>The Bhopal disaster in Madhya Pradesh, India on December 3, 1984 was the worst industrial disaster in history. Eight thousand persons were killed outright by a leak of deadly methyl isocyanate from a Union Carbide pesticide plant and half a million injured, of whom 23,000 would die afterward. In 1989, Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) of the United States paid $470 million (equivalent to $1.3 billion in 2024) to settle litigation stemming from the disaster.[2]
This happened and everyone looked away and ignored it but then two years later Chernobyl happens and everyone holds it up as a fatal condemnation of the USSR and Gorbachev cries and flagellates himself.
>>18500676Because your corrupt Indian govt. took the hush money instead of exploding it into an international ordeal.
>>18500605Do it again Union Carbide!
>>18500676Chernobyl was one of the events that led to the USSR's collapse so it had long term geopolitical significance, Bhopal did not.
>>18501192Chernobyl led to the collapse of the USSR because the west ran news on it 24/7 for months and Gorbachev was a little bitch who treated it like the fucking Holocaust and allowed it to become a great shame that broke people's trust in his nation. Bhopal led to nothing because no one bother turning it into a propaganda piece.
Okay but why do India and China dominate the "Most polluted shithole" list consistently even decades later?
>>18501235Later industrialization, larger population, and in China's case, being the largest producer of goods on the planet.
>>18500605How do you even handle that many bodies?
>>18501228>allowed it to become a great shame that broke people's trust in his nationThe USSR tried to cover it up and only got exposed when the radiation was do bad it started setting off Geiger counters in other countries, I can imagine why this eroded trust of soviet citizens
>>18501192>>18501228>he thinks Chernobyl was what caused the USSR to collapse and not the Soviet-Afghan War that completely shattered the aura of invincibility of the Red Army and began stirring up restlessness among Soviet Muslims.
>>18501333Chernobyl did not cause the Soviet collapse and neither did the Afghan war. They were significant movers but they in themselves didn't necessitate the dissolution of the USSR. That was caused by Gorbachev rapidly decentralizing power leading ultimately to all of the eastern bloc and then soviet republics breaking away.
>>18501333>Soviet-Afghan WarThe Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan because their country was imploding, not the other way around.
>>18501337The coup attempt was what did it. If the KGB goon hardliners hadn’t utterly ratfucked the reforms they wouldn’t have destabilized the country.
>>18501558Gorbachev's economic reforms were not producing results, and at the same time he completely overhauled the political system in an attempt to empower reformers but instead ended up losing control. Then with the economy failing and the political system chaos, he gives everyone freedom of speech and gives more power to the republics, so the papers are full of government criticism and all the republic leaders start to see secession as a real option. The March referendum does show that even with all of these fuckups Gorbachev still probably could have salvaged a 9 republic Soviet Union but yes the coup was the final straw that let Yeltsin do his stupid speech and create independent Russia at which point all of the other republics had to leave whether they wanted to or not.
