Chernobyl Link Whoopsie

Whoops!

So we posted the wrong link for our review of Chernobyl.

Here's the proper link.

Review of Chernobyl

The first of what we hope will be many collusions with Russia, our review of HBO's Chernobyl:

Chernobyl is many things: a disaster movie, a meditation on power, a warning against secrecy, a thriller – a race against time. Chernobyl is also a horror movie where the monster is radiation, unseen yet everywhere. But ,unlike the zombies of our imagination, this monster is real. Chernobyl shows us the full horrors of radiation exposure. We see station personnel in hospital days after the explosion, their skin bloody and black with death, their faces melted off. These scenes are gut wrenching, difficult to watch and necessary.

Chernobyl has triggered in us an interest in things Russian. After finishing the series we read Midnight at Chernobyl. This triggered an interest in the fall of the Soviet Union so we read Moscow December 25th, 1991: The last day of the Soviet Union. Now we're reading about Ivan the Terrible* and next The Romanovs.

We're hoping to do a series of book reviews.

This line of inquiry will make for a better Final Storm, which will be severely Soviet centric.

*Yikes. 

Chernobyl Gets Religious (Door to Door)

That awkward moment when the Jehovah's Witness comes to your door, and tells you she is from Ukraine, without knowing you are obsessed with HBO's Chernobyl and she tries to tell you about her religion, but you keep asking her about Ukraine and Chernobyl and Chernobyl.

Will: 'What's your accent?'

JW: 'I am from Ukraine.'

Will: 'Have you seen HBO's Chernobyl.'

JW: 'Yes. Very scary. You know Eve bit the apple and we have suffered...'

'Will: 'What did you do when the accident happened.'

JW: 'Actually, my mother was from town of Chernobyl... and so God...'

Will: 'OMG! OMG! Was she evacuated?'

JW: [Says something unintelligible in Russian]

[Curses, no doubt-Ed]

JW: So have you thought about God's plan for...'

Will: Do you think the show accurately depicted life in the USSR?'

JW: '...you on this Earth....why no...Pripyat was beautiful, much like Garden of Eden...'

Will: You've been there?'

JW: 'Yes, and God says...'

Will: OMG! So you saw the actual Chernobyl plant?!' 

[He did the same thing to me when he found out I was from a city in the English coal ring. Winter of Discontent this, and Miner's Strike of '84 that, even though I'm not even real-Ed].

And so that nice woman from Ukraine endured our questioning. She had too. She's a Jehovah's Witness.

Nuke This

So we've watched HBO's Chernobyl twice, read a history book on same, and written a review (pending acceptance) for a Ruski news site.

[Colluding? - Ed]

Hey, we might get some new fans. Can't be anyworse than working for CNN, which I also did.

[Yeah, 20 years ago.-Ed]

You could say we're really into this Chernobyl thing...comrades.

We've learned a lot about the Soviet Union too.

In writing World War 1990, we've really underestimated the Soviet willingness, and frankly, assumption, that they would fight World War Three as a nuclear war.

Oh well. 

That's just not the direction we wanted to go. But this does give us some ideas for The Final Storm. We might back reference Thatcher saying, 'If the Soviets use tactical nukes in Europe our very first retaliatory move will be to nuke Moscow.' She already said something similar in Eastern Storm.

[Hey! Before you talk about The Final Storm, how's about getting Three Seas out there?-Ed]

We are afraid to open that doc. So afraid.

Have Faith, Comrades

We finished Chernobyl last night, a brilliant final episode to wrap up a brilliant miniseries.

We were struck by the below scene in episode one, in which the plant managers and local party apparatchiks are trying to figure out what happened and what to do: 

Watch the old man, the old communist. 

He got that limp in the Great Patriotic War. 

He knew Lenin, didn't he? 

Gentle and kindly, he is a true believer. 

'Have faith, comrades.'

This is not cynicism. This is idealism. His words are inspirational and heartwarming.

His words are also heartbreaking.

For the Soviet state will fail the Soviet people in every way, utterly, completely.

Communism's Monument

So we've been watching HBO's Chernobyl.

Chernobyl is about more than the accident. It's about the Soviet Union, and communism and a corrupt, decrepit system without joy or hope. Chernobyl is also an enraging horror movie.

The reactor was so big it was difficult to manage. The reactor was flawed and the bastards knew it.

As it happens we have Russian neighbors; Lithuanian and Ukrainian actually. The husband was 10 at the time. He recalls an announcement on the news and in the papers, then hushed talk amongst the grownups about radiation and wind direction (he's from Odessa). The Lithuanian wife was put on a train for a timely visit with relatives up north.

At all levels communism failed at Chernobyl, from design, to construction, to operation.

Reader(s) you want a monument to communism, I give you Chernobyl.