Chernobyl: Serhii Plokhy in conversation with Luke Harding

On 26 April 1986 at 1:23am a reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Soviet Ukraine exploded. While the authorities scrambled to understand what was occurring, workers, engineers, firefighters and those living in the area were abandoned to their fate. The blast put the world on the brink of nuclear annihilation, contaminating over half of Europe with radioactive fallout.

Historian Serhii Plokhy talks to journalist and author Luke Harding, drawing on his recent book ‘Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy’, winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2018. In this impeccably-researched and riveting account, the catastrophe becomes emblematic of the decline of the Soviet state itself, from the complacency that led to the disaster, to the massive underestimation of its political and human aftermath.

Serhii Plokhy is the Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard University. A leading authority on Eastern Europe, who has published extensively in English, Ukrainian and Russian, he has lived and taught in Ukraine, Canada and the United States. His recent books include ‘The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine’ (2015), ‘The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union’ (2015), ‘The Cossack Myth: History and Nationhood in the Age of Empires’ (2012) and ‘Yalta: The Price of Peace Viking/Penguin’ (2010; 2011).

Luke Harding is a Guardian foreign correspondent. He has reported from Delhi, Berlin and Moscow and covered wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. In 2014 he was the recipient of the James Cameron prize for his work on Russia, Ukraine, WikiLeaks, and Edward Snowden. His 2011 book ‘Mafia State’ discusses his experience in Russia and the political system under Vladimir Putin.

Co-organised by Ukrainian Institute London in partnership with British Library.