Chernobyl

By Craig Mazin ’92

Published June 27, 2019

1 min read

In a hit new miniseries, screenwriter Craig Mazin ’92 dramatizes the 1986 nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukrainian SSR and the urgent cleanup efforts to contain the fires and radiation. Chernobyl (HBO/Sky Atlantic) offers a chilling account of the accident and its aftermath — a sobering reminder of its relevance today.

Published in the June 5, 2019, Issue

1 Response

Norman Ravitch *62

5 Years Ago

An Overlooked Point

What could be missed in discussion of the Chernobyl disaster and other such events in Soviet-controlled Europe and in China is that Marxists believed in economic determinism even more than capitalists. They, when in control. exploited resources, nature, and the working class more than any capitalist would dare to do, not even the Koch brothers! To show that communism could bring economic progress better than the capitalists, they used means more extreme than those of the most unregulated capitalists. Thus, when we complain as we should about unregulated market capitalism, we should recognize that Marxist critics of capitalism had even worse records. All of Eastern Europe is a polluted nightmare.