I have read many books about the Soviet Union. The government was full of perverse incentives which encouraged fraud, deception, denial and corruption. The dog

I have read many books about the Soviet Union. The government was full of perverse incentives which encouraged fraud, deception, denial and corruption. The dogma was so perverse it lead to a total corruption of logic and reason. To the point it essentially warped reality. In the Soviet Union, to ask for a better tool was to imply that your managers were incompetent. Or the tool designers were. Or the manufacturers were. All of whom were appointed by the government. A government which saw itself as the manifest will of the people. To imply something wasn't good enough was to imply the Russian people themselves weren't good enough. That horrendous logic may have been self inflicted but it none the less set the ground rules for any action taken by the government. The inadequacies you point out say nothing about how seriously the Soviet government took Chernobyl. You will find the exact same problems pervade almost every single Soviet government initiative.