Abstract—
September 28, 2017, marked the 75th anniversary of the issuance of the Resolution of the State Defense Committee (SDC) On Uranium Mining, which laid the foundation for the Atomic Project, one of the most ambitious projects in the history of the Soviet Union. This article is dedicated to reconstruction of the factors that ensured its successful implementation. The completion of the project is attributed to the late 1950s, but the author focuses on the period from 1945 through 1953. On the one hand, it was then that the scientific, technical, material, and organizational prerequisites for the production of nuclear weapons were created, and, on the other, that time can be called the “golden age of the command economy,” when its capabilities manifested themselves to the full. Turning to it allows one to understand better how the command economy in its classical, Stalinist, version achieved success and what limitations it had.
Similar content being viewed by others
REFERENCES
USSR Atomic Project: Documents and Materials, in 3 vols., Ed. by L. D. Ryabev (Nauka: Fizmatlit, Moscow, 1998), Vol. 1, Part 1 [in Russian].
V. A. Naishul’, “The highest and last stage of socialism,” in Plunge into the Bog (Progress, Moscow, 1991) [in Russian].
E. T. Gaidar, The Fall of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia (Ross. Polit. Entsikloped., Moscow, 2007) [in Russian].
S. Rosefield, “The economy of the military-industrial complex,” in The Economy of Russia: The Oxford Collection (Inst. Ekon. Polit. im. E.T. Gaidara, Moscow, 2015), Book 2, pp. 791–814 [in Russian].
N. V. Mel’nikova and A. E. Bedel’, “The USSR Atomic Project: Modern domestic historiography and sources,” in Economic History: Yearbook 2014/2015 (Inst. Ross. Ist. RAN, Moscow, 2016) [in Russian].
N. V. Mel’nikova and P. R. Josephson, “American and Russian studies on the history of the Soviet Atomic Project: A comparative analysis,” Vopr. Ist. Estestvozn. Tekh. 37 (1), 85–109 (2016).
E. T. Artemov and N. P. Voloshin, “The role of foreign experience in the implementation of the Soviet Atomic Project,” in Economic History: Yearbook. 2014/2015 (Inst. Ross. Ist. RAN, Moscow, 2016) [in Russian].
USSR Atomic Project: Documents and Materials, in 3 vols., Ed. by L. D. Ryabev (Nauka: Fizmatlit, Moscow, 1999), Vol. 2, Book 1 [in Russian].
E. T. Artemov and N. P. Voloshin, “ Military preparations and scientific and technological progress: The case of the Soviet Atomic Project,” Ekon. Ist., No. 1, 45–56 (2015).
N. S. Biryukov, Born of the Atomic Era: 12th Main Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation: Experience of Creation and Development (Chekhov. Poligraf. Kombinat MO, Moscow, 2002) [in Russian].
USSR Atomic Project: Documents and Materials, in 3 vols., Ed. by L. D. Ryabev (Nauka: Fizmatlit, Moscow, 2005), Vol. 2, Book 5 [in Russian].
G. A. Goncharov and L. D. Ryabev, “The development of the first Soviet atomic bomb,” Physics–Uspekhi 44 (1), 71–93 (2001).
F. I. Chuev, Molotov: Half-Sovereign (Olma-Press, Moscow, 2000) [in Russian].
USSR Atomic Project: Documents and Materials, in 3 vols., Ed. by L. D. Ryabev (Nauka: Fizmatlit, Moscow, 2005), Vol. 2, Book 3 [in Russian].
P. A. Sudoplatov, Special Operations: Lubyanka and the Kremlin 1930s–1950s (Olma-Press, Moscow, 2005) [in Russian].
USSR Atomic Project: Documents and Materials, in 3 vols., Ed. by L. D. Ryabev (Nauka: Fizmatlit, Moscow, 2003), Vol. 2, Book 4 [in Russian].
USSR Atomic Project: Documents and Materials, in 3 vols., Ed. by L. D. Ryabev (Nauka: Fizmatlit, Moscow, 2003), Vol. 2, Book 2 [in Russian].
E. T. Artemov, “The Soviet Atomic Project in the ‘command economy’ system,” Cahiers du Monde Russe 55 (3–4), 267–294 (2014).
Yu. B. Khariton and A. A. Brish, “Nuclear armaments.” in Russia’s Armaments, Vol. 1: Soviet Military Might (Ross. Akad. Raket. i Artill. Nauk; Izd. Dom Oruzhie i Tekhnol., Moscow, 2010) [in Russian].
Lavrenty Beria: 1953: Transcript of the July Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee and Other Documents (Mezhdunar. Fond Demokratiya, Moscow, 1999) [in Russian].
E. T. Artemov and A. E. Bedel’, Taming Uranium (Izd. OOO SV-96, Yekaterinburg, 1999) [in Russian].
E. P. Slavskii, “From the stories of an old nuclear engineer,” in E. P. Slavskii, Pages of Life (IzdAT, Moscow, 1998) [in Russian].
V. N. Novoselov and V. S. Tolstikov, Secrets of the “Forty” (IPP Ural. Rabochii, Yekaterinburg, 1995) [in Russian].
N. M. Sinev, Enriched Uranium for Nuclear Weapons and Energy: On the History of the Creation in the USSR of Industrial Technology and the Production of Highly Enriched Uranium (1945–1952) (TsNIIatominform, Moscow, 1991) [in Russian].
A. M. Petros’yants, The Roads of Life That Chose Us (Energoatomizdat, Moscow, 1993) [in Russian].
USSR Atomic Project: Documents and Materials, in 3 vols., Ed. by L. D. Ryabev (Nauka: Fizmatlit, Moscow, 2003), Vol. 2, Book 7 [in Russian].
G. A. Goncharov, “The extraordinarily beautiful physical principle of thermonuclear charge design (on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the test of RDS-37—the first Soviet two-stage thermonuclear charge),” Physics–Uspekhi 48 (11) 1187–1196 (2005).
E. T. Artemov, N. P. Voloshin, B. V. Litvinov, and B. I. Nikitin, “In order to strengthen the work,” Ural. Ist. Vestn., No. 3, 38–58 (2008).
Leo and Atom: Academician L.P. Feoktistov: Self-Portrait against the Background of Memories (Voskresen’e, Moscow, 2003) [in Russian].
I. Imamutdinov, “Just a very interesting science,” Ekspert, No. 14 (2013).
A. D. Sakharov, Recollections: 1921–1971: This is How Life Turned Out (KoLibri, Moscow, 2016) [in Russian].
B. V. Brokhovich, Chemical Factory Mayak: History: Serpentine of Events (Memories) (PO Mayak, Ozersk, 1996) [in Russian].
M. V. Gladyshev, Plutonium for the Atomic Bomb (Director of the Plutonium Factory Shares Memories) (PO Mayak, Chelyabinsk, 1992) [in Russian].
E. T. Artemov and N. P. Voloshin, “Academician Evgenii Nikolaevich Avrorin: The man who forged the country’s nuclear shield,” Komsomol’skaya Pravda, July 10 (2012).
I. M. Savitskii, The Contribution of the Defense Industry of Siberia to the Creation of the USSR Nuclear Missile Shield (Novosibirsk. Knizg. Izd., Novosibirsk, 2011) [in Russian].
I. E. Deryabin and R. A. Zhumanov, “The construction industry of Russia’s Minatom,” in Russia’s Nuclear Industry (Energoatomizdat, Moscow, 2000) [in Russian].
Soviet Life: 1945–1953, Ed. by E. Yu. Zubkova, L. P. Ko-sheleva, G. A. Kuznetsov, A. I. Minyuk, and L. A. Rogovaya (Ross. Polit. Entsikloped., Moscow, 2003) [in Russian].
D. Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: the Soviet Union and the Atomic Energy: 1939–1956 (Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, 1994).
V. A. Tsukerman and Z. A. Azarkh, People and Explosions (RFYaTs-VNIIEF, Arzamas-16, 1994) [in Russian].
L. V. Al’tshuler, “The whole life in Atomgrad,” Nauka Zhizn’, No. 2, 24–32 (1994).
N. V. Mel’nikov, The Closed Nuclear City Phenomenon (Bank Kul’turnoi Informatsii, Yekaterinburg, 2006) [in Russian].
B. V. Litvinov, Facets of the Past (IzdAT, Moscow, 2006) [in Russian].
The History of the Creation of Nuclear Weapons in the USSR: 1946–1953 (in Documents), in 8 vols. (RFYaTs-VNIIEF, Sarov, 1999), Vol. 1, Book 1 [in Russian].
N. S. Simonov, The Military-Industrial Complex in the 1920s–1950s: Economic Growth Rates, Structure, Organization of Production, and Management (Ross. Polit. Entsikloped., Moscow, 1996) [in Russian].
V. A. Shestakov, Socioeconomic Policy of the Soviet State in the 1950s–mid-1960s (Nauka, Moscow, 2006) [in Russian].
R. Erikson, “The command economy and its legacy,” in The Economy of Russia: The Oxford Collection (Inst. Ekon. Polit. im. E.T. Gaidara, Moscow, 2015), Book 1 [in Russian].
R. B. Kotel’nikov and V. A. Tumbakov, “The USSR Atomic Project: Goals tree, resources, efforts, results (1945–1950),” in Science and Society: History of the Soviet Atomic Project (1940–1950) (IzdAT, Moscow, 1999) [in Russian].
I. V. Bystrova, Soviet Military-Industrial Complex: Problems of Formation and Development (Inst. Ross. Ist. RAN, Moscow, 2006) [in Russian].
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Translated by B. Alekseev
Evgenii Timofeevich Artemov, Dr. Sci. (Hist.), is Chief Research Fellow of the Institute of History and Archaeology of the RAS Ural Branch.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Artemov, E.T. Components of Success of the Soviet Atomic Bomb Project. Her. Russ. Acad. Sci. 90, 548–558 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1019331620050020
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S1019331620050020