Talk:1988 Spitak earthquake
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[edit] initial media coverage
should it be noted that the soviet media initially reported "no distructions or casualties"? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.189.58.173 (talk) 04:46, 8 December 2006 (UTC).
- If you have any websites that state this sure. Nareklm 22:22, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Lives lost
In the article for the year 1988, it states the amount of lives lost was nearly 25,000. In this article, it states that it was 50,000. This is a shockingly unreliable trend. Which is correct? It needs changing. It might also be wise to check other articles on this earthquake too. Lradrama 18:42, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Results
Can it be said that the earthquake and the aftermath, like Chernobyl two years previously, meant that the USSR had to make concessions in its domestic policy? Would it be interesting or worthy of the article to suggest that the international community had to support Soviet relief efforts and that this led to the need for greater openness in general? Finding contemporary sources might be problematic but doubtless some historian or other could come up with a plausible connection between the need for the international community to help and thus the exposure of the shortcomings of the Soviet system in providing for people within the disaster area. It needn't be POV as long as it was handled sensitively but the fallout of the earthquake had larger repercussions for the USSR as a whole than, say, similar disasters in Soviet Central Asia in the 1960s which were hushed up successfully.
I have Russian friends who say it was well-understood at the time that the USSR could not cope with the scale of the disaster, and having to accept humanitarian aid from the West meant that serious flaws were exposed; they cite it as one of the pivotal events in the ending of Communism on a par with the Chernobyl disaster of 1986. (I even have a book from 1977 - on the subject of "omens" and prophecies - that includes the idea "the return of Halley's Comet will mark the ending of Russia's quest for world domination". When Halley's Comet was at its perihelion in 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded, thus precipitating glasnost, perestroika and the events leading to the fall of communism. I have read a lot of these kind of things and always doubted until coming across just such a concrete example...) Lstanley1979 (talk) 21:13, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
