Valery Legasov
Born in September 1936 in the Soviet Union, Valery Legasov was the man primarily responsible for cleaning up the Chernobyl Power Plant after its fateful explosion in 1986.
Before he assisted with the containment and cleanup effort at Chernobyl, Legasov attended college and earned a degree in Physicochemical Engineering. After earning his degree, he rose through the ranks at the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, eventually becoming the man in charge there.
Legasov later hung and killed himself in 1988, two years after being irradiated and after he recorded five audiotapes expressing what he really saw and what really happened during 1986 in Pripyat, Ukraine. He was an intelligent, hard-working, courageous, and selfless man who was invaluable in containing the disaster at Chernobyl and later courageously exposed what truly happened at Chernobyl after Soviet coverups.
Boris Shcherbina
Born in October 1919 in Ukrainian Boris Shcherbina helped with the cleanup of the Chernobyl Power Plant after its deadly and devastating explosion in 1986.
Before he helped cleanup for Chernobyl, Shchetbina started a business in the oil and gas industry, also he was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and was in it until his death. In 1984 he became the vice-chairman of the Council of Ministers which meant he was in charge of dealing with the Chernobyl outbreak. He also severed a roe in dealing with the 1988 earthquake.
Shcherbina died because of radiation poisoning in 1990 he was 70 years old. Shcherbina was awarded for the honorary title of Hero of Socialist Labor for major contributions to the development of the country's oil and gas industry.
Anatoly Dyatlov
Born in the Soviet Union in 1931, Anatoly Dyatlov was one of the most senior engineers at the Chernobyl Powerplant. He was, however, the man primarily responsible for the accident because of a poorly supervised and executed safety test (as well as a poor reactor design, which he wasn't responsible for). For his actions, Dyatlov was "tried" and served ten years in a Soviet Prison. He was eventually released in late 1990.
Interestingly, Dyatlov survived two radiation accidents - once at a shipyard and later at Chernobyl. He died in 1995, over 9 years after the accident at Chernobyl, from congestive heart failure caused by his radiation sickness.
Mikhail Gorbachev
The leader of the Soviet Union during the Chernobyl incident, Gorbachev is an intimidating man who worked to ensure that the Soviet Union adequately took care of the Chernobyl disaster - both on the public relations front and physically by putting out the fire and preventing the magma from escaping the concrete encasements.
