DISINFO: The Chernobyl series shows that the Soviets aren’t really people
SUMMARY
In one of the scenes, a “wall of lies” was added, with the caring hand of the screenwriters. For what reason? To show viewers that Soviet people aren’t really people.
RESPONSE
No evidence given. This is a disinformation narrative about the Chernobyl accident in 1986, as well as about the West's anti-Russian and anti-Soviet sentiments. According to HBO, Chernobyl, a "five-part mini-series co-production from HBO and Sky, dramatises the story of the 1986 nuclear accident, one of the worst man-made catastrophes in history — and of the sacrifices made to save Europe from unimaginable disaster". In his interview with VICE News, Craig Mazin, the screenwriter of the series, mentions that he wanted to depict not only the catastrophe but also the Soviet people who prevented it from being even worse. "As I’ve said many times—yes, the villain in this story is the Soviet system. But the hero of this story, collectively, are the Soviet people," Mazin said. According to Mazin, the film crew tried to follow what really happened, without over-fictionalising or over-dramatising. "We had a basic rule of thumb: If you had to change something to be able to tell the story, narratively, then that was the only reason we could change it. We couldn’t change things to make them scarier; we couldn’t change things to make them more dramatic, or more sensational, or more horrifying," Mazin mentioned in the interview. More about Russia's state media reaction to the "Chernobyl" series is here and here.