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A distinguished authority tells the spellbinding story of the people and politics behind the development of the Soviet atom bomb. Based on interviews with participants and research in newly opened Soviet archives, the book reveals how the American atomic monopoly affected Stalin's foreign policy, the role of espionage in the evolution of the Soviet bomb, and the relationship between Soviet nuclear scientists and the country's political leaders. 'An indispensable contribution to our knowledge of the modern world.' Robert Conquest, 'London Review of Books' 'A perceptive, highly informative, and altogether excellent book.' Rudolf Peierls, 'New York Review of Books' 'A masterful account of the arms race from the Soviet side.' Gregg Herken, 'Washington Post Book World' 'A superb history that gives fresh insights into the cold war and, even more, into the conditions of intellectual life in Stalin's Russia. This study is a work on the largest scale, one that advances our understanding and is likely to remain definitive for years to come.' Priscilla Johnson McMillan, 'New York Times Book Review' Winner of the 1995 Vucinich Prize given for the best book in the field of Slavic studies and the Shulman Prize for the best book on Soviet and Post-Soviet Foreign Policy, both awarded by the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. David Holloway was born in Ireland and taught at Edinburgh University before becoming professor of political science and co-director, Center for International Security and Arms Control, at Stanford University. He is also the author of 'The Soviet Union and the Arms Race'.
- Sales Rank: #658189 in Books
- Published on: 1996-03-27
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.21" h x 1.02" w x 6.14" l, 1.53 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 480 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Tracing the development of nuclear power in Stalinist Russia, Holloway examines such topics as the role of espionage and the relationships between scientists and politicians.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
Intriguing Analysis of a Hidden Episode
By G. W. Thielman
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. The gaseous diffusion facility, modeled on the Oak Ridge plant involved particular engineering difficulties to be solved before uranium enrichment could proceed. Yulii Khariton, director of the secret nu-clear research laboratory Arzamas-16, led the study on the physics of detonation. Implosion was needed to compress the plutonium a few microseconds in order to start the chain reaction. Their first atom bomb was exploded August 1949 at Semipalatinsk with a yield of 20 kilotons of TNT. Thus the Soviet Union joined the nuclear club.
While espionage yielded useful information at the West's expense, Holloway argues that Klaus Fuchs saved the Soviets only about a year or two by giving dimensions of the plutonium implosion design. He compares the first Soviet atom bomb explosion in 1949 with the first British demonstration in 1952 despite much closer collaboration with the Americans than anything obtained clandestinely by their Soviet counterparts. Holloway also contends that the contribution by captured Germans was comparatively minor and sped the project by only a few weeks or months--principally in the area of processing uranium.
While the bomb was being developed, Stalin initiated orders on delivery systems--bombers by Vladimir Myasishchev and rockets by Sergei Korolev. In Stalin's view, another war was inevitable within two decades, and the atomic bomb would serve as merely another policy instrument. After he died in March 1953, his successors embarked on a less confrontational rapproachement with the West.
After the Soviets demonstrated their ability to create weapons based on nuclear fission, Truman decided to pursue the hydrogen bomb, because there was no indication that Stalin would reciprocate a policy of restraint. After some false starts, a method to use X-ray compression from fission to implode the thermonuclear charge was discovered, enabling a yield limited only by the quantity of nuclear fuel. The Mike test in November 1952 verified this concept with an ungainly 60-ton refrigerated assembly. Meanwhile, the Russians embarked on fusion independently. A young physicist, Andrei Sakarov began work in 1948 and joined the Arzamas-16 facility, developing the "Layer Cake" which resembled the boosted fission weapon, before advancing on the two-stage Super. The first thermonuclear bomb was exploded in August 1953, and apparently alarmed Kurchatov, being 20 times more power-ful than the first Soviet fission bomb four years earlier. In November 1955, the first two-stage thermonuclear bomb with a yield of 1.6 megatons was exploded.
The first Soviet fusion explosion produced a profound change in the attitudes of politburo members about the same time that Americans realized that this new weapon represented a far more potent destructive force than the fission variety. In the aftermath of this revelation, a more conciliatory "peaceful coexistence" doctrine began to develop. Khrushchev's increased dialog with western leaders also facilitated long dormant communication between Soviet physicists and their colleagues beyond the Iron Curtain. Kurchatov's visit in 1956 was well received at Harwell, the British power station. From this small privileged enclave, a civilizing influence was nurtured within a totalitarian society. Eventually, Sakarov went beyond the usual misgivings of Soviet society to become a dissident and human rights advocate.
_Stalin_ concludes that the arms race between the two blocks was contingent solely on Stalin's intentions. Holloway believes that in the post-war years the bomb probably restrained the use of force but also made Stalin less cooperative to avoid seeming weak.
The book is not without flaws--some identifications to the KGB presumably belong to NKVD, the American arsenal in June 1946 lists a grossly exces-sive nine atom bombs taken from the _Bulletin of_Atomic_Scientists_ compared to _The Winning_Weapon_ by Gregg Herken which identified a single partially disassembled weapon in the inventory in January 1947, and an annoying transliteration of two Cyrillic characters as "ia" and "iu" instead of "ya" and "yu" as more conventionally employed. Otherwise, _Stalin_ is a tremendous addition to our knowledge of Russian capabilities in physics instigated by a repressive regime at the dawn of the nuclear age.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Important for Understanding the Cold War; 4.5 Stars
By R. Albin
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 seems only to have exacerbated tensions without providing the Americans with any particular leverage. Holloway is quite specific that having achieved dominance of Eastern Europe and secured the borders of the Soviet Union, Stalin was relatively cautious and non-aggressive. The broad contours of the post-war settlement and the early stages of the Cold War were not altered by the existence of nuclear weapons. Its also clear from Holloway's discussion that the nuclear rivalry probably exacerbated tensions in the late 40s and early 50s though Holloway feels that nuclear deterrence, particularly after the development of fusion weapons, had a restraining effect.
While the international aspects of the Soviet nuclear weapons program will be the most interesting part of the book for many readers, Holloway's treatment of the internal effects of the Soviet nuclear program are equally important. The implementation of a major Soviet nuclear weapons program and its corollaries, large missile and strategic bomber programs, would ultimately consume disproportionate amounts of Soviet economic resources and have a deleterious long-term effect on the Soviet state. Another important internal effect was the preservation of the Soviet physics community. The importance of physics was apparent to Stalin, and the need for physicists prevented physics from being subjected to something like the Lysenkoist purge that devastated Soviet biology. Stalin's protection of the Soviet physics community also had ironic long-term effects. The physics community remained dedicated to open discussion of ideas, resistance to ideology, and cosmopolitanism. Physics was an island of civil society in a totalitarian society. From this milieu emerged the remarkable Andrei Sakharov.
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
An island of intellectual autonomy in a totalitarian state
By Luc REYNAERT
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.
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