Historical Studies (Chinese Edition)

No.1, 2015

 

Foreign Nuclear Intelligence and the Soviet Development of the Atom Bomb: Research Based on Declassified Russian Documents

(Abstract)

             

Liu Yubao and Zhang Guangxiang

 

On August 29, 1949, the USSR successfully exploded its first atom bomb, only four years after the first US atom bomb explosion on July 16, 1945. The Soviet Atomic Project: Documentation and Memorial is a collection of declassified official documents compiled from 1998 on by the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Office of the President, the Defense Department, the Russian Intelligence Service etc., starting from 1998. The collection indicates that Soviet foreign intelligence successively obtained large amounts of information from American and British officials and nuclear scientists from 1941 on, covering important theories and applications such as the general physical and chemical properties of nuclear material and its production techniques and the principles behind the construction of the bomb and the technology for making it. This not only prompted the Soviet leadership to lose no time in taking the major strategic decision to develop the atom bomb, but also helped Soviet scientists race against time in finding a reliable route to completing the project, thereby greatly shortening the time required for the development of the first Soviet atom bomb.