Shock Waves From Meltdown Could Shake Up Politburo

The political impact of the Chernobyl atomic plant disaster could reach up to shake the ruling Politburo of the Soviet Union if the economic and medical consequences are catastrophic, several U.S. experts on Soviet affairs said Wednesday. But, they said, even lesser effects will have significant consequences.

“There will certainly be scapegoats among government ministries for the accident,” said Prof. Adam Ulam of Harvard University’s Russian Research Institute. “But if large areas of the Ukraine and Byelorussia become uninhabitable, it would be such an unprecedented catastrophe that it could shake up the political system.”

Considerably less than that worst-case scenario is expected, the Soviet experts said, but political, economic and societal “fallout” from the accident were predicted even with less damage to the region.

Gorbachev ‘Playing It Badly’

Although Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev is not likely to fall, the disaster will reflect badly on him, the experts said. “He got dealt a bad situation, but he is playing it badly,” said Arnold Horelick, a former CIA analyst and director of the Rand-UCLA Center for the Study of Soviet International Behavior.

“It is at least an enormous diversion from Gorbachev’s larger agenda (of reform, particularly economic), and he looks powerless,” Horelick added. “The Soviet leadership looks confused and embarrassed, like it can’t get its act together on how to respond.”

“The effect on agriculture could be profound,” said Dmitri Simes, senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The reactor is within 400 kilometers (250 miles) of the entire Ukrainian food producing area, the ‘bread basket’ of the country.”

“This is the second disaster for Gorbachev, neither of which was of his making,” Simes said. The first was worldwide collapse of the international oil market on which the Soviets depend for most of their hard-currency earnings.

Luck Looks Bad

After just one year in office, “Gorbachev may get the reputation of being unlucky,” Simes added. “Bad karma,” as another Sovietologist said, can weaken any politician, even in the Soviet Union.

“The whole thing reminds us that the Soviet Union is really a Third World nation when it comes to the safety of their people and security,” he added. “They still see no need to share information unless forced to, despite all of the talk that Gorbachev has brought a new ‘openness’ to the Kremlin.

“They just don’t know how to release unpleasant news intelligently,” Simes said. “It is just like the KAL (Korean Air Lines) incident. They shot down the plane, then tried to cover it up, then gave inconsistent explanations.” Simes was referring to the downing of KAL Flight 007 in September, 1983, in which all 269 aboard were killed.

The nuclear accident also will increase animosity toward Moscow among Soviet neighbors because of the fallout--the Soviets could have warned Scandinavia and its East European allies but did not--and will certainly make Soviet reactors unattractive among developing nations such as India, which might be considering their purchase.

Used in Propaganda

It probably will have little direct effect on arms control talks and U.S.-Soviet relations. In propaganda terms, however, the Soviets already have cited the accident to repeat their call for nuclear disarmament, just as they used the U.S. space shuttle disaster to call for ending President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars” program.

In the Soviet system, Ulam said, the implicit bargain between the rulers and the ruled is that the elite take care of the people, in return for which they have a free hand. “Now the weakness in that system appears and there could be very profound psychological effects when the dimensions of this accident are finally announced,” he said.

“There will be a lot of people in the Soviet system, below the Politburo level, who will find it hard to understand that their own government found it impossible to share with them information important to their own health and well being,” Horelick said.

The Polish government, as well as those in Scandinavia, are providing more information and taking more protective steps for their people than the Soviet government is for people much closer to the scene, so far as is known.

‘Not a Peep’ From Leader

“Leave aside the question of whether it was a poor design from the start,” Horelick said. “Here you have a national catastrophe of frightening if not fully known consequences, and for all his talk of new ‘openness,’ you have not a peep from Gorbachev.

“He’s handling it like Brezhnev would,” Horelick added, referring to the late Soviet President Leonid I. Brezhnev, whose tenure has been harshly criticized by Gorbachev. “Soviet officials in and around the elite will be asking: ‘Have things really changed?’ ”

In its virtual silence, the Kremlin followed past practice. It says little if anything about disasters inside the Soviet Union, even natural ones, although it gives much publicity to such events in foreign countries. Recently, a Soviet newspaper reader complained that greater space was given to a Mexican earthquake than to a Soviet earthquake, for example.

Typically, too, after a domestic disaster occurs, the Soviet press discloses it and, at the same time, reassuringly declares that appropriate steps were taken to limit any damage, correct any errors, punish any guilty. In effect, it tells the people to go back to work.

Not a Timely Approach

But, in the current situation, with the continuing risk of casualties from continuing radioactive fallout, such an approach may seem criminal to the Soviet people, as well as to neighboring nations.

Economically, the Soviets will have to re-examine the basic designs of their atomic power plants to ensure their safety. It is extremely unlikely that the Soviets will experience the kind of internal clamor for closing all reactors that could be seen in democracies. But Moscow may have to shut down some for modifications or build containment vessels around older ones, all costing time and money.

However, changing the long-planned expansion of the nuclear industry, with the huge investments already made in it, probably will not occur. About 10% of Soviet electricity is now generated by atomic power, but more than half of new power plants being built or planned in the European part of the country will be fired by nuclear fuel rather than oil or coal.