Chronology of Events in the USSR

1.  Soviet Chronology

This chronology was prepared by T. M. Sanders. The sources used were Holloway's Stalin and the Bomb[1], Rhodes's Dark Sun[2], and Sakharov's Memoirs[3], primarily the first. Another interesting source is the Discovery Channel's The Red Bomb, which is available in the form of three 45-minute VHS video cassettes. There is also both information and disinformation in Special Tasks [4].

1.1  Early Days

1918 A. F. Ioffe founds Physico-Technical Institute (``Fiztekh'') at Petrograd/Leningrad/St. Petersburg.

1932 Nuclear Physics Institute founded in Fiztekh, director I. V. Kurchatov (age 29).

1934 Soviets operate first cyclotron in Europe. Stalin's purges begin.

January, 1939 F. Joliot-Curie writes Ioffe news of discovery of nuclear fission. G. Flerov: ``... There was a smell of nuclear powder in the air.''

Spring, 1939 First Soviet publications relating to fission. Flerov measures secondary neutrons.

June, 1939 Verification of U-235 fission by slow neutrons.

Khariton, Zeldovitch consider theory of chain reaction, (homogeneous) reactor, explosion.

September 1, 1939 Germany, USSR invade Poland. WWII begins.

1940 Flerov finds spontaneous fission in uranium, publishes in Physical Review.

Flerov notes absence of fission-related publications from US, UK, concludes that military work must be going on.

May 5, 1940 New York Times article, headlined ``Vast Power Source in Atomic Energy Opened by Science'' read, communicated to Soviet government.

Summer 1940 Government establishes ``Commission on the Uranium Problem,'' approves its plan for uranium research, isotope separation, exploration for ores, construction or upgrade of 3 cyclotrons.

Fall 1940 Kurchatov calls for more ambitious program: reactor development, bomb research.

1940 Theorists calculate critical mass for fast neutron chain reaction.

1.2  Wartime

June 22, 1941 Germany invades USSR.

December, 1941 German army at gates of Moscow, stopped by Russian Winter.

Flerov continues to press government for action, writes Stalin, but scientists are needed for more urgent tasks.

Late 1941 USSR receives intelligence information from UK, learns of Maud committee.

Spring, 1942 L. Beria (NKVD Head) recommends increased efforts on uranium.

February, 1943 Soviet victory at Stalingrad (present Volgograd). Stalin authorizes formation of a laboratory to investigate nuclear weapons, appoints I. V. Kurchatov its scientific director, reporting to M. G. Pervukhin and the Council of People's Commissars.

March, 1943 Kurchatov reads Soviet intelligence materials, and writes an analysis of them, learns about isotope separation and of the fissile isotope plutonium-239 (which the Russians call ``eka-osmium''), and the Frisch-Peierls analysis of a uranium-235 bomb. He apparently does not know about Fermi's successful reactor of December, 1942.

July, 1943 Kurchatov decides on a graphite-moderated natural uranium reactor for plutonium production.

April, 1944 Reactor lab.  opens. Uranium still in short supply.

Late 1944 Kurchatov complains to Beria that the intelligence data shows an enormous effort in the West. ``But in our country, in spite of great progress in developing the work on uranium in 1943-1944, the state of affairs remains completely unsatisfactory.''

Summer, 1945 With the fall of Germany, the USSR acquires German scientists, uranium ore, uranium source in Saxony (future DDR). ``... it is clear that, in spite of Fuchs's report that the United States was planning to test the bomb on July 10, and use it against Japan if the test was successful-neither Stalin, Beria, nor Molotov understood the role that the atomic bomb would soon play in international relations... Their failure ... suggests that the atomic bomb had no reality for them in the summer of 1945, that they had no conception of the impact it was about to have on world politics.'' (Holloway)

August, 1945 Hiroshima, Nagasaki, WWII ends.

August 12, 1945 Smyth report published in US, quickly translated into Russian.

1.3  Postwar

August 20, 1945 Atomic Bomb project given highest priority. Kurchatov scientific director, Beria in overall charge.

Fall, 1945 Kurchatov decides fastest route is to replicate Trinity/Nagasaki bomb.

Late 1945 Pure graphite in production.

Uranium in short supply.

December, 1946 First reactor goes critical. Design begins for plutonium production reactor(s) at Chelyabinsk, in the Urals. Operates in summer, 1948. Metallic plutonium available in quantity in Summer, 1949. Chemical separation at same site.

``Joe 1,'' a replica of the ``Fat Man,'' first tested August 29, 1949 near Semipalatinsk on the steppes of Kazakhstan (Central Asia).

After one week break Kurchatov ``directed them to the next stage-the creation of a hydrogen bomb.''[1] (Sakharov's ``First idea'' was proposed earlier.)

References

[1]

David Holloway. Stalin and the bomb : the Soviet Union and atomic energy, 1939-56. Yale, New Haven, CT, 1994. UA 770 .H6321 1994 (GRAD).

[2]

Richard Rhodes. Dark sun : The making of the hydrogen bomb. Simon & Schuster, New York, 1995. UG 1282 .A8 R461 1995.

[3]

Andrei Sakharov. Memoirs. Hutchinson, London, 1990. DK 275 .S16 A323 1990b.

[4]

Pavel Sudoplatov, J. L. Schecter, and L. P. Schecter. Special tasks : the memoirs of an unwanted witness, a Soviet spymaster. Little, Brown, Boston, 1994. JN 6529 .I6 S831 1994 (GRAD).