What Russia Really Thinks about Chernobyl?

Photo: <https://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/1145211/Chernobyl-what-does-Russia-really-think-about-Chernobyl-putin-state-media-propaganda>

Experiencing the spread of COVID-19, the growth of the pandemic, and witnessing the various international governments’ responses to the public health crisis reminded our graduate student, Maryam Bainazar, and me about the Chernobyl disaster and the Soviet government’s response to it. While she knows about Chernobyl only through the experience of her parents who left the Soviet Union in 1991, as well as media and scientific sources, I vividly remember the official government silence and slow response. Although I lived in Bulgaria, our government followed closely the USSR’s announcements and replicated them. The immediate few days after the accident and the release of radioactivity into the environment, all students in my city were practicing the opening of a local Spartakiad (sports competition) on the stadium. Nobody warned us or stopped the practice to minimize our exposure. According to scientists, approximately 25,000 square kilometers were contaminated, and my city is about 1,000 kilometers away from Chernobyl. With such memories resurrected, Maryam and I  decided to evaluate the Soviet government censored media coverage and general response to the public health crisis which occurred following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and to compare it to the current Russia’s government agents’ false COVID-19 narratives, circulating online. In addition to analyzing available public information disseminated in the 2-3 weeks after Chernobyl’s explosion, we will examine the reception of this information by collecting the oral history of participants who were affected by the disaster. Additionally, we are interested in the reception and circulation on social media platforms of COVID-19 false narratives.

Audience behavior and reception of film and media has shaped my research and teaching in the last several years. My last book, Screening Trafficking: Prudent and Perilous, analyzes the local and varied reception of internationally distributed anti-trafficking films. As part of this more general research in audience responses, my colleague Dr. Alisa Lin and I will host a conversation with the American-Latvian film creator Michael Idov on November 18 (4:00-5:00) and we’ll discuss his work on the creation of Russian films (Summer, 2018) and TV series (Optimists and Londongrad, both available on Amazon Prime Video), their reception, and any impact of COVID-19 on his work.