Cover Osteuropa 4/2006

In Osteuropa 4/2006

Not Just a Nuclear Power Station
A Letter to Mikhail S. Gorbachev

Ales’ Adamovič


Deutsche Fassung

Abstract

After Chernobyl, the Belarusian writer Ales’ Adamovich criticised the Soviet authorities’ policy of obstruction and cover-up. In a letter to Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the then general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Adamovich warns of a disaster of unimaginable dimensions. He sums up the tragic events by noting, “It was not simply a nuclear power station that exploded, but an entire complex of irresponsibility, indiscipline and bureaucracy.”

(Osteuropa 4/2006, pp. 19–26)