Posted on 06/04/2019 3:46:09 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
It seems every major Russian media outlet had to chime in about the Chernobyl TV series by HBO. Although the foreign program airs only online to paying viewers, the show has become something of a national sensation in Russia where the pro-Kremlin media have launched a mini-crusade against it.
Komsomolskaya Pravda (KP), Russias most popular newspaper, raised suspicions that competitors of state-atomic center Rosatom were using the series to tarnish this countrys image as a nuclear power.
Argumenty i Fakty...dismissed the show as a caricature and not the truth.
The only things missing are the bears and accordions! quipped Stanislav Natanzon, lead anchor of Rossia 24, one of the countrys main news channels.
In his show, the anchor pointed out...that the HBO series was wrong to suggest that the Soviet authorities were afraid to admit their mistakes and that this reluctance led to terrible consequences.
Ultra pro-Soviet columnist Anatoly Vasserman offered what is probably the most candid of all the reviews leveled against the show: If Anglo-Saxons film something about Russians, he said, it definitely will not correspond to the truth.
It is an ordinary case of jealous resentment: Only we have the right to talk about our history, they say, so dont butt in. However, the reception given Chernobyl says more about the critics than it does about the series.
Thanks to the HBO series, many of my peers now have a different view of the Chernobyl accident...only the first episode in this series is devoted to the Chernobyl reactor explosion.
All the subsequent episodes focus on the harrowing and self-sacrificing struggle that the Soviet people waged against the consequences of the explosion. It was these people who saved Europe at the cost of their own lives and health.
Russia, however, does not honor these individuals as heroes...
(Excerpt) Read more at themoscowtimes.com ...
It's bringing in unwashed and unwanted animals from all over the world by the millions. We object, but they ignore us.
Sorry Mr. Franklin, but we were not able to hold onto the Republic.
Sounds remarkably like the United States in the 21st century, doesn't it?
I saw the last episode tonight too. It took an extraordinary act of bravery, the guy risked his life just to tell the truth. This is what we’ll get if the stupids vote for socialism.
In 20 years when they become the majority, after the American male has been thoroughly castrated, who will hold back the storm? Old men, like me?
Actually, I'm a baby boomer. We're already the bane of civilization. We're the ones who made this mess in the first place.
I've a gloomy perspective, but I just can't see any way out of this mess.
“the HBO series was wrong to suggest that the Soviet authorities were afraid to admit their mistakes and that this reluctance led to terrible consequences”
Like not telling anyone it happened until monitoring equipment down wind went off the charts?
They successfully denied it until the radiation left their own borders.... then it was out of their control.
The embarrassment of the state was much more important than the lives of their citizens. The positions in bureaucracy were more important than those who lost their lives. The ineptitude was baked into the system. That is why the Soviet Union failed. The truth was so apparent the lie was exposed.
HBO's Chenobyl definitely corresponds to the peculiar character of Russian bureaucracy expressed in Lt. Kije, or anything Pushkin or Gogol wrote. So, I take it as accurate.
I enjoyed the series immensely. It's rare for HBO to produce such a well written, well produced, and well acted gem. After the first episode, I was inspired to read all I could on the internet about Chernobyl, then Three Mile Island and Fukushima. Like another poster here, I am halfway through Midnight at Chernobyl and recommend it highly.
But all that was still not enough. I went on Amazon and found a $70 Geiger counter with five star ratings. With that in hand, I explored the neighborhood, only to find that the most radioactive spot anywhere around was my china cabinet.
There were a lot of brave Russians, Belorussians, and Ukrainians involved, but they were ordinary soldiers, firefighters and local people. The leftist political leadership was universally reprehensible or insane.
Other than that what was your feeling about the series over all?
Unless you were born before the seventies, you are carrying around traces of the Chinese open air nuclear testing.
It got so bad in the US, Kodak stopped manufacturing some print/film emulsions because the ambient radiation was spoiling it.
The first and last episodes were the best written, and the most interesting. With some tweaking, they (and probably necessarily a third middle episode) could have been the entire presentation, since the “measured” pacing of the show would allow for pertinent material to be moved from other episodes into either one or the other.
Pacing is ponderous, music is pompous, casting was brilliant, and the acting is very good.
I was wondering why the show creators name sounded familiar...and realized that he (Craig Mazin) was Senator Ted Cruzs (R-TX) freshman year roommate at Princeton. Mazin had chimed in some (not so nice) commentary about living with Ted during the early stages of the 2016 presidential election. Do you guys remember that? I wasnt a fan at the time of Sen. Cruz either but I do think its a shame that the maker of a show like this has to be so liberal on every other issue in real life. But alas...
https://www.thedailybeast.com/ted-cruz-at-princeton-creepy-sometimes-well-liked-and-exactly-the-same
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