Stolen American secrets made Soviet nukes WORSE

From my conversation with Richard Rhodes, historian and author of "The Making of the Atomic Bomb."

[johnstuartsmith]

One of the difficult parts of doing a huge project that has never been done before is convincing people who need to provide a huge amount of their money that the project can be done. Once someone else has done what had never been done before, it becomes easier for the next project manager to explain why it's doable. There probably were physicists in the 1942 Soviet Union who understood that an atom bomb was perhaps a theoretical possibility, but none of them wanted to be the guy explaining it to Stalin.

[RonJohn]

"Build the one that works" is a quite reasonable strategy when doing something the first time.

[MrBlacksight]

Beria was a monster, even Stalin was afraid to have his children around him.

[ShubhamBhushanCC]

I am a physicist by training and Soviet Physicists were not only good they were bloody good at doing things cheap and easy. Example to couple an optical mode into a optical fiber it usually takes micrometer level adjustment but Soviets just used a prism and something called Frustrated Total Internal reflection and lo and behold no micrometre adjustment needed

[PxThucydides]

Tupolev had the same problem with Stalin and the stolen B-29s. He told Stalin, why build a five year old design? I could build you a better one. But Stalin insisted. A few years later Tupolev built the T-95, a plane the Russians still use today.

[snakevenom]

The Soviets top scientists knew the Americans were working on a bomb as soon as WW2 started. They noticed that no new publications or research was being published on Nuclear Fission. They knew Nuclear Fission could, in theory, create a bomb. So they came to the conclusion that the Americans were making a fission bomb

[aliteralmoth]

I can understand that to a degree. Get the one you KNOW works, then experiment to make a better one. Guy was still a monster, but that logic makes sense to me.

[Apple-vmgc]

Mathematics and physics books written during soviet time are still used today that's how good they were

[newdefsys]

Despite all the criticism, the Manhattan Project team with with the Fat Man design because they knew it would work. Better designs were on paper but Trinity proved that Fat-Man would work.

[blakebrown]

Beria went with the 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it' option and I can't blame him for that.

[kubahenriksen]

What a well constructed, informative, honest answer. Respect.

[TheDarkfrostElf]

“Or you’ll be camp dust” is an interesting threat

[Rob-ucjh]

The Soviets beat the US to space. Why does everyone think they weren't technologically capable?

[pathfinderreality]

Soviet physicists were top notch. They gave many contributions to nuclear engineering and are still today (Russia) a leading nuclear energy developers and suppliers.
Their reactor designs (apart from the RBMK) are very safe and modern and on par with anything from the West just much more affordable.
The modern template for a fusion reactor is a Tokamak, a Soviet design.

[james]

Beria was the second best character in death of stalin

[borisreid]

I read a book of Yuli Khariton, one of the scientific directors of the Soviet Atomic project. He openly admits that American data was reviewed and some ideas were used, but generally speaking, nothing critically new was found in this data. He mentioned that possible delay of not having the US data would not be greater than 1 year. So the soviets would receive the A-Bomb not in 1949 but in 1950 - 1951. The gap in Fusion bomb was about 10 months, and the actual scheme of Soviet device was completely different from the US.

[plasmakitten]

Context on Beria: after Stalin's death, Beria was one of the contenders to replace him. During the political scramble, WW2 hero Marshall Zhukov had Beria executed by the army. Zhukov, the man who was pretty much the only competent general the Soviets had left after Stalin's great purge, and as a result had to defeat the Nazis essentially by himself, still said later in life that his most important achievement was killing Beria. He thought that Beria becoming the leader of the Soviet Union would literally have been worse than the Nazis winning WW2. Let that sink in.

[blade]

"Cause we know that works"

A statement that does not cross enough minds today.

[AtlasCrafted]

Designing an original concept is many times more difficult than simply improving an existing one. Especially when not pressured by a world war.

[tim-dffu]

Little did they know they only had to add a little Lithium 7 to double the yield. The US found that out after the Castle Bravo detonation had double the yield they expected.