I think it's hard to spin it as a win for communism, considering that the nightmare totalitarian society in which everyone was afraid to speak the truth caused the disaster in the first place. That doesn't mean it could only happen under a Soviet government, but it definitely happened due to their ideology and the society they created around it.

The theme is made clear in Legosov's monologues from the beginning and end of the series. We cannot live by lies.

What is the cost of lies? It's not that we'll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all. What can we do then? What else is left but to abandon even the hope of truth and content ourselves instead with stories? In these stories it doesn't matter who the heroes are. All we want to know is who is to blame?

When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there, but it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid.

Those quotes hit me so hard because they are so relevant to us now.

Our media and authorities have abandoned truth for "narratives" and nobody knows what the truth is anymore, so we pick our preferred narrative and cling to it to try and make sense of the world.

Meanwhile, the people who have taken over all our major institutions will cancel you for stating obvious facts, like "men are not women," while pushing obvious lies like "math is racist."

All these lies are going to mean disaster for us when they eventually collide with the truth.

That is how an RBMK reactor explodes. Lies.