CC CPSU Politburo Session June 5 1986 Anatoly S Chernyaev's Notes Gorbachev About Chernobyl We should make every agency individually responsible for dealing with the consequences Because the effect of getting used to it is already kicking in And they will be held to strict account In this case we are responsible to our people responsible to the entire world And let's put an end to the bureaucratic parochialism One hears all the time I am in charge of my own objective there Everybody is in charge of their own objective it turns out No the objective is the same for everybody--Chernobyl But comrades are incapable of looking beyond the lines of their particular work responsibilities Chernobyl is everybody's business of all the ministers and all the members of the Central Committee and the entire CC apparatus The social aspect is extremely important We have to have very strict oversight here We must determine all the social parameters of the consequences before July I am very concerned about the work of the government commission which is investigating the causes of the catastrophe We will raise this issue very strictly and very extensively at the Politburo and we will not allow them to manipulate us with all kinds of professional conclusions which are actually just excuses It is quite obvious--lack of responsibility dissoluteness Nobody should count on mercy A repetition of anything like this should be absolutely excluded One or two accidents like this and we would get it worse than from a total nuclear war Already now you see the resonance and the kind of expense The loss of production by now is already at one billion eight hundred million rubles And the expenditures for the object itself are at about two billion rubles In a word we are talking about very serious things Addresses Shcherbina Deputy Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers Be at your best We are talking about life itself You must prepare a very serious party-state document about the causes and consequences We should not shy away from anything Now trying to present it as an easy task would be the worst thing shapkozakidatel'stvo And in Budapest at the Political Consultative Committee meeting we should relate everything honestly to the general secretaries And not what our newspapers have written so far Because they are building nuclear power stations building with our assistance and with our designs And look what a signal In the GDR 50% of our equipment was declared defective Addresses Dolgikh You bring it all to order Safety and order at the stations is the utmost priority Those that function today should be ensured of maximum safety And don't be shy to interact with people at nuclear power stations Do not tell tales speak honestly Translated by Svetlana Savranskaya for the National Security Archive This document is from the holdings of The National Security Archive Suite 701 Gelman Library The George Washington University 2130 H Street NW Washington D C 20037 Phone 202 994-7000 Fax 202 994-7005 nsarchiv@gwu edu