The claim as I drew it from “Midnight in Chernobyl” by Adam Higginbotham (I don’t know if a popular non-fiction book meets your evidentiary standard, I just happen to have finished reading it) is that the public damage and cost from Chernobyl was so unprecedented and spectacular in scope that it was impossible for the Soviet government to cover it up. And that what makes this remarkable is how this incident compared to other past incidents (not to mention purposeful engineering efforts) that the Soviet government had successfully managed to cover up and keep from the population. In other words, “exposed the dysfunction of the system” is accurate, but also incomplete. It omits the reason why this particular disaster, and not other disasters, was the trigger that caused this reckoning.

And the book makes a compelling case for why Chernobyl was so important and so different. I will leave it to experts to tell me whether it’s wrong.

"Here's more evidence to support your idea" is perhaps the pettiest possible retort. Is agreeing with someone so hard?

Re-reading my comment I can see how it could be interpreted that way, I meant it more as playful jab but such are the woes of a textual medium...

I just thought it was amusing to present that theory in that way, when it's been brought up by Mr СССР himself.

I didn't want to make it sound like it's a new theory at all. I applaud your addition with the quote and I didn't read it as negatory at all.

His comment is actually a very good reply to the grandparent, which was making a poor job of supporting the argument.

Also, your accusation of his comment being petty is pretty ironic.

It's not that surprising that the cause of the Soviet Union's collapse tries to pass the blame elsewhere.

Without Chernobyl, but with Gorbachev's reforms, the Soviet Union would still have collapsed.

Without Gorbachev's reforms, but with Chernobyl, the Soviet Union would still exist, just as PRC did not collapse from Tiananmen Square and DPRK did not collapse from 1990s famine.