American Rhetoric: Movie Speech

"Chernobyl" (2019)

Valery Legasov Delivers  Revelatory Concluding Remarks at Trial

Legasov: No one in the room that night knew the shutdown button [AZ-5] could act as a detonator. They didn't know it because it was kept from them.

Kadnikov: Comrade Legasov, you're contradicting your own testimony in Vienna.

Legasov: My testimony in Vienna was a lie. I lied -- to the world. [I'm] not the only one who kept the secrets. There are many. We were following orders -- from the KGB, from the Central Committee. And right now, there are 16 reactors in the Soviet Union with the same fatal flaw. Three of them are still running less than 20 kilometers away at Chernobyl.

Kadnikov: Professor Legasov, if you mean to suggest the Soviet State is somehow responsible for what happened, then I must warn you, you are treading on dangerous ground.

Legasov: I've already trod on dangerous ground. We're on dangerous ground right now, because of our secrets and our lies. They're practically what define us. When the truth offends, we -- we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there. But it is -- still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid.

That is how an RBMK reactor core explodes: Lies.