Soviet program to develop nuclear weapons during and after World War II
Soviet atomic bomb project
The first Soviet nuclear weapon test, 1949. (RDS-1)
Operational scope
Operational R&D
Location
Atomgrad, Semipalatinsk, Chagan
Planned by
NKVD, NKGB, MGB PGU GRU
Date
1942–1949
Executed by
Soviet Union
Outcome
The successful development of nuclear weapons
Further escalation of the Cold War
The Soviet atomic bomb project was the classified research and development program that was authorized by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union to develop nuclear weapons during and after World War II.[1][2]
Although the Soviet scientific community discussed the possibility of an atomic bomb throughout the 1930s,[3][4] going as far as making a concrete proposal to develop such a weapon in 1940,[5][6][7] the full-scale program was not initiated and prioritized until Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.
Because of the conspicuous silence of the scientific publications on the subject of nuclear fission by German, American, and British scientists, Russian physicist Georgy Flyorov suspected that the Allied powers had secretly been developing a "superweapon"[2] since 1939. Flyorov wrote a letter to Stalin urging him to start this program in 1942.[8]: 78–79 Initial efforts were slowed due to the German invasion of the Soviet Union and remained largely composed of the intelligence gathering from the Soviet spy rings working in the U.S. Manhattan Project.[1]
After Stalin learned of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the program was pursued aggressively and accelerated through effective intelligence gathering about the German nuclear weapon project and the American Manhattan Project.[9] The Soviet efforts also rounded up captured German scientists to join their program, and relied on knowledge passed by spies to Soviet intelligence agencies.[10]: 242–243
On 29 August 1949, the Soviet Union secretly conducted its first successful weapon test (First Lightning, based on the American "Fat Man" design) at the Semipalatinsk-21 in Kazakhstan.[1] Stalin alongside Soviet political officials and scientists were elated at the successful test.[11] A nuclear armed Soviet Union sent its rival Western neighbors, and particularly the United States into a state of unprecedented trepidation.[12] From 1949 onwards the Soviet Union manufactured and tested nuclear weapons on a large scale.: 840 [13] The nuclear capabilities these tests helped develop were crucial to projecting and maintaining its global status. In total, the Soviet Union conducted 715 nuclear weapon tests throughout the course of the Cold War. Furthermore, the nuclear capabilities of the Soviet Union escalated the Cold War with the United States to the possibility of nuclear war and ushered in the doctrine of mutually assured destruction.[14]
^ abcSublette, Carey. "The Soviet Nuclear Weapons Program". nuclearweaponarchive.org. nuclearweaponarchive, part I. Retrieved 21 April 2017.
^ abSwift, John. "The Soviet-American Arms Race". www.historytoday.com. History Today. Retrieved 21 April 2017.
^""Двигатель" №3 (63) 2009 г. К ИСТОРИИ СОЗДАНИЯ ПЕРВОЙ ОТЕЧЕСТВЕННОЙ ЯДЕРНОЙ БОМБЫ". engine.aviaport.ru.
^Мещеряков, М. Г.; Перфилов, Н. А. (Nov 1, 1963). "Памяти Льва Владимировича Мысовского (К семидесятипятилетию со дня рождения)". Успехи физических наук. 81 (11): 575–577 – via ufn.ru.
^"История – описание | ННЦ ХФТИ".
^"ILTPEr – LTP in Kharkov".
^"Харьков-1940: атомная прелюдия".
^Holloway, [by] David (1994). Stalin and the bomb : the Soviet Union and atomic energy. New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 421. ISBN 978-0300066647. Retrieved 21 April 2017.
^"Manhattan Project: Espionage and the Manhattan Project, 1940–1945". www.osti.gov. US Dept of Energy. Retrieved 21 April 2017.
^Strickland, Jeffrey (2011). Weird Scientists: the Creators of Quantum Physics. New York: Lulu.com. p. 549. ISBN 978-1257976249. Retrieved 21 April 2017.
^"Detection of the First Soviet Nuclear Test, September 1949 | National Security Archive". nsarchive.gwu.edu. Retrieved 2022-10-10.
^Andrew Glass (22 September 2017). "Truman reveals Soviet Union is now a nuclear power, Sept. 23, 1949". Politico. Retrieved 2022-10-10.
^Relations, United States Congress Senate Committee on Foreign (1963). Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. U.S. Government Printing Office. Retrieved 26 November 2022.
^Kristensen, Hans M.; Norris, Robert S. (2006). "Global nuclear stockpiles, 1945–2006". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 62 (4): 64–66. Bibcode:2006BuAtS..62d..64N. doi:10.2968/062004017. S2CID 145147992.
and 24 Related for: Soviet atomic bomb project information
2022-04-16 Schwartz, Michael. The Russian-A(merican) Bomb: The Role of Espionage in the SovietAtomicBombProject. J. Undergrad. Sci. 3: 103–108 (Summer 1996)...
nuclear weapons in hostilities. The Soviet Union started development shortly after with their own atomicbombproject, and not long after, both countries...
Manhattan Project's emphasis on security, Sovietatomic spies penetrated the program. The first nuclear device ever detonated was an implosion-type bomb during...
1945, the United States detonated two atomicbombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people...
second largest detonation by MT Father of All Bombs – largest Russian conventional bombSovietatomicbombproject Doomsday device Bendix, Aria (1 September...
German atomic related facilities, intellectual materials, material resources, and scientific personnel for the benefit of the Sovietatomicbombproject. The...
acted as a Soviet intelligence officer for the Sovietatomicbombproject. Koval's infiltration of the Manhattan Project as a GRU (Soviet military intelligence)...
and Soviet espionage of the Manhattan Project in the US (known as Project Enormous). Some of the espionage was undertaken to support the Sovietatomic bomb...
believed that all power generators in the future would be atomic in nature. The atomicbomb would render all conventional explosives obsolete and nuclear...
debate exists over the ethical, legal, and military aspects of the atomicbombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 August and 9 August 1945 at the close...
Elektronenphysik. For ten years after World War II, he worked in the Soviet Union on their atomicbombproject and was awarded a Stalin Prize. Upon his return to the...
Lanzhou. The atomicbomb was a part of China's "Two Bombs, One Satellite" program. It had a yield of 22 kilotons, comparable to the Soviet Union's first...
missile project: an ICBM control-system Apollo program, which landed humans on the Moon SovietatomicbombprojectSoviet crewed lunar programs Project-706...
2022. Pondrom, Lee G. (25 July 2018). SovietAtomicProject, The: How The Soviet Union Obtained The AtomicBomb. World Scientific. p. 784. ISBN 978-981-323-557-1...
little that was directly used in the Sovietatomicbombproject. According to Alexander Feklisov, the former Soviet agent who was Julius's contact, the...
agreed that the reports were nonsensical, the directors of the Sovietatomicbombproject decided to pursue this line of research, which resulted in several...
the Manhattan Project. The report was also revealed to the Soviet Union by its atomic spies, and helped start the Sovietatomicbombproject. The neutron...
Before their marriage on April 12, 1970, Alliluyeva had defected from the Soviet Union, renounced her father's tyrannical rule and come to the United States...
fission ("atomic") bomb released an amount of energy approximately equal to 20,000 tons of TNT (84 TJ). The first thermonuclear ("hydrogen") bomb test released...
Spilled AtomicBomb Secrets". Smithsonian. Retrieved 5 April 2019. Holloway, David (1993). "Soviet Scientists Speak Out". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists...
physicist, author of a number of textbooks, and collaborator on the Sovietatomicbombproject who lived mainly in Moscow. Kompaneyets was a student of Lev Landau...
Global Information
NKVD, NKGB, MGB PGU
GRU
Soviet Union