NUCLEAR WEAPONS, RUSSIA AND THE SOVIET UNION

NUCLEAR WEAPONS, RUSSIA AND THE SOVIET UNION

According to the Arms Control Association, Russia possesses 7,700 nuclear warheads compared to 7,100 in the United States and 250 in China. In 2004, Russia possessed an estimated 16,000 nuclear warheads. During Cold War, the Soviet Union made 55,000 nuclear warhead, the majority of them with plutonium recovered from irradiated fuel rods. At its peak the Soviet Union possessed around 45,000 warheads at one time. In 2004, the United States had an estimated 10,350 nuclear warheads. At the height of the Cold War in the 1960s, it possessed 32,000 nuclear warheads.

In 2001, the United States had 7,000 strategic long range warheads and Russia had 5,600 strategic long range warheads on bombers, submarines and ICBMs. Of these Russia had 2,300 warheads on land-based missiles, 340 sub-based warheads, 1,730 bomber-based warheads and 370 on ship- and submarine-launched cruise missiles. In 1998, Russia and the United States each had about 1,000 nuclear missiles pointed each other. In comparison China had 400 nuclear weapons, France, 440 and Britain, 260.

In 1991, Russia had 10,100 deployed nuclear warheads (6,078 on land-based missiles, 2,560 on sub-based missiles and 1,410 on bombers). The U.S. had 8,500 deployed nuclear warheads (2,090 on land-based missiles, 2,880 on sub-based missiles and 3,528 on bombers).

Atomic Bombs

In a report on nuclear warfare, one analyst concluded: “people are easy to kill.” What is more difficult is knocking out military targets. The killing power of a nuclear weapon depends on how large it is but also whether its explodes: in the air or on the ground. The latter produces more radioactive fallout.

Low-enriched uranium is much less dangerous than high-enriched uranium but it can be processed into high-enriched uranium. At least 200 kilograms of low-enriched uranium is needed to produce enough high-enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb.

In 1956, the United States deployed the first "tactical" nuclear weapons. Only eight inches wide, the devices were fired by artillery guns, traveled almost 20 kilometers, and exploded with a force almost equal to Hiroshima bomb.

Soviet Union Develops an Atom Bomb

The Soviet Union became the world’s second nuclear power after the United States when it detonated its first atomic bomb, "Joe 1," in Kazakhstan in August 1949, four years after the Hiroshima bomb exploded. The bomb was a copy of the Fat Man bomb. United States "sniffer" planes picked up fallout from the test. The design for the bomb was stolen from the U.S. by the German-born spy Klaus Fuchs.

In September 1949, U.S. President Truman reported, “We have evidence that within recent weeks an atomic explosion occurred in the U.S.S.R.” For the Soviets the weapons evened the score and removed the nuclear advantages that the United States had over them. Around the same time, the CIA predicted that the development of a Soviet nuclear bomb was still three years away. In 1946, the Soviet Union built its first reactor but had difficulty putting it into operation.

The Russian atomic bomb program began around the same time as the Manhattan Project. In early 1940 Soviet scientists first heard rumors that the West was working on some kind of super weapon and were examining the possibility of building an atomic bomb with uranium. In September, 1941, the British spy Donald MacLean reported from London that the British were actually beginning work on an a super-powerful bomb based on atomic energy.

In March, 1942 the head of the KGB gave Stalin a letter that read: "In a number of capitalist countries...work [is] underway on the fission of the atom nucleus with a view of obtaining a new source of energy, research has been launched into the utilization of the nuclear energy of uranium of military purposes.” In February, 1943, Stalin signed a decree organizing a special committee to develop atomic energy for military weapons. The Soviets were able to develop an atomic bomb in six years.

Spies and the Soviet Atom Bomb

Klaus Fuchs, a German-born physicist who provided key details on the construction of the atomic bomb to the Soviets, was probably the most valuable Cold War spy for Moscow. A known Communist, Fuchs was hired by the British to do nuclear research in 1941. After offering his services to Moscow as a spy, he became a member of the British-American Manhattan Project team at Los Alamos, New Mexico. At Los Alamos Fuchs had access to documents that detailed the design, construction, components and detonating devices of the atomic bomb, the production of uranium and plutonium, the schedule of the Manhattan Project. Secrets were passed via an intermediary to Moscow.

The Soviet bomb probably could have developed faster than it was but the KGB withheld the stolen secrets from the Soviet atomic scientist out fear it was planted Western disinformation. By August, 1944, the Soviets possessed 3,000 pages of stolen atomic secrets. A year later that that amount tripled and including a detailed sketch of the Hiroshima device provided by Klaus Fuchs in June, 1945. The first Russian atomic bombs were almost exact copies of the first United States bombs. Stalin may have known more about the American atomic bomb than Truman when the American president informed him of the weapon in July 1945.

After a while the information from Fuchs dried up, and not enough information had been supplied to build a bomb. The rest was supplied by Edward Hall, a 19-year-old physics students at Harvard who worked on detonation devices at Los Alamos. He had decided that the United States was going to become fascist and that if the Soviet Union had the bomb they would prevent the world from becoming fascist.

Information provided by Fuchs and other spies is believed to have sped up Stalin's bomb project by two years. Fuchs also provided outlines and drafts of the United States' plan to build a hydrogen bomb and information from nuclear tests conducted by the Americans at Eniwetok atoll. Information provided by a defecting Russian cipher clerk working at the Soviet embassy in Ottawa led to the capture of Fuchs and other famous other Russian spies. Fuchs was arrested in 1950. He spent 10 years in prison and then moved to East Germany.

Soviet Union Develops a Hydrogen Bomb

The first Soviet hydrogen bomb—a 1.6-megaton device— was detonated in November1953, only 13 months after the first U.S. test of a hydrogen bomb, code named Mike, at Enewatak Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Soviet scientist were ordered to begin working on a thermo-nuclear hydrogen bomb within weeks after the successful atomic bomb tests.

The concept for a hydrogen fusion bomb—many times more powerful than an atom bomb—was first advanced in the summer of 1942 by U.S. physicist Edward Teller. In January 1950, U.S. President Harry Truman authorized Teller to tell the United States army about hydrogen bomb a couple of months after Joe 1. Teller's initial design didn't work. A Polish mathematician at Los Alamos, Stanislaw Ulam, advised him to make an effective two-stage design.

Andrei Sakharov, who later became a well-known dissident, is considered the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb. Motivated by the belief that nuclear parity between the United States and the Soviet Union would bring peace, along with some prodding from the KGB, Sakharov began work on the H-bomb project in 1948 and labored on nuclear projects for 20 years at the closed city of Arzamas-16. Sakharov is regarded as creator of "pulsed power," a method of creating enough energy with conventional high-explosives to start a sustained nuclear-fusion reaction.

The largest thermonuclear device ever exploded (roughly 50 megatons) was an 100-megaton H-bomb detonated at slightly more than half power by the Soviets in the Novaya Zemlya area in the Soviet Arctic on October 30, 1961. The largest United States bomb— a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb was detonated over Bikini atoll— was exploded on March 1, 1954. Dubbed "Operation Bravo," the explosion was 1,000 times more powerful than one at Hiroshima and the power of the bomb was greater than all the explosives used in World War II. A freight train carrying the equivalent amount of TNT would span the North American continent. The device exploded by the Soviets in 1961 was more than three times more powerful than this.

Sputnik and ICBMs

In August 1957, the Soviet Union tested the first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), before the United States tested similar missiles. . The same technology was used to send Sputnik aloft a month later, raising fears that the Soviet Union could attack the United States from space. Around the same time, Khrushchev claimed that the Soviet Union was churning out rockets like sausages" and told the United States "we'll bury you" and that American grandchildren will under Communism.

In October 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first satellite, Sputnik. This was followed by the first man in space and other technological advance that were ahead of those in West and greatly worried the United States.

Sputnik (meaning "fellow traveler") was an 184-pound satellite launched from Bairkonur, Russia. Measuring less than two feet in diameter, the spherical satellite was delivered into orbit by 32 rocket boosters. News of the feat startled the world and lead to a space race with the United States. Sputnik maintained an elliptical orbit (apogee 588 miles above the earth's surface; perigee 142 miles). It stayed aloft for three months before burning up re-entering the atmosphere. The first United States effort to launch a satellite-carrying rocket, the Vanguard, resulted in an explosion and failure shown live on American television on December 6. 1957.

Sputnik raised fears that the Soviet Union coudl attack the United States from space. Describing what Washington was like upon hearing the news of Sputnik, Hugh Sidey wrote in Time: “Washington changed in those next few hours. The U.S., which had assumed scientific pre-eminence, had been beaten in the opening lap of the space race...Those at the center of the power game knew their lives had changed...The 184-lb intruder had not only humiliated the U.S. but racheted up the cold war. The Soviet Union rockets obviously were bigger and better than ours... Worry seeped through the nation always uncomfortable with second place.”

Cold War

The Cold War was a war without battles between the Communist world and the West—or more specifically between the Soviet Union and the U.S.— characterized by the threat and fear of nuclear weapons. It began after the Soviet Union took over Eastern Europe after World War II and gained more teeth when the Soviet’s developed atomic bombs. It may also be remembered as a time when mankind realized the cost of a war was a price too big to pay.

After the common cause of World War II dissipated, it again exposed the underlying hostility between the capitalist countries and the Soviet Union. The favorable position in which the Soviet Union finished World War II rapidly made it the prime postwar threat to world peace in the eyes of Western policy makers. The so-called Cold War that emerged from that situation featured Soviet domination of all of Eastern Europe, the development of nuclear weapons by the Soviet Union, and dangerous conflicts and near-conflicts in several areas of the world.

World War II opened the way for the Communist domination of central and eastern Europe and the division of Germany. When the war ended Russian soldiers occupied much of the territory that would become the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War formally began in 1947 when U.S. president Harry Truman initiated the policy of containment. The goals of American policy towards the Soviet Union and the weaknesses of the Soviet Union were described in the famous 1947 “X” article in Foreign Affairs magazine by George F. Kennan.

Closed Cities

In Russia there were ten major closed cities, where nuclear bombs were designed and made. They were not pictured on any maps; they were heavily guarded and access to them was strictly limited. People who lived in them were often not allowed to leave. Closed Cities were a unique Soviet creation. Residents were trained to be secretive about their activities and notify the KGB if they noticed anything out of the ordinary.

Arzamas-16 and Chelyabinsk-70, the homes of Russian equivalents of Los Alamos Laboratory, were closed cities. Their names were changed often. Arzamas-16 was once known as "The Volga Office." According to Western estimates almost all of the 3,000 or scientists knowledgeable of "critical nuclear-weapons design information" worked at Arzamas-16 and Chelyabinsk-70.

Arzamas-16 (250 miles east of Moscow) was the main nuclear design center and the home of the dissident physicist Andrei Sakharov for 20 years. The first Soviet bomb, "Joe 1," the largest H-bomb ever detonated, ICBMs, the first MIRVs was designed here.

Many Closed Cities were still closed in the early 2000s. Describing the security at a "military factory," the Moscow-based writer Tatyana Tolstaya wrote in the New York Times, people "knew who to get onto the factory grounds—not through the official entrance, where passes were meticulously checked and where a sharpshooter sat with a gun, but through a hole in the fence a mere 100 yards from the automatic gates. People climbed through the hole not to take out secret documents, but simply to buy food in the store or cafeteria, for secret institutions were always well stocked."

Today scientist Arzamas-16 and Los Alamos are working together on peaceful ways to use nuclear energy such as "pulsed power," a method of creating enough energy with conventional high-explosives to start a sustained nuclear-fusion reaction. They have conducted several experiments together. One Los Alamos scientist at Arzamas-16 told Newsweek, "Some of the work they do here is five to 10 years ahead of anything in the West."

Nuclear Testing in the Soviet Union

As of 1995, the U.S. had conducted 1,030 nuclear tests, Russia (the Soviet Union) 715, France 209, Britain 45, China 43, and India 1. Kurchatov, a city in northeaster Kazakhstan, was an important center of the Soviet nuclear industry. Designed and tested here were everything from some of the world's most powerful H-bombs to tiny nuclear reactors intended to power the Soviet mission to Mars. The city was so top secret it didn't appear on any maps. [Source: Mike Edwards, National Geographic, March 1993 ♠]

Not far from Kurchatov the Soviets built an entire town with five story buildings, military bunkers and bridges. The put cars, tanks and planes on the streets; brought in sheep and dogs. And then blew it all up on August 29, 1949. No one was warned about the explosion beforehand including Kazakh villagers who lived 60 miles downwind.♠

Hundreds of nuclear blasts were set off at the site. People used to go to them as if they were a were a fireworks display. One person who did this told National Geographic, “They didn’t say anything about radiation.” Some 80 percent f the 1.5 million people who lived downwind from the testing area had weakened immune systems. Cancer and birth defect rates were also very high.

People living around the Chukotka nuclear testing site in the far northeast of Russia have been exposed to high levels of radiation and suffer from high levels of child mortality and tuberculosis. Over 120 underground and atmospheric nuclear tests were conducted on the Arctic Novaya Zemlya Island. The reindeer and Nentet people that live there have abnormally high cancer rates.

Semipalatinsk Test Site

Semipalatinsk Test Site (150 kilometres west of Semey), is located East Kazakhstan region. Covering 18,000 square kilometers, it is under the jurisdiction of the National Nuclear Center of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Between 1949 and 1989, 468 500 nuclear devices were detonated here, two third of all nuclear explosions in Soviet Union. It was closed in 1991. [Source: Nuclear Threat Initiative]

There were four major testing areas at the site, along with two research reactors, supported from then closed city of Kurchatov. A total of 116 atmospheric nuclear weapons tests took place at the ‘Experiential Field,’ either detonated on towers or dropped from aircraft. After the Limited Test Ban Treaty entered into force in 1963, the Soviet Union carried out 340 underground nuclear tests in caves or boreholes at all four sites.Semipalatinsk also was the location of 9 of the Soviet Union’s peaceful nuclear explosions. This program intended to use nuclear devices to create artificial lakes, aid in mining and other large scale infrastructure projects.

The first Soviet nuclear explosion occurred 50 kilometers southwest of Kurchatov city in August 1949. It was the first time nuclear weapon made in Soviet Union was tested at what became Semipalatinsk Test Site. To evaluate destruction of the explosions a lot of different technology was concentrated there and different buildings and structures were constructed. Many of the buildings or their remains are still there. Touring the site is possible. Despite the high radiation levels, it is said, short visits are not dangerous for health if basic safety and hygiene regulations are complied with such as wearing surgical boots and a mask and being accompanied by a guide. Taking metal units from the territory is prohibited.

Soviet Nuclear War Test

On September 14, 1954, Soviet warplanes drooped a nuclear bomb, more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima, on the town of Totsk, near the Kazakhstan border, to test how soldiers would react during a real nuclear war. Minutes after the explosion, about 44,000 troops dug into 140 miles of trenches were ordered into area the bomb had just exploded. Twenty minutes after the explosion conventional warplanes were ordered to the center of the inferno to bomb any "enemy" targets that might have survived.

Some civilians were told to move; others were not. Some soldiers received no protection. Villagers said they heard a deafening explosion, followed by fires and shock waves. Some people who were six kilometers away said the shock wave was so intense blood started to pour out of the ears. A Russian colonel told the Washington Post in 1994, "We already had many manuals written on the tactical use of nuclear weapons, but we wanted to see what would happen in real life—the morale and psychological response of the soldiers, and so forth."

The soldiers had to swear an oath that there would never discuss the test. They were encouraged to wash off and destroy their clothes but there wasn't enough soap and water to go around and many kept a belt they were given to commemorate the event.

No casualties figures for civilians and villagers living in the area have been made available and no rigorous long-term medical studies were conducted to check the lasting effects of radiation exposure. Some studies showed that people in the area had a five times higher rate of cancer than the general population.

Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Bombs

In 1956, a nuclear bomb was detonated underground to create a reservoir 65 miles southwest of Semey, a city in Kazakhstan. Large amounts of radiation was released into the atmosphere at the time of the blast was blown into populated areas. The reservoir is now called Atomic Lake.

In the Volga Basin nuclear explosions were set off to create vast reservoirs for natural gas. The gas emitted from the plant which processed the natural gas was said to be so toxic that doctors warned the health of children in villages 50 miles away was affected. [National Geographic, On Television, June 1993].

The Soviet Union detonated 116 nuclear bombs for "peaceful purposes" such as building mines and canals. Fifteen devise were set underground only a few miles from villages to create underground gas reservoirs. All but two of them caved in, making them useless, and one leaked low-level radiation. It is hard to imagine what the Soviets had in mind. Even if the cavities didn't collapse, what were people supposed to do heat their homes with gas made radioactive after being stored. [Source: Mike Edwards, National Geographic, August 1994]

Convinced that more water could help the Caspian Sea rebound, Soviet engineers in the early 1970s considered using nuclear explosions to open a new canal between the Pechora River and Kama River (a tributary of the Volga). Three 15-kiloton nuclear devices were detonated as part of an experiment and the radiation levels were figured to be within allowable limited. Even though the Soviet Union possessed the weapons to do the job (250 devices between 100 and 200 kilotons) the programs was eventually dropped because it was worried that it would divert to much warm water away from the Arctic Ocean and affect navigation there.

Image Sources:

Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, Lonely Planet Guides, Library of Congress, U.S. government, Compton’s Encyclopedia, The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, AFP, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, The Economist, Foreign Policy, Wikipedia, BBC, CNN, and various books, websites and other publications.

Last updated May 2016


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