Stalin and the Bomb

by David Holloway

The conference did not take place, however, and its possible effects must remain a matter for speculation. The last meeting of the organizing committee took place on March 16, 1949, and the conference was due to start on March 21. It was canceled between those dates. Only Stalin could have taken the decision to do this, and it appears that he canceled the conference because it might retard the atomic project. According to General Makhnev, head of the secretariat of the Special Committee on the Atomic Bomb, Beria asked Kurchatov whether it was true that quantum mechanics and relativity theory were idealist, in the sense of antimaterialist. Kurchatov replied that if relativity theory and quantum mechanics were rejected, the bomb would have to be rejected too. Beria was worried by this reply, and may have asked Stalin to call off the conference.72