Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956

by David Holloway

Book Overview

For forty years the Soviet-American nuclear arms race dominated world politics, yet the Soviet nuclear establishment was shrouded in secrecy. Now that the Cold War is over and the Soviet Union has collapsed, it is possible to answer questions that have intrigued policymakers and the public for years. How did the Soviet Union build its atomic and hydrogen bombs? What role did espionage play? How did the American atomic monopoly affect Stalin's foreign...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300066643
• ISBN13: 9780300066647
• Release Date: March 1996
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 480 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.9" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Important for Understanding the Cold War; 4.5 Stars

This well written book is an insightful look at the onset of the Cold War and the role of nuclear weapons. It is based on significant research in Soviet archives and interviews with some of the important Soviet figures. Since access to Soviet archives have become more restricted in recent years, Holloway's book continues to be a major source of information about early Soviet nuclear policy. Holloway pursues 3 closely related themes. The first is the history of the Soviet nuclear weapons program, set very well in the context of the historical development of the Soviet physics community. The second is the relationship between the Soviet physics community and the Soviet state, and in particular how Soviet physicists attempted to balance the norms of science as a transnational phenomenon and the demands of the state. The third, and the one of broadest interest, is how nuclear weapons affected Soviet foreign policy. Holloway presents a nice, concise history of Soviet nuclear physics, providing significant information about a number of the important figures. The key point is that by mid-30s, there was a vigorous Soviet physics community with a number of strong international ties and contributing significantly to research in nuclear physics. From this very impressive group would come the personnel who developed the Soviet nuclear weapons program. Holloway writes sensitively about the difficulties inherent in the position of scientists in a totalitarian state, particularly as Soviet society became more closed with the rise of Stalin. The impressive intellectual power of the Soviet physics community, clearly supported by equivalent intellectual power in crucial related areas in chemistry and engineering, made the Soviet nuclear program possible. While the Soviet effort benefited from the knowledge that nuclear weapons were feasible, and in many cases from espionage information about the Anglo-American nuclear fission technology, Holloway shows very well the difficulty of developing nuclear weapons and the impressive achievements of Soviet scientists. The real proof of Soviet capabilities was the development of fusion weapons, accomplished entirely without the benefit of espionage information. Holloway's description of the nuclear weapons program also captures very well the brutal nature of the Soviet state. The vigor of the physics community shows the Soviet state at its best, but the success of the program depended also on the ruthless exploitation of convict labor in the Gulag. Holloway has an equally thoughtful discussion of how nuclear weapons affected Soviet foreign policy. This is essentially an effort to determine what Stalin thought. To the surprise of the Truman administration, Stalin refused to be cowed by the American nuclear monopoly. If anything, American possession of nuclear weapons seems only to have simultaneously reinforced Stalin's natural caution and stiffened his resolve. The existence of nuclear weapons seem

An island of intellectual autonomy in a totalitarian state

D. Holloway tells us outstandingly and very detailed the gripping story of the development of nuclear weapons in the Soviet Union. He shows us that the SU success was the result of the effort of Russian scientists with I.V. Kurchatov in a crucial role, although some data were obtained via spying (Klaus Fuchs). The nuclear weapons building combined the best (scientists, engineers) and the worst of the SU, with prisoners working in appalling conditions (no protection) and real nuclear exercises with soldiers as guinea pigs. D. Holloway analyzes also pregnantly the hostile ideological environment for scientists. The regime's fundamental logic remained political. The politicians had the right to define what was science and pseudoscience. In the name of dialectical materialism whole scientific disciplines (e.g. genetics) were destroyed (the Lyssenko case). Physics also came under attack. Beria asked Kurchatov if it was true that quantum mechanics and relativity theory were idealist, antimaterialist. Kurchatov replied that if relativity theory and qm were rejected, the bomb would be rejected too. Stalin's ultimate answer was:' Leave them in peace, we can shoot them later!' (p. 204) This 'pseudoscientific' debate was held within a bureaucratic framework. Scientists were well paid and the party bureaucrats and ideologues were jealous and wanted to take their place, even if they were incompetent. Beria left physics unhampered because he needed the bomb. In that sense, physics remained a small element of civil society in a totalitarian state. But if the scientists had failed, they would certainly have received a neckshot. The impact of nuclear weapons on international political relations is also outstandingly explained. After WW II the Soviet leaders assumed rightly that the US was seeking world dominance and that the SU was the main impediment. The scientific planners in the US discussed seriously a preemptive (!) strike against the US. Stalin was not impressed by the US nuclear power. He continued tot think that conventional weapons and troops had still the upper hand. As an example, he took the risk of the Berlin crisis in 1948. But he grasped that the SU also needed the bomb. The physicists knew that an international balance of power was needed. They understood the effects of a nuclear war and explained to the politicians that the survival of the human race was at stake. After Stalin, Khrushev renounced Lenin's thesis that war was inevitable between capitalist states. As the nuclear stockpile grew, he admitted that a peaceful coexistence of capitalism and socialism was preferable. D. Holloway wrote a magisterial analysis of an essential part of mankind's history. A fascinating read.

An Excellent Overview of the Entire Period

Stalin and the Bomb is an excellent overview not only of the Soviet atomic project but of the entire Stalin period. Holloway discusses some of the disastorous policies Stalin pursued in the scientific arena (for example, when it came to biology) and shows how Stalin was able to control his ideological impulses when it came to a project that would net him real power.Stalin and the Bomb is extremely readable and provides some nice detail on Kurchatov, the father of the Soviet A-bomb. A little more on Sakharov and the H-bomb project would have been nice, but was not central to the thrust of the book. Significantly, this book delves into significant technical detail about the research and construction of nuclear weapons, but the author does a superb job of making the science accessable to people without PhDs in physics.

Plenty of characters, with just a few plots.

I was most interested in who had the first hydrogen bomb (the first real plan, the ideal materials, a way to make it, and a test device) and I didn't mind reading about "some radioactive indicator which is formed with the participation of fast deuterons" (p. 304) to find out. Sorting out the physics, which can be revealed to those who care to know, with a comparison of alternate paths to the same result, reveals something far more substantial than the usual plot, based on the politics of world domination, the main concern of Stalin and the author of this book. Stalin gets some sympathy for facing a stark post-war reality, based on his comparison of what World War II did to Russia and Germany, compared to the damage which the few atomic bombs which existed in his lifetime could produce, and it might be said that he acted accordingly in attempting to maintain countervailing threats whenever he was pressured. Any notion of absolute justice, or even feasible military advantage, seems to be as elusive for the superpowers (and one still exists today) as for the petty despots and warlords that often become characters in this book about how such weapons came to be. I didn't mind the revelations about certain events: a war in Korea at a critical point in this book even makes the question of when Mao ordered the Chinese divisions into Korea an interesting question to be considered. In most of these books, I like the events which influenced Sakharov most, the best. The description of the shock wave from the November 1955 test on pages 316-7 includes, "All of this triggers an irrational yet very strong emotional impact."

Intriguing Analysis of a Hidden Episode

David Holloway, a professor at Stanford, has published an intriguing history of Soviet nuclear weapons development in _Stalin_and_the_Bomb_. This volume interweaves two main themes--the technical difficulties in designing and fabricating nuclear weapons, and the political motivations commanding these efforts along with their strategic implications. Many of the major participants are familiar to readers of Soviet history, such as Stalin, Beria, Molotov and Khrushchev. However, the important actors in this drama were the technical experts who created these engines of destruction on behalf of their masters. Many prominent scientists labored to provide the theoretical and experimental support demanded by Stalin for rapid industrialization, laying the groundwork for the tremendous infrastructure needed to duplicate the achievements of the Manhattan Project years later. Research in radioactivity eventually led to the first spontaneous fission experiment in 1940, but this did not attract attention in the West, where restrictions began for publication on nuclear physics. Work on fission continued during the war, but the lack of uranium prevented much advancement. Holloway, in examining the directives during this period, found priorities unchanged following the Potsdam meeting, in contrast to the subsequent demand for uranium production after Hiroshima. He attributes Stalin's casual reaction to Truman's mention of a new weapon to skepticism regarding its importance. But the bomb as a colossal reality, not merely as an intelligence phantom, presented Stalin with a new strategic contention. His response was to show resolve in the face of anticipated intimidation coupled with orders to develop this technology independently. However, he only recognized the bomb as an instrument of Anglo-American policy, and refused to consider it militarily decisive in any potential conflict. When challenging US policy over Berlin, for example, Stalin carefully applied pressure while keeping his options open and took care not to escalate tensions beyond retraction. The achievement of creating an atomic bomb, given the devastating post-war depravation of the Soviet Union can be credited primarily to Igor Kurchatov, the scientific director of the nuclear project from 1942 until his death in 1960. Kurchatov was a well respected figure in Soviet physics, but he also provided a methodical and systematic orchestration to a project with many difficult sundry en-gineering obstacles to overcome, not to mention the menacing oversight by Beria, head of the NKVD. Although awarded privileged status in the post-war Soviet Union, the scientists recognized their position as predicated on successful completion of this task. The primary obstacle remained the inadequate supply of uranium metal until 1948 when the first production reactor was built. Uranium isotope separation and plutonium precipitation were tackled with indus-trial vigor.