MAPS OF HISTORY · The Cold War · ALL CHAPTERS · Chernobyl
Site of memory · The Cold War, 1945–1991
Chernobyl

26 Apr 1986 — Reactor 4 explodes; the state lies for days while fallout crosses Europe. ~50 direct deaths, thousands of projected ones, 350,000 displaced. Gorbachev later calls it “perhaps the real cause” of collapse. Remember.
This is one scene of Chapter 11 — Gorbachev and the Unraveling in The Cold War, 1945–1991.
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