Количественные и качественные характеристики кадровой базы советского атомного проекта

Abstract

The article examines the socio-demographic features, the quantitative and qualitative dynamics of the Soviet atomic project's manpower. The chronology is from 1945 to the second half of the 1950s. It was time between the beginning of the project active stage after a protracted start and its completion, when the main results were achieved. It is the first comprehensive research of the Soviet atomic project's manpower in the historiography of this topic. The work is based on published primary sources and declassified archival documents collected by the author. The author used the methods of statistical analysis and case-study methods. The last one helps to overcome the problems of the topic's sources base: quite a few of primary sources have not been declassified, and most of declassified documents are devoted to scientific and technical details, but not social aspects. The author examines the dynamics of the number of Soviet “atomic” manpower, based on the currently known data. The figures obtained allow us to assess the scale of “atomic” employment - about 0,3% from the USSR population in the late 1940s - the first half of the 1950s. This correlates with the Manhattan Project's the cumulative employment. The author investigates the following groups of the Soviet atomic project's human resources: scientific and industrial heads, grassroots cadres (residents of closed nuclear towns), foreign specialists, prisoners, including scientists, other specific Soviet slave categories (so-called spetscontingent), military builders, as well as personnel of Soviet uranium enterprises outside the Soviet Union. It were analyzed such indicators as sex, age, ethnicity, social origin and status, official capacity, education, together with the changes in the structure and ratio of different personnel groups. The study raises controversial issues: number of foreign specialists, the prevalence of prisoners among the project's human resources and mortality rate. The study shows that ‘atomic” personnel selection in general prefers young, men, Russians, educated. Membership in the Communist Party was important for the leaders of the Soviet and foreign enterprises, and for last one it was more important than education. At the same time, membership in Party and social origin were not so important for scientists. The mortality rate in the project was not catastrophic and the prisoners did not make up half of the project's human resources, as a number of publications claim. The project developed on the way to a gradual refusal of indentured labor.