Boris Shcherbina


Boris Yevdokimovich Shcherbina was a Soviet politician who served as a vice-chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1984 to 1989. During this period he supervised Soviet crisis management of two major catastrophes: the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and the 1988 Armenian earthquake.

Life

Shcherbina was born in Debaltsevo, Ukrainian SSR on October 5, 1919 to the family of a Ukrainian railroad worker. He joined the CPSU in 1939 and volunteered for army service during the Winter War with Finland.
Shcherbina is credited with co-founding the oil and gas industry in Western Siberia while serving as the CPSU first secretary in Tyumen Oblast and later as the Minister of Construction of Oil and Gas Industries. In 1976, Shcherbina had become a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and kept the position until his death.
In 1984, he became a vice-chairman of the Council of Ministers and as such was in charge of dealing with the Chernobyl disaster outcome in 1986. Shcherbina served in a similar role after the catastrophic 1988 Armenian earthquake. He proposed inviting international rescuers – from Austria and Czechoslovakia – who had thermal imagers and specially trained dogs at their disposal to search for living people.
In 1990, he opposed the election of Boris Yeltsin to the chairmanship of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, describing him as "a man of low moral qualities", whose election would "pave the way for the darkest period in our country's history". However, Yeltsin was elected and became the first president of the Russian Federation after the collapse of the Soviet Union a year later.

Death

Shcherbina died in Moscow in 1990, aged 70. General Nikolai Tarakanov, who worked with Shcherbina during the clean-up operation, stated that he knew Shcherbina "very well" and that he "exposed himself to large doses of radiation" at Chernobyl. It is unclear if his death was related to radiation as a 1988 decree prevented Soviet doctors from citing radiation as a cause of death or illness.

Honours and awards

In his position of Minister of Oil & Gas, he was awarded the honorary title of Hero of Socialist Labor for major contributions to the development of the country's oil and gas industry, which was the highest award for achievements within the national economy. During his life, he was also awarded four Orders of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution and two Orders of the Red Banner of Labour.
In Gyumri, Armenia, a street was named after him in his honour. On 10 November 2004, a bust of Shcherbina was erected in Nikolai Nemtsov Square in Tyumen, Tyumen Oblast.

In popular culture

Shcherbina is portrayed by Stellan Skarsgård in the Sky/HBO miniseries Chernobyl and Vernon Dobtcheff in the BBC docudrama Surviving Disaster.