Volodymyr Shcherbytsky

Volodymyr Vasyliovych Shcherbytsky (17 February 1918 – 16 February 1990) was a Ukrainian Soviet politician, military officer and engineer who served as First Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party from 1972 to 1989. A close ally of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and member of the Dnipropetrovsk Mafia, Shcherbytsky replaced the moderate reformist leader Petro Shelest in 1972. Shcherbytsky ruled as a neo-Stalinist, overseeing Russification of Ukrainian society, a crackdown on dissidents and intelligentsia, as well as a rapid shift to nuclear power, ultimately resulting in the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Three years later, in 1989 against mass widespread protests against his rule, while the USSR began to collapse, he was removed from power by Gorbachev as part of a broader effort to get rid of hardline CPSU party bosses. An actor who appears to resemble Shcherbystky is seen during the second episode, when Gorbachev is chairing a meeting to discuss how to respond to the disaster.