Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency JPRS report, dated 1 August 1990, translates an OGONEK interview by Vanda Beletskaya with Academician Anatoliy Petrovich Aleksandrov, former president of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Aleksandrov blames the Chernobyl accident on an ill-considered experiment prepared by Donenergo that violated operating instructions. He also describes earlier nuclear plant defects, Legasov's suicide, and his dealings with Beria and Kapitsa. He argues for continued atomic power engineering and a law on nuclear power.
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# Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1990 Document 6 of 16 against the Afghan war will remain. 108. I also did not understand why we stuck our hand in there. At the Academy of Sciences in the lobby many people were indignant. Only those, who dealt with international economics, talked of the fact that we had invested much capital there and would not want to lose it... But that way we lost more--the lives of people... 109. OGONEK: They deprived Academician Sakharov of an award which he received precisely for a contribution to science... 110. A.P. Aleksandrov: The Academy of Sciences could not prevent this. The government made do without us, they did not ask for the consent of scientists. 111. OGONEK: Anatoliy Petrovich, what do you think of your own awards? Now it is all but customary to be ashamed of received orders. On television you see: At conferences, at meetings of the session of the Supreme Soviet, and even at the party congress there are few people with awards on their chest... You also do not wear them... 112. A.P. Aleksandrov: Let those, who received them for nothing and whom they cost nothing, be ashamed of orders. I know for what I received every award of mine. 113. I received my first Order of Lenin, for example, during the war for the degaussing of ships, which saved thousands of lives of sailors. I received my first Hero of Socialist Labor Star for works on the obtaining of fuel for the development of atomic weapons. I received the second one for the nuclear plant for the icebreaker Lenin, the third one also for scientific developments... 114. True, I received foreign orders, I do not know for what probably for the total combination of scientific works... 115. But I do not wear the orders, I simply have so many of them, I would be covered like a Christmas tree. But on solemn occasions I put on the three Hero of Socialist Labor Stars. 116. OGONEK: You knew all the leaders of our country, starting with Stalin, and met with them. What do you think of Gorbachev? 117. A.P. Aleksandrov: He is the only one of them, whom I like as a person. But as the leader of the country... It is necessary to wait with this. 118. OGONEK: And what worries you now in the affairs of the Academy of Sciences?
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 22 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.