TV, podcasts, movies, and popular culture expose us to topics or historical events we wouldn’t otherwise know about. Recently, the meltdown of Reactor Number 4 of the Chernobyl Power Plant on April 26, 1986 has come back into public consciousness, largely thanks to the HBO miniseries Chernobyl.

The New York Public Library has a wide range of resources to help you delve deeper into the events in the early morning of April 26, how the disaster gained public consciousness despite the secretive tendencies of the former USSR, and how the incident changed and continues to shape public discourse about nuclear power today.

Adam Higginbotham’s Midnight in Chernobyl is a great place to start for a more in-depth understanding of the meltdown. Higginbotham details the events of April 26 in minute-by-minute detail but also outlines the engineering and design deficiencies that contributed to the disaster, and heroism by the plant staff, fire-fighters, and thousands of Soviet soldiers that were drafted into the armed forces to remediate the exclusion zone and build the sarcophagus.

Fun fact! Higginbotham worked on this book while a scholar at The New York Public Library.

For contemporary accounts in the immediate aftermath, periodicals, and newspapers are a great resource.

The New Yorker, September 8, 1986

In the September 8, 1986 issue of The New Yorker, John Newhouse wrote about the Chernobyl accident in the context of Gorbachev’s USSR and his policy of glasnost, or “openness.” Newhouse comments:

“Chernobyl was Gorbachev’s first real test. To have mishandled it would have been to play into the hands of the naysayers on arms control. The consensus in Western foreign-policy circles is that he turned in a virtuoso performance. Within a month or so of the accident and the initial Soviet failure to disclose it, Gorbachev had neutralized Chernobyl as an East-West political issue; in Europe, he has actually turned it to his advantage.” (Newhouse, John. “The Diplomatic Round,” The New Yorker, September 8, 1986, 42-60.)

For a more international perspective, a great place to start is the International Herald Tribune, 1887-2013 database

April 30, 1986

For a very different perspective on how the Chernobyl incident was covered by the press explore the Communist Historical Newspaper Collection , and find articles such as this one from the Daily World.

Daily World The Library has access to a breadth of scholarly journals and resources for a more detailed understanding of the disaster and its impact. Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society Marjolein van der Veen revisits Chernobyl after the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, Japan in 2011. In the article, van der Veen analyzes Chernobyl's role in the collapse of the Soviet Union: “Even twenty-five years after Chernobyl, there remains a curious silence about the extent of the disaster in the mainstream press as well as by scholars analyzing the former Soviet Union…It may have been a significant contributing factor in the collapse of the former Soviet Union, its transition to a system of private capitalism, and its rapid economic and social decline.”

To dig deeper behind the scenes and learn more about the Chernobyl disaster take some time to explore our online resources.

U.S. Department of State Declassified Document, June 16, 1986

U.S. Declassified Documents database provides access to a number of declassified memos and correspondence from The Department of State, the CIA and the White House showing how the U.S developed their response to the nuclear disaster.

Regardless of where your research interests lead you, The New York Public Library has resources to support a broad range of topics. Get started from home using the Library’s online resources and go deeper with print and archival materials. When in doubt, one of our intrepid librarians will be able to help you. Visit us at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building and get started on your research today!

This is a joint post, written in collaboration with Rhonda Evans, E-Resources Librarian.

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