Soviet Union Gorbachev Goes on the Offensive

For 18 days his silence resounded around the world. Then finally last week Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev publicly acknowledged the gravity of the April 26 accident that destroyed a nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl power station in the Ukraine and spread radioactive fallout across the globe. "For the first time ever," Gorbachev declared on Soviet TV, "we have confronted in reality the sinister power of uncontrolled nuclear energy."

The 25-minute speech was more than just an official explanation of the Chernobyl disaster, which forced the evacuation of nearly 100,000 Soviet people. It was a dogged effort by Gorbachev to strike back at foreign critics and limit the severe damage to Soviet prestige caused by the accident and by Moscow's initial refusal to let the rest of the world know what had happened. As workers labored to encase the crippled reactor in concrete and render it harmless, Gorbachev strove to seize the offensive and contain the worst political fallout from the disaster.

By turns gracious, outraged and somber, the Soviet party chief used the occasion to call for a global early-warning system that would alert the world in the event of future nuclear power mishaps. He also rather clumsily linked the dangers of atomic power with the threat of nuclear weapons, noting that "inherent in the nuclear arsenals stockpiled are thousands upon thousands of disasters far more horrible than the Chernobyl one." Gorbachev then disingenuously invited President Reagan to meet in Europe "or, say, in Hiroshima" to negotiate a test moratorium. He pointedly extended the Soviet Union's own ten-month test ban until Aug. 6, which marks the 41st anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. In Geneva, meanwhile, Soviet negotiators offered a plan for removing medium-range nuclear missiles from Europe.

While he played the dove on nuclear issues, Gorbachev lashed out aggressively at sensational Western news reports of the Chernobyl disaster. Said he: "Generally speaking, we faced a veritable mountain of lies--most dishonest and malicious lies." The Soviet leader spoke of stories citing "thousands of casualties, mass graves of the dead, desolate Kiev, that the entire land of the Ukraine has been poisoned, and on and on." Such accounts, Gorbachev said, reflected the desire of "certain Western politicians" to "defame the Soviet Union" and deflect growing criticism of the "militaristic course" of U.S. policy.

In Washington the Reagan Administration called Gorbachev's charges unfounded. Said a White House statement: "If some reports carried in the mass media were in fact inaccurate, this was an inevitable result of the extreme secrecy with which the Soviet authorities dealt with the accident in the days immediately following it. Citizens of foreign countries and their governments had a legitimate interest in knowing the facts, since their own health could be affected." While it rejected Gorbachev's proposal for a summit meeting to discuss a ban on nuclear tests, the Reagan Administration stressed that the previously agreed-upon U.S.-Soviet summit remains "possible" this year. Meanwhile, PlanEcon, a Washington research group that studies the Soviet bloc, said the nuclear accident may cost the Soviet Union up to $4.3 billion in medical expenses and agricultural and other economic losses.