The Real Viktor Bryukhanov
Okay, people have requested @elenatria @oikid I do a post on the real Dyatlov, Bryukhanov, and Fomin, because they really were not as bad as HBO’s Chernobyl depicted them. I’m not going to comment on whether HBO did the right thing in how they depicted them or not (I suppose people can battle that out in the notes). Instead, I’m just going to compare them. I’m not as familiar with these men as I am with Valery Legasov because they have never caught my attention in my time studying Chernobyl, but this is what I have on them. I’m going to start with Bryukhanov because he represents the most startling difference between reality and HBO’s portrayal of him.
HBO Victor Bryukhanov was not the biggest jerk on the show, but still a jerk who did everything he could to cover up the disaster and bully those who said something terrible had happened. His portrayal on the show is meme material, whether you find Chernobyl memes disgraceful or funny.
The real Bryukhanov was not such a bad man. Out of him, Fomin, and Dyatlov, he in my opinion was the least guilty for the Chernobyl disaster.
The real Viktor Bryukhanov was given an impossible and unrealistic mission by the Soviet Union. In the HBO series, we see Bryukhanov as the man in charge of the nuclear power station. We don’t know how long he’s been in charge or how he got there. We just know he’s the Big Man there in Pripyat. The real Bryukhanov was the creator of not only the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station, but also the entire city of Pripyat.
At the age of only 34, Bryukhanov was given a task: build the largest, most prestigious nuclear power plants in the world and a city to house the plant workers from scratch. The land that what would become Pripyat and the V. I. Lenin Nuclear Power Plant (AKA Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant) was literally an empty field surrounded by a forest when Bryukhanov was put in charge. It was a monumental task. (The one nod we have to this in the series is when the old man asks everyone the name of this power plant - it’s real name. And everyone is stumped, except Bryukhanov because of course Bryukhanov would know - he literally was the engineer who built Chernobyl NPP and Pripyat from an empty field.)
Now, not only is this task daunting enough as it is, but imagine you are being told to do this and you are given hardly any materials. The materials you do get are wrong, half-broken, or faulty. Every time he got materials and equipment from the USSR, he had to take it apart, fix any manufacturing errors, and put it back together the right way. And then from these shoddy pieces you are to build something immediately. And this something was something as complicated as a high-powered nuclear reactor. He was given no wages. There was no one to help him manage anything. Any time he had to go back to Kiev, he had to hitchhike to get there. He lived in a little cottage in the woods with his wife and two young children. To top it off, his bosses were telling him they wanted the power plant up and connected to the grid by December 1975. This deadline was impossible.
Can you imagine Bryukhanov and his construction workers getting turbines from the USSR and taking them apart screw by screw and then fixing the manufacturing errors and putting it back together the right way so it could turn properly when receiving steam from a fissioning nuclear core? And he had to do this FASTER, FASTER. I mean, wut? This was reality for him. (We see a moment in the HBO series when Bryukhanov says, “This is what they do - send us shit equipment and wonder why things go wrong.”) The roof of Reactor 4 was covered in highly flammable materials that should not have gone over a nuclear reactor. The Soviet Union had a safety regulation that said non-flammable materials should go onto the roof. But guess what - the Soviet Union didn’t have the supplies, so Bryukhanov was forced to use cheap flammable material instead because it was literally impossible to purchase the right materials in the entire USSR.
He learned how to take limited resources and meet unrealistic goals out of necessity. He did this by cutting corners everywhere, not because he wanted to, but because he had no choice. He was easily pushed around. He objected to things, saying it was unsafe, but he was told, “Just do it.” And he did. He worked himself down to the bone, often going without food and without sleep, surviving only on coffee and nicotine.
The pressure was too much for Bryukhanov. In July 1972, he went to his boss with a letter of resignation. He did not want to be in charge of building the largest nuclear power plant in the world.
His boss took his letter of resignation, ripped it up in front of him, and told him to get back to work.
He. Had. To. Keep. Building. And from nothing.
The real Bryukhanov was a softie. He was soft-spoken. Said little. Mild-mannered. He didn’t yell at his subordinates. People described him as “a marshmallow.” At the time of the accident, Bryukhanov was trying to get 50,000 roses delivered to Pripyat to be on display on May 1st, as a way to represent every single resident in the city. He was known for liking roses and had them all over his garden. He actually sent a request to Moscow for 50,000 roses because they would make the city look pretty for the holiday.
The real Bryukhanov ran to view the wreckage himself around 2:00am the night of the accident. As he ran to view reactor 4, he kicked at some of the graphite that was on the ground, unaware of the radiation. He immediately knew (and would later tell his family this): I am going to prison.
The HBO Bryukhanov tried to cover up the accident, but the real Bryukhanov immediately cried to Moscow for help. He immediately got on the phone and said that the accident was of a very serious scale. He gave the number he was given and the number they had: 3.6 roentgens, although he knew it was higher. When he was later told the 200 roentgen dosimeter had maxed out as well, Bryukhanov did not want to hear about it. He struggled to come to terms with the seriousness of what had happened. Bryukhanov told Moscow officials that Pripyat should be evacuated, and he was reprimanded for suggesting such a thing. But because he was a softie, he didn’t argue and decided to turn the entire matter over to the Chernobyl commission. In fact, he was relieved that it was out of his hands. He wanted Boris Shcherbina there, and quickly.
Still, when someone asked him how Unit 4 was doing, Bryukhanov replied, “There is no Unit 4 anymore. Have a look for yourself. The separators are visible from the street.” By saying this, this tipped off his boss, who then told his boss, Boris Shcherbina, that the reactor had been completely destroyed.
Lastly, the real Bryukhanov plead guilty and said that he was partly to blame for the disaster. He owned up to “mismanaging” the plant, completely, in court.
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