The Internationalism

Internationalism No. 85, March 2026 Page 15 From the series Atom and industrialisation of science It was only after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in August 1945, that the Soviet Union became fully committed to the project of acquiring the atomic bomb. The alliance of the US, the UK, and the USSR Producing U-235 accounted for 64% of the total cost of the Manhattan Project, while plutonium production made up another 20%; in total, 84% of the expense went toward producing material for the atomic bombs, as against only 4% spent on research and development [ Lotta Comunista , July-August 2018]. In 1945, the most urgent problems to be resolved for Russian imperialism were not tied to the scientific knowledge required for the atomic bomb, but to uranium and its processing. During the Second World War, under the Lend-Lease Act passed on March 11th, 1941, the United States gave its allies food, oil, and supplies worth $46 billion ...

Internationalism No. 71, January 2025 Page 13 From the series Atom and industrialisation of science “ The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers ” [Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto ). The Manhattan Project scientists In Brighter Than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists , Robert Jungk [1913-1994] writes that the Manhattan Project was a labyrinth of winding paths and dead ends. Commenting on Jungk’s romanticised account of the first phase of the history of the atomic bomb, Edward Teller [1908-2003], often called the “father” of the H-bomb, wrote: “There is no mention of the futile efforts of the scientists in 1939 to awaken the interest of the military authorities in the atomic bomb. The reader does not learn about the dismay of scientists f...