“Misguided radiations”: reactions of the political and administrative leadership from Hungary to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster

Abstract

The Chernobyl disaster constituted a serious challenge, not only for the Soviet Union - embarked on the path of reforms initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev -, but also for the signatory countries of the Warsaw Pact - among which at that time was the RPU (People’s Republic Hungary – Magyar Népköztársaság). The content of the questions to which political leaders and specialists from the most different fields of activity had to find concrete and immediate answers, aimed at the manner in which a crisis situation could be treated, the effects and proportions of which could only be imagined, as there was no precedent. Under these conditions, the dissemination of information to Western countries was done, in accordance with the totalitarian practice of the time, through the propaganda apparatuses of the regimes in the satellite states of Moscow, taking into account the interests of the Kremlin. From the study of archival materials, it appears that the RPU had approaches characteristic of a dictatorship in transition.