Chernobyl (2019): Speaking Truth to Power

If you asked me what recent film or programme deserves to be considered a classic (dare I say masterpiece?), I would nominate HBO’s Chernobyl (2019). Watch it! This five-episode miniseries tells the story of Soviet physicists containing the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The tragedy revealed the lies and façade of the Soviet Union and, according to Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, catalysed its eventual collapse.

Director Johan Renck conveys the stakes of Chernobyl masterfully, unravelling two main tensions throughout the series. The first is the race against time to stop nuclear meltdown, and the second is the search for what caused the disaster. The USSR is adamant that Soviet reactors do not explode, that it must be human error, but the scientists are determined to find the truth and stop something like this from happening again. In a regime where information is tightly controlled, the hunt for the truth is a dangerous one.

Renck recreates a KGB-controlled Soviet world with haunting accuracy, and in the final episode, he brings this tension of truth and power to its climax. The episode covers a court case where scientist Valery Legasov recounts what happened on the night of the Chernobyl disaster. Legasov has been intimidated by the Chairman of the KGB beforehand, and we know that he will face the consequences if he damages the USSR’s national pride. The Chairman says:

“We shall have our heroes, we shall have our villains, and we shall have our truth”.

The KGB Chairman understands that if you control the narrative, you control society. He places Power over Truth. He seems quite postmodern; ‘our truth’ suggests that there is no such thing as objective truth, that the order of things is up for grabs, and as the most powerful authority, the Soviet State determines ‘truth’. Might makes right. Nothing goes wrong in the Soviet Union.

It’s a show trial. The judge has already been handed his verdict, and the witnesses have been told what to say. The stakes, in this sense, are low. But Legasov realises he has a duty to tell the truth, that he is answerable to a higher authority to reveal the real cause of the problem. He has seen the horrors of Chernobyl and knows the true cost of suppressing the truth. After all, Chernobyl's engineers ignoring the warning signs is what exacerbated the problem. As a scientist, Legasov needs to know the truth in order to diagnose what the issue is, and how to stop it. And in the courtroom, he cannot help but speak the truth:

The Judge: Professor Legasov, if you mean to suggest the Soviet State is somehow responsible for what happened, then I must warn you, you are treading on dangerous ground.

Legasov: I've already trod on dangerous ground. We're on dangerous ground right now, because of our secrets and our lies. They are practically what define us. When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there, but it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid. That is how an RBMK reactor core explodes. Lies.

Legasov is absolutely right. We fear the harsh realities that the light of truth reveals. It offends us, so to avoid it we construct lies. The truth is inconvenient and uncomfortable, but it is also invisible and easy to ignore. We suppress it, because we want to continue taking comfort from the lies that we tell, and the fantasy that we want to believe in. Paul says in Romans 1:18 that mankind, ‘by their unrighteousness suppress the truth’. Jesus says as much in John 3:19-20:

the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light, lest his works should be exposed.

The light of truth - objective reality - exposes lies for what they are, no matter how powerfully those lies are reinforced. But, as Chernobyl demonstrates, there comes a point where the truth cannot be avoided any longer.

It is this conviction of the inevitable power of truth that gives people the confidence to defy those who would silence it. John the Baptist confronts the powerful King Herod with the truth about his sin, even though it will lead to his imprisonment and execution (Mark 6:17-20). The apostles Peter and John would not be silenced by the Sanhedrin, saying 'we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard' (Acts 4:20). And, of course, Jesus before Pilate:

Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I have come into the world - to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate said to him “What is truth?” (John 18:37-38)

If one method of suppressing the truth is to try and silence it, the next line of defence is to pretend that ‘truth’ doesn't exist. That’s what Pilate does here, pre-empting the postmodern philosophers who argue that ‘truth’ is an artificial framework and doesn’t really exist (or, that we each have our own ‘truth’ to live out).

‘What is truth?’ sounds clever, but it is a futile attempt to deny reality. It’s like a child playing hide-and-seek, who thinks that you can’t see him if he closes his eyes. It doesn’t matter what you think about the truth, whether you see it as subjective or objective. The truth doesn’t care what you think. In the final words of the episode, Legasov recounts that merciless reality:

“To be a scientist is to be naïve. We are so focused on our search for the truth we fail to consider how few actually want us to find it. But it is always there whether we see it or not, whether we choose to or not. The truth doesn't care about our needs or wants, it doesn't care about our governments, our ideologies, our religions. It will lie in wait for all time. And this, at last, is the gift of Chernobyl. Where I once would fear the cost of truth, now I only ask: What is the cost of lies?”

The cost of lies is dealing with a nuclear catastrophe rather than a minor fault. The cost of lies is the damage caused in maintaining illusions. The cost of lies is the debt that has to be paid when everything is revealed.

Legasov is vanished by the KGB for speaking out against the regime. “In a just world”, he says. “I’d be shot for my lies, but not for this, not for the truth.” The Chairman’s response is: “When the bullet hits your skull, what will it matter why?” It matters, because by being a martyr to the truth, Legasov demonstrated there was something more powerful than the USSR's bullying, that it too will one day be called to account. Legasov's account of Chernobyl was circulated secretly throughout Russia and the world, and discredited their pomp and grandeur. By sacrificing his comfort to the truth, Legasov ensures that the reality of Chernobyl outlasts the lies of the Soviet Union, something we're still seeing the consequences of.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a prisoner in the Soviet gulags, was another victim of this attempt to control ‘truth’. His masterwork The Gulag Archipelago also dealt the lies of the USSR a deadly wound. In it, Solzhenitsyn argues that the fight for truth is not won or lost in the Kremlin or the courtroom, but in the home, in the workplace, on the street. The fight for truth is fought every day. The falsehoods we ignore and the little lies that we tell nestle into society, and make the bigger untruths easier to swallow. Everyone has a duty to the truth, no matter how trivial, no matter the opposition.

Chernobyl testifies not only to the consequences of these lies, but also to the inescapable reality of the truth. The reason the drama grips us is because, although the Soviet Union is no more, the struggle for truth is something we face in our own day. It makes you wonder: What lies are we telling now?