Soviet Atomic Project, The

The book describes the lives of the people who gave Stalin his weapon — scientists, engineers, managers, and prisoners during the early post war years from 1945–1953. Many anecdotes and vicissitudes of life at that time in the Soviet Union accompany considerable technical information regarding the solutions to formidable problems of nuclear weapons development.

The contents should interest the reader who wants to learn more about this part of the history and politics in 20th century physics. The prevention of nuclear proliferation is a topic of current interest, and the procedure followed by the Soviet Union as described in this book will help to understand the complexities involved.

Sample Chapter(s)
Introduction

Contents:

• Wartime Soviet Industry
• Development of Nuclear Physics Before the Discovery of Fission
• The Discovery of Fission of Uranium
• The Soviet Union and Stalin's Terror 1937–1939
• The Soviet Union and Nuclear Research 1934–1942
• The Manhattan Project Creates Los Alamos
• The Soviet Union Creates Laboratory #2
• Soviet Espionage and the Atomic Project
• Players in the Drama — Stalin, Beria, and Kurchatov
• Industrial Plants Move to the Urals
• The Soviet Union Creates Arzamas-16
• Uranium and Plutonium
• German Scientists and the Soviet Atomic Project
• Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Range
• Appendices:
  • Nuclear Masses
  • Controlled Nuclear Chain Reactions
  • Isotope Separation
  • Charged Particle Accelerators
  • Spontaneous Fission of Uranium, K A Petrzhak and G N Flerov, JETP 10, 1013, (1940)
  • Nuclear Weapons
  • Encryption and Decryption
  • Soviet Intelligence
  • Critical Assemblies

Readership: Students, researchers, and general readers interested in physics and history of science.
History of Nuclear Weapons;History of 20th Century Physics0Key Features:

• Written by a physicist, the perspective on many events is different from other similar studies
• Extensive use of declassified materials from the Soviet archives
• Personal experience in the Soviet Union authenticatics various circumstances described