Stalin and the Bomb

by David Holloway

Most Soviet scientists were skeptical about the possibility of utilizing atomic energy. Igor’ Tamm is reported to have said in August 1939, upon hearing of the work of Zel’dovich and Khariton, “Do you know what this new discovery means? It means a bomb can be built that will destroy a city out to a radius of maybe ten kilometers.”31 But this was an exception. Ioffe commented in a report to the Academy of Sciences in December 1939 that it was unlikely that there would be a technological payoff “this time” from nuclear physics.32 Kapitsa remarked at some point in 1939 that nuclear reactions would absorb more energy than they yielded. The isotopes of uranium would have to be separated, and to do this it would be necessary “to expend more energy than one could count on obtaining from nuclear reactions.” It would be very surprising, he said, if the possibility of using atomic energy were to become reality.33