[FULL DISCLOSURE STATEMENT: From 1987 through 2012 the author of this review was a technical translator and conference interpreter for utility companies and U.S. government entities in the nuclear complex. Specifically, in 1987 he accompanied the first team of Soviet engineers, physicists, and bureaucrats to visit the United States after the explosion of reactor № 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986. In 1994 he served as the interpreter for representatives of the State Department and Department of Energy during the first set of negotiations with the Ukrainian government regarding the future decommissioning of Chernobyl’s undamaged reactor units.]

Kate Brown is a prolific scholar and an engaging writer. Her first two books, A Biography of No Place1 and Plutopia,2 earned multiple awards from the academic community. In her third book, Dispatches from Dystopia,3 she refined her personal approach to writing history, which enables her to place events ‘in the moment’ – not in the moment when they transpired, but rather in the moment when she is writing about them.4 This approach imbues her most recent study with a sense of urgency concerning the impending disaster she sees facing humanity in the nuclear age.

Clearly, Kate Brown is not your average historian. In fact, she is defiantly not your average historian.5 Rather, she is part ethnographer, part memoirist, part intrepid explorer, part victim rights advocate, part inquisitive tourist,6 and part conspiratist.7 She is an aggressive investigator, pushy interviewer, compassionate listener, and a persistent, perceptive researcher. Brown is passionately involved on a personal level in the study of nearly-current events – ‘being there in the narrative.’8 What she is not, unfortunately, is an epidemiologist, health physicist, or classical Sovietologist. Accordingly, in order to fully comprehend the strengths and weaknesses of the story being told in Manual for Survival, one must fully understand the mindset of the storyteller.

The narrative in this book is based on the following premises:

1)   The nuclear age – particularly, above-ground testing of atomic and thermonuclear weapons conducted from the late 1940s through the early 1960s – has poisoned the earth; in this context, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster is merely an inflection point – what Brown terms an “acceleration”9 – in the degradation of the biosphere.

2)   There was – and continues to this day – a vast conspiracy among the nuclear states, international organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), commercial nuclear power interests, and academics to prevent the general public from learning about the devastating medical consequences of Chernobyl, including hundreds of thousands of fatalities that (supposedly) have been, and continue to be, caused by the radiation that spewed from reactor unit № 4 in April/May 1986. Rather – so the conspiracy goes – aside from an astounding number of children who contracted thyroid cancer and an unexpected number of cleanup workers (‘liquidators’) who contracted leukemia, the conspirators want the world to believe that the primary health effects suffered by the populace can be ascribed to psychological causes (what the Soviet government derisively termed ‘radiophobia’).

3)   In order to continue this cover-up, international entities have refused to conduct a long-term study of the effects of chronic exposure to low doses of ambient radiation similar to the Life Span Study of Japanese survivors of the atomic bomb explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which was begun in 1950 and continues to this day.

The danger, of course, when writing in the moment is to view events from the reality of that moment – and not the reality in which the events being described actually occurred. Brown fell prey to that danger to a certain extent in her otherwise remarkable study Plutopia.10 But she succumbs to the danger in Manual for Survival. Consider, for instance, this comment about Soviet agriculture:

The sleepy farm communities of northern Ukraine and southern Belarus had not fully kept pace with the postwar trend, led by American farmers, in industrializing agriculture. [112]

This romanticized vision of rural life might lead an uninformed reader to think that the USSR in 1986 was almost a normal Western country, when the reality was quite different. Brown, however, seems oblivious to the actual state of the Soviet economy in the years leading up to the dissolution of the Union and in the nearly thirty years thereafter in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. This despite the fact that she has proudly conducted interviews in dilapidated housing in Kyshtym, sat with Kazakh peasants in their yurt, and gathered berries on radiation-contaminated land near Pripyat.

In contrast, individuals who are knowledgeable about the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia will not find surprising any of the following statements – culled from the writings of Murray Feshbach, the preeminent scholar, who spent his career studying the nexus between the Soviet economy and demographic analysis and who passed away recently at the age of 90:

¨   “In part, the inadequacies of rural medical facilities are a reflection of the perennial backwardness of the countryside.”11
¨   “Considering the shortage of … single-use syringes and needles, and the large number of injections given, the potential for a medical disaster is manifest. How do Soviet rural district hospitals perform such sterilization if about 80 percent do not have any hot water at all, 25 percent do not have sewage treatment, and 17 percent no piped water of any sort?”12
¨   “…medical deprivation of the countryside and its acute shortage of so many modern amenities….”13
¨   “…contributing to the shortfall in medications and their supply is the qualitative issue of laboratory standards. No laboratories in Russia [met] good management practice and good laboratory practice even as late as 2000….”14
¨   “…overworked and underqualified doctors in underfinanced and badly equipped clinics and hospitals”15
¨   “…700 major [petroleum product] accident spills … occur every year in Russia….these losses are the equivalent to about 25 Exxon Valdez spills per month!”16
¨   “…the all-but-universal horror of maternity ward conditions.”17
¨   “…inflation rate of 2,539 percent (officially) in 1992….”18
¨   “In the Ukraine, according to a September 1988 disclosure, the asphyxia, pneumonia, respiratory-disorder syndrome and very premature birth that ranked as the principal causes of death among newborns were ‘directly related to the inadequate skills’ of the medical personnel in attendance.”19
¨   “Some Soviet scientists assert that 75 percent of all illness is related to the use and consumption of polluted water.”20
¨   “…lead pollution levels in children (BLL – blood lead levels) above 5 mcg/dl may affect as many as 12% of all Russian children.”21
¨   “…estimated Soviet GNP down by 4 to 5 percent in 1990 and 8 to 10 percent in the first half of 1991….”22

Brown’s naiveté – whether genuine or feigned for narrative effect – is stunning. Here are just a few examples:

¨   The Politburo “…rarely dwelled on the contaminated territories or the people exposed in them….To my surprise, that concern was left to others.” [55]
¨   “The Ukrainian party leadership was under pressure. Waiting on orders from Moscow, they had delayed evacuating Pripyat. They had held the May Day parade because Moscow commanded it so. They stalled on giving out iodine pills because Ilyin told them to wait. All of that was bad advice.” [62-63]
¨   Ukrainian health officials ‘stayed on message’ until 1990, when they started to release information about medical impacts on the population and about the true scope of radiation contamination – “I tried to sort it out. Somebody, at some point, was lying. I tried to make sense of the contradictory evidence.” [164]
¨   “I could not get access to the KGB case files….” [234]

Particularly given the first-person nature of Brown’s narrative, it is legitimate to examine the manner in which stylistic choices within the text support the thrust of her conspiratist argument.23 Again, a few examples, chosen from many similar instances in this text:

¨   “Residents’ households became the spleen where radioactive isotopes moored.” [109, emphasis added]
¨   “Mousseau and Møller are practicing the kind of science left to post-human landscapes, a science that is tedious and hazardous, as much as it is creative and invigorating.” [131, emphasis added]
¨   “Poorly welded fuel rods [in Chernobyl’s first reactor unit] popped inside the reactor like corn kernels in hot oil.” [136, emphasis added]
¨   People living in contaminated areas “…rarely had just one disease but had instead a complex of illness swarming their bodies like a murder of crows.” [163, emphasis added]
¨   The WHO sent a “commission of well-dressed scientists…on an itinerary that included a number of suffering communities.” [211, emphasis added]
¨   “…the UN’s Vienna International Center, a complex of glass, steel, and convenience…” was an edifice in which “…men and women in fashionable suits and impractical shoes glided on polished floors….” [225, emphasis added]
¨   “Behind the international diplomats trailed the scent of cologne and good health.” [225, emphasis added]

And what is perhaps the most outrageous sentence in the entire book:

¨   “…filmmakers walked right into the buzz saw of Westerners’ arguments about failed Soviet medicine and the alleged graft and incompetency of the socialist system.” [288]

When it suits her purpose, however, Brown conveniently contradicts her own hyperbole:

¨   “The [Chernobyl children’s charity] programs were plagued with corruption….” [296]

But the true test of any historical study is the manner in which the historian selects and utilizes existing sources.

As noted earlier, Kate Brown is a remarkably persistent researcher: Manual for Survival contains, in its endnotes [319-320] a list of 27 archives around the world she utilized while preparing her manuscript and 40 personal interviews she conducted, either in person or by telephone, with various figures relevant to her story. The number of government documents – previously unknown to academe or the general public – that she cites is truly outstanding. At one point in the book, in her own inimitable fashion, Brown addresses her readers directly: “Even if you are not one to look at footnotes, you might turn your attention to this one” [195]. Check it out: fn. 68 on pages 366-7 lists more than two dozen previously secret documents.

Beyond that, however, it is important to discuss the public sources Brown relies on, the individuals whom she cites in a positive or derogatory manner, the extent to which discrepant information is ignored or distorted,24 and the readily available published reports that she studiously avoids.

Brown has her heroes and her villains. Chief among her heroes is Keith Baverstock, a specialist in chemistry and molecular genetics who worked for the WHO during the 1980s and ‘90s and who now serves as a senior researcher in Finland; her bête noir is Fred J. Mettler, Jr., a physician, board certified in both radiology and nuclear medicine, and a member of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP) – one of the governmental entities that figures in this narrative. [More about each of them below.]

Throughout this book Brown quotes or cites a large number of individuals, who – although usually not identified by more than their name – are actually well known in the “nuclear world” as fervent opponents of nuclear power and/or nuclear weapons. To mention just a few:

¨   Joseph Mangano – Radiation and Public Health Project, “an independent group of scientists and health professionals dedicated to research and education of health hazards from nuclear reactors and weapons.”25 “In Mad Science, Joseph Mangano strips away the near-smothering layers of distortions and outright lies that permeate the massive propaganda campaigns on behalf of nuclear energy.”26
¨   John Gofman (deceased 2007) – formerly at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a physician and Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology at Berkeley; founder of the now defunct Committee for Nuclear Responsibility, which was formed as a “political and educational organization to disseminate anti-nuclear views and information to the public”27 – claimed in 1991 that a “health-Holocaust” was occurring at Chernobyl. Gofman is the author of Poisoned Power: The Case Against Nuclear Power Before and After Three Mile Island28 and, with Arthur Tamplin, of Population Control Through Nuclear Pollution.29
¨   Rosalie Bertell (deceased 2012) – a specialist in biometry, and a founding member of the International Institute of Concern for Public Health, whose mission is described as “concern for human survival on an intact planet.”30 Dr. Bertell is the intellectual wellspring for Kate Brown’s conspiracy theory and her belief that hundreds of thousands of people will ultimately die as a direct result of Chernobyl.31

Brown’s beliefs about the diseases resulting from Chernobyl radiation are based on two books:

¨   Tchertkoff, Wladimir (editor). 2006. The Crime of Chernobyl: The Nuclear Gulag. London: Glagoslav Publications. ISBN 978-1-784-37931-5.

¨   Yablokov, Alexey V., Vassily B. Nesterenko and Alexey V. Nesterenko (editors). 2009. Chernobyl. Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment. [Consulting Editor Janette D. Sherman-Nevinger]. [Volume 1181, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences]. New York: New York Academy of Sciences. ISBN: 978-1573317573.

Originally published in French, Tschertkoff’s book espouses the conclusions promoted in the Yablokov et al. compilation of studies.

Tschertkoff’s translator and sponsor, Susie Greaves, recently wrote that “The nuclear industry in the West was perfectly aware of RBMK reactor technology and there is no evidence that the West ever warned that an accident was waiting to happen.”32 On the contrary, the U.S. had virtually no knowledge about the RBMK until the Soviet government delivered its inaccurate and misleading report to the IAEA in advance of hastily scheduled meetings in Vienna in August 1986. Accordingly, in order to prepare for the Vienna meetings, the U.S. Department of Energy assembled a team consisting of a dozen (or more) technical translators, brought them to the DOE facility in Germantown, Maryland, and sequestered them over a long weekend as they compiled the first English language information regarding either the reactor design itself or the events that had occurred.33

Yablokov et al. (whose book was first published in Russian by Greenpeace and Bellona) reject modern epidemiological methods. This publication has been roundly criticized in two reviews in the authoritative Journal of Radiological Protection:

¨   Jackson, Duncan. 2011. “Review of Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences).” Journal of Radiological Protection 31(1) [March]: 163-165.

Jackson argues that the book “reflects a conspiracy-theory approach which implies time and again that the International Atomic Energy Agency, the World Health Organisation and others ‘completely neglected’ or misinterpreted significant information sources when evaluating health effects” and that the editors “cite information in an uncritical fashion, such as an account of pigs literally ‘glowing’ as a consequence of contamination.”34

¨   Balonov, M. I. 2012. “On protecting the inexperienced reader from Chernobyl myths.” Journal of Radiological Protection 32 (2) [08 May]: 181-189.

Mikhail Balonov has written extensively on the medical consequences of the 1950 Techa River and 1957 Kyshtym events. His comprehensive review of Yablokov et al. is extremely critical of the methodology and the conclusions presented therein. He states that:

¨   the authors “…suggested a departure from analytical epidemiological [cohort or case-control] studies in favour of [studies based on group averages]. This erroneous approach resulted in the overestimation of the number of accident victims by more than 800 000 deaths during 1987-2004.”35
¨   they make “uncorroborated claims of mass mortality in emergency and recovery operation workers (‘liquidators’), of abnormalities in newborns, and a host of other supposed effects of radiation.”36
¨   that the book “is full of doubtful claims of ‘new methodology’ research” and “contains numerous factual errors.”37
¨   that “…the denial of the analytical approach and the unconditional trust in the … geographic methodology with primitive statistical tests puts an end to the credibility of any conclusions…”38
¨   that “[t]he value of such a review is not just zero, but negative, as its lack of balance may only be obvious to specialists, while inexperienced readers may well be misled.”39

Balonov’s ultimate conclusion is that “Yablokov’s estimation of population mortality due to Chernobyl fallout of about one million before 2004…transports this book from science to the realm of science fiction. Clearly, if such a mass death of people had occurred as a consequence of Chernobyl, this would never have passed unnoticed.”40 Finally, Balonov states categorically that “There are no reasonable grounds to suspect the modern community of experts of concealment of the facts.”41

Kate Brown, for her part, almost completely ignores the massive epidemiological literature that has accumulated as a direct result of the Chernobyl disaster. There have been – literally –thousands of research studies published on related topics. Nearly all of them are the work of international teams including researchers from the U.S., England, Western Europe, the Baltics, Japan, plus Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. Interested readers might consult these reviews of multiple studies:

¨   Cardis, Elizabeth et al. [31 co-authors]. 2006. “Cancer Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident: 20 Years On.” Journal of Radiological Protection 26 (2) [24 April]: 127-140. DOI: 10.1088/0952-4746/26/2/001.
¨   Bromet, E. J., J. M. Havenaar, and L. T. Guey. 2011. “A 25 Year Retrospective Review of the Psychological Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident.” Clinical Oncology 23 (4) [May]: 297-305. DOI: 10.1016/j.clon.2011.01.501.

Brown’s difficulty in this regard is obvious: had she acknowledged the existence and the results described in all the epidemiological literature, she would have had trouble reconciling this information with her reliance on Bertell, Yablokov et al., and Tchertkoff or to square it with her claim that the West has abandoned people living in the contaminated areas of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine to their cruel fate.

But she does highlight two articles published in the journal Nature in a context that, according to her reading of the situation, clearly shows academics conspiring with their governments to attack contrarians. Specifically, Brown discusses these brief notices:

¨   Kazakov, Vasili S., Evgeni P. Demidchik, & Larisa N. Astakhova. 1992. “Thyroid Cancer after Chernobyl.” Nature 359 (№ 6390) [03 September]: 21. DOI: 10.1038/359021a0.
¨   Baverstock, Keith, Bruno Egloff, Aldo Pinchera, Charles Rechti, & Dilwyn Williams. 1992. “Thyroid Cancer after Chernobyl.” Nature 359 (№ 6390) [03 September]: 21-2. DOI: 10.1038/359021b0.

Kazakov and Baverstock, who visited Minsk on a WHO mission, reported a dramatic increase in the incidence of childhood thyroid cancer starting in 1990, just four years after Chernobyl, and attributed this fact to the huge doses of iodine-131 that had been deposited over a wide swath of land in Belarus. This dramatic news was met with skepticism, in part because radioactive iodine had not previously been implicated in thyroid cancer and in part because Western radiation epidemiologists had no prior experience with what had been up to then a very rare phenomenon.  

In fact, these were not the first academic indications of an upsurge in thyroid cancer. In November 1991 a team of Ukrainian and British researchers published an article in The Lancet, a highly respected British medical journal that has been published continuously since 1823.

¨   Prisyazhiuk, Anatoly, O. A. Pjatak, V. A. Buzanov, Gillian K. Reeves, and Valerie Beral. 1991. “Cancer in the Ukraine, post-Chernobyl.” The Lancet 338 [23 November]: 1334-5.

Nevertheless, the notices in Nature, a widely read international journal, spurred medical examinations that ultimately identified cancer in more than 4,000 children – many of whom had been afflicted with a very aggressive type that was often characterized by a specific type of gene mutation (RET3). [Fortunately, thyroid cancer is very treatable: fewer than a dozen of these children had died from their disease through 2006 – twenty years after the accident and about fifteen years since the outbreak began – although that cohort continues as adults to suffer from new cancers.]

Indeed, against a worldwide baseline incidence of this cancer on the level of 0.5 per million children per year, the most thoroughly contaminated areas in Gomel oblast’ ultimately recorded a prevalence above 130 cases per million children per year.42 Thus, the researchers ultimately were vindicated. Accordingly, it might not be an exaggeration to state that the unanticipated outbreak of childhood thyroid cancer precipitated a paradigm shift – a fundamental change in the basic concepts and practices of radiation epidemiology – as belated acceptance of this reality compelled researchers to develop new methodologies of dose reconstruction in the face of inadequate records about the impacted individuals.43

Almost immediately following the publication of these two notices, Nature published three responses from world-renowned epidemiologists:

¨   Beral, Valerie, & Gillian Reeves. 1992. “Childhood Thyroid Cancer in Belarus.” Nature 359 (№ 6397) [22 October]: 680-681. DOI: 10.1038/359680b0.
¨   Shigematsu, I., & J. W. Thiessen. 1992. “Childhood Thyroid Cancer in Belarus.” Nature 359 (№ 6397) [22 October]: 681. DOI: 10.1038/359680b0.
¨   Ron, Elaine, Jay Lubin, & Arthur B. Schneider. 1992. “Thyroid Cancer Incidence.” Nature 360 (№ 6400) [12 November]: 113. DOI: doi:10.1038/360113a0.

Beral, a radiation epidemiologist at Oxford University, has authored more than 100 articles in The Lancet beginning in the 1970s. Reeves, her colleague at Oxford, is a professor of radiation biometry. Shigematsu has been a leading figure in the Life Span Study for many years.44 Thiessen was a medical doctor working in the U.S. Department of Energy.45 Ron (deceased 2010), a senior investigator for the Radiation Epidemiology Branch at the National Cancer Institute, was one of the world’s foremost experts in radiation epidemiology and in the causes of thyroid cancer.46

None of the comments challenged the accuracy of the numbers published by Kazakov and Baverstock. Rather, Beral and Reeves suggested that, due to the fact that the reported numbers relied on histological examination of asymptomatic subjects, it was possible that some of the cases may have been ‘occult’ nodules “which are indolent clinically” and might “never progress to frank symptomatic disease.”47 Shigematsu and Thiessen stated that the data in the reports “are limited and preliminary,” and that “studies of these consequences must be carefully pursued and based on scientific methodologies.” The Japanese specialist offered the support of the Hiroshima-based Radiation Effects Research Foundation in conducting such studies.48 Ron and her colleagues argued that “carefully controlled epidemiological studies are needed to understand the true impact of the accident.”49 To this reviewer, Brown’s contention [251-252] that these scholars were part of an international conspiracy stretches credulity beyond the breaking point.

Brown also uses innuendo and exaggeration as stylistic tools to support her main thesis. Some examples:

James Asselstine

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) published a study saying Chernobyl could never happen in the United States.50 Internally, however, one of the five NRC commissioners, James Asselstine, argued the same accident could indeed occur in the United States and that the NRC was not prepared for it.51 His concerns dismissed, Asselstine left the NRC that month [247].

Asselstine’s term as an NRC Commissioner came to an end a month after this report was released, so he was scheduled to leave in any event, and he returned to the private sector. There is no evidence adduced that his departure was somehow related to release of the report. Nevertheless, Brown allows the reader to infer that Asselstine resigned in protest, which is simply not the case.

Gordon McLeod

The accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on 28 March 1979 was a true meltdown of the reactor core – technologically a much worse event than the steam explosion that destroyed Chernobyl’s Unit № 4. Citing Joseph Mangano,52 Brown writes:

When Pennsylvania State Health Commissioner Gordon McLeod announced nine months later that child mortality in a ten-mile radius around the plant had doubled, the governor did not order an investigation of the problem, but instead fired McLeod. [60]

Brown sees this as just another indication of the nuclear establishment’s indifference to suffering among the population. But McLeod’s statement was completely irresponsible. In the first place, a grand total of 15 (!) curies of iodine-131 was released beyond the grounds of the power plant – not enough to cause any harm to flora, fauna, or humans;53 and, as a matter of fact the accident caused no medical casualties. However, alarmed by national news coverage and the local media, many mothers of small children evacuated the area around the power plant needlessly. As a result, they suffered a version of PTSD that was still afflicting them ten years later.54

David Marples

Marples, a history professor at the University of Alberta, Canada, and a fellow at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, has published extensively on topics related to Belarus, Ukraine, and nuclear power safety. He is no friend of nuclear power. Brown, while discussing the fact that in 1990 “Soviet doctors were well aware of a new trend in thyroid cancers among children” [242], cites Belarus: From Soviet Rule to Nuclear Catastrophe55 in footnote 11 on page 379. Brown writes: “Marples reports the first jump in thyroid cancers in Ukraine in 1986.” Here is what Marples actually wrote on page 104:

Among children prior to Chernobyl, there were seven cases of [thyroid cancer] in the republic. Between 1986 and 1989 a small increase in [thyroid cancer] was detected among children: two cases in 1986; four in 1987; and five in 1988. However, in 1990, 29 cases were suddenly detected. By 1991 the figure had jumped to 59….

Apparently, one person’s “small increase” is another person’s “first jump” in thyroid cancers. By the way, any cancers that became clinically identifiable in 1986, 1987, 1988, and 1989 already existed before Chernobyl blew up. In informal logic the fallacy here is known as post hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin: "after this, therefore because of this") – just because Event B occurred after Event A does not necessarily mean that Event A caused Event B. Coincidences do happen in real life, if not in the mind of conspiratists.

Fred Mettler

Based on information from Olga Degtyariova, a Ukrainian endocrinologist, and Valentina Drozd, a medical doctor, in 1991 Mettler was shown slides of twenty thyroid biopsies, which he confirmed to be carcinogenic [260]. Brown continues: “...a year later Mettler published a major article about thyroid nodules among children in Chernobyl territories, but he did not mention the twenty thyroid cancers he had verified” [261].

The article in question was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.56 Given the fact that this study had fifteen co-authors (five of whom were Slavic), it seems a little misleading to write that “Metter published” a major article. But, then, he is one of the perpetrators of the grand conspiracy.

In the text of their article, the researchers state that “[t]he purpose of our study was to assess the prevalence, size, type, and distribution of thyroid nodules in the population that had been continuously residing around Chernobyl from 1985 to 1990.”57 Among the research results was the following statement:

¨   Overall, there was no apparent difference in the prevalence of nodules … between contaminated and control groups; this was also true when adults and children were considered separately.58

Further, the research team implies that the generally bad health of people in rural areas will make cohort and case-control studies extremely difficult to conduct:

¨   The large number of adults in unexposed populations with sonographically detected thyroid nodules will confound future detection of potentially radiation-induced nodules and carcinomas in the general population living around Chernobyl.59

Moreover, they explicitly include the following caveat: “[T]he fact that ultrasonography is not reliable in differentiating between benign and malignant nodules is well established. Consequently, we did not attempt to make such differentiations.”60 Accordingly, the study as designed had nothing at all to do with cancer per se, although Brown obviously thinks it should have. Interestingly, however, the research report does contain an oblique statement that might have satisfied a more objective observer:

¨   Since the accident, some local scientists have reported that the prevalence of thyroid disease has increased in the populations potentially exposed to even very small amounts of radioactive iodine.61

There is more one could say about Manual for Survival regarding issues such as latency (the amount of time it takes from exposure to radiation until clinical evidence of disease can be detected) or the difficulty in conducting a long-term study of low-dose impacts from radiation when the total population affected by Chernobyl is around five million people  ̶  for whom incomplete, incorrect, or simply no dose estimates are available.

However, suffice it to say that as travelogues go, this book is bad science and bad history.

In closing, it may be appropriate to quote the first sentence in a review of Manual for Survival by the well-known historian Sheila Fitzpatrick that appeared recently in the Australian Book Review:62 “This is a very disturbing book.” This reviewer would agree wholeheartedly with Professor Fitzpatrick – but for a completely different reason.

1	Balonov, M. I. 2012. “On protecting the inexperienced reader from Chernobyl myths.” Journal of Radiological Protection 32 (2) [08 May]: 181-189. DOI: 10.1088/0952-4746/32/2/181.
2	Battist, Lewis, and Harold T. Peterson, Jr. 1980. “Radiological Consequences of the Three Mile Island Accident.” Radiation Protection. A Systematic Approach to Safety. Proceedings of the 5th Congress of the International Radiation Protection Society, Jerusalem, March 1980. New York: Pergamon Press. ISBN 978-0080259123. Available here.
3	Baverstock, Keith, Bruno Egloff, Aldo Pinchera, Charles Rechti, & Dilwyn Williams. 1992. “Thyroid Cancer after Chernobyl.” Nature 359 (№ 6390) [03 September]: 21-2. DOI
4	Beral, Valerie, & Gilllian Reeves. 1992. “Childhood Thyroid Cancer in Belarus.” Nature 359 (№ 6397) [22 October]: 680-681. DOI: 10.1038/359680b0.
5	Bertell, Rosalie. 2006. “Behind the Cover-Up: Assessing Conservatively the Full Chernobyl Death Toll.” Pacific Geologist [Winter]: 15-18, 39-40.
6	Bertell, Rosalie. 2008. “Chernobyl: An Unbelievable Failure to Help.” International Journal of Health Services 38 (3): 543-560. DOI: 10.2190/HS.38.3.i.
7	Bromet, E. J., J. M. Havenaar, and L. T. Guey. 2011. “A 25 Year Retrospective Review of the Psychological Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident.” Clinical Oncology 23 (4) [May]: 297-305.  DOI: 10.1016/j.clon.2011.01.501.
8	Brown, Kate (Kathryn L.). 2004. A Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674019492.
9	Brown, Kate (Kathryn L.). 2013. Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-985576-6.
10	Brown, Kate (Kathryn L.). 2015. Dispatches from Dystopia: Histories of Places Not Yet Forgotten. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-24279-8.
11	Cardis, Elizabeth. Geoffrey Howe, Elaine Ron, Vladimir Bebeshko, Tetyana Bogdanova, Andre Bouville, Zhanat Carr, Vadim Chumak, Scott Davis, Yuryi Demidchik, Vladimir Drozdovitch, Norman Gentner, Natalya Gudzenko, Maureen Hatch, Victor Ivanov, Peter Jacob, Eleonora Kapitonova, Yakov Kenigsberg, Ausrele Kesminiene, Kenneth J Kopecky, Victor Kryuchkov, Anja Loos, Aldo Pinchera, Christoph Reiners, Michael Repacholi, Yoshisada Shibata, Roy E. Shore, Gerry Thomas, Margot Tirmarche, Shunichi Yamashita and Irina Zvonova. 2006. “Cancer consequences of the Chernobyl accident: 20 years on.” Journal of Radiological Protection 26 (2) [24 April]: 127-140. DOI: 10.1088/0952-4746/26/2/001.
12	Dew, M. A., & E. J. Bromet. 1993. “Predictors of Temporal Patterns of Psychiatric Distress during 10 Years Following the Nuclear Accident at Three Mile Island.” Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology 28 (2) [March]: 49-55.
13	Diamond, Stuart. 1986. “U.S. Expert Doubts Soviet on Chernobyl’s Effects.” New York Times [20 September]. Section 1, page 28. Available here.
14	Drozd, V., O. Polyanskaya, V. Ostapenko, Y. Demidchik, I. Biko, and C. Reiners. 2002. “Systematic Ultrasound Screening as a Significant Tool for the Early Detection of Thyroid Carcinoma in Belarus.” Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology & Metabolism 15 (7) [Jul-Aug]: 979-984.
15	Feshbach, Murray. no date. Secret Cities, Glasnost and Global Environmental Threats. Washington, D. C.: The National Council for Soviet and East European Research.
16	Feshbach, Murray. 1991. “The Enormity of the Soviet Union’s Health Disaster,” Cosmos: A Journal of Emerging Issues 1 (1). Washington, D.C.: The Cosmos Club.
17	Feshbach, Murray, and Alfred Friendly, Jr. 1992. Ecocide in the USSR: Health and Nature Under Siege. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0-456-01664-2.
18	Feshbach, Murray. 1995. Ecological Disaster: Cleaning Up the Hidden Legacy of the Soviet Regime. New York: The Twentieth Century Fund Press. ISBN 0-87078-364-5.
19	Feshbach, Murray. 2002. “Russia’s Demographic and Health Meltdown.” Compendium of Papers Submitted to the Joint Economic Committee. Congress of the United States. 107th Congress: 1st Session. December 2001. Washington, D. C.: USJPO. 283-304. Accessed 18 June 2019 here.
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This analysis was initially published as Chapter Twenty-Seven in

David Cratis Williams, Marilyn J. Young, and Michael K. Launer. The Rhetorical Rise and Demise of “Democracy” in Russian Political Discourse – Volume One: The Path from Disaster toward Russian “Democracy.” Boston, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2021: 393–409.

Our extended review critiques the historical methodology manifested in the book and the lack of scientific knowledge displayed by its author. A very brief review appears in The Slavic and East European Journal 64, no. 4 (Winter 2020): 738. A commentary regarding a special issue devoted to Manual for Survival appears in Slavic Review 79, no. 4 (Winter 2020): 914–919. 

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Michael K. Launer is Professor Emeritus of Russian at Florida State University. In 1987 he interpreted for the first group of Soviet scientists visiting the United States following the Chernobyl nuclear accident. A State Department certified technical interpreter, he supported Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Department of Energy assistance programs through 2012.

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