According to the subject essay by Lewis Siegelbaum, three years before the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb in 1949, work on the “super-bomb” began. Differing from the recent atomic bomb the world had been experimenting with at the time, the hydrogen bomb was a nuclear weapon which used fusion in a 2-step chain reaction rather than fission. The […]
Category: 8th Weekly Edition
Brain Drain Is Prohibited!
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Though Khrushchev’s Thaw brought about significant political and social changes in Russia, many academics and scientists continued to view the Soviet bureaucracy as an impediment to their work. With newfound political freedom and a re-emphasis on technological advancement, Soviet scientists looked for ways to organize themselves into a physically close community in order to be able […]
Russia Launches Into The Final Frontier
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By the mid-1950s, the Cold War was in full swing in both the United States and the Soviet Union. The growing threat of nuclear weapons and an arms race the likes of which the world had never seen before fueled the conflict between the two nations. On October 4th, 1957, The Soviet Union launched itself … Continue reading Russia Launches Into The Final Frontier
Joe-4 Soviet H-Bomb
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The successful test of RDS-1 in August of 1949 inspired the Soviet government to institute a major, high-priority program to develop the hydrogen bomb. The Soviets, who received information from Klaus Fuchs regarding the American hydrogen bomb program throughout the late 1940s, knew that thermonuclear weapons were theoretically possible. They also knew that the hydrogen … More Joe-4 Soviet H-Bomb
Make Abortion Legal Again
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Despite the fact that the 1936 ban on abortions was lifted in 1955, this did not signify a societal change in the way that abortions were ultimately viewed. With the ban being repealed, the government strived to make abortions safer for women by preventing illegal and unsafe abortions from occurring as commonly as they did … Continue reading Make Abortion Legal Again
“Happiness of Motherhood”
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Last week, I read a post about gender roles and it talked about how Stalin made abortion illegal because of the negative impact he thought it would have on the population. When I was looking at the events of 1956, … Continue reading →
Turncoats and Slanderers
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With the death of Stalin in March 1953 and the soon-to-follow process of de-Stalinization under Khrushchev, socialist realism as a movement finally begins its slow succumb to scrutiny… but not without a lot of mixed signals and zig-zags from the Soviet … Continue reading →
The Virgin Lands Program
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After Stalin’s death, a period of reforms and changes began to take hold in the USSR. Among many changes and initiatives that took place, Khrushchev’s Virgin Lands Program was significant. The Virgin Lands Program was an “…ambitious scheme to convert
Shhhh… It’s a Secret (Speech)
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On February 24th, 1956 Premier Nikita Khrushchev delivered a Secret Speech to a closed session of the 20th Congress that set the course for the destalinization of the Soviet Union. No one knew Khrushchev had planned to give this speech, and no part of the session was made open to the public. However, the speech …
Mankind’s Deadliest Weapon: The Hydrogen Bomb
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In his essay Hydrogen Bomb, Lewis Siegelbaum states that on “August 12, 1953 the Soviet Union detonated a thermonuclear (“hydrogen”) bomb at the Semipalatinsk test site in northern Kazakhstan. Work on the super-bomb had begun in 1946, three years before the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb.” To clarify, the difference between an atomic … Continue reading Mankind’s Deadliest Weapon: The Hydrogen Bomb
