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Sergii Parashyn, the then chairman of the
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant's Communist Party Committee, said
the HBO mini-series, screened this spring in the United States
and Britain, depicted the initial disbelief at the scale of the
disaster well.
"I did not understand what was happening until dawn, until I saw
with my own eyes that everything was destroyed," he told
journalists in the command bunker that was used as a crisis
center after the explosion on April 26, 1986.
The fourth reactor in the Soviet plant north of Kiev exploded
during a botched safety test, releasing more radiation into the
Earth's atmosphere than any other man-made event in history.
The accident killed 31 within weeks and forced tens of thousands
to flee. The final toll of those killed by radiation-related
illnesses such as cancer is subject to debate, and estimated by
the World Health Organization to be in the thousands.
The series blames the excessive bureaucracy and secrecy of the
Soviet Union, and Parashyn said there were flaws in the way it
depicts the plant's workers, in particular its management.
Chernobyl's Deputy Chief Engineer Anatoliy Dyatlov, interpreted
by English actor Paul Ritter as tyrannical and arrogant, "did
not behave as terribly with people as the show portrays,"
Parashyn said.
"He was harsh, yes, everyone obeyed him unquestioningly... But
he was fair."
Parashyn, appointed as the plant's director from 1994 to 1998
and later chief of the 30km (19 mile) exclusion zone that
surrounds it, said Viktor Bryukhanov, the man then in charge,
was also inaccurately depicted.
"Bryukhanov is a composed, calm, intelligent man, who never
denied his responsibility," he said.
This view is backed by Oleksiy Breus, the senior engineer of the
4th reactor in 1986, who arrived as part of the 8:00 a.m. shift
change on April 26.
"The plant workers are shown as though they are scared of
everything... This does not reflect reality," Breus insisted.
"In reality, they were quite decisive, very decisive, not one of
the operators fled after the explosion."
However, he praised the portrayal of Chernobyl as a global,
rather than a regional, catastrophe.
At 9.6/10 the highest rated TV series of all time on the IMDb
website, the show also has caused a surge in visitor numbers to
the plant and the nearby ghost town of Pripyat.
Tour guide Sergii Myrnyi believes that the show, whose final
episode screened on June 3, was wrong to portray the events in
1986 only as a tragedy, calling "Chernobyl "the story of global
learning... and eventually the story of victory."
Its creator, Craig Mazin, said deviations from the historical
record were undertaken in good faith.
"There's a difference between the perfect way of doing something
in terms of historical accuracy, and the perfect way of doing
something so that people will watch it and appreciate what
matters. You can't have both, at least in that format," he told
Vice magazine in an interview this month.
Chernobyl Tour invited Parashyn, Breus and Myrnyi to the
official launch of the agency's new tour, which takes visitors
around locations depicted in the series.
(Writing by Matthias Williams; editing by John Stonestreet)
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