On October 29 the Council of Ministers adopted a secret decree, signed by Stalin, granting honors and awards to those who had taken part in the atomic project. The decree was prepared by Beria. In deciding on who was to receive which award, Beria is said to have adopted a simple principle: those who were to be shot in case of failure were now to become Heroes of Socialist Labor; those who would have received maximum prison terms were to be given the Order of Lenin, and so on down the list. This story may well be apocryphal, but it nevertheless conveys the feeling of those in the project that
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