In the Soviet Union, the reactor meltdown in Chernobyl was officially termed an "accident" -- in the West, it was a "catastrophe." Were the Soviets propagandistically downplaying the extent of an event so likely to inspire fear and terror? Was "accident" a euphemism like "engagement" for war, "landfill" for a nuclear waste site or "economically disadvantaged" for the poor?

Clearly Soviet officials did have an interest in playing down the event. The Russian term for "accident" normally refers to the collision of two ships. The word derives from the Arabic "awar" (flaw, damage) and entered Germanic languages early on, becoming "Havarie" in German. In Grimm's Dictionary, the etymological dictionary the Brothers Grimm began compiling in 1838, "Havarie" is hardly felt to be a foreign word any longer. Another dictionary claims the word originally refered to damaged cargo. These days, Germans apply the word "Havarie" to catastrophes at sea and in the sky; the term can be applied to ships as well as to airplanes.

According to the Duden, Germany's standard dictionary, a "Havarie" is not quite a "Katastrophe" -- and the concept of catastrophe seems to have been the one Soviet authorities were particularly eager to avoid. But the Duden also gives "damage to a nuclear plant" as one of the meanings of "Havarie," citing a 1964 edition of the East German daily Neues Deutschland as a reference. Was the newspaper, the central organ of East Germany's ruling SED party, already following Soviet guidelines back then? In Russian, even a car crash can be an "accident" and the word is sometimes used in this sense in Austria as well. In German, a car accident would be neither a "Havarie" nor a "Katastrophe."

 

The literal meaning of "catastrophe" is simply "turning point" or "reversal." A catastrophe is a "turn for the worse." The way the word is used today, it suggests natural disasters rather than the outcome of human action. In German mediaspeak, floods, earthquakes and famines are regularly described as "Katastrophen." Nor has today's rampant desire to dramatize everything left this word unscathed. Germans can now be heard to say things like "His haircut is a catastrophe" or "The chancellor's speech was one big catastrophe."

In ancient tragedy, the concept of the "turn for the worse" reflects a view of the world in which there is no escape from ruin, and in which humans are doomed to move blindly through life -- like Oedipus, who killed his father and married his mother, or like the "technological progress" that has lost so much of its appeal after Chernobyl, even if some insist that what happened there was "only an accident."