The Cost of Lies

Sally and I finished watching “Chernobyl” over the weekend—a series I found as riveting as everyone said it would be. A lot could be said about the artistic choices (and have been). But Americans seem uniquely unable to understand fictive reinterpretations—they focus on small inaccuracies rather than digesting the larger truths fiction delivers, and most of the criticisms seem to be of this ilk. (Based on Masha Gessen’s piece in the New Yorker, Russians may have the same problem.)

What fiction does is portray characters and arrange events in a way that conveys meaning, and that meaning is by intention artificial. Life isn’t constrained by neatly-clipped periods of time that present little universal epiphanies. That is the storyteller’s job.

In this regard I found “Chernobyl” particularly potent. As we drift ever further from the Soviet Union, its power as a metaphor diminishes. Had this miniseries been made in 1995, it would have been a warning about the dark power of totalitarian states. But every story offers lessons about the current moment. Today’s danger isn’t an all-powerful, individual-crushing government. (“Chernobyl,” happening just a few years before the collapse of the empire, would never have been a good vehicle for that message.) Instead, “Chernobyl” hints at human frailties that don’t depend on the ideology of leadership.

The show-runners settled on a different message (and I don’t think there’s any spoiler here): lies. In the concluding scenes, this is the bow in which the writers wrap up the show. But not just lies—the reasons they are told and retold by people down the line in societies where truth has become so devalued no one even thinks about it. (Does a nuclear disaster count as a trump card, the clarifying reality that clears away the fog of lies? Not really: the Soviets successfully buried the lessons of Chernobyl so that only now, 33 years later, is it even being considered.)

But here the show-runners have highlighted a danger that is current and relevant. “Chernobyl” is the story of corrupt party leaders building policies on lies, and feckless functionaries and apparatchiks unquestioningly acting on them. The web of lies, which in Soviet Russia were always designed to exalt the Party and hide embarrassments, become a dry rot that eventually, inevitably lead to disaster. The most potent indictments in “Chernobyl” highlight the sycophancy of incompetent little gray men who are elevated for their loyalty rather than their skill.

What does this sound like? What cult is right now trying to recreate a reality in which a leader and Party are infallible, and in which every hard truth is buried? Right on cue, after watching the final episode last night before bed, I scanned the headlines and saw these two (bear in mind this was just one night, and a Sunday at that):

• Axios: “Nearly 100 leaked internal Trump transition vetting documents leaked identify a host of ‘red flags’ about officials who went on to get some of the most powerful jobs in the U.S. government.” Gray men who would do Trump’s bidding. The White House’s response? “President Trump has assembled an incredible team...”
• Politico: “Agriculture Department buries studies showing dangers of climate change.”

The Soviet Union is gone. Russia 2.0, headed by a liar more competent than Trump, carries on. The costs of living in the world of lies, “Chernobyl” tells us, are both real and current. In that regard, it seems incredibly timely.