It was my uncle, not father. There's no way to know for fact as everything was done in secrecy and many archives were destroyed or are still locked in Russia, b

It was my uncle, not father. There's no way to know for fact as everything was done in secrecy and many archives were destroyed or are still locked in Russia, but I guess that the list of "expendables" were present for such cases. Some facts that highlights suspicion: 1) he was young (19-20 yo) and recently back from mandatory service in army, so still high in reserve list 2) he was not a member of Communist party, nor had any influential relatives 3) he was working as a truck driver and did not have any other qualifications, so easily replaceable. The fact that he had young children probably didn't bother anybody or made through bureaucratic apparatus in time. According to various sources, few to several thousands of Lithuanians were taken to Chernobyl during few years time (the exact numbers probably will never be known, as most other numbers regarding this disaster) and many of them were not so lucky and had to work inside/near the reactor building itself, so it's hard to speculate what could have been. Though the fact that he was taken with such haste, only few hours after the meltdown, might suggest that they had an emergency for drivers. "they wouldn't need to go all the way to another region to get them" It was a common practice for Soviets to get people from far regions to do dirty jobs, because it's easier to hide nasty deeds this way and prevent rumors from spreading. As an example, most of Lithuanians served in far regions of Siberia while at the same time most of soldiers stationed here were from Mongolia and the like.