On 29 July 1987 the trial of #Chernobyl plant leadership ended with 10 years sentences for the director Bryukhanov, head of engineering Fomin and his deputy Dyatlov.
This ruling was a classic example of the Soviet “legal system” - the people convicted were formally responsible for the decisions that led to the disaster, but they were not the decision makers.
The primary responsibility for the disaster was on the local (Kiev) and central (Moscow) Communist Party authorities who insisted on conducting the planned reactor test in spite of its known faults, specifically because it was planned. In #USSR the Plan was absolutely sacred and built from top to bottom, in detachment of any physical reality. Executive level not following the Plan was subject to criminal charges based on article 58 of the RSFSR Criminal Code (“sabotage” and others). The Party leadership insisted on the testing to be conducted in spite of the plant management - the one who was convicted - asking to postpone it due to reactor faults.
The faults in reactor were known for a long time by its designer and manufacturer - the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy (NIKIET) - who however chose to hide them because, if revealed, they would hamper their own Plan. Therefore reactor operating procedures, closely followed by the plant staff during the tragic test, did not account for the faults.
In the period immediately following the reactor explosion and fire, local Party officials actively blocked emergency response and dismissed the impact in their communication to Moscow - once again, because that would negatively impact their careers. None of them were actually convicted, of course.
So if you want an example in corporate greed and dysfunctional management leading to world-scale environmental disaster, the Soviet management of Chernobyl makes a perfect case study. Except nobody uses it, because USSR had “Socialist” in its name so when they caused an environmental disaster that must have been, naturally, a “honest mistake” that had nothing to do with incompetence or greed 🤷
If you want a book that documents all of the above details - which are usually skipped in most narratives about Chernobyl - I can recommend a 2019 book “Midnight in Chernobyl” by Adam Higginbotham which uses tons of Soviet original documents to show what has really happened there and why.
