THIS BOOK HAS ALREADY HAD TWO ENDINGS: the November 1955 superbomb test, which marked a new stage in nuclear weapons development, and the renunciation in February 1956 of the inevitability-of-war thesis, which marked a new stage in thinking about war and peace in the nuclear age. This chapter provides a third ending. Its substantive focus is the use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes, but it also deals with themes raised in the first chapter and discussed at intervals during the book – technological innovation, the physics community as a sphere of intellectual autonomy in Soviet society,
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