From the series Atom and industrialisation of science
In 1945, Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific head of the Manhattan Project, stated: If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of a warring world, or to the arsenals of nations preparing for war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and of Hiroshima. The people of this world must unite, or they will perish. This war that has ravaged so much of the Earth, has written these words. The atomic bomb has spelled them out for all men to understand
[Richard Rhodes, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, 1995].
American underestimation of Soviet science
According to Rhodes, the idea that the danger of an atomic war was common to all the nations of the world had been brought to Los Alamos by Niels Bohr [1885-1962], and strongly influenced Oppenheimer [1904-1967]. An element to consider in judging the doubts and ambiguities of the American scientist in the postwar period.
Bohr was aware of the advanced level of Soviet science and hoped for cooperation between the two powers to avert an otherwise inevitable nuclear arms race, which nonetheless eventually occurred. Transcending Bohr's scientific rationality was the confrontation between two imperialist powers.
Charles Percy Snow [1905-1980], an English writer, physicist, and researcher in the field of physical chemistry, comments: With the discovery of fission [...] physicists became, almost overnight, the most important military resource a nation-State could call on
. The nuclear arms race was the inevitable consequence of the military scientific competition between the powers. The American president, however, did not share this awareness. Oppenheimer recalls his conversation with Harry Truman, as recorded by his biographer Nuel Pharr Davis: When will the Russians be able to build the bomb?
asked Truman. I don't know
, said Oppenheimer. Truman retorted: I know
. Oppenheimer asked: When?
Truman's final answer: Never
[N.P. Davis, Lawrence and Oppenheimer, 1968]. Truman's attitude reflected the presumption of American technological superiority. The physicists disagreed.
Before leaving Los Alamos, Richard Feynman [1918-1988] wrote in his notes: Other peoples are not being hindered in the development of the bomb by any secrets we are keeping [...] but soon they will be able to do Columbus, Ohio, and hundreds of cities like it what we did to Hiroshima
[James Gleick, Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, 1992].
The public declaration of the Los Alamos civilian staff, signed in September 1944, stated: The development of the atomic bomb has involved no new fundamental principles or concepts; it consisted entirely in the application and extension of information which was known throughout the world before intensive work started. Furthermore, deposits of basic materials for atomic bombs have been found, even before the war, in many parts of the world and new deposits will undoubtedly be discovered. It is therefore highly probable that with sufficient effort other countries, who may in fact be well underway at this moment, could develop an atomic bomb within a few years
[R. Rhodes, op. cit.].
However, the director of the Manhattan Project, General Leslie Groves [1896-1970], was not convinced of this and believed that the US monopoly would be long-lasting. On August 1st, 1946, Truman signed the Atomic Energy Act, which explicitly prohibited the United States from sharing nuclear weapons or related information with any other country, although Allies could receive material and assistance for the development of atomic energy. This law prevented any collaboration between the US and the USSR and scuppered Bohr's hopes for cooperation. It also undermined the Quebec Agreement on nuclear collaboration between the United States and Great Britain: it hit not only the USSR, but also a US ally. The legislation nationalised every aspect of the development of atomic energy.
Beria takes charge
Meanwhile in the USSR, on August 20th, 1945, the State's Defence Committee promulgated Stalin's decision to accelerate the USSR's nuclear project, establishing a special committee on the atomic bomb. This was placed under the command of Lavrentiy Beria, head of the secret police and of the Ministry of the Interior from 1938 to 1946. He had also been Stalin's right-hand man in carrying out the physical elimination of the Bolshevik leaders who, together with Lenin, had led the Revolution. Stalin's decision to give Beria the nuclear project indicates the priority the Soviet leader gave to the atomic bomb.
The physicist Yulii Khariton [1904-1996], one of the leading scientists of the Soviet atomic project, recalled: Once the project passed into Beria's hands, the situation changed completely. Beria understood the scope and dynamics of the research. This man personified evil in the country's modern history [and] possessed at the same time tremendous vigour and efficiency. To the scientists who met him it was impossible not to admit his intellect, willpower, and purposefulness. He was a first-class manager able to bring every job to its conclusion
. Beria wanted a bomb whose functioning was guaranteed.
Soviet total commitment
The scientific director of the project, Igor Kurchatov [1903-1960], met with Stalin, Beria, and Vyacheslav Molotov in the Kremlin on the evening of January 25th, 1946, to discuss the programme for the bomb. Molotov was the foreign minister. Stalin decisively rejected the proposal of Pyotr Kapitsa [1894-1984] for an independent Soviet programme which would cost less than the American one. Khariton writes: In the course of the conversation, Stalin advised avoiding collateral issues and not losing time in seeking inexpensive solutions to the problems. He stressed that it was necessary to conduct the work broadly, with Russian scope, and that he would give it his full support
.
In a war-devastated Soviet Union, where millions of people were starving and homeless, the scientists became the country's privileged elite, and their standard of living rose above prewar levels. Stalin understood the value of science as an element of a country's power: new scientific institutes multiplied like cells in biological cultures; an expanded network of technical schools and universities was created for demobilised soldiers with a secondary education. The number of high school students — 817,000 before the war — reached more than 1.5 million between 1948 and 1954. This, too, reflects a similarity with the US, where, at the end of the Second World War, the GI Bill
guaranteed all those who had fought the right to access a university education. The bill provided veterans with funds to pay tuition fees and living expenses so that they could attend colleges and professional schools, as well as low-cost mortgages and loans to set up their own ventures.
On March 5th, 1946, during his speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, Winston Churchill coined the expression iron curtain
to describe the division of Europe between the Western and the Soviet spheres of influence, marking the beginning of the Cold War. Almost simultaneously, on April 9th, Khariton and General Pavel Mikhailovich Zernov, deputy minister of tank production during the war, selected Sarov as the site for the Soviet counterpart to Los Alamos.
On August 20th, the State's Defence Committee adopted a decree establishing a special committee to direct all work on the use of atomic energy from uranium. The committee was chaired by Beria, charged with supervising the whole project and ensuring strict adherence to deadlines. Boris Vannikov [1897-1962] was appointed as the director of the project while Kurchatov remained as its scientific director, a position similar to that held by Oppenheimer in the US.
Vannikov reported directly to Beria. His story typifies the state of uncertainty for many political figures of the Stalinist period: one day, they risked the firing squad, and the day after they entered the government, and vice versa. In January 1939, Vannikov was appointed as people's commissar for armaments, but in June 1941 he was arrested by Beria. He was sentenced to death, but the sentence was never carried out because of the German invasion, after which Stalin realised he needed capable administrators. Vannikov was released on July 25th, 1941, and then appointed as people's commissar for ammunition.
Beria distrusted the Soviet scientists, but had to rely on Kurchatov. He did not interfere in scientific or technical decisions; his role was to obtain resources — such as labour, materials, and information — in order to build the bomb as soon as possible. He visited the institutes and plants and made threats: threats that were far from empty, as evidenced by the millions of victims. But Beria wanted the project to succeed and he understood that arresting its managers would have slowed it down. He was intelligent enough to understand that he needed competent management.
Conventional demobilisation and nuclear mobilisation
In November 1945, in his speech for the 28th anniversary of the October Revolution, Molotov declared the importance of nuclear energy. This was the first official announcement of a Soviet atomic project.
On May 26th, the State's Defence Committee ordered the gradual conversion of the military industry to civilian production. In June, the Supreme Soviet adopted the demobilisation bill and the Red Army, which had 11.365 million soldiers in May, was reduced to 3 million by the year's end. By the end of 1947, this figure was reduced to 2.874 million. The military budget dropped from 137.8 billion roubles in 1944 to 128.2 in 1945, 73.6 in 1946, and 66.3 in 1947.
Stalin implemented a policy similar to that of the US, whereby the reduction of Soviet conventional forces was to be compensated for by the development of the atomic weapon. For Stalin and Molotov, it was clear that the United States would use the bomb as a tool of political pressure: even if the Truman administration had refrained from nuclear diplomacy, its existence alone was seen by Stalin and Molotov as a factor in the balance of power. Neither Stalin nor Truman saw the bomb as a danger to the human race: for Stalin, the danger was not the bomb itself, but rather the American monopoly of the bomb. The obvious solution was that the Soviet Union should also have it.