Camera shutters clicked and high-intensity television lights flooded a makeshift courtroom last week in Chernobyl, the Ukrainian town whose name has been forever emblazoned in the pantheon of nuclear disaster. In the blinding glare, dozens of photographers zeroed in on six haggard-looking men seated in the defendants' box. Thus began the trial of the once obscure former plant officials and technicians charged with primary responsibility for history's + worst nuclear accident. The April 26, 1986, mishap, in which the No. 4 reactor at the Chernobyl power station exploded and burned out of control, killed 31 people, forced 135,000 to be evacuated and spewed poisonous radiation across Europe and much of the rest of the world.
Moscow has been at pains to make the trial a showcase for Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of glasnost (openness). Though Chernobyl has been virtually deserted since the accident at the power plant eleven miles away, the town has recently bustled with new life. Workers swarmed over the squat yellow-and-white Dom Kulturi, or Culture House, and converted its auditorium into a 162-seat courtroom. Briefcase-bearing lawyers and expert witnesses appeared last week on tree-lined streets that had lately been occupied mainly by soldiers armed with decontamination gear. A dozen foreign journalists traveled from Kiev in a police-escorted tourist bus for the four-hour opening session and were given front-row seats. At the building's entrance, white- suited technicians checked everyone for radiation contamination. Noted one official: "There is a logic in holding the trial here at the scene of the crime, as it were."
While it may be rich in symbolism, the trial is also a hardheaded exercise in damage control. By blaming relatively low-level technicians for the disaster, Gorbachev hopes to deflect responsibility once and for all from the top Soviet leadership and the country's beleaguered nuclear power agenda. The program continues to roll ahead, with about a dozen new plants under construction. The court proceedings, moreover, are not completely open. Under ground rules set by Moscow, foreign reporters may cover only the first and last sessions of what is expected to be a three-week trial that will hear more than 50 witnesses. So far, 67 plant workers have been fired or demoted since the Chernobyl accident, and 27 of those have been expelled from the Communist Party.
Western observers had a close look at Soviet justice on its best behavior as the case got under way. One by one, the defendants gave their names, ages and work histories in reply to questions put by Supreme Court Judge Raimond Brize, chairman of the three-judge panel that is hearing the case. Brize paused solemnly between each answer, as though hearing the information for the first time. When the judge asked if anyone in the jammed gallery had witnessed the disaster, a man rose to say that he was scheduled to testify this week. Brize politely asked him to leave, presumably to avoid his hearing something that might prejudice his testimony.