Components of Success of the Soviet Atomic Bomb Project

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.