Components of Success of the Soviet Atomic Bomb Project
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Issue of the Journal Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences Dedicated to the History of Russia Components of Success of the Soviet Atomic Bomb Project E. T. Artemov# Institute of History and Archaeology, Ural Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Yekaterinburg, Russia e-mail: [email protected] Received June 15, 2020; revised June 15, 2020; accepted July 1, 2020
Abstract—September 28, 2017, marked the 75th anniversary of the issuance of the Resolution of the State Defense Committee (SDC) On Uranium Mining, which laid the foundation for the Atomic Project, one of the most ambitious projects in the history of the Soviet Union. This article is dedicated to reconstruction of the factors that ensured its successful implementation. The completion of the project is attributed to the late 1950s, but the author focuses on the period from 1945 through 1953. On the one hand, it was then that the scientific, technical, material, and organizational prerequisites for the production of nuclear weapons were created, and, on the other, that time can be called the “golden age of the command economy,” when its capabilities manifested themselves to the full. Turning to it allows one to understand better how the command economy in its classical, Stalinist, version achieved success and what limitations it had. Keywords: Soviet Atomic Project, resource support of the Atomic project, planning and organization of work on the Atomic Project, command economy, logistics of scientific institutions, nuclear weapons complex, management personnel, targeted training of specialists, staff motivation, serial production. DOI: 10.1134/S1019331620050020
In the public consciousness, the Soviet Atomic Project [1] is associated with outstanding breakthroughs in science, technology, and production. It is not by chance that relevant events have brought increased attention. However, they are interesting not only on their own merits. Today there is a lot of talk about the ineffectiveness and nonviability of the “socialist economic system”: the question has always been “only about when and how it will collapse.” The recognition of individual achievements does not change the overall negative assessment. Regarding the postwar period, they are mainly associated with building up the capabilities of the military‒industrial complex by exsanguinating civilian sectors of the economy and its consumer sector. The high level of production of the defense industries is explained by the active copying of foreign technologies and the importation of high-performance equipment, supplied in exchange for natural resources and traditional goods [2, p. 36; 3, p. 19; 4, pp. 798‒801]. Indeed, this practice took place. It was especially widely used at the initial stage of industrialization. However, it is not enough to create high-tech indus# Evgenii
Timofeevich Artemov, Dr. Sci. (Hist.), is Chief Research Fellow of the Institute of History and Archaeology of the RAS Ural Branch.
tries. Other approaches were required, and they were found, owing to which the Soviet Union could i
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