site.btaProf. Dimitar Vatsov on Disinformation in Bulgaria following Chernobyl Disaster

In early 2025, the Sofia Centre for Advanced Studies and the Institute for Studies of the Recent Past launched a regular seminar titled "Bulgaria after Chernobyl". As part of the seminar, Dimitar Vatsov, Professor of Philosophy at New Bulgarian University, presents the study "Bulgarian Chernobyl: Archaeology of Moral Debilism" where he examines the fallout from the Chernobyl disaster and its impact in Bulgaria.

In an interview with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA), Prof. Vatsov shares what motivated him to investigate the scale of disinformation in Bulgaria following the Chernobyl disaster. 

“Chernobyl is a painful topic for many people in Bulgaria. Among younger generations who did not experience Chernobyl firsthand, there is a lingering sense - shaped by family memory - that something went terribly wrong and that the Bulgarian authorities failed to act appropriately,” Prof. Vatsov said.

Around the time of the disaster, in May, Vatsov was an eighth-grade student. He recalls being sent on a student brigade to harvest spinach and spring onions during the days of radioactive rainfall. It was not until the third day that the principal of the National School for Ancient Languages and Cultures in Sofia called off the activity.

Years later, Prof. Vatsov watched the HBO miniseries Chernobyl, which piqued his interest in the topic and led him to begin researching archival documents. He found no academic or historical studies in Bulgarian. The health authorities did not produce statistics on the impact of Chernobyl in Bulgaria. Although radiologists collected data, it never received proper public attention.

Bulgaria remains largely absent from many of the international radiation atlases - alongside Albania, one of the most closed-off totalitarian countries in the region at the time, and Portugal, which was not affected by the radioactive cloud, Prof. Vatsov said.

The first public acknowledgment of radiation came on May 7 - more than a week after the radioactive cloud had arrived in Bulgaria. Appearing on Bulgarian National Television, Lyubomir Shindarov, then first deputy minister of public health and chief sanitary inspector, and Ivan Pandev, chairperson of the committee for the peaceful uses of atomic energy, said that there was radiation in Bulgaria and offered few basic precautions that were insufficient. On May 24, the BTA released a statement declaring the radiation threat to be over - a message repeated across all media outlets. “In this way, the Bulgarian public was left unprotected,” Prof. Vatsov added.

The measures that had to be adopted had to do with a more rigorous hygiene regime, including frequent handwashing, not eating certain vegetables, thoroughly washing others with water, and soaking meat and dairy products in water. These protocols were fully adopted by the Bulgarian Armed Forces, Prof. Vatsov said.

Then defence minister General Dobri Djurov and General Stoyan Sabev, chief of the Bulgarian Armed Forces' support services, took all necessary measures to protect the military personnel. Protective measures were also implemented for the senior nomenklatura. The authorities acted rationally when it came to their own safety, taking all possible measures through the State Security’s Safety and Security Directorate (SSD). However, they chose not to apply the same precautions to the general population. The data in the documents Prof. Vatsov examined indicated that there was zero protection for the population.

Among the documents Prof. Dimitar Vatsov used were BTA’s confidential bulletins. The government nomenklatura that was taken care of by SSD received the C-2 and C-3 special confidential bulletins, available to some 200-300 people. These people had access to SSD-run restaurants and official residences. They were kept informed via the bulletins about protective measures being implemented around the world, including in socialist states. 

The most extensive documentation comes from a court case conducted between 1990 and 1994 against Grigor Stoichkov, then deputy prime minister of the People's Republic of Bulgaria and chairperson of the permanent government commission for disasters and accidents, and Lyubomir Shindarov, Prof. Vatsov said. These two officials were the only communist-era functionaries held accountable for their inaction, despite being directly responsible. Only middle-echelon functionaries were convicted as higher-ranking officials had not officially signed anything. The case documents allow a detailed reconstruction of events, including institutional orders and radiation level reports broken down by district and by the hour, Prof. Vatsov noted.

He added that BTA’s archive provides a clear comparative perspective showing what measures were taken in Bulgaria compared to those in other European countries. The BTA bulletins show, day by day, when measures were taken. For instance, Romania – despite being under the regime of Nicolae Ceausescu, which was considered to be more retrograde than Bulgaria’s, issued public guidelines and confirmed the presence of radiation as early as May 2, just a day after the radioactive cloud reached the Balkan peninsula. Belgrade followed suit. While there was an information blackout across all socialist states, Bulgaria's was the most severe, Prof. Vatsov said. 

A year after the Chernobyl disaster, in 1987, the People's Republic of Bulgaria experienced a second spike in radioactive contamination in animals due to a failure to implement the necessary measures a year earlier. The animal feed from 1986 had been stored instead of destroyed and was distributed to farms a year later. As a result, dairy and meat products with elevated radiation levels reached the country's stores. Despite the recurrence, no one was held accountable. The lack of basic protective measures that the authorities knew had to be implemented but were neglected constitutes “moral debilism”, Prof. Vatsov noted.

“Many people were affected by Chernobyl. Some of the heavy radionuclides carried by the Chernobyl cloud are still present and continue to irradiate us to this day. Caesium has a half-life of 30 years. Strontium has a half-life of 80 to 90 years and its decay has not even begun,“ Prof. Vatsov concluded.

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On April 26, 1986, at 1:23 a.m. local time, an explosion occurred in a RBMK-1000 reactor during a planned shutdown of Unit 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the former USSR, located in present-day Ukraine.

According to the World Nuclear Association, two people died immediately during the accident. Some 600 plant workers and firefighters were exposed to high doses of radiation, 28 of whom died by the end of 1986. More than 200,000 square kilometres of the Soviet Union – primarily present-day Ukraine, as well as Russia and Belarus – were subjected to radioactive contamination. Nearly 52,000 square kilometers were heavily polluted with highly radioactive isotopes such as caesium-137 and strontium-90, with half-lives of 30 and 28 years, respectively. More than 600,000 people took part in the cleanup operation. About one-tenth of these people died and 165,000 were left with permanent disabilities. Some 115,000 people were evacuated from the 30-kilometre exclusion zone surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

On April 30, 1986, the following statement was published in BTA's International News daily bulletin:

"The Council of Ministers of Ukraine reported that, according to government commission data, the radiation situation at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and surrounding area is currently improving. The air quality in Kyiv and across the region is not a cause for concern. The quality of drinking water and water in rivers and reservoirs remains within standards. Environmental monitoring is ongoing."

On May 5, 1986, the BTA Home News bulletin published a statement from the Bulgarian Committee for the Peaceful Use of Atomic Energy at the Council of Ministers. The statement read: "Radiation monitoring continues. The monitoring network has been strengthened and expanded to provide continuous data for the entire country. In most areas, no deviation from normal radiation levels has been observed, with a national average ranging from 0.015 to 0.025 milliroentgen per hour.”

According to United Nations estimates, around 9 million people were directly affected by radiation exposure, and the consequences are expected to last for decades.

On November 30, 1996, the first reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was permanently shut down. The plant ceased operations completely on December 15, 2000.