Science, like art, does not tolerate intermediate links. However, an event occurred, of such a scale, of such involvement of people with controversial interests, of errors and victories, failures and successes. In his memoirs, Legasov wrote I knew that the town had Our fact check confirmed that the real Valery Legasov hung himself on April 26, 1988, two years after the Chernobyl disaster (his body was found by his son on the 27th). The real-life story is a bit different. [23] In attendance was the former plant director Viktor Bryukhanov, RBMK designer Anatoly Alexandrov and Efim Slavsky of Sredmash. Legasov flew to Chernobyl after the No. [1] Water in the lower barboteur was drained but Legasov was convinced that an explosion was not possible,[7] in contrast to what some scientists and politicians feared. [37] However, the operators were found to have deviated from operational procedures, changing test protocols on the fly, as well as having made "ill judged" actions, making human factors a major contributing factor. May 1 to celebrate International Workers Day. Legasov, with only a few anomalies. Photo: Liam Daniel/HBO. He was appointed Bryukhanov was accused of mismanagement and that operator error was the primary cause of the accident, while design flaws were also a factor. (miniseries) To them, a just world is a sane world. 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 is exactly how Soviet courts worked: they did the bidding of the Central Committee, and the prosecutor wielded more power than the judge. Jun 2, 2019. If you believe that any Site Content infringes upon your copyright, please notify us by email support@quotecatalog.com. daughter Inga, he knew from his first day on the scene he would eventually die. Valery Legasov : And now Dyatlov will spend the next ten years in a prison labor camp. Legasov's suicide and cassettes in the trash basket - exaggerations on screen . He was assigned to compile a report for the International Atomic Energy Agency about the causes and aftermath of the accident. It would be harder to show a system digging its own grave instead of an ambitious, evil man causing the disaster. he was barely eating or sleeping. [28], Some in the scientific community were still displeased by Legasov and his legacy. On 27 April 1988,[32] the day after the second anniversary of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant accident and one day before he was due to release the outcomes of the investigation into the causes of the disaster,[23] Legasov hanged himself in the stairwell of his Moscow apartment[33] (though some sources say inside his apartment,[34][35] others in his office[23]). Legasov has been made immortal by the TV show, but if you dig long enough, you'll find that he was a very different man in real 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.. 2023 Cond Nast. Born in 1936 in Tula (173 km south of Moscow), Valery chose his career path early on. And this part is tragic, confusing and incomprehensible. 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. (?) [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. [19] Legasov had the opportunity to visit nuclear power plants in the West, such as the Soviet designed Loviisa Nuclear Power Plant in Finland, and was shocked at the higher safety standards, better equipment, a containment structure and superior construction. but officials did not cancel it. This was one of the biggest challenges for the creators The grave of Valery Legasov (1936-1988) at the Novodevichye Cemetery in Moscow. 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. To make direct measurements of the reactor, Legasov was driven in an armored personnel carrier to the site which established the reactor had shut down. The Legasov tapes are kinda useless for finding cool quotations. [1] Legasov recorded his memoir The Legasov Testament using audio tapes[7][30] where he described his involvement with the Chernobyl liquidation. In this episode Zeinab Badawi travels to Angola, DRC and Congo in central Africa to bring the history of the great Kongo Empire.She hears about the critical role played by women in We're committed to providing the best documentaries from around the World. David Remnick speaks with Masha Gessen about the chance that Donald Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin, whether it matters, and surprising pockets of resistance in Russia. In the early days of the series' production, actors auditioned with vaguely Eastern European accents. by the Soviet Government to investigate the Chernobyl disaster less than 24 So, even if he didn't necessarily speak about that, did he say any notable things in his tapes? University Teacher, Chemist, Physicist. Share this quote: [36] Legasov's daughter commented "It was not an emotional breakdown, it was a deliberate, thoroughly considered act. But resignation is a depressing and untelegenic spectacle. He has succeeded in sending his message: Legasov claims political pressure censored the mention of Soviet nuclear secrecy in his report to the IAEA, secrecy which forbade even plant operators having knowledge of previous accidents and known problems with reactor design. [7] He opposed a plan to extend the underground cooling system outside the reactor 4 building, as well as other projects he considered to be redundant. [5] Boris Shcherbina said of him: "Valery was too great, I loved him more than all the people I knew, he gave all of himself to work, to Chernobyl. His report was 400-pages long, and he presented it during a five-hour Written by Craig Mazin. Valery Legasov did kill himself and left audio tapes without hiding them behind the ventilation grill though. Craig Mazin tried to warn us. HBOs latest drama series Chernobyl paints a rather accurate picture of [13][9] In 1967,[citation needed] he defended his thesis at the Kurchatov Institute, under the supervisor Isaak Kikoin, on the synthesis of compounds of noble gases and the study of their properties[citation needed]. Valery Legasov was the chief investigator of the Chernobyl accident. [5] These ideas were quickly quashed by the authorities. The viewer is invited to fantasize that, if not for Dyatlov, the better men would have done the right thing and the fatal flaw in the reactor, and the system itself, might have remained latent. He graduated from the Mendeleev Moscow Institute of Chemistry and Technology. [8][9][10] He also had two grandchildren, Misha and Valerik. Valery Legasov Real Quotes & Sayings. [5] While Legasov attempted to include all the top scientists in the new organization, many objected to Legasov being given a top leadership position, considering him an upstart. Valery Legasov : There was nothing sane about Chernobyl. After two years at the plant, he finally joined the Kurchatov Institute. At the age of 36, he was awarded a doctorate of chemistry, and at the age of 45 - became one of the youngest members of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). So they voted him down at the elections to the Academic Council. And as for what Dyatlov did do, the man does not deserve prison. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Those tapes sound like rambling of a very depressed man suffering from PTSD, because that's exactly what they are. The real Valery Legasov. [27] His treatment may have been that his independence, his habit of violating the chain of command and his lack of deference to the scientific establishment had irked senior members of the scientific community. Here are some quotes for you to read about the Chernobyl incident as described in the series. Legasov was particularly concerned with complex systems reliant on a single operator without adequate safety systems. [1], In August 1986, he presented the report of the Soviet delegation at the special meeting of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. He wanted to make sure all of the information was absolutely true.. Emily Watson and Jessie Buckley on getting to the truth in new TV drama Chernobyl, based on the 1986 nuclear plant disaster. [7] Legasov developed a plan to extinguish the reactor fire using nitrogen gas pumped throughout the plant's pipe network but the pipes were too badly damaged to be effective. Legasov: It means the core is open.It means the fire we're watching with our own eyes is giving off nearly . Pripyat, but also Ukraine and surrounding towns. Jared Harris portrays him as a committed professional who becomes the voice of conscience within a corrupt regime, dominating the final episode with . Legasov is portrayed by Ade Edmondson in the BBC docudrama Surviving Disaster (2006), by Adam Curtis in his documentary series Pandora's Box (1992), and by Jared Harris in the Sky/HBO miniseries Chernobyl (2019). In private he campaigned for reactor safety and institutional reorganization. now I only ask what is the cost of lies. In the great-men version of history, only the powerful have speaking parts. Before you were Deputy Secretary, you worked in a shoe factory. First, shed never say this. He is now mainly remembered for his work in containment of the Chernobyl disaster and presenting the investigation findings to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. Neither Tass nor the evening television news broadcast Vremya on Friday gave the cause or place of death. He saw his main goal was not in justifying the Soviet Union and hide certain information, but, on the contrary, to educate the world community on what to do in such situations, Inga told Russian newspaper, MK. Press J to jump to the feed. Valery Alekseyevich Legasov (Russian: ; 1 September 1936 - 27 April 1988) was a Soviet and Russian inorganic chemist and a member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union.He is now mainly remembered for his work in containment of the Chernobyl disaster and presenting the investigation findings to the International Atomic Energy Agency . There are a lot of people throughout the series who appear to act out of fear of being shot. I've been wanting to read it for a long time. [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. There have been stories in the media in Russia and abroad, many of them on the odd tourist industry that has sprung up in the disaster zone; there has been a BBC documentary and a bizarre American-Ukrainian documentary. [28] He gave interviews to Novy Mir and Yunost in which he changed his public stance and expressed his concern that cultural failings and Soviet science losing its way had led inevitably to nuclear disaster. Footage of Legasov's address does exist -- but perhaps not the whole address. Add to that his unpopularity among the younger scientists due to his meteoric rise in Soviet science and his questionable handling of the situation after the accident, and Legasov found himself being pushed back from all quarters. [5] Since December 1978, the Legasov family kept a high-bred pet chow-chow. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. #ValeryLegasov #Chernobyl #ChernobylHBO. 27) and worked on mitigating the consequences of the reactor explosion. permanent. He was also concerned at the lack of safety literature distributed to the population. Legasova, Valery was the one who ordered and organized the mass exodus of Valery Legasov didn't have problems with the government. But this caused a storm in the Ministry. Reddit and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with a better experience. Whatever they are, they are not the truth. The series begins with Legasov's suicide which is . I know who I am, and I know what Ive done. His specialty was physical chemistry, he worked on explosives, she explains(in Russian). Everything he tried to do after Vienna was frustrated by his peers with a vengeance. Valery Legasov is one of the real people in HBO's miniseries, Chernobyl. G. Alimov interview with Legasov, Izvestia newspaper, 1987. International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group, Last edited on 20 February 2023, at 15:52, D. Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Mendeleev Moscow Institute of Chemistry and Technology, State Committee for Science and Technology, Nuclear and radiation accidents and incidents, Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster, " , ", "Valery Legasov: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know", "Who was Valery Legasov, the Soviet scientist that saved the world from Chernobyl? (I once asked Alexievich if people actually talk like that; she agreed that the quality of Ignatenkos speech was Shakespearean.) In the series, though, Ignatenkos story is partly shown and partly told by Khomyuk. One of the first to grasp the scale of the catastrophe, Valery Legasov was on hand to mitigate the consequences.

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