While Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost meant that it was possible to discuss the USSR’s past more freely than ever, the same openness did not extend to the present, and the Politburo reacted with all the secrecy and dissemination that had been characteristic of the Soviet regime since its founding. It wasn’t until the morning of 28 April that workers at a Swedish nuclear power station detected abnormal levels of radiation and identified the USSR as the source. The news broke worldwide that evening, and the Soviet government was finally forced to admit that their “peaceful atom” was not as safe as they had claimed.

Thirty-five years later, and much has changed in the world — not least the disintegration of the USSR itself — but the idea of Chernobyl endures, lingering on in our imaginations as a symbol of the dangers of nuclear power. It manifests itself in serious books and solemn documentaries, but also in B-movies and weird comics, in an abundance of heavy metal songs, in Kraftwerk’s live shows, and in cult video games.

HBO’s 2019 Chernobyl series was a cultural phenomenon, one of those TV programmes that people just couldn’t stop talking about, like Making a Murderer or Tiger King. The Chernobyl-mania it induced led to a boost in disaster tourism in the area, with Instagram influencers pioneering a new, “pouting-in-Pripyat” genre of selfie. This in turn led to a brief tumescence of scandalised headlines, before the next outrage came along (long since forgotten, of course) to replace it.

The truth is, however, that while the HBO series gave Chernobyl tourism a bump, it was hardly a new phenomenon. I remember reading an account of a trip to the irradiated forests and abandoned buildings of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in the early 2000s in The Fortean Times. The author described an idyllic nature reserve which was not even all that lethal, so long as you didn’t stay too long and knew which areas to avoid. Equally fascinating was the “stalker” subculture that had emerged around the Zone, directly inspired by the 1979 Andrei Tarkovksy film, Stalker.

In that film, a mysterious “Zone” has been left uninhabitable following an alien visitation, but individuals known as “stalkers” illegally explore the forbidden landscape, and bring outsiders in, for a price. Stalker itself was adapted from Roadside Picnic, a novel by the USSR’s premiere science fiction writers, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, that was first published in 1972. Thus, the idea of a deadly, forbidden Zone had been imaginatively explored by a celebrated film director and two of the USSR’s most popular authors years before the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone erupted into real life; and that imaginary experience shaped how people conceived of and related to the irradiated landscape they now had to live with.

I was living in Moscow when I read the article in The Fortean Times and thought it would be interesting to visit the Zone, but it was difficult to organise, and I never got round to it. Nowadays, it’s much easier: you can sign up for one of several post-apocalyptic package tour options online, and, departing from Kiev, ride the bus for four hours to Chernobyl, accompanied by professional guides equipped with dosimeters. After stopping by the power plant and pausing for a photo, you can promenade through Pripyat, admiring the abandoned Ferris wheel and the crumbling Polissya hotel. So long as you stick to the approved itinerary, you will only be mildly irradiated — no more than if you spent a few hours on a plane.

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In Chernobyl: A Stalkers’ Guide, British author-photographer Darmon Richter chafes against the rigid, schematized approach to experiencing the Zone that has emerged in recent years, and goes as deep into its forests and abandoned settlements as anybody is ever likely to. Richly illustrated with scores of photographs, it is a document of obsession, describing trips undertaken over the years since he first visited as a tourist in 2013. Starting in 2016 he began offering guided tours himself, and over the next four years took over one hundred visitors along routes that went beyond the usual sites to provide deeper insight into life in the area, with a focus on “village life and tradition, public art (murals, mosaics and monuments), and overlooked works of architecture”.

In Tarkovsky’s film, the Zone contains a room which is said to fulfil the wishes of anyone who enters it — if they can reach it, that is. So, too, in his book Richter is constantly searching for new, deeper, ways to experience the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, as if in pursuit of some secret as yet unrevealed. At one point he enlists the services of “Kirill”, an experienced stalker who leads Richter and some friends on an illegal hike that sees them creeping past police checkpoints, dodging cop cars, crossing rivers and fields, sleeping in abandoned houses, and staring at an abandoned radar station before finally spending a night in one of Pripyat’s 10,000 empty flats.

But this journey, while no doubt interesting for the participants, doesn’t quite translate to the printed page. Richter preemptively sucks the tension out of his narrative by sharing the story of a French group who got caught and suffered a fate no worse than $14 fine, and the reduction of their 90-day entry permits to five. They returned to Ukraine the next day, because, well, because the authorities in Ukraine just don’t care all that much.

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Perhaps the most interesting of Richter’s several voyages into the Zone is described in the chapter “Monumenteering”. Here he decides to visit every Soviet monument left standing in all the villages and settlements that were so hastily abandoned by their inhabitants 35 years ago. This section reveals that the Zone is much more than a tourist attraction and nature reserve; it is also a strange radioactive Pompei, a lost world where the signs and symbols of a vanished civilisation linger on, even as they have been erased from the landscape elsewhere as a result of Ukraine’s laws on decommunisation.

As he ventures through this strange landscape, Richter discovers one strange sight after another: abandoned blocks of flats that run alongside crumbling roads; a decaying statue of a glowering Soviet warrior emerging from the trees, clutching a machine gun; a forlorn, overgrown arch commemorating the 300^th anniversary of Russia and Ukraine’s unification; an enormous, rusty, sheet metal hammer and sickle that looks as though it was left in the woods by accident. Entering a former fish farm, he finds ancient specimens still preserved in glass jars; he also penetrates the most dangerous part of the Zone, the “Red Forest”, that was razed to the ground after all the trees died. Now beautiful pines and white birch trees grow there, at once beautiful and lethal.

Most haunting of all are the many monuments to those who lost their lives in World War II. The neglect of these once sacred sites marks a second death of sorts for those who died resisting Hitler’s armies; despite their sacrifice, those men and women cannot, in today’s Ukraine, be forgiven for serving in Stalin’s army. (By contrast, when Richter crosses into Belarus, which is run by a Soviet-style authoritarian, Richter finds that all the monuments to the war dead of the fallen empire are well-maintained).

Richter succeeds in his quest to visit all the monuments in the Zone, but he is not quite done. One more voyage remains: just as Tarkovsky’s Stalker is structured around a journey towards a mysterious room, so it turns out that Chernobyl: A Stalker’s Guide is leading us to the control room of Reactor 4, where the disastrous test that led to the meltdown run that fateful night 35 years ago. But whereas Tarkovsky’s film leaves the room unpenetrated and mysterious, Richter manages to bribe his way in and so achieve his heart’s desire; he even manages to sneak in a tour of the immense New Arch that today encloses the Soviet-era concrete sarcophagus that in turn encloses Reactor 4. It seems like a real achievement, but then he lets us know that today even the control room has been added to official tours. It is almost as if, by entering the room himself, Richter broke the spell.

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Of course, there are those who might dismiss Chernobyl: A Stalker’s Guide, as “disaster tourism.” Richter rejects the term, describing it as “grossly misplaced”, and says that of the people he has led on tours “more had come to see signs of life and progress, than of disaster.” That may be so, but even then, I am not so sure that “disaster tourists” have that much to apologise for in the first place. People have been fascinated by ruins and the remnants of fallen empires for centuries. In Berlin you can visit a perfectly preserved bombed out church in Berlin and buy a postcard, in Mexico you can visit ziggurats erected by practitioners of human sacrifice, who were swept away by war and disease, and nobody will criticise you.

For as Richter discovers when he enters the control room at the end of his journey, Chernobyl has no great secret. In truth, its meaning is very old, and very obvious: there are forces larger than us that we cannot control, we are not the masters of the world, and our grand dreams can shatter in a second, humbling us. There is not much we can do about that but stand and stare and remember our powerlessness; it’s probably even quite a healthy thing to do.

That Chernobyl is today a popular tourist destination, added to the list of other sites where empires fell or tragedies happened, is a sign that the process which started 35 years ago, when people first began processing the event in books and art and music, is almost complete. Once unimaginable except in works of science fiction, today Chernobyl is almost normal.

Darmon Richter’s Chernobyl: A Stalkers’ Guide is published by FUEL

This is a scenario, of course, that has lurked in the wings ever since the EU referendum produced the result it did, with Scotland and Northern Ireland notching up substantial majorities for Remain. Victory for Leave was only achieved thanks to the vast numerical superiority of England. The UK of June 2016 was already a disunited Kingdom.

Where others concerned about the Union’s future have focused on the prospects for an independent Scotland or a united Ireland, however, Lidington turned to the English. “In England,” he told The Times, “I think that there is an indifference to the Union, a sense of taking for granted. It is something that is there as part of the landscape rather than something that you’ve really got to make a conscious effort to work to sustain.”

His argument, however, presupposes that there is support among the English in general, and English Conservatives in particular, for preserving the Union, and that the English are just not paying attention. But is this so?

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A recent YouGov poll produced the startling finding that members of the Conservative Party across Great Britain had leaving the European Union as their absolute priority – and if that meant the break-up of the Union, well, so be it.

Some 63% of those polled said they wanted Brexit to happen even if it meant Scotland would vote for independence, while 59% said they wanted Brexit, even if it precipitated a united Ireland. That Unionist element, as in “Conservative and Unionist”, it would seem, might not be as deeply rooted as many believe.

But could the “indifference” of the English really foster, or even contribute, to the break-up of the UK? Those who disagree might cite the unusual flexibility of the UK’s institutions and argue that the varying forms of devolved government introduced by Blair’s Labour government in the late 1990s have in fact enabled the UK to muddle along with the Union intact.

That is one way of looking at what is now going on. But there is another – and, for those who prize the Union, it is far less comforting.

The old Soviet Union, while obviously very different from today’s UK in almost every way, was analogous in one significant, structural, respect. It was a country that that purported to be a federation, even as one of its constituent republics – the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic as it was known then – was as dominant as England is in the UK. The RSFSR was nominally just one of 15 republics, but it accounted for more than three-quarters of the USSR’s territory and more than half of its population and GDP, creating a federation that was out of balance, to say the least.

There is another parallel with England, too. Despite the dominance of ‘their’ republic in the Soviet Union, Russians could legitimately claim to be under-represented and under-valued, echoing complaints made by the English in the UK. Of the 15 Soviet republics, the RSFSR was alone for much of the USSR’s existence in not having its own Communist Party organisation or any permanent assembly or executive to represent its interests.

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So long as regional aspirations were held in check and Moscow essentially ruled each republic through proxies, this went generally unchallenged. Russia and the Soviet Union could be regarded as essentially the same. Mikhail Gorbachev was General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and President of the Soviet Union, but also, de facto, leader of Russia.

As national aspirations grew, however, and Gorbachev’s glasnost (transparency) and perestroika (restructuring) made it possible for such sentiments to be expressed, Russia and Russians began to air their resentment. Once upon a time, their lack of direct representation could have been parried with the argument that Russia and Russians ruled, so they did not need their own institutions. Suddenly, though, they did.

Compare this to the UK. When Scottish devolution prompted new calls for England to have its own parliament, the disparity between England and the rest was advanced as the main reason why not. England’s dominance was so great, it was argued, that the UK could never be a genuine federation along the lines of, say, Germany. England’s Parliament was Westminster, even if it was shared.

When the calls could no longer be ignored, the then Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, proposed a compromise that entailed a more federated national structure with regional assemblies for England. This, however, was roundly rebuffed by the North East, which had been designated the pioneer. This looked less like representation for England than divide and rule. Devolution has been limited to Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales to this day.

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The fate of the Soviet Union stands as a salutary example of what could happen next, and why David Lidington’s warning about the attitude of the English to the Union is so apposite. For break-up is not only about separatism at the periphery. It is also about the capacity, even the will, of the centre to hold.

The collapse of the Soviet Union is commonly ascribed to the unsustainability of the planned economy, the iniquities of Soviet communism, incipient bankruptcy forced by the USSR’s (vain) effort to keep up with the United States militarily, and growing separatism in some (but not all) of the constituent republics. Often disregarded, though, is another factor that played a big, even decisive, role: the frustrated national sentiment of the Russian majority.

Far from feeling privileged, many Russians felt that the other – mostly poorer – republics were a drag on their own well-being and development. A Rand Corporation report of 1991, published before the Soviet collapse, identified “a strong movement for self-assertion among the Russian people” and saw some of the writing on the wall.

Boris Yeltsin, the quintessential Russian in so many ways, gave voice to that resentment. He rode the wave of Russian aspiration, claiming the chairmanship of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet (a hitherto toothless legislature) in 1990 and winning the new post of President of the RFSFR a year later in a direct election. The RSFSR also set up its own Communist Party structure. By the end of 1991, the Soviet Union was no more.

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In championing the interests of the Russian Republic, Yeltsin found himself challenging, and then destroying, central, Soviet power. But this happened not just because of his force of character – though that was a consideration. It was also the reality that Russia could never be just one constituent republic of a genuine federation, or even first among equals. It was too big and too dominant in every way.

Within months of the RFSFR Supreme Soviet gaining real, in theory devolved, power, Russia’s new and revamped institutions were vying for precedence with their Soviet equivalents. Through the autumn of 1991, sections of power transferred almost by the day from the Soviet organs of state to those of Russia. Key personnel and money followed.

We have not yet reached that situation of dual, rival power in the UK, in part because England does not have the institutions that might allow it to realise its ambitions. But just as the part played in the Soviet break-up by frustrated Russian nationalism should not be underestimated, nor should the extent to which Brexit has been an English phenomenon, representing frustrated English national sentiment at not having its own institutional voice, unlike Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

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Not to be underestimated either is the part in the Soviet break-up that was played by Russians’ indifference towards the Union. There came a point when Russia, as the dominant republic of a lop-sided federation, whose citizens felt they had been neglected by the centre and milked by the periphery for decades, lacked the will to keep the federal show on the road.

Brexiteers might note that the story of post-Soviet Russia has been the story of Russia’s national rebirth, with all the pluses and minuses that entails.

The English voice in the Brexit process might have been muted, but very similar forces are in play: unrepresentative state structures, a lop-sided devolution and an aggrieved majority. Giving the Russian Republic real devolved power contributed directly to the Soviet collapse. But not doing so is unlikely to have saved the Union, because by then Russia was – to use David Lidington’s word – profoundly “indifferent”, if not actually hostile, to keeping the Union intact.

This, quite as much as any move by Scotland or Northern Ireland to leave, is what could precipitate the break-up of the United Kingdom, too.