cover image Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956

Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956

David Holloway. Yale University Press, $50 (480pp) ISBN 978-0-300-06056-0

Working from newly opened Russian archives, as well as interviews and memoirs, Holloway presents an authoritative analysis of the Soviet nuclear program from the discovery of nuclear fission to the hydrogen bomb tests in the mid-'50s, with emphasis on the effects of the Stalinist regime's ideological and political attitudes. He documents the Soviet dictator's reluctant decision to launch a small-scale nuclear project early in WWII and the crash program he ordered after the destruction of Hiroshima alerted him to the bomb's strategic importance. Holloway calls the creation of the Soviet atomic industry a remarkable feat, adding that it would have been impossible without slave labor. He also says the effects of nuclear radiation and environmental damage virtually were ignored. His study includes rare eyewitness accounts of the initial Soviet atomic and hydrogen bomb tests. Holloway is a political science professor at Stanford and codirector of the Center for International Security and Arms Control. Illustrations. (Sept.)