Translated material
Bomb
The Soviet atomic project has become a little less mysterious
The exhibition “Atomic Project of the USSR”, which opened in the Exhibition Hall of the Federal Archives, is an extraordinary event. If only because the participants in documentary exhibitions rarely include such organizations as the operational archive of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, the Central Archive of Rosatom and a bouquet of nuclear physics institutes, the topics of which were once strictly classified, and the names were replaced by letters and numbers. An additional charm is the participation of the American side - the Harry Truman Library and Museum.It is pointless to even try to list here everything that is being shown for the first time at this exhibition. Just look at a film based on the filming of the test of the first Soviet atomic bomb (August 29, 1949) and edited specifically for Stalin. Or President Truman’s handwritten note giving the command for the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: “Response to your report No. 41011. I approve of your proposal. Publish when it’s ready, but not earlier than August 2.” This note, of course, was not sent by mail, but the answer was written in such a way that the uninitiated would not guess what “publication” we were talking about.
The viewer is given a rare opportunity to observe the efforts of all parties to ensure a regime of strict secrecy. Many documents are handwritten, and do not think that this is a handwritten draft of Zavenyagin’s memo to Beria on ensuring the secrecy regime of the first bomb test - this is a secrecy regime at the level at which even a trusted and proven typist is excluded. Therefore, the most important reports compiled for Beria and Stalin were written by the high officials themselves in the touching handwriting of a diligent schoolboy. Kurchatov also wrote handwritten reviews of intelligence reports addressed to Beria. However, Kurchatov did not know exactly where the information came from - he probably guessed; however, he was not supposed to know .
The level of secrecy is slightly lower: in the typed document, dashes are left, where the boss, when signing the report, inserts key words with his own hand - titles, names, dates, terms. Here and there the viewer will notice copies of documents (well made, by the way) with neat black rectangles over the text: there were technical data that are not subject to disclosure even now. Dangerous, terrible secrets are breathing very close. Some exhibits are provided with reassuring labels: there is no radiation hazard.
However, the strict secrecy did not entirely help and even gave itself away. May 1942, from the 2nd Directorate of the GRU of the General Staff of the Red Army, the special department of the USSR Academy of Sciences asks: “In connection with reports of work abroad on the problem of using uranium nuclear fission energy for military purposes, please inform me how plausible such reports are and whether “At present this problem is a real basis for practical development.” They answer: the Academy of Sciences does not have any data, however, “over the past year, almost no work related to solving this problem has been published in the scientific literature... This circumstance... gives reason to think that the relevant work is given importance and is carried out in secret." A little earlier, Soviet intelligence had already realized: the names of all nuclear scientists suddenly disappeared from Western reference books. It is amazing that intelligence officers began to worry about these issues in November-December 1941. The Germans are near Moscow, and intelligence is doing things that would seem completely academic. We double-checked the data, received feedback from major Soviet scientists, and made sure that the question was not empty. And who then, in the early 40s, could understand anything about the problems of a nuclear chain reaction? Indeed, back in January 1941, specialists from the People's Commissariat of Defense assessed the proposal to use uranium as an explosive as unserious (this conclusion is presented at the exhibition). The order of the State Defense Committee “On the organization of work on uranium” was signed on September 28, 1942. For clarity, the authors of the exhibition placed it against the background of a map of the European part of the USSR with the marked operational situation for that period. The government, which had lost the lion's share of its most developed territories, at the height of the war launched large-scale work with the knowledge that there was no hope of getting results during this war. It's worth appreciating. The project was headed by L.P. Beria, and his personal merit in the fact that in 1949 they were able to test the bomb, is very great.
The exhibition allows you to assess the scale of the project. Making an atomic bomb is by no means a task for a group of scientists who need to be provided with laboratories and the necessary materials. This is the construction of new institutes, the construction of reactors for conducting experiments, the solution of a mass of complex related scientific problems (chemistry, engineering solutions, the development of new materials), and the organization of relevant production. This is the problem of uranium accumulation; in the summer of 1943, geologists were hastily recalled from the front and sent to look for deposits (at that time only one had been explored - in Taboshary in Central Asia). At the same time, factories were founded and testing grounds were equipped. And intelligence acted. Authors now writing on these topics emphasize that spectacular successes in atomic espionage in no way negate the merits of Soviet scientists. They made the bomb themselves; intelligence data made it possible to narrow the range of technical solutions and speed up the results.
And it was necessary to get ahead not only of the Americans, but also of the Germans. Hitler did not have time to receive the atomic bomb. There was an element of fate in this: the Nazis themselves forced the best German scientists who were Jews to flee. They, in particular, made the American atomic bomb; Among them was Robert Oppenheimer, who headed the laboratory at Los Alamos. And also the young and very talented Klaus Fuchs, who first emigrated to England and was included in a group of British scientists sent to work in the Manhattan Project. Klaus Fuchs was a communist, he himself contacted a Soviet agent, and the main information on the Manhattan Project was received from him (in 1950 he was discovered and arrested in England, spent nine years in prison, and spent the rest of his days doing scientific work and teaching in East Germany). The scientists who worked for Hitler became a tasty prey for the Allies; they were taken (to some extent) to both the USA and the USSR.
The Soviet Union acquired German uranium reserves and equipment for several large laboratories in its occupation zone. German physicists, led by Professor von Ardenne, formed a special group of developers of the Soviet atomic project. The stunning paradox is that rivalry between powers, secrecy, special regime and special protection gave rise to a bizarre international cooperation of scientific thought. Through stolen secrets, captured/rescued specialists, fantastic intelligence tricks. The bomb (or rather, bombs) were eventually made through joint efforts.
By the way, a huge photo chronicle of the life of I.V. Kurchatov was strictly monitored by the security officer who accompanied him for many years. Now the joint efforts of those who were followed and those who followed them bring us the fantastic plots of this story.