Turning the pages back...

May 12, 1996

Writing five years ago on May 12, as a follow-up to reports on the 10th anniversary of the Chornobyl nuclear accident, The Weekly reported that former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev continued to deny that the Soviet leadership intentionally concealed the scale of the accident.

Mr. Gorbachev told a news conference in Moscow on the 10th anniversary of the Chornobyl accident that "we failed to do something only because we were unaware of what had happened. I believe we were simply unprepared." He added: "In the beginning, when our top scientists and a government commission arrived there (Chornobyl), they all stayed silent because they did not know what to report - because they could not understand anything. ... "And only gradually we started to understand the scale of the event and the dangers."

Only on May 14, 1986, did Soviet leader Gorbachev address the public about the "misfortune" of April 26 - and he accused the West of exaggerating its seriousness and "defaming" the Soviet Union.

Source: "Gorbachev, Kravchuk recall early days of Chornobyl disaster" by Marta Kolomayets, Kyiv Press Bureau, The Ukrainian Weekly, May 12, 1996, Vol. LXIV, No. 19.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, May 6, 2001, No. 18, Vol. LXIX

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