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I have only vague memories of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. As a child growing up in the east of England when the Soviet reactor blew some 40 years ago this weekend, I recall concerns around the dinner table over the risks of contaminated milk and livestock. But those conversations must have taken place days, potentially weeks, after the accident itself.
In part, that is because the Soviet authorities were keen to keep the extent of the damage and radioactive leak under wraps.
Lauren Cassidy, a lecturer in German and Russian studies at Binghamton University, has spent three years going through the files of the once-feared East German secret police and intelligence service, the Stasi, researching misinformation in the former Eastern bloc. The documents reveal how the KGB and Stasi colluded to downplay the risk to the public.
“The problem for the East German state was that by the mid-1980s, a lot of people were able to pick up Western TV and radio signals,” Cassidy writes. “Many recognized that their own government wasn’t telling them the truth. However, they also knew that Western media would take any chance they got to disparage the Eastern bloc. The result was that many people knew that they weren’t being told the truth, but they weren’t sure exactly what the truth was.”
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