Before the first astronaut was sent into space, someone who could meet several ideological criteria had to be carefully selected to lend the enterprise a distinctive human face. Yuri Gagarin was chosen to be that man. After the explosion of the No. 4 nuclear reactor at Chornobyl (this is the Ukrainian form of the place-name) it was the countless liquidators who came to symbolize the disaster. There were a great many of them. It was no longer a single face. Robert Musil was right to claim that a man can’t be angry at his own time without suffering some damage. […]