The beginning of “destalinization” put an end to many things, but the Soviet Union’s development of nuclear weapons wasn’t one of them. Given priority by Stalin, nuclear arms development was also continued by his successors, including Nikita Khrushchev. The soviets considered the nuclear program of very high importance, and in 1953, the directors were even … Continue reading The Semipalatinsk Test Site: A Bomb on Nation
Tag: Nuclear Weapons
The Soviet Super-Bomb
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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 […]
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
