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The Soviet Nuclear Weapons Program
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Book Synopsis Stalin and the Bomb by : David Holloway
Download or read book Stalin and the Bomb written by David Holloway and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 507 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic and “utterly engrossing” study of Stalin’s pursuit of a nuclear bomb during the Cold War by the renowned political scientist and historian (Foreign Affairs). For forty years the U.S.-Russian nuclear arms race dominated world politics, yet the Soviet nuclear establishment was shrouded in secrecy. Then, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, David Holloway pulled back the Iron Curtain with his “marvelous, groundbreaking study” Stalin and the Bomb (The New Yorker). How did the Soviet Union build its atomic and hydrogen bombs? What role did espionage play? How did the American atomic monopoly affect Stalin's foreign policy? What was the relationship between Soviet nuclear scientists and the country's political leaders? David Holloway answers these questions by tracing the dramatic story of Soviet nuclear policy from developments in physics in the 1920s to the testing of the hydrogen bomb and the emergence of nuclear deterrence in the mid-1950s. This magisterial history throws light on Soviet policy at the height of the Cold War, illuminates a central element of the Stalinist system, and puts into perspective the tragic legacy of this program―environmental damage, a vast network of institutes and factories, and a huge stockpile of unwanted weapons.
Book Synopsis Red Cloud at Dawn by : Michael D. Gordin
Download or read book Red Cloud at Dawn written by Michael D. Gordin and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2009-09-29 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On August 29, 1949, the first Soviet test bomb, dubbed First Lightning, exploded in the deserts of Kazakhstan. The startling event was not simply a technical experiment that confirmed the ability of the Soviet Union to build nuclear bombs during a period when the United States held a steadfast monopoly; it was also an international event that marked the beginning of an arms race that would ultimately lead to nuclear proliferation beyond the two superpowers. Following a trail of espionage, secrecy, deception, political brinksmanship, and technical innovation, Michael D. Gordin challenges conventional technology-centered nuclear histories by looking at the prominent roles that atomic intelligence and other forms of information play in the uncertainties of nuclear arms development and political decision-making. With the use of newly opened archives, Red Cloud at Dawn focuses on the extraordinary story of First Lightning to provide a fresh understanding of the origins of the nuclear arms race, as well as the all-too-urgent problem of proliferation.
Book Synopsis The Soviet Nuclear Weapons Program by : Charles River Editors
Download or read book The Soviet Nuclear Weapons Program written by Charles River Editors and published by . This book was released on 2019-08-06 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes a bibliography for further reading Tens of millions died during World War II as the warring powers raced to create the best fighter planes, tanks, and guns, and eventually that race extended to bombs which carried enough power to destroy civilization itself. While the war raged in Europe and the Pacific, a dream team of Nobel Laureates was working on the Manhattan Project, a program kept so secret that Vice President Harry Truman didn't know about it until he took the presidency after FDR's death in April 1945. The Manhattan Project would ultimately yield the "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" bombs that released more than 100 Terajoules of energy at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but weeks earlier, on July 16, 1945, the first detonation of a nuclear device took place in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The first bomb was nicknamed the "gadget," to avoid espionage attempts to discover that it was, indeed, a bomb. In some sense, the device detonated in July was not really a "bomb" anyway; it was not a deployable device, though it was a detonatable one. With this success, word reached President Truman, who was then attending the Potsdam Conference, and while there, he presented the news to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Stalin feigned surprise; in an ironic twist of fate, espionage missions had revealed American nuclear research to the Soviets before it had even reached Vice President Truman. The attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, along with the Cold War-era tests and their accompanying mushroom clouds, would demonstrate the true power and terror of nuclear weapons, but in the late 1930s these bombs were only vaguely being thought through, particularly after the successful first experiment to split the atom by a German scientist. Despite the fact the Nazis' quest for a nuclear weapon began in earnest in 1939, no one really had a handle on how important nuclear weapons would prove to war and geopolitics, so the Germans were hesitant to expend resources on it. Moreover, they were hampered by the fact their policies had compelled Jewish scientists like Liz Meitner and Albert Einstein to flee before the war. For their part, Stalin's regime had been working on a nuclear weapons program since 1942, relying greatly upon successful Soviet espionage to help lead the way. With intelligence sources connected to the Manhattan Project, Stalin was able to keep abreast of the Allies' progress toward creating an atomic bomb, so that by 1945, the Soviets already had a working blueprint of America's first atomic bombs. On August 29, 1949, the Soviets successfully tested an atomic bomb, and with that, the Soviet Union became the second nation after the U.S. to develop and possess nuclear weapons. The nuclear age itself was still in its infancy, but within a few short years the advent of nuclear war loomed over the world and the prospect of a malign dictatorship possessing nuclear superiority kept Western leaders awake at night. The Soviet Nuclear Weapons Program: The History and Legacy of the USSR's Efforts to Build the Atomic Bomb examines the Soviets' race to reach the ultimate goal during and after World War II, and how they went about their objectives. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Nazi Germany's nuclear weapons program like never before.
Book Synopsis The Soviet Biological Weapons Program by : Milton Leitenberg
Download or read book The Soviet Biological Weapons Program written by Milton Leitenberg and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-06-29 with total page 956 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first attempt to understand the full scope of the USSR’s offensive biological weapons research, from inception in the 1920s. Gorbachev tried to end the program, but the U.S. and U.K. never obtained clear evidence that he succeeded, raising the question whether the means for waging biological warfare could be present in Russia today.
Book Synopsis The Soviet Atomic Project by : Lee G Pondrom
Download or read book The Soviet Atomic Project written by Lee G Pondrom and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2012-06-04 with total page 784 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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. remove
Download or read book Seeking the Bomb written by Vipin Narang and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-01-11 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first systematic look at the different strategies that states employ in their pursuit of nuclear weapons Much of the work on nuclear proliferation has focused on why states pursue nuclear weapons. The question of how states pursue nuclear weapons has received little attention. Seeking the Bomb is the first book to analyze this topic by examining which strategies of nuclear proliferation are available to aspirants, why aspirants select one strategy over another, and how this matters to international politics. Looking at a wide range of nations, from India and Japan to the Soviet Union and North Korea to Iraq and Iran, Vipin Narang develops an original typology of proliferation strategies—hedging, sprinting, sheltered pursuit, and hiding. Each strategy of proliferation provides different opportunities for the development of nuclear weapons, while at the same time presenting distinct vulnerabilities that can be exploited to prevent states from doing so. Narang delves into the crucial implications these strategies have for nuclear proliferation and international security. Hiders, for example, are especially disruptive since either they successfully attain nuclear weapons, irrevocably altering the global power structure, or they are discovered, potentially triggering serious crises or war, as external powers try to halt or reverse a previously clandestine nuclear weapons program. As the international community confronts the next generation of potential nuclear proliferators, Seeking the Bomb explores how global conflict and stability are shaped by the ruthlessly pragmatic ways states choose strategies of proliferation.
Book Synopsis Atomic Diplomacy by : Gar Alperovitz
Download or read book Atomic Diplomacy written by Gar Alperovitz and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis The Soviet Nuclear Weapon Legacy by : Marco De Andreis
Download or read book The Soviet Nuclear Weapon Legacy written by Marco De Andreis and published by SIPRI Research Reports. This book was released on 1995 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The breakup of the Soviet Union left a cold war nuclear legacy consisting of tens of thousands of nuclear weapons and a sprawling infrastructure for their production and maintenance. This book examines the fate of this vast nuclear weapon complex and the unprecedented non-proliferation challenges associated with the breakup of a nuclear weapon state. It describes the high-level diplomatic bargaining efforts to consolidate in Russia the nuclear weapons based in newly independent Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine and to strengthen central control over these weapons. It surveys the problems associated with dismantling nuclear weapons and the difficulties involved in safely storing and disposing of large stockpiles of fissile material. It reviews the key provisions of the principal nuclear arms control measures and initiatives, including the START I and START II treaties. Finally, the book assesses the contribution of international assistance programmes to the denuclearization process under way in the former Soviet Union.
Book Synopsis Restricted Data by : Alex Wellerstein
Download or read book Restricted Data written by Alex Wellerstein and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2024-04-23 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first full history of US nuclear secrecy, from its origins in the late 1930s to our post–Cold War present. The American atomic bomb was born in secrecy. From the moment scientists first conceived of its possibility to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and beyond, there were efforts to control the spread of nuclear information and the newly discovered scientific facts that made such powerful weapons possible. The totalizing scientific secrecy that the atomic bomb appeared to demand was new, unusual, and very nearly unprecedented. It was foreign to American science and American democracy—and potentially incompatible with both. From the beginning, this secrecy was controversial, and it was always contested. The atomic bomb was not merely the application of science to war, but the result of decades of investment in scientific education, infrastructure, and global collaboration. If secrecy became the norm, how would science survive? Drawing on troves of declassified files, including records released by the government for the first time through the author’s efforts, Restricted Data traces the complex evolution of the US nuclear secrecy regime from the first whisper of the atomic bomb through the mounting tensions of the Cold War and into the early twenty-first century. A compelling history of powerful ideas at war, it tells a story that feels distinctly American: rich, sprawling, and built on the conflict between high-minded idealism and ugly, fearful power.
Book Synopsis Atomic Audit by : Stephen I. Schwartz
Download or read book Atomic Audit written by Stephen I. Schwartz and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2011-12-01 with total page 750 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since 1945, the United States has manufactured and deployed more than 70,000 nuclear weapons to deter and if necessary fight a nuclear war. Some observers believe the absence of a third world war confirms that these weapons were a prudent and cost-effective response to the uncertainty and fear surrounding the Soviet Union's military and political ambitions during the cold war. As early as 1950, nuclear weapons were considered relatively inexpensive— providing "a bigger bang for a buck"—and were thoroughly integrated into U.S. forces on that basis. Yet this assumption was never validated. Indeed, for more than fifty years scant attention has been paid to the enormous costs of this effort—more than $5 trillion thus far—and its short and long-term consequences for the nation. Based on four years of extensive research, Atomic Audit is the first book to document the comprehensive costs of U.S. nuclear weapons, assembling for the first time anywhere the actual and estimated expenditures for the program since its creation in 1940. The authors provide a unique perspective on U.S. nuclear policy and nuclear weapons, tracking their development from the Manhattan Project of World War II to the present day and assessing each aspect of the program, including research, development, testing, and production; deployment; command, control, communications, and intelligence; and defensive measures. They also examine the costs of dismantling nuclear weapons, the management and disposal of large quantities of toxic and radioactive wastes left over from their production, compensation for persons harmed by nuclear weapons activities, nuclear secrecy, and the economic implications of nuclear deterrence. Utilizing archival and newly declassified government documents and data, this richly documented book demonstrates how a variety of factors—the open-ended nature of nuclear deterrence, faulty assumptions about the cost-effectiveness of nuclear weapons, regular misrepresentation of and overreaction to the Soviet threat, the desire to maintain nuclear superiority, bureaucratic and often arbitrary decisions, pork barrel politics, and excessive secrecy—all drove the acquisition of an arsenal far larger than what many contemporary civilian and military leaders deemed necessary. Atomic Audit concludes with recommendations for strengthening atomic accountability and fostering greater public understanding of nuclear weapons programs and policies.
Book Synopsis The Soviet Atomic Project by : Lee G. Pondrom
Download or read book The Soviet Atomic Project written by Lee G. Pondrom and published by . This book was released on 2020-04-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Book Synopsis The Nuclear Spies by : Vince Houghton
Download or read book The Nuclear Spies written by Vince Houghton and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-15 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did the US intelligence services fail so spectacularly to know about the Soviet Union's nuclear capabilities following World War II? As Vince Houghton, historian and curator of the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC, shows us, that disastrous failure came just a few years after the Manhattan Project's intelligence team had penetrated the Third Reich and knew every detail of the Nazi 's plan for an atomic bomb. What changed and what went wrong? Houghton's delightful retelling of this fascinating case of American spy ineffectiveness in the then new field of scientific intelligence provides us with a new look at the early years of the Cold War. During that time, scientific intelligence quickly grew to become a significant portion of the CIA budget as it struggled to contend with the incredible advance in weapons and other scientific discoveries immediately after World War II. As Houghton shows, the abilities of the Soviet Union's scientists, its research facilities and laboratories, and its educational system became a key consideration for the CIA in assessing the threat level of its most potent foe. Sadly, for the CIA scientific intelligence was extremely difficult to do well. For when the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb in 1949, no one in the American intelligence services saw it coming.
Book Synopsis The Cambridge History of the Cold War by : Melvyn P. Leffler
Download or read book The Cambridge History of the Cold War written by Melvyn P. Leffler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-25 with total page 663 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines the origins and early years of the Cold War in the first comprehensive historical reexamination of the period. A team of leading scholars shows how the conflict evolved from the geopolitical, ideological, economic and sociopolitical environments of the two world wars and interwar period.
Book Synopsis Nonproliferation and Threat Reduction Assistance by : Amy F. Woolf
Download or read book Nonproliferation and Threat Reduction Assistance written by Amy F. Woolf and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2010-06 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Congress passed the Nunn-Lugar amendment, authorizing U.S. threat reduction assistance to the former Soviet Union, in Nov. 1991, after a failed coup in Moscow and the disintegration of the Soviet Union raised concerns about the safety and security of Soviet nuclear weapons. The annual program has grown from $400 million to over $1 billion/year across 3 agencies. It has also evolved from an emergency response to impending chaos in the Soviet Union, to a more comprehensive threat reduction and non-proliferation effort, to a broader program seeking to keep nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons from leaking into the hands of rogue nations or terrorists. This report discusses issues related to U.S. non-proliferation and threat reduction assistance. Illus.
Download or read book Target America written by Steve Zaloga and published by Presidio Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the development of the A-bomb and the role of espionage surrounding it to the dire environmental consequences of its nuclear power program, the development of nuclear technology and weaponry in the former Soviet Union is impressively researched in this important, pioneering study. Photographs. Maps.
Book Synopsis Making The Russian Bomb by : Thomas B. Cochran
Download or read book Making The Russian Bomb written by Thomas B. Cochran and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-04-15 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Natural Resources Defense Council once again provides the definitive account of the current status of Russian nuclear weapons. Taking advantage of previously unavailable information the authors describe the origins, growth, and decline of the massive Soviet nuclear weapons production complex-the places involved in the recent headline-making epi
Book Synopsis The Case for U.S. Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century by : Brad Roberts
Download or read book The Case for U.S. Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century written by Brad Roberts and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2015-12-09 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An excellent contribution to the debate on the future role of nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence in American foreign policy.” ―Contemporary Security Policy This book is a counter to the conventional wisdom that the United States can and should do more to reduce both the role of nuclear weapons in its security strategies and the number of weapons in its arsenal. The case against nuclear weapons has been made on many grounds—including historical, political, and moral. But, Brad Roberts argues, it has not so far been informed by the experience of the United States since the Cold War in trying to adapt deterrence to a changed world, and to create the conditions that would allow further significant changes to U.S. nuclear policy and posture. Drawing on the author’s experience in the making and implementation of U.S. policy in the Obama administration, this book examines that real-world experience and finds important lessons for the disarmament enterprise. Central conclusions of the work are that other nuclear-armed states are not prepared to join the United States in making reductions, and that unilateral steps by the United States to disarm further would be harmful to its interests and those of its allies. The book ultimately argues in favor of patience and persistence in the implementation of a balanced approach to nuclear strategy that encompasses political efforts to reduce nuclear dangers along with military efforts to deter them. “Well-researched and carefully argued.” ―Foreign Affairs
