The Soviet project to develop an atomic bomb (Russian: Создание советской атомной бомбы) was a top secret research and development program begun during World War II, in the wake of the Soviet Union's discovery of the American, British, and Canadian nuclear project. This scientific research was directed by Soviet nuclear physicist Igor Kurchatov, while the military logistics and intelligence efforts were undertaken and managed by NKVDpeople's commissarLavrentiy Beria. The Soviet Union benefited from highly successful espionageefforts on the part of the GRU of the Soviet General Staff, PGUNKGB SSSR/ MGB SSSR. During World War II, the program was started by Joseph Stalin who received a letter from physicist Georgy Flyorov urging him to start the research, as Flyorov had long suspected that many of the Allied powers were already secretly working on a weapon after the discovery of nuclear fission in 1939. However, because of the bloody and intensified war with Nazi Germany, large scale efforts were prevented. The Soviets accelerated the program after the American atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Soviet atomic project was charged with gathering intelligence on the German nuclear energy project as well as the American nuclear efforts. After the war, the Soviet Union expanded its research facilities, military reactors, and employed many scientists.
Nuclear weapons possess enormous destructive power from nuclear fission or combined fission and fusion reactions. Starting with scientific breakthroughs made during the 1930s, the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada collaborated during World War II in what was called the Manhattan Project to counter the suspected Nazi German atomic bomb project. In August 1945 two fission bombs were dropped on Japan ending the Pacific War. The Soviet Union started development shortly thereafter with their own atomic bomb project, and not long after that both countries developed even more powerful fusion weapons known as "hydrogen bombs."
Physics and politics in the 1930s- and 1940s
In the first decades of the 20th century, physics was revolutionised with developments in the understanding of the nature of atoms. In 1898, Pierre and Marie Curie discovered that pitchblende, an ore of uranium, contained a substance—which they named radium—that emitted large amounts of radioactivity. Ernest Rutherford and Frederick Soddy identified that atoms were breaking down and turning into different elements. Hopes were raised among scientists and laymen that the elements around us could contain tremendous amounts of unseen energy, waiting to be harnessed.
Sputnik explores the Soviet atomic bomb's development, its military and geopolitical significance, and some of the long-held myths surrounding the project.
atomic bomb project, and, in 1942, had tasked his own scientists to begin work on building a Soviet bomb which, when tested in 1949, ended America’s short-lived nuclear supremacy.).
Britain and the USSR had fought alongside each other, but tensions between the countries were beginning to grow as news of the Soviet atomic bomb project emerged ... The club was owned by Felix Dzerzhinsky, the head of the Secret Soviet Police.
The code-cracking coup led to the discovery of Soviet penetration of the ManhattanProject, the top-secret program to build the first atomic bombs, and the existence of the Cambridge Five, a group of ...
The code-cracking coup led to the discovery of Soviet penetration of the ManhattanProject, the top-secret program to build the first atomic bombs, and the existence of the Cambridge Five, a group of ...
American fighter jets capable of nuclear bombing raids are ...Washington also supplied atomic bombs to UK forces under an initiative dubbed 'Project E' until 1992, soon after the fall of the SovietUnion.
American fighter jets capable of nuclear bombing raids are ...Washington also supplied atomic bombs to UK forces under an initiative dubbed 'Project E' until 1992, soon after the fall of the SovietUnion.
Robert Oppenheimer’s security clearance, which the AtomicEnergyCommission had taken away from him in 1954, declaring him to be not simply a communist but, in all likelihood, a Soviet spy. Oppenheimer, of course, is the father of the atomic bomb.
The “enheimer” of Barbenheimer is giving moviegoers the cliff notes on how a Soviet spy ring infiltrated the ManhattanProject, stealing secrets of the atom bomb.
From the time he started to work on Britain’s wartime atom bomb project, Fuchs was in what he later described as “continuous contact” with Soviet intelligence, providing theoretical ...
Calhoun Times
13 Aug 2023
Calhoun Times
13 Aug 2023