Gorbachev Addresses Nation — 18 Days Late

Mikhail Gorbachev makes his first televised address to the Soviet nation about Chernobyl — 18 days after the explosion. He frames the accident as a test of the newly proclaimed glasnost policy and criticizes 'bureaucratic distortions' but does not acknowledge the full extent of casualties or contamination. The speech is notable for what it omits rather than reveals. Gorbachev later wrote that Chernobyl was a 'turning point' that 'opened the possibility of much greater freedom of expression' in the USSR.