Stalin and the Bomb

by David Holloway

Stalin did not believe that war was likely in the short term; nor, as will be seen in a later chapter, did he believe that Soviet divisions had lost their value. The immediate threat he saw was not military, but the threat of atomic diplomacy. He was afraid, as he had explained to Gromyko and Gusev, that the United States would try to use its atomic monopoly to impose a postwar settlement. This raises an interesting analytical question. How could the atomic bomb affect the balance of power when the United States, as Stalin knew, did not possess a real atomic capability? The United States had a very small number of bombs – the stockpile was nine in mid-1946 – and no desire to go to war.

bomb as a common danger for the human race, as Bohr had hoped. For Stalin the danger was not the atomic bomb as such, but the American monopoly of the bomb. The obvious solution to this problem, in Stalin’s mind, was a Soviet atomic bomb.

No good figures are available for the cost of the project, or for the number of people involved. Some indication of the project’s size, however, is given by a 1950 Central Intelligence Agency report, which estimated that between 330,000 and 460,000 people were employed in it. Most of these – 255,000 to 361,000 – worked in mining in the Soviet Union (80–120,000) and in Eastern Europe (175–241,000); 50–60,000 worked in construction, 20–30,000 in production, and 5–8,000 in research.1 The CIA estimated that about 10,000 technically qualified people – engineers, geologists, research scientists, and laboratory technicans – worked in the project.2 Although these figures are estimates, they appear plausible, and certainly of the right order of magnitude.

Beria, as has been seen, had doubts about Soviet scientists, but he had to rely on Kurchatov. It is possible that he hoped to use the German scientists as a parallel team, which would compete with Kurchatov and his colleagues. That did not prove possible, however, except in some limited areas, because Soviet scientists were more advanced in their understanding of what needed to be done. The Manhattan project, on the other hand, did provide a model against which Soviet decisions could be assessed. It exercised a strong influence on the Soviet project not only because it had been successful, but because, in the political conditions of the time, Soviet scientists had to make a strong case if they wanted to do something different.

Several days later Beria came to the laboratory for a special demonstration of the new reactor. He stood at the control panel while Kurchatov raised the control rod. The clicks that registered the neutrons increased in frequency until they became a continuous wail, while the indicator on the galvanometer moved off the scale. The scientists present exclaimed, “It’s started.” But Beria, with evident disappointment, said, “Is that all? Nothing more? Can I go to the reactor?” Kurchatov stopped him, telling him that it would be dangerous for his health. The start-up of the reactor was far less impressive than the flight of a new airplane or the test of a new tank. Because there was so little to see at these “demonstrations,” Beria could not be sure that Kurchatov was not pulling the wool over his eyes.73

It is true that the Soviet Union had a great deal of information about the Manhattan project, and that this information influenced the technical choices that were made. But this does not detract from the achievement of building the atomic industry in so short a time, for there is a great gap between knowing what should be done and actually building the plants.

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

It was the atomic bomb that saved Soviet physics in 1949. Stalin was not so concerned about the condition of agriculture – he tolerated, after all, a desperate famine in the Ukraine in 1947 – and so it may not have mattered very much to him whether Lysenko was a charlatan or not. The nuclear project was more important, however, than the lives of Soviet citizens, so it was crucial to be sure that the scientists in the nuclear project were not frauds.

Stalin did not destroy physics, because physics was needed to enhance the power of the state. Landau remarked that the survival of Soviet physics was the first example of successful nuclear deterrence. This comment had a serious point. What the bomb saved was a small island of intellectual autonomy in a society where the state claimed control of all intellectual life. Besides, the physics community saw itself in some significant sense as part of a larger international community, and was perhaps more closely linked with the West, in cultural terms, than any other part of Soviet society. Thus the atomic bomb, the most potent symbol of the hostility between the Soviet Union and the West, saved a community that constituted an important cultural and intellectual link between the West and the Soviet Union.

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 their fate hinged on the success of the test.

The German contribution to the atomic project was small and limited. With one exception, German scientists did not play any role on the critical path to the plutonium bomb. The exception was Nikolaus Riehl’s group, which produced uranium metal at a crucial stage of the project.

The intelligence information – particularly that from Klaus Fuchs – was more important. Fuchs helped the nuclear project in two ways. He contributed to the setting up of the Soviet effort during the war; and he provided a detailed description of the design of the plutonium bomb. Fuchs’s confession makes it clear that he gave little help with other stages of the plutonium route to the bomb:

Fuchs’s information undoubtedly enabled the Soviet Union to build the atomic bomb more quickly than it could otherwise have done. Fuchs himself thought that he had saved the Soviet Union several years – though he added, on reflection, that he had speeded up the Soviet bomb “by one year at least.”126 But Fuchs, who had never been in the Soviet Union, knew almost nothing about the state of Soviet physics. The best-qualified estimates of the time that intelligence saved the Soviet Union have fallen into the range of one to two years.

Stalin assiduously cultivated his own image as a military leader. On Red Army Day, February 23, 1946, he published a letter in which he belittled Lenin’s authority in military affairs (“Lenin did not consider himself a military expert”); argued that German military ideology, represented by Clausewitz, had not withstood the test of history (“it is ridiculous now to take lessons from Clausewitz”); and portrayed himself as a latter-day Kutuzov, whose retreat in the face of the German attack was patterned on the Russian withdrawal before Napoleon’s armies in 1812.5 Stalin presented the early retreats and disasters of the war as part of a planned strategy of active defense. In Order No. 55, issued on February 23, 1942, he had referred to the “permanently operating factors” which determine the outcome of war: the stability of the rear, the morale of the Army, the quantity and quality of divisions, the armament of the Army, and the organizing ability of the command personnel. He had contrasted these factors with the “transitory” element of surprise, thereby playing down the reverses of the first months of the war.6

The American stockpile was still small at the time when these studies were being done: on June 30, 1946 the United States had 9 atomic bombs; a year later it had 13 and in 1948 it had 56.20

In May 1948 the JCS approved the Joint Emergency War Plan, “Halfmoon,” which envisaged “a powerful air offensive designed to exploit the destructive and psychological power of atomic weapons against the vital elements of the Soviet war making capacity.”24 Truman rejected this plan and ordered that a plan based solely on conventional forces be prepared, for he still appears to have hoped that atomic weapons might be outlawed by international control. At the same time, however, he refused to countenance a defense budget that would allow the United States to maintain what the Joint Chiefs regarded as adequate conventional forces. As a result, American strategy came ultimately to depend on the atomic air offensive.25 The Strategic Air Command (SAC), which had been established in March 1946 to conduct long-range offensive operations in any part of the world, now became the spearhead of American military power.

In October 1948 Defense Secretary James V. Forrestal, himself a former Secretary of the Navy, asked the JCS to examine the impact on the Soviet Union if all the bombs were delivered. The Harmon Committee completed its report in May 1949 and concluded that the planned atomic attack on seventy Soviet cities would not, “per se, bring about capitulation, destroy the roots of Communism, or critically weaken the power of the Soviet leadership to dominate the people.”26 A successful strategic air campaign might result in 2.7 million deaths and reduce Soviet industrial capacity by 30–40 per cent, but it would not lead to the defeat of the Soviet Union.

The first mission assigned to SAC was to disrupt the Soviet capacity to make war. This was the same mission that strategic bombers had carried out against Germany. After the formation of NATO in April 1949 SAC was assigned an additional mission: to retard a Soviet advance into Western Europe. In the following year, soon after the Soviet test, SAC acquired a third mission: to blunt the Soviet capability to deliver an atomic offensive against the United States and its allies. This blunting mission had the highest priority because it had to be carried out quickly, before Soviet bombers got off the ground.

The atomic stockpile had grown to 298 bombs by June 1950, and it now began to increase more rapidly – to 438 in 1951, to 832 in 1952, and to 1,161 in 1953.32 This growth was accompanied by an increase in the number of nuclear delivery vehicles. Until 1948 SAC had only about 30 B-29s modified to drop atomic bombs, and all of these were based in New Mexico.33 By December 1948 the number of nuclear-capable aircraft had grown to 60, and to 250 by June 1950; by the end of 1953 it had reached 1,000.34 Most of these were medium bombers which could not strike the Soviet Union from the United States; only the B-36, of which SAC had 38 at the end of 1950 and 154 at the end of 1952, had intercontinental range.

The ground forces were the spearhead of Soviet military power. After the setbacks and defeats of 1941 and 1942, the Red Army had emerged as a formidable force, which had driven the Wehrmacht out of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and had seized Berlin. The Army’s 500 divisions were reduced to 175 after the war, but these remaining divisions were strengthened: the tank and mechanized divisions were allocated additional tanks and guns, while the infantry (rifle) divisions were reinforced with tanks, self-propelled guns, and motor transport. Their firepower and mobility were thus greatly enhanced.44

The Soviet posture in Europe after the war did not betray a real fear of imminent attack by the United States, or an urgent ambition to invade Western Europe; it was the posture of a state determined to consolidate its power on the territory that it now occupied, rather than expand that territory. Although the Western Allies demobilized more rapidly, the Soviet Union did not have overwhelming military superiority in Europe in the early postwar years. The Western powers had about 375,000 occupation troops in Germany and Austria in 1947–8, while other forces in Western Europe (excluding Britain) amounted to about 400,000.51 In 1948 US intelligence estimated that the Soviet Union might have 700–800,000 men available for a surprise attack on Western Europe. This would not have provided the Soviet armed forces with anything like the kind of force ratios it considered desirable for large-scale strategic offensive operations.52

In 1944, however, Stalin had a stroke of luck. At the end of July a US Air Force B-29, running low on fuel after a mission over Manchuria, was forced to land near Vladivostok. In November two more B-29s crash-landed in Siberia after running out of fuel on raids against Japan, and a fourth crashed after the crew had bailed out.66 The four-engined B-29, which had conducted its first bombing raid in June 1944, was the most advanced bomber in the world at the time: it had a speed of 584 km/h at 8,000 meters, and a range of about 6,100 kilometers with a bomb load of almost 5 metric tons.67 Instead of returning the bombers to the United States, Stalin kept them so that they could be dismantled and studied by Soviet designers.

There was very little discussion in the Soviet press of the military implications of the atomic bomb. The most substantial analysis was given by Major-General G.I. Pokrovskii, the explosives expert whom Balezin had consulted in 1942 about the feasibility of a uranium bomb. In a pamphlet published in 1946 Pokrovskii wrote that atomic aviation bombs will be effective in destroying deep underground installations, large dams and hydroelectric plants, heavy naval vessels (especially when concentrated in narrow waters), and the most important transport junctions. On the other hand, against armies deployed over a wide area and dispersed and camouflaged in the appropriate way it will be more effective to use less concentrated forms of energy, i.e. conventional explosives.93

Pokrovskii’s analysis suggested that they would be more effective in a strategic than in a tactical role, against targets in the enemy’s rear rather than against his military forces in the field. This was an important conclusion and it guided military policy for the next five years.

Khlopov’s article provides the clearest available Soviet discussion of the character of a future world war in the late Stalin years. The United States would launch an atomic air offensive, and this would be countered by Soviet air defenses and by strikes against United States air bases. Soviet ground forces would launch a counteroffensive in Europe, and perhaps also in the Middle East, to prevent the United States from using those regions as a springboard for attacking the Soviet Union. This image of a future war matches postwar military policy.

But the Soviet conception of a future war was very close to that elaborated in the war plans of the United States. For example, the “Offtackle” Emergency War Plan, which was approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in December 1949 and remained operative for two years, also envisaged a war in several phases. In the first three months the Soviet Union “was expected to launch offensives in Western Europe and the Middle East, an aerial bombardment of the British Isles, campaigns with limited objectives in the Far East, air-sea offensives against allied lines of communications, and selective air attacks upon North America.”108 Strategic bombing was not expected to stop these offensives. The Western allies would be too weak to hold Western Europe, and would have to try to secure the United Kingdom and hold on to North Africa and the Cairo–Suez area. The resulting situation would be like that of 1942–3. The Allies would carry out strategic bombing attacks, build up the United Kingdom as a major base, and begin to move outwards from the western Mediterranean and North Africa, with the aim of reentering the European continent. World War III would be decided by campaigns reminiscent of those of 1944–5.109

The Soviet conception of a future war did not change in Stalin’s last years, but an important shift of policy took place in 1949–50. Stalin decided to increase Soviet forces in Germany, to expand the Navy, and to build up the East European armies. These decisions reflected the growing tension in East–West relations. With the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in April 1949, the United States was now formally committed to the defense of Western Europe, and the Western Allies began to build up their forces in Western Europe.116

His build-up of the ground forces and his decision to expand the Navy are not signs that Stalin ignored the bomb, but they do indicate that he had a particular conception of the bomb and of its role in military strategy. Stalin did not think that the atomic bomb had ushered in a revolution in military affairs. Soviet military strategy drew heavily on the experience of the war with Germany. There was no radical shift in the Soviet conception of war.

The great success of Stalin’s military policy was that it helped to persuade the United States that the atomic air offensive would not be decisive, and that war with the Soviet Union would be prolonged and difficult.

Alexander George and Richard Smoke have argued plausibly that the Berlin blockade was a “classical example of a low-risk, potentially high-gain strategy,” because it could be controlled and reversed. “Soviet leaders were not committed to persisting in the blockade,” they have written. “They could at any time find a solution to the ‘technical difficulties’ and open up ground access to West Berlin. Nor need the Soviets persist in the blockade if the Western powers threatened to overreact to it in ways that raised the danger of war.”48 Andrei Gromyko, who was Deputy Foreign Minister at the time, later commented that “I believe that Stalin – of course nobody actually asked him directly – embarked on that affair in the certain knowledge that the conflict would not lead to nuclear war.

The Berlin blockade was the first nuclear crisis, and it gave new impetus to the nuclear competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. The atomic bomb came to occupy a central role in United States military strategy, while the deployment of B-29s to Britain signified an American nuclear commitment to the defense of Western Europe.63 For the Soviet Union the Berlin blockade was not a nuclear crisis to the same degree. There were, however, several signs in 1948 that the American atomic threat was being taken more seriously.

the toast Stalin made to the Russian people in May 1945, when he referred to the desperate situation in 1941–2 and the retreat of the Red Army. “Another people,” he said, “could have said to the government: you have not justified our expectations, go away, and we will install another government which will conclude peace with Germany and guarantee us a quiet life.”79 That toast was demagogic too, but it was the closest Stalin ever came to acknowledging how close the Soviet regime was to collapse in 1941–2. The fear that the state would collapse in the event of war remained with Stalin, according to Khrushchev.80 Stalin’s comment that the Russian people “could dismiss us” provides an echo of that fear, a recognition that war might mean the end of the Soviet regime. It stands in sharp contrast to the confidence he tried to project to the Chinese leaders and to the world at large.

The Soviet Union had been making a determined effort to end the American atomic monopoly: surely it would have wanted the world to know that it had succeeded? Why should it keep the test secret? There were two plausible motives. The first was fear that the United States would redouble its efforts to stay ahead in the arms race.

The second motive was fear that the test might goad the United States into a more aggressive policy before the Soviet Union had acquired an effective atomic capability.

The Soviet Union was “widening the gap between its preparedness for war and the unpreparedness of the free world.”92 The Soviet possession of nuclear weapons had greatly intensified the Soviet threat to the United States, NSC 68 concluded. The Soviet nuclear threat is more immediate than had previously been estimated. In particular, the United States now faces the contingency that within the next four or five years the Soviet Union will possess the military capability of delivering a surprise atomic attack of such weight that the United States must have substantially increased general air, ground, and sea strength, atomic capabilities, and air and civilian defenses to deter war and to provide reasonable assurance, in the event of war, that it could survive the initial blow and go on to the eventual attainment of its objectives.93 NSC 68 did not have an immediate effect on United States policy, since its call for a sharp increase in the defense budget was unpopular in the government,94 and the administration did not act upon it before the Korean War broke out on June 25, 1950. But the report did reflect a sense of deep foreboding in Washington now that the Soviet Union had acquired the atomic bomb.

There is little evidence to suggest that the United States was able to use the bomb to compel the Soviet Union to do things it did not want to do. Atomic diplomacy played no part in the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Iran in 1946, the example of compellence (to use the political science term) most frequently cited in the postwar period. There is more evidence for the deterrent effect of the atomic bomb, especially during the Berlin crisis, but even in this instance the case is not conclusive. There is no convincing evidence to show that the atomic bomb deterred a Soviet invasion of Western Europe in the first four years after the war. The United States did not have enough atomic bombs in the early postwar years to be able to prevent the Soviet Union from occupying Western Europe; and the Soviet leaders were aware of this.

Stalin’s policy on the bomb was guided by two principles: the concept of the “war of nerves,” and the idea of “limits.” The first of these principles sprang from the assumption that the United States would use the atomic bomb to intimidate the Soviet Union, to wring concessions from it, in order to impose its own conception of the postwar order.

It was crucial therefore to show that the Soviet Union was tough, that it could not be frightened. This sometimes involved putting pressure on the West and raising international tension.

The second principle – the concept of limits – acted as a brake on the war of nerves. Stalin did not want war with the West; he did not believe that the Soviet Union was ready for war. If the Soviet Union pursued a conciliatory and accommodating policy towards the West, it would appear weak, and its weakness would invite pressure and an aggressive Western policy. That was why he thought it necessary to conduct the war of nerves. But in the war of nerves it was crucial not to go too far, for fear of precipitating a real war. Hence the importance of limits. Soviet awareness of limits was evident in the Berlin crisis of 1948.

The Sino–Soviet alliance set the stage for the Korean War, the most serious crisis of the first postwar decade. At the time it was widely assumed in the West that Stalin – emboldened by the first Soviet atomic test – had directed North Korea to attack the South. Some historians have argued more recently that Stalin might not have known of North Korea’s decision to unify the country by force. The issue is a crucial one for understanding Stalin’s policy in the last years of his life, and in particular his attitude to war and peace.28

Sergei Goncharov, John Lewis, and Xue Litai have argued that Stalin hoped that the invasion would provoke the United States into backing the Nationalist regime on Taiwan, thereby removing the danger that China might be tempted to align itself with the United States.

Mao informed Stalin that he intended to send twelve divisions into North Korea. These forces would engage in defensive warfare while waiting for the delivery of Soviet weapons. The implication was clear: Soviet military assistance was needed if China was to carry out its goal of defeating the United States forces quickly; if China failed to do this, a stalemate would result, leading to a Sino–American war in which the Soviet Union might become embroiled, in line with its commitment under the Sino–Soviet Treaty. Mao’s decision to intervene was thus predicated on extensive Soviet military aid. Stalin had already agreed to provide air support, and to equip Chinese ground force divisions.53 On October 8 Mao issued the order for the Chinese People’s Volunteers to enter North Korea under the command of Peng Dehuai.54

Mao did not mention the atomic bomb in his telegrams to Stalin. He had been even more outspoken than Stalin in playing down the significance of the bomb. As early as August 13, 1945, one week after Hiroshima, he had written: “Can atom bombs decide wars? No, they can’t. Atom bombs could not make Japan surrender. Without the struggles waged by the people, atom bombs by themselves would be of no avail.”62 A year later he had said: The atom bomb is a paper tiger which the US reactionaries use to scare people. It looks terrible, but in fact it isn’t. Of course, the atom bomb is a weapon of mass slaughter, but the outcome of a war is decided by the people, not by one or two new types of weapon.63

It is moreover possible that the Chinese leaders, if they believed the statements that the Soviet Union had had the bomb since 1947, thought that Soviet atomic capabilities were in fact greater than they were. In any event Chinese fears of the atomic bomb did not outweigh the reasons for entering the war

The Soviet Union had the basic design concept for a workable thermonuclear bomb before the end of 1948, well before its first atomic bomb test. The decision to develop the hydrogen bomb was seen as a logical next step and occasioned none of the soul-searching that took place in the United States.

The distinction between the boosted fission weapon and the superbomb is crucial in the history of the United States program. The boosted weapon is one in which a fission bomb is used to initiate a small thermonuclear reaction so that the neutrons from this reaction might increase the efficiency of the use of the fissile material. The idea of the superbomb, on the other hand, was to use a fission bomb to ignite a very large mass of thermonuclear fuel, in order to produce a very large explosive yield on the order of 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb.38 Oppenheimer had advocated the boosted fission bomb as early as 1944, on the grounds that it would provide “an experimentally possible transition from a simple gadget [a fission bomb] to the super and thus open the possibility of a not purely theoretical approach to the latter.”39 Now, in 1948, it was planned to proceed with this work at Los Alamos and to test a boosted weapon in 1951.40 This test was conducted on May 24, 1951; it produced an explosive yield of 45.5 kilotons.41

Although it was formally an advisory body, the GAC normally carried great weight on scientific and technical matters. Among its members were Harvard president James Conant, and Nobel prizewinners Enrico Fermi and I.I. Rabi, as well as Oppenheimer.47 The GAC approved the build-up and diversification of fission weapons (including tactical weapons), endorsed preparation for radiological warfare, and supported the development of boosted fission weapons; but it unanimously opposed an all-out effort to develop the Super.

Historians have continued to wonder whether, in launching an all-out program to develop the superbomb, Truman missed an opportunity to halt the arms race.161 If the GAC’s recommendation not to develop the hydrogen bomb had been accepted, would the Soviet Union have reciprocated?

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.”

everyone liked Miasishchev’s M-201 bomber [as the new version was called], but you would not call it intercontinental in the full sense; the fuel supply was limited, and from the very beginning the designer had to rack his brains over inflight refuelling of the bomber.28 When Khrushchev complained that the 201M did not have a true intercontinental range, Miasishchev replied that it could bomb the United States and then land in Mexico. Khrushchev was not amused: “What do you think Mexico is – our mother-in-law? You think we can simply go calling any time we want? The Mexicans would never let us have the plane back.”