In his memoirs Sakharov is very skeptical about the possibility that Stalin might have reciprocated American restraint in the development of thermonuclear weapons. In the late 1940s, he writes, Stalin and Beria “already understood the potential of the new weapon, and nothing could have dissuaded them from going forward with its development. Any US move toward abandoning or suspending work on a thermonuclear weapon would have been perceived either as a cunning, deceitful maneuver, or as evidence of stupidity or weakness.”
