“It’s their coat of arms”. How communist Bulgaria hid the Chernobyl accident

The date is May 1, 1986 It’s Wednesday and it’s a holiday. Rummy, but that doesn’t stop people from celebrating Labor Day. In those years, there were demonstrations – mass street processions to express socio-political feelings. Attendance is not mandatory, but it is strongly recommended that everyone be there.

On the same day, a large radioactive cloud passed over Bulgaria, rising above the Soviet nuclear power plant (NPP) “Chernobyl” a few days earlier – on April 26. Then, in the fourth block of the plant, an accident occurs and an explosion occurs.

The rain is poisonous, it contains highly radioactive elements cesium 137 and strontium 90, which are dangerous to health and even life. But people don’t know that.

In the following days, the Komsomol will send over 50 thousand schoolchildren and students in the field – in the first brigades of the year – to pick the seasonal fruits and vegetables. The Komsomol (Dimitrov Communist Youth Union – DKMS) was a youth organization during the communist era, membership in which is mandatory for everyone between the ages of 14 and 28.

In those days, everything outdoors was radioactive. Air, water, soil, fruits and vegetables. The milk and meat of animals.

But people don’t know that either. The communist leadership of Bulgaria – the Politburo and the Komsomol – knows it. But it lasts. Because the Soviet Union wants to keep the incident a secret. A secret that cannot be kept.

The Chernobyl accident before 38 years becomes the world’s largest man-made disaster. It takes the lives of hundreds of thousands and affects millions.

The radiation released into the atmosphere after the explosion was the equivalent of at least 200 nuclear bombs such as those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in August 1945. The radiation cloud passed over Eastern, Central Europe and Scandinavia.

The Soviet Union and the Communist bloc did not immediately warn of the incident. Millions were exposed to radiation in a huge crime against humanity, investigated in Bulgaria by Prof. Dimitar Vatsovprofessor of philosophy at the New Bulgarian University.

He defines the information blackout surrounding the Chernobyl disaster as “one of the worst crimes of communism in Bulgaria”.

In 2022, the Chernobyl NPP suffers another shock: the February 24the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the headquarters was occupied and remained under Russian control until April 1.

The radiation cloud

After the accident 38 years ago, a huge radioactive cloud passed over more than 200 thousand square km from the territory of the then USSR – the current territories of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.

Highly radioactive elements are scattered over 52 thousand square km cesium 137 and strontium 90 with half-lives of 30 and 28 years, respectively. More than 8 million people are exposed to direct radiation. In the following days, the radiation cloud also passes through the whole of Europe.

According to official figures, direct deaths are only a few dozen, but there is a dispute about the influence of radiation on later deaths from cancer and other diseases.

In the following decades, hundreds of thousands of people were affected, no one can calculate exactly how many. It is assumed that over the years 115 thousand people died from diseases caused by the radiation.

According to a 2005 UN report 50 deaths were caused directly by the radiation after the accident, and others 4 thousand of the deceased are among the local residents and the so-called liquidators. These are close 600 thousand civilians, reservists and military personnel sent to Chernobyl to deal with the aftermath of the accident.

According to the Ministry of Health of Ukraine 20 thousand liquidators die every year from diseases they got because of direct radiation.

The Greenpeace organization claims that close 200 thousand deaths between 1990 and 2004 occurred as a result of the Chernobyl accident. The cases of premature aging, neurological and mental diseases are countless.

The disinformation cloud

The events that followed the accident are infamous because of the Soviet authorities’ desire to keep it secret.

The huge radiation cloud that rises after the explosion is overshadowed by a thick cloud of misinformation. Even a year after the explosion, some of those involved in the clean-up operations do so without knowing the extent of the danger.

The state news agency of the Soviet Union – TASS, reports on the incident two days after it – on April 28 1986

The evacuation of people from the 30-kilometer zone around the Chernobyl NPP begins 36 hours later. Evacuated approx 115 thousand people, having initially been told it would only be for three days.

On April 29 The Council of Ministers of USSR issued a statement admitting that there had been a “known leak of radioactive substances” and that two people had died in the accident.

“Now the radiation situation in the power plant and in the area around it has been stabilized,” the message reads.

“There has been an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. One of the nuclear reactors has been damaged. Measures are being taken to eliminate the consequences,” reads the laconic message, reflected in the bulletin of the state-run Bulgarian Telegraph Agency (BTA) on April 29.

The communist bloc, of course, reports “half-heartedly” about the danger to its population. However, the partial information blackout is quickly cracking.

“The authorities are reluctant to inform the population, they are afraid of fermentation,” says Dimitar Vatsov. Such civil demonstrations take place in Poland, leading to clashes with the police.

This happens after April 28 Finland and Sweden they report radiation, and the cloud has already passed “quietly” over Poland. On April 30, the Polish authorities are forced to report on the radiation and recommend first measures. Protests follow, people want additional information, powdered milk for the children.

“It turns out to be absurd that all the countries around us announce that there is radiation, but not Bulgaria,” says Vatsov.

As early as May 2, the Romanian totalitarian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu informs the population and warns them not to drink water from open reservoirs. On the same date, the authorities in Belgrade warn and advise pregnant women and children not to go outside, but to stay at closed windows. Greecewhich is democratic, immediately reports that there is a problem and tries to take measures.

What is happening in Bulgaria?

In Bulgaria, however, the information blackout is the worst, says Prof. Vatsov. “Nowhere is the information blackout about dangerous radiation as strong as in our country”.

He knows this because, since 2021, he has been researching the arrays of archival documents in Bulgaria about Chernobyl.

But let’s go back to May 1986. Then 160 children from the Sofia Classical High School were also sent to the fields – to pick spinach. The eighth graders, among whom is Dimitar Vatsov, are also there. Two or three days after the start of the student brigade, the headmistress Gergina Toncheva stops her. Without explanation, he simply orders the buses to return the children and calls the event over.

Now, several decades later, Vatsov and his classmates talk about it. Four of them have already died of cancer, one is a cancer patient – before they were born 50 years.

The connection with radiation from Chernobyl is unprovable, of course, but this fact prompts Vatsov to dig into the archives. To discover “the most brutal madness of communism, which is paradoxically unexplored”.

The Bulgarian authorities “knew perfectly well what was happening”, they were initially warned by the Soviet ambassador, the documents show.

“The archives give a pretty complete picture of how information flows and how radiation builds up,” he says.

From April 30 military districts begin measuring radiation in all areas of the country. They report the data three times a day to the Civil Defense headquarters, which passes it on to the Politburo and the government in summaries preserved to this day.

“Day by day, county by county, radiation is measured in air, water, soil, milk, meat, fruit and vegetables.”

At the same time, the laboratories of the Agricultural Academy, the University of Sofia, and the Medical Academy are also measuring. There is also a specially equipped helicopter that covers Bulgaria and measures the radiation.

“I still haven’t reached the archive of chemical troops, which is in Veliko Tarnovo. I hope the data is preserved there as well,” says Vatsov.

I.e. the authorities in Bulgaria are fully aware that the radiation is coming over the country of May 1but they say nothing for a week.

On May 2, 3 and 4 BTA releases messages on behalf of the Committee for the Research of Atomic Energy for Peaceful Purposes that “the radiation background is being monitored, but there is no danger to the population”.

At the same time, however, in the confidential application of BTA it is written that Western intelligence agencies report otherwise: that “in the unanimous opinion of Western specialists [аварията] probably caused the death of many people”.

According to all Western information, the very fact that the USSR officially reported the disaster – “something unprecedented in its information practice” – says that “something very serious happened”.

BTA has always broadcast all the news, but during the communist era, all unmanipulated and unprocessed propaganda news reached an extremely limited circle of the then nomenclature – party and state.

This is what he tells Free Europe Panayot Deneuve, a longtime journalist at the state news agency. He published a book in which he describes the 125-year history of BTA, unearthing from the archives the information hidden during the communist era.

One of the most deeply covered news is the Chernobyl accident.

Only on May 7 the then head of the Nuclear Energy Committee Ivan Pandev and the then Chief Sanitary Inspector Lubomir Shindarov “they mention that there is some radiation, but it is not dangerous”. They recommend two “small measures”: not eating lettuce and leafy greens, and children not playing in sandboxes and washing more often.

“Scientists who measured radiation at the time recommended much more measures. However, they were forced to sign declarations of confidentiality,” says Vatsov.

There are such measures in Bulgaria from May 7 to 24when authorities announce that all danger has passed and advise people to go on seas and holidays.

Moreover, in 1986 237 thousand Bulgarian schoolchildren and students were sent to the field – by the Komsomol in cooperation with the Ministry of Public Education. Above 50 thousand of the children and young people were sent in May and June – the months with the highest radioactivity.

“The Politburo and the DKMS knew that young people were being sent to a radioactively contaminated environment,” he says.

At the same time, Bulgaria’s top leaders ate safe food and drank non-radioactive water.

A year later, the communist country allowed a second radiation peak, after not heeding the warnings of scientists and feeding the animals the radioactive fodder harvested in May 1986. Thus, in April, May and June 1987. food – especially milk and meat – reached levels of radiation contamination even higher than levels a year earlier.

This secondary radiation represents about 30% of the exposure that Bulgarians have absorbed for the entire period after Chernobyl, says Dimitar Vatsov.