, these images published in newspapers became a stark testament to the Soviet authorities’ crime against their own people: “Thousands of Kyiv residents took to the main avenue of the hero city, Khreshchatyk, on May 1,” the newspaper Vechirniy Kyiv wrote on May 2, “more than 120,000 residents of Kyiv and visitors to the capital took part in the celebrations on Khreshchatyk.” These figures, however, should be treated with caution, as quotas had been set at the local party level for participation from each of Kyiv’s ten districts, at 2,000 people per district, whereas the usual number was around 5,000.
By the morning of May 3, 911 patients with symptoms of radiation exposure had been hospitalized in Ukraine. The following day the number rose to 1,345, including 330 children. Soon, radiology departments in Kyiv hospitals became overwhelmed, and patients with this diagnosis began to be admitted outside the city.
The information blackout surrounding the accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant was enforced at all levels. Even within the exclusion zone, the local newspaper Prapor Peremohy did not publish a single word about the tragedy. Its final issue instead appeared with striking slogans:
“Soviet people can live in peace: the Party fully recognizes its responsibility for the future of the state.”
In May 1986, the Fifth Department of the Sixth Directorate of the KGB of the USSR compiled a list of information, 26 items in total, related to the events at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant that were to be classified. In order to downplay the scale of the disaster, state security bodies monitored the non-disclosure in both the press and private conversations of such topics as the causes of the accident at Unit 4, data on the nature and extent of the destruction, the quantity and composition of the material released from the destroyed reactor during the explosion, information on radiation levels inside the plant and within the 30-kilometer zone, the scope of decontamination work carried out during the response, statistics on radiation sickness among plant personnel, liquidators, and evacuated residents, as well as cases of mass poisoning and epidemiological diseases linked to the accident. The list also included data on state capital expenditures for the containment of Unit 4, as well as the names of organizations involved and the number of personnel engaged in the liquidation effort.
To conceal the true scale of the tragedy, the authorities resorted to unprecedented measures to hide the real diagnoses of those affected by radiation exposure. “According to the Shevchenkivskyi District Directorate of the KGB, the Kyiv regional administration and 25 hospitals, acting on instructions from the Ministry of Health of the Ukrainian SSR, recorded the diagnosis ‘vegetative-vascular dystonia’ in the medical histories of patients showing signs of radiation sickness,” states a report of the Sixth Department of the KGB Directorate of the Ukrainian SSR for Kyiv, dated May 13, 1986.
Preventing the spread of information about the incident beyond the country
Drawing on its experience of concealing the facts of technological disasters that had periodically occurred in the Soviet Union, the authorities initially planned to suppress information once again. However, the scale of this catastrophe was far greater. Around 50 million curies of radioactive substances were released into the atmosphere. In addition, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant was located in the European part of the USSR, and the wind carried radioactive fallout across Belarus and Lithuania toward Sweden and Finland, and beyond. As a result, Sweden was the first to detect elevated radiation levels and demanded explanations from the Soviet government. In the face of a looming international scandal, it became impossible to hide the accident.
The KGB in Kyiv received instructions from Moscow on what could and should be said about the accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, both for domestic and international audiences. Among the causes, emphasis was placed solely on human error, while technological and design flaws were deliberately omitted.
News of the events at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant quickly became a leading story in Western and American media.
CIA experts prepared a report on April 29, 1986 on the events at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, calling it the worst nuclear disaster in history and noting that reports of thousands killed and affected in various ways by the accident were not unfounded. On the same day, the administration of U.S. President Ronald Reagan offered assistance to a Soviet diplomat who had arrived at the State Department for talks on nuclear weapons.
On April 30, Ronald Reagan received a message from Mikhail Gorbachev. Serhii Plokhy cites this message in Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe:
“The USSR states that the release of radioactive materials has led to the partial evacuation of the population… the radiation situation has stabilized… contamination levels, despite partially exceeding permissible norms, do not require special measures to protect the population.”
In response to offers of assistance, Soviet propaganda produced a series of press publications highlighting nuclear accidents abroad.
On April 30, a briefing for foreign ambassadors was held in Moscow by First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, Anatoly Kovalev, regarding the events at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The overall message was that the situation was not as serious as Western media portrayed it. Following this, foreign ministers of the Soviet republics received instructions and guidance on how local authorities should inform foreigners about the accident. The key points emphasized that there was no threat to public health, and that “the task was to prevent the departure of sick individuals, which would deny our enemies any opportunity to exploit isolated incidents for anti-Soviet purposes.”
On May 5, leaders of the Group of Seven, meeting in Tokyo, issued a joint statement on the Chernobyl accident:
“We call on the Government of the Soviet Union to urgently provide all the information requested by our countries and others.”
The world sought truthful information about the disaster. Between April 27 and May 22, 22 visits by foreign diplomats to Kyiv took place. All information remained classified, and to prevent its leakage, the KGB closely monitored the movements of foreign correspondents and diplomatic personnel, intercepted phone calls, and blocked the broadcast of television reports.
On May 8, at the invitation of the Soviet authorities, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Hans Blix, arrived in Kyiv. The visit was meant, on the one hand, to demonstrate the authorities’ openness and, on the other, if successful, to show that the scale of the disaster was not as severe as portrayed by Western media.
For a long time, officials debated how to transport Blix to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Travel by road posed the risk of passing through clouds of radioactive dust that had settled on the ground, where dosimeters registered extremely high levels. From the air, however, the secret radar installation “Duga” would be visible. After lengthy consultations, Mikhail Gorbachev authorized the use of a helicopter.
Serhii Plokhy writes that it is unclear whether Hans Blix noticed the “Duga” installation, but he did record radiation levels of 350 milliroentgens per hour inside the helicopter cabin at an altitude of 400 meters and at a distance of 800 meters from the reactor. Measurements were not taken outside the cabin, and the plant itself was not visited, as the helicopter landed in Chernobyl and then returned to Kyiv.
At a press conference in Moscow, Blix stated:
“We were able to see people working in the fields, livestock on pastures, and cars moving through the streets. The Russians are confident they will be able to decontaminate the area. It will once again become suitable for agriculture.”
KGB information reports are filled with accounts of foreigners searching for the truth. From May 23 to 25, 1986, a film crew from the American channel CBS worked in Kyiv. They were placed under round-the-clock surveillance. Along their route, operatives and agents were deployed who, when needed, posed as ordinary passersby or plant workers and relayed information favorable to the Soviet authorities.
“The KGB carried out a set of operational measures in the interest of obtaining information about the Americans’ intentions, controlling their actions, studying the equipment they used, and conveying information advantageous to us,” stated in a report by the Chairman of the KGB of the Ukrainian SSR, Stepan Mukha, to the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Volodymyr Shcherbytskyi.
Lacking reliable information, foreign governments began recalling their citizens who were in Kyiv and Minsk. Most of them were students. Representatives of “developing countries,” seeing their classmates leave, also began turning to their embassies with requests for evacuation. These included students from Egypt, Nigeria, India, and Iraq. The KGB reported that “they simply wanted to obtain free tickets home and longer holidays.”
Original source: sk