What Is the Cost of Lies?
Chernobyl was the catalyst for decades of struggle, resulting in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Craig Mazin tried to warn us.
Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid.
In the final episode of HBO’s Emmy award-winning miniseries Chernobyl, Valery Legasov (Jared Harris) stated this while explaining the Soviet Union’s role in the nuclear disaster and subsequent cover-up.
When I first heard this quote, I was puzzled by its meaning. It was in the context of the lies perpetrated by the USSR, albeit what was that debt? The propaganda, the lives lost? Truth in general?
Three years after the episode aired, the debt is clear.
Russia is invading Kyiv, sending missiles, and threatening nuclear war while I type this essay. As I listened to a Twitter Space hosted by the Atlantic Council and watched Clarissa Ward explain the significance in real-time, I scrolled through my Twitter feed at one in the morning.
Being active on both political Twitter and Batman Twitter, I noticed two sides of the coin. On one hand, the political analysts, foreign policy experts, and journalists I followed knew what was occurring. On the flip side of the coin, some of my mutuals from the latter side of Twitter were confused. Why was Russia invading Ukraine? What did Ukraine do that was bad?
This essay is for both sides of Twitter.
1986, told in 2019
Craig Mazin’s eponymous miniseries how Chernobyl contributed to the USSR’s fall while offering a warning - a warning now chilling in retrospect. Although it is not entirely accurate, Chernobyl offers a concise, educational briefing on history through art - similar to Lin Manuel-Miranda’s Hamilton or Matthew Weiner’s Mad Men.
Valery Legasov was a nuclear physics professor turned chief investigator of the Chernobyl Investigative Commission. He was a loyal communist suddenly caught in the lies of his party. His job was to find the facts. Before he presented the facts to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Legasov was pressured into downplaying the Soviet Union’s role in the disaster. The Soviets knew the Union’s remaining nuclear reactors contained the fatal flaw attributed to Chernobyl; they tried to keep it hidden.
After blowing the whistle on the Communist Party’s cover-up at the trial of Chernobyl’s supervisors (Mazin altered the defendants to deputy chief engineer Anatoly Dyatlov, manager of construction Viktor Bryukhanov, and chief engineer Nikolai Fomin for story-telling purposes), Legasov is blacklisted from his industry and subjected to surveillance before meeting a tragic fate.
Yet, how does Chernobyl connect to the invasion of Ukraine? The recurring theme of Chernobyl gives a plausible answer.
2021
Russia’s motive is relatively simple: they want to reboot the Soviet Union. Chernobyl was the first step towards the USSR’s fall. Like an RBMK reactor, the 1986 disaster exposed the core of a faulty infrastructure that would split the world wide open.
For Putin, the invasion is a second chance for his ideal Communist state. Even if it results in a lengthy, gruesome war, Putin will do anything to reclaim his Union - even if it results in nuclear consequences.
Russia’s troops reclaimed Pripyat, the ghost town home to Chernobyl’s remnants, overnight. While Russia’s ultimate goal is to take the capital of Kyiv, an irradiated, abandoned power plant is now in the hands of a regime hellbent on refreshing history. Harvard professor and CNN National Security Analyst Juliette Kayyem pointed out how Pripyat offers the quickest route from the Russian border to Kyiv:
At a press briefing, Ukraine’s Ambassador to the United States Oksana Markarova expressed concern over the repercussions of Russia’s control over the power plant, saying:
They made an attempt to seize the Chernobyl nuclear power station, and the fight is going right there with the Ukrainian National Guard protecting the Chernobyl station from the attack. For the first time since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster - after which Ukraine has been protecting, together with our European and American friends and allies, the world from another nuclear disaster - we have to defend it again from Russian forces.
Russia and Ukraine’s checkered past is a flat circle. The former’s justification for invading the latter is a genocide perpetrated by Ukraine. This lie is a cover for Putin’s regime, which is setting the stage for a genocide not seen since the Bosnian War. We are already seeing the cost of Putin’s lies.
Mazin tried to warn us.