Chornobyl Nuclear Plant Disaster as Historical Event

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The historical context surrounding the historical event

The major historical context surrounding the Chornobyl Nuclear Plant Disaster is the political one. The Soviet Union, which had been trying to keep its dictatorship regime, was gradually losing its power. However, at the time of the explosion, the Kremlin was still trying to hold to its power as much as possible. The major process going on in the world affairs of the time was the Cold War, the main players of which were the Soviet Union and the USA (Ball, 2019). Sports events’ rivalries, the Space Race, military dominance, cultural development, and many other aspects were involved in the ongoing non-military competition. This geopolitical tension in numerous spheres between the two countries made the Soviet Union try to disguise its problems, including the ecological ones.

The key historical figure or group’s participation in the historical event

The key historical figure in the context of the Chornobyl Disaster was the leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev. His participation in the chosen historical event is the main and most infamous one. Instead of realizing the volume of the catastrophe and doing everything possible to save the lives of people both in the Soviet Union and abroad, the Kremlin’s leader was attempting to cover up the true facts about the accident (Rodgers, 2021). Only on the second day after the explosion, about 30 thousand people were evacuated from the town located near the reactor. However, Gorbachev’s attempts to hide the truth failed when several days after April 26, reports from Sweden announcing a nuclear leak in the Soviet Union were published (Rodgers, 2021). Therefore, instead of acting as a wise and caring leader for his people, Gorbachev behaved cowardly and irresponsibly. Despite his own initiation of the politics of ‘glasnost,’ meaning ‘transparency and openness,’ Gorbachev failed at providing the people of his country and the world with truthful information. He tried to conceal the real scale of the tragedy, which only led to more losses of innocent lives and the deterioration of numerous people’s health due to radiation exposure.

The key historical figure or group’s motivation to participate in the historical event

The motivation of Gorbachev to act as he did could be explained by his willingness to retain power and remain an equal competitor of the USA in the Cold War. The two countries had been competing for several decades in terms of who was the best in various areas of development. Gorbachev could not let the Chornobyl explosion nullify the achievements the Soviet Union had gained by then. Unfortunately, such intentions played a very bad trick on innocent people who were far from being involved in politics and were just modestly living and working in Soviet republics.

How the historical context caused or influenced the historical event

The disaster could have been, if not avoided, then at least eliminated if the Soviet Union leader and the ruling party were not concerned with the Cold War implications so much. The rulers of the Soviet Union, to which the Chornobyl Nuclear Plant belonged in 1986, were both unable and afraid to evaluate and admit the full scale of the tragedy. Eventually, as a result of the Chornobyl disaster, the Soviet Union’s collapse neared (Coumel & Elie, 2013). Hence, the two events were interconnected: the Soviet Union’s reluctance to react to the disaster led to innocent people’s suffering, and later, the people who revolted against their rulers managed to gain independence from the regime.

Connecting the historical event and current event

The understanding of the topic becomes easier once one connects the historical context with current events. In the case of the Chornobyl Nuclear Plant Explosion, the invasion of the Russian Federation to Ukraine has a twofold link with the historical background. For one thing, Russian president, Putin, is trying to prove his power. However, this time, he is doing that not against the USA and not in a non-military way but against a neighboring country that has never opposed Russia in any way. For another thing, Putin is putting people’s lives under threat by endangering Chornobyl and Zaporizhzhia nuclear plants (Borger & Henley, 2022). Thus, by understanding historical context, it becomes evident that no historical event occurs in a vacuum.