Is there any relationship to this nuclear accident in 1986 and the collapse of the Soviet Union?
It could have been a triple-whammy: Chernobyl, the Armenian earthquake, and the Admiral Nakhimov... or perhaps the actions of Pope John Paul II in Poland, or Ronald Reagan's Star Wars spent them into oblivion, or their socialist economy finally hit the Kondratiev winter cycle.
I was stationed in Germany when the Berlin Wall 'fell', and kept a scrapbook of clippings. There was an incident in Budapest, a bunch of East Germans somehow got into the West German embassy there, and Hungary for some reason let them go to Austria. Then Hungary decided that any East Germans who wanted to go to Austria could do so, and even demobilized a stretch of border.
Lots of East German Trabbis and Wartburgs started showing up all over West Germany, West Germans were actually buying their Ossi brethren beer and champagne (seems like science fiction nowadays).
Then lots of demonstrations in Leipzig, Dresden, "Die Mauer mussen weg!" (The wall must go), and it did.
Once East Germany caved, all the rest followed. Romanians just up and shot their dictator, Poland, Hungary, and the Baltic states went to the streets declaring themselves free...
Gorby tried to hold it together, but their was a putsch, Gorby ended up stuck in his dacha near Yalta, Yeltsin climbed up on a tank and yelled to the soldiers to go home, since Russia had seen enough history for one century.
... Whatever it took, however it happened, thank God.
Da. The tardy, lackidaisical, whatever-you-want-to-call-it responed of Moscow to this accident is widely credited with helping to destroy whatever vestiges of credibility that the CP-USSR had at the time.
I expect to be in Ukraine in the summer. I'll pursue this question then (I'll be at a nuclear station of a completely different design than Chernobyl).
Thanks for giving me a diversion for my trip!