Chernobyl (TV Mini Series)

The Happiness of All Mankind (2019)

Stellan Skarsgård: Boris Shcherbina

Photos 

Quotes 

• [Shcherbina screams into the phone after finding out why the West German robot failed within seconds of being deployed on Masha] 

  Boris Shcherbina : OF COURSE I know they're listening! I want them to hear, I want them to hear it all! Do you know what we're doing here? Tell those idiots what they have done!

  [beat] 

  Boris Shcherbina : I DON'T GIVE A FUCK!

  [beat] 

  Boris Shcherbina : Tell them, go tell them! Ryzhkov! Go tell Ligachyov! Tell fucking Gorbachev! Tell them!

  [he smashes the phone to pieces in rage. Cut to Legasov and Tarakanov waiting outside; Shcherbina emerges from the trailer, dragging the broken phone behind him, and tosses it to the ground] 

  Boris Shcherbina : The official position of the State is that a global nuclear catastrophe is not possible in the Soviet Union. They told the Germans that the highest detected level of radiation was 2,000 roentgen. They gave them the propaganda number. That robot was never going to work.

  [to a nearby soldier] 

  Boris Shcherbina : We need a new phone.

• [while looking at photos of the destroyed reactor] 

  Valery Legasov : The atom is a humbling thing.

  General Tarakanov : It's not humbling, it's humiliating. Why is the core still exposed to the air? Why have we not already covered it up?

  Valery Legasov : We want to, but we can't get close enough. The debris on the roof is graphite from the core itself. Until we can push it off the roof back into the reactor, it'll kill anyone who gets near it. You can see, the roof is in three levels. We've named them. This small one here is Katya. 1,000 roentgen per hour. Presume two hours of exposure is fatal. The one on the side, Nina. 2,000 roentgen, one hour fatal.

  General Tarakanov : We used remote-controlled bulldozers in Afghanistan.

  Boris Shcherbina : Too heavy. They'd fall right through.

  General Tarakanov : So then...

  Valery Legasov : Moon rovers. Lunakhod's STR-1s. They're light, and if we line them with lead, they can withstand the radiation.

  Boris Shcherbina : We couldn't put a man on the moon. At least we can keep a man off a roof.

  Valery Legasov : That is the most important thing, General. Under no circumstances can men go up there. Robots only.

  General Tarakanov : What about this large section here?

  Boris Shcherbina : [grimly]  Masha.

  Valery Legasov : 12,000 roentgen. If you were to stand there in full protective gear, head-to-toe, for two minutes, your life expectancy would be cut in half. By three minutes, you're dead within months. Even our lunar rovers won't work on Masha. That amount of gamma radiation penetrates everything. The particles literally shred the circuits in microchips apart. If it's more complicated than a light switch, Masha will destroy it.

  Boris Shcherbina : It would be fair to say that that piece of roof is the most dangerous place on earth.

  [Tarakanov considers this] 

  General Tarakanov : So... what do we do?

  Boris Shcherbina : That's what we wanted to ask you.

• Valery Legasov : When I saw the reactor blown open, I still didn't think it could be this flaw in the A Zed five. Because the flaw will not lead to an explosion unless the operators have pushed the reactor to the edge of disaster.

  Boris Shcherbina : So it is their fault.

  Valery Legasov : Yes.

  Ulana Khomyuk : But not only their fault

  Valery Legasov : No.

  Ulana Khomyuk : Is that what you're gonna say in Vienna?

  Boris Shcherbina : You can't possibly be that naive.

• Boris Shcherbina : We couldn't put a man on the moon. At least we can keep a man off a roof.

• Boris Shcherbina : To think that's what we put on the moon.

  Valery Legasov : Not that one.

  Boris Shcherbina : I know not that one.

  General Tarakanov : This robot was in storage. They can build two more; that should cover Nina and Katya.

  Boris Shcherbina : Masha?

  General Tarakanov : The Central Committee have informed me that they may have found something that could work up there. On the outside.

  Boris Shcherbina : American?

  General Tarakanov : Course not. German police robot. The West Germans, so as you can imagine, that wasn't an easy conversation to have.

• Boris Shcherbina : I've known braver souls than you, Khomyuk. Men who had their moment and did nothing. Because when it's your life and the lives of everyone you love, your moral conviction doesn't mean anything. It leaves you. All you want at that moment is not to be shot.

• Boris Shcherbina : [to Khomyuk]  What you are proposing is that Legasov humiliate a nation that is obsessed with not being humiliated.