Everyone knows about Chernobyl. Most likely what they didn't know was where they are. I saw too many videos of soldiers asking locals for directions in the first days of war.
To this day, Chernobyl is a pain point for Russia - f--k knows why because it didn't even happen there. When HBO's Chernobyl came out, Moscow went into a full-blown hysteria. They released their own show with an alternate version of events, where the whole explosion was a CIA operation.
So, no - they didn't know. That's 100% plausible.
I think you're falling into the mistake everyone is like you, and has access to the info you had access to.
In the meantime, there is plenty of documented evidence that Russian soldiers who were ordered to move into Ukraine were totally oblivious to the area they were occupying. There are even comical reports from the start of the war on how Ukraine thwarted the advance of some Russian columns towards Kyiv by switching road signs.
No, it's not plausible. Stop making shit up.
So rural Russians knowing nothing about Chernobyl is completely in realm of possibilities.
It is propaganda from 1950s (2 years after the communist putsch) so it is pretty loaded against West in general.
* Milada Horáková - Executed by communist government in fake process. 27th of June 1950
* Oldřich Pecl - Executed by communist government in fake process. 27th of June 1950
* American Colorado Beetle = Mandelinka Bramborová (its common neutral name)
* American Beetle = Americký Brouk (propagandistic name)
Translation:
Those clouds are not bringing blessing. Those clouds are coming from the west. Together with clouds American imperialists sent American Colorado beetle on our republic.
Father with son has found the American Colorado beetle. This is it! The American Beetle, latest tool of American barbarism. We found it where it does not belong, on the wood instead of potatoes, we found it on the junkyard, American Beetle is climbing wall.
The beetle is spread via wind and planes from our west and south borders. It is spread by secret western agents bringing it in boxes. Those who sent it to us expect that this beetle will find its way to our potatoes. They expect that it will lay thousands of eggs and red-orange larvae will come up.
What is the aim of American imperialists? Their aim is to use the most dangerous potato pest to destroy our advanced potato industry! They want to hamper our nutrition, our livestock farms and industry for whom the potatoes are important resource.
Those bottomless larvae are culture of nuclear warmongers. But our imperialists gentlemen were planning wrong. Or government did decisive measures. Decisive measures to deflect wicked attack of our enemy. But they could have already known that in the West. In our country we do more than we talk. We all and especially youth, pioneers, are getting into a fight. We will find every American Beetle, and destroy it. Every place of its occurrence will get disinfected. Every place of its finding will get properly marked. We will involve technology into fight against the vermin. We are putting all our strength into saving our work. This is our direct defense against attack of our enemies.
We won't let them pupate under the ground. We will find them and we will destroy them. That's our answer to enemy attackers. We got rid of (Milada) Horáková, we got rid (Oldřich) Pecl, we will get rid of American Colorado Beetle, the American Beetle. We will defend our harvest and our fields from American disease. We don't want foreign, but we won't give up ours.
I asked four of the youngest people I know (ages 19-22) what Chernobyl was and only one knew. And only because of the TV show.
You have no idea how little the average youngster cares about stuff they didn't personally experience. Almost nobody is reading history articles on Wikipedia for fun. It's just Tik Tok, Insta, and Youtube.
For the majority of them, certain subjects will just be mentioned in passing 5 minutes in a history lesson, and it exits the student's brain within days, if not as soon as the bell rings.
The former USSR is a totally different matter. It's a very well-known and painful, very close part of history. Not knowing about it is a shocking level of ignorance and miseducation, and yet - this is what we have.
I don't think it's a stretch to think a 22yo Russian farmer signed up for the military is just as disinterested in history.
Nobody likes to talk about that stuff. Ideologues most of all.
France’s reactors (other technology) are 0.910-1.3 Gigawatts (x60 cores)[1]. Chernobyl must have been the powerhouse for half of the country.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Fr...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plan...
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nunn-lugar-russia-pr...
> Documents from the highest levels of the Soviet Union, including notes, protocols and diaries of Politburo sessions in the immediate aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, detail a sequence of cover-up, revelation, shock, mobilization, individual bravery, and bureaucratic turf battles in the Soviet reaction, according to the “Top Secret Chernobyl” e-book published today by the National Security Archive.
> Key sources include protocols of the Politburo Operational Group on Chernobyl that were published in Russian by the journalist and former Supreme Soviet deputy Alla Yaroshinskaya in 1992. The posting today begins with Yaroshinskaya’s essay (written exclusively for this publication) reviewing the Chernobyl story and her own efforts dating back to 1986 to document and expose the lies and the secrecy that surrounded the disaster.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/tv/a27787022/cherno...
> "The fact that an American, not a Russian, TV channel tells us about our own heroes is a source of shame that the pro-Kremlin media apparently cannot live down," Shepelin writes.
How the Soviet Union stayed silent during the Chernobyl disaster - https://wapo.st/3shRS4M
> Information inside Russia was sparse, too. Russian residents and even some officials were left unaware that the accident had occurred. In the news reports that trickled out, Soviet media stated that nuclear accidents like Chernobyl were "virtually impossible."
> ...
> The Soviet Union's refusal to release any information speaks to the mentality of the Kremlin. Perhaps the best explanation of trying to make sense of this mentality came from Ellen Goodman writing in 1988, shortly after the accident:
> Exactly a year ago, in Moscow, I had a conversation with a young journalist who acted as interpreter. After a session with three bureaucrats, which bored him as much me, we went to a local coffee shop and talked about journalism and censorship.
> Andre was among the elite of his Soviet generation. He was informed about America -- down to our frequent-flyer coupons -- and not reflexively defensive about the Soviet system. Yet, at one point, animatedly debating our countries' attitudes toward information, he reached for this analogy, "In the U.S.S.R. we do not tell a patient if he has cancer. Many times we treat people like they are children to be protected."
> And in many ways, those living in the Soviet Union at the time would have agreed.
---
While I can't say for certain, the reporting suggests that there is a deliberate willingness to collectively forget about Chernobyl within Russia.
For christ sakes, as you state, there is a whole new generation that was born after 2000 in russia. 90s are out and there is control of information> it doesn't matter that they can learn about this topic from internet or hbo or stalker (yes, sure, all gamers will assume that game is based on real events). if they are not taught about it, they won't know.
did you see new history books in russia btw that were published a couple of weeks ago ? do you see the new versions of history been on tv ? the laws about spreading "false information about ussr in wwII" ?
Which hilariously enough is what they do when drafting and recruiting new soldiers...
The bulk of Russia's invasion force is comprised by people from remote villages.
You're talking about people who risked their lives, and many died, to pillage washing machines and indoor toilets.
Do you really think the literacy level and access to information from the average Russian grunt on the floor accommodates this info? Many didn't even knew where in the world they were stationed.
[1] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44492/ukrainians-are-m...
[2] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=entry+to+chernobyl+exclusion+zone+...
The level of brainwashing and propaganda in the terrorist state of russia is truly staggering.
Owning a smartphone isn’t a magical key to free access of objective truth, and even if it was, it certainly doesn’t intrinsically provide motivation for average babushka to go and seek information that contradicts the narrative that they themselves need to believe to continue to have a sense of identity.
And specifically:
> Everyone knows about Chernobyl.
And everyone knows about Tienanmen, the difference in what they know is made by the country where they live.
Compare this poll from 2019 with the expected values from Western Europe where probably 100% learned it from the news, for many many days.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040923/how-russians-lea....
The poll is a bit strange though because despite asking how did they learn of the disaster "at its moment of occurrence" they list internet, social media, books and movies.
BTW, the Chernobyl TV series was not available on general TV in Russia AFAIK.
From documentary films
From social media and the Internet
From fictional films/ TV shows
From books
Already books, films, social media and the internet on the very first day of the accident? Fiction, maybe.
Just the title of the graphic says that, incorrectly. It's a poll that includes 18-year-olds done in 2019, it's clearly not intended to be only asking about the moment of the incident.