What the Russians did at Chernobyl was they asked the army for volunteers fully informing the soldiers that it could be a suicide mission. They ended up getting more volunteers than they needed.
Nobody volunteered, this was soviet russia. The 'bio-robots'[1] were all culled from reservist regiments and most of them were absolutely scarred shit of going in and cleaning up.
Even the miners who worked to re-support the foundation were never 'asked' - they were simply bought onto the site and dumped there.
The full time military units never went anywhere near the reactor - that was for the reservists. They needed the military units to keep everybody else inline.
As a person who's family survived eastern euro communism, I can tell you that your view of it is greatly, greatly skewed and straight out of what they wanted people to believe.
there was no 'please' or 'thank you' or 'yes' or 'no' - there was say nothing, or be missing.
[1] Why they were called biorobots is chilling. The roof of and surroundings of the reactor had to be cleaned up. They bought in robots, but they would break down due to the high radiation exposure. It is estimated that on the roof it only took 40 seconds of exposure to receive a lethal dose. When the robots broke down, the army response command bought in reservists who they dubbed the 'bio-robots'. These guys were given sheets of lead to stick to themselves to provide some protection, and then sent up to the roof holding a shovel in 1 minute intervals. Some of the bio-robots made 5 or more trips - there were almost 200,000 of them in total, and it is estimated that over 25,000 died right afterwards, and the majority are now disabled or dead. All of the official reports were downplayed and the incidents covered up until after the wall fell.
Volunteers? In Soviet Russia? You are kidding me. I lived there (not in Russia, but it does not matter).
I was a small kid at the time, but I have heard a family story a few times how my father stayed out of work and home not to be included into the list of "volunteers".
There were people asking for him at work. The reasons for choosing him? He was an engineer and young enough.
He got notified by a coworker and got himself a certificate from a doctor to stay out of work.
A lot of other young guys didn't get a warning in advance and now suffer the illnesses they got from "volunteering".
Yes, I know there are a lot of "Liquidators" that were forced to work at Chernobyl. But the original crew that was going up to the roof and disposing material by hand, those guys were military volunteers. Here I found the story of one guy that volunteered http://www.chernobylee.com/articles/chernobyl/interview-with...
Apparently those guys were treated as heroes, got benefits like higher pensions and being able to go to the front of any line (cool!).
Just to add to the public thrashing of your comment..
My Estonian father-in-law was given 5 minutes notice to pack his bags at 5am, and taken to Chernobyl along with many other Estonians. He had no choice. He was not told where they were going.
Thankfully, his task was to be a driver for the Russian officals (who wisely stayed some distance away from the reactor), rather than clearing up the power station.
4200 people who "volunteered" in a similar manner currently reside in Estonia. Many of those who were taken have since died.
I was just in the middle of this. I'm at about 4 minutes, and the people have gas masks around their necks that they're not even bothering to use. Seems like they're oblivious.
