Commenter in this branch put it all together just right. Also Dyatlov notes all industrial disasters was attributed to personnel error in Soviet Union, no matter which real reason it was, for political reasons.

I'll let myself add some reasoning about accusations against Dyatlov. Even if he violated some instructions (it is still not so clear), environment and way operations conducted in SU (and maybe in some modern countries too) implicitly require that. Management requires real results, not obedience to rules and instructions. Senior personnel has to deliver what is expected from them no matter how. But if something goes wrong, negligence to rules will be formal reason to blame. So, there was no evil layman who got himself near top of hierarchy and made evil decisions. All hierarchy consists of people who was installed at their positions for a reason and they do what is expected from them. Otherwise, replacement occurs.

Basically, if you replace in this situation Dyatlov with somebody of same rank, outcomes could be eventually same or even worse.

Interesting. So in short, even if Dyatlov did make some shortcut and violated safe practices, this was probably mainly due to corrupt system that forced people to violate the rules to maintain their jobs. This helped the higher ups to easily exploit the workers and easily find a scapegoat when necessary. The soviet system was real sick.

It's not just about losing job or other penalities, it is also about futility of resistance to corruption. If you are openly against system, you get replaced and your place will be taken by less experienced but more convenient person. Good leader in such situation should play politics and follow common rules in order to retain at least chance to make some decisions on his own and step in when situation is critical.

However, that trait is not unique to Soviet system only. If you look wider, you probably will be able to resemble Volkswagen scandal, Boeing MAX, Fukusima and so on. Boeing case looks clearly as outcome of "just make it fly" decision.

He says everything in the control room was pretty routine, no misdeeds, no risky experiments, no drama, no questioning of orders, no worries as unpredictable behavior of the reactor happens, the reactor was just poorly designed. After the explosion he was confused and didn't know what happened and what to do. At some point after looking around, etc. he figured out that he needs to take measures to prevent new fires on the exploded reactor building. While they were busy taking measures they got sick, started vomiting. Eventually he got taken by the ambulance to the clinic. In the clinic he was questioned, eventually got arrested. Complains about USSR, that soviets wanted to blame the disaster on the reactor personal and that the judge only did what the politburo ordered.

Thank you. So it seems in assigning the blame between the personnel and the officials responsible for design, both parties were blaming the other party. I read somewhere that Legasov criticized the steps done in the control room and also the design and lack of oversight in designing/building the reactor. So the truth is probably somewhere in between and the blame is shared between the personnel and the officials/system.