Boris Shcherbina (played by Stellan Skarsgard) was the deputy head of the Soviet government in charge of the investigation after the Chernobyl disaster hours after the accident. When he arrived in Pripyat (the city near the plant), he rejected to suggest an order for mass evacuation, saying, "Panic is worse than radiation." The town would not be evacuated until 36 hours after the explosion.
He died in 1990 at age 70, and it's not clear if he died of radiation or not, given that he ordered the construction of a new town in the highly contaminated area. In a secret 1988 decree that he helped form, Soviet doctors could not cite radiation as a cause of death or illness.