with the failure of the authorities to confront the design flaws. Legasov's daughter commented "It was not an emotional breakdown, it was a deliberate, thoroughly considered act." Ustynyuk emphasized the role of the harassment of Legasov by other scientific leaders in their resistance to organizational reform. Boris Shcherbina said of him: "Valery was too great, I loved him more than all the people I knew, he gave all of himself to work, to Chernobyl. He burnt out." Journalists Vladimir Stepanovich Gubarev and Yuriy Shcherbak claim that his suicide was a conscious attempt to draw attention to the lack of nuclear safety in the Soviet Union. Aftermath As a national hero at the time of his death, Legasov's suicide caused shockwaves in the Soviet nuclear industry. Extracts from his tapes were published in Pravda in May 1988. Some in the scientific community were still displeased by Legasov and his legacy. A former colleague of Legasov said "There is no need to idealize Legasov ... He is no better or worse than any manager of this rank, and he followed the accepted rules of the game, moving up the career and scientific ladder... he took on too much, especially in recent years. A chemist, he dared to define the topics of physics laboratories and departments. At the same time, he was not always right, he ordered what to do and how to do it. Who would like that? So they voted him down at the elections to the Academic Council. Physicists make up the majority. And you, chemists, are now making him almost a great martyr... And in Chernobyl he screwed up enough - the shelter of the fourth unit turned out to be far from optimal." Legasov's defenders counter this saying "Courage was not forgiven him, since it clearly marked the cowardice and ordinariness of others." While the initial Soviet investigation put almost all the blame on the operators, later findings by the IAEA found that the reactor design and how the operators were informed of safety information was more significant. However, the operators were found to have deviated from operational procedures, changing test protocols on the fly, as well as having made "ill judged" actions, making human factors a major contributing factor. On 20 September 1996, Russian president Boris Yeltsin posthumously conferred on Legasov the honorary title of Hero of the Russian Federation, the country's highest honorary title, for the