When did the nuclear bomb appear? Creation and testing of the first atomic bomb in the USSR

A democratic form of governance must be established in the USSR.
Vernadsky V.I.

The atomic bomb in the USSR was created on August 29, 1949 (the first successful launch). The project was led by academician Igor Vasilievich Kurchatov. The period of development of atomic weapons in the USSR lasted from 1942, and ended with testing on the territory of Kazakhstan. This broke the US monopoly on such weapons, because since 1945 they were the only nuclear power. The article is devoted to describing the history of the emergence of the Soviet nuclear bomb, as well as characterizing the consequences of these events for the USSR.

History of creation

In 1941, representatives of the USSR in New York conveyed information to Stalin that a meeting of physicists was being held in the United States, which was devoted to the development of nuclear weapons. Soviet scientists in the 1930s also worked on atomic research, the most famous being the splitting of the atom by scientists from Kharkov led by L. Landau. However, it never came to the point of actual use in weapons. In addition to the United States, Nazi Germany worked on this. At the end of 1941, the United States began its atomic project. Stalin found out about this at the beginning of 1942 and signed a decree on the creation of a laboratory in the USSR to create an atomic project; Academician I. Kurchatov became its leader.

There is an opinion that the work of US scientists was accelerated by the secret developments of German colleagues who came to America. In any case, in the summer of 1945, at the Potsdam Conference, the new US President G. Truman informed Stalin about the completion of work on a new weapon - the atomic bomb. Moreover, to demonstrate the work of American scientists, the US government decided to test the new weapon in combat: on August 6 and 9, bombs were dropped on two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This was the first time that humanity learned about a new weapon. It was this event that forced Stalin to speed up the work of his scientists. I. Kurchatov was summoned by Stalin and promised to fulfill any demands of the scientist, as long as the process proceeded as quickly as possible. Moreover, a state committee was created under the Council of People's Commissars, which oversaw the Soviet atomic project. It was headed by L. Beria.

Development has moved to three centers:

The design bureau of the Kirov plant, working on the creation of special equipment.
A diffuse plant in the Urals, which was supposed to work on the creation of enriched uranium.
Chemical and metallurgical centers where plutonium was studied. It was this element that was used in the first Soviet-style nuclear bomb.

In 1946, the first Soviet unified nuclear center was created. It was a secret facility Arzamas-16, located in the city of Sarov (Nizhny Novgorod region). In 1947, the first nuclear reactor was created at an enterprise near Chelyabinsk. In 1948, a secret training ground was created on the territory of Kazakhstan, near the city of Semipalatinsk-21. It was here that on August 29, 1949, the first explosion of the Soviet atomic bomb RDS-1 was organized. This event was kept completely secret, but American Pacific aviation was able to record a sharp increase in radiation levels, which was evidence of the testing of a new weapon. Already in September 1949, G. Truman announced the presence of an atomic bomb in the USSR. Officially, the USSR admitted to the presence of these weapons only in 1950.

Several main consequences of the successful development of atomic weapons by Soviet scientists can be identified:

Loss of the US status as a single state with atomic weapons. This not only equalized the USSR with the USA in terms of military power, but also forced the latter to think through each of their military steps, since now they had to fear for the response of the USSR leadership.
The presence of atomic weapons in the USSR secured its status as a superpower.
After the USA and the USSR were equalized in the availability of atomic weapons, the race for their quantity began. States spent huge amounts of money to outdo their competitors. Moreover, attempts began to create even more powerful weapons.
These events marked the start of the nuclear race. Many countries have begun to invest resources to add to the list of nuclear weapons states and ensure their security.

The creation of the Soviet atomic bomb(military part of the USSR atomic project) - fundamental research, development of technologies and their practical implementation in the USSR, aimed at creating weapons of mass destruction using nuclear energy. The events were largely stimulated by the activities in this direction of scientific institutions and the military industry of other countries, primarily Nazi Germany and the USA [ ] . In 1945, on August 9, American planes dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Almost half of the civilians died immediately in the explosions, others were seriously ill and continue to die to this day.

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In 1930-1941, work was actively carried out in the nuclear field.
During this decade, fundamental radiochemical research was carried out, without which a complete understanding of these problems, their development, and, especially, their implementation would be unthinkable.

Work in 1941-1943

Foreign intelligence information

Already in September 1941, the USSR began to receive intelligence information about secret intensive research work being carried out in Great Britain and the USA aimed at developing methods for using atomic energy for military purposes and creating atomic bombs of enormous destructive power. One of the most important documents received back in 1941 by Soviet intelligence is the report of the British “MAUD Committee”. From the materials of this report, received through external intelligence channels of the NKVD of the USSR from Donald McLean, it followed that the creation of an atomic bomb is real, that it could probably be created even before the end of the war and, therefore, could influence its course.
Intelligence information about work on the problem of atomic energy abroad, which was available in the USSR at the time the decision was made to resume work on uranium, was received both through the intelligence channels of the NKVD and through the channels of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff (GRU) of the Red Army.
In May 1942, the leadership of the GRU informed the USSR Academy of Sciences about the presence of reports of work abroad on the problem of using atomic energy for military purposes and asked to report whether this problem currently has a real practical basis. The answer to this request in June 1942 was given by V. G. Khlopin, who noted that over the past year, almost no work related to solving the problem of using atomic energy has been published in the scientific literature.
An official letter from the head of the NKVD L.P. Beria addressed to I.V. Stalin with information about work on the use of atomic energy for military purposes abroad, proposals for organizing this work in the USSR and secret familiarization with NKVD materials by prominent Soviet specialists, versions of which were prepared by NKVD employees back in late 1941 - early 1942, it was sent to I.V. Stalin only in October 1942, after the adoption of the GKO order on the resumption of uranium work in the USSR.
Soviet intelligence had detailed information about the work to create an atomic bomb in the United States, coming from specialists who understood the danger of a nuclear monopoly or sympathized with the USSR, in particular, Klaus Fuchs, Theodore Hall, Georges Koval and David Gringlas. However, as some believe, the letter of the Soviet physicist G. Flerov addressed to Stalin at the beginning of 1943, who was able to explain the essence of the problem popularly, was of decisive importance. On the other hand, there is reason to believe that G.N. Flerov’s work on the letter to Stalin was not completed and it was not sent.
The hunt for data from America's uranium project began on the initiative of the head of the scientific and technical intelligence department of the NKVD, Leonid Kvasnikov, back in 1942, but fully developed only after the arrival of the famous pair of Soviet intelligence officers in Washington: Vasily Zarubin and his wife Elizaveta. It was with them that the NKVD resident in San Francisco, Grigory Kheifitz, interacted, who reported that the most prominent American physicist Robert Oppenheimer and many of his colleagues had left California for an unknown place where they would create some kind of superweapon.
Lieutenant Colonel Semyon Semenov (pseudonym “Twain”), who had been working in the United States since 1938 and had assembled a large and active intelligence group there, was entrusted with double-checking the data of “Charon” (that was Heifitz’s code name). It was “Twain” who confirmed the reality of the work on creating an atomic bomb, named the code for the Manhattan Project and the location of its main scientific center - the former colony for juvenile delinquents Los Alamos in New Mexico. Semenov also reported the names of some scientists who worked there, who at one time were invited to the USSR to participate in large Stalinist construction projects and who, upon returning to the USA, did not lose ties with far-left organizations.

Thus, Soviet agents were introduced into the scientific and design centers of America, where nuclear weapons were created. However, in the midst of establishing undercover activities, Lisa and Vasily Zarubin were urgently recalled to Moscow. They were at a loss, because not a single failure occurred. It turned out that the Center received a denunciation from an employee of Mironov’s station, accusing the Zarubins of treason. And for almost six months, Moscow counterintelligence checked these accusations. They were not confirmed, however, the Zarubins were no longer allowed abroad.
Meanwhile, the work of the embedded agents had already brought the first results - reports began to arrive, and they had to be immediately sent to Moscow. This work was entrusted to a group of special couriers. The most efficient and unafraid were the Cohen couple, Maurice and Lona. After Maurice was drafted into the US Army, Lona began independently delivering information materials from New Mexico to New York. To do this, she went to the small town of Albuquerque, where, for appearances, she visited a tuberculosis dispensary. There she met with agents named “Mlad” and “Ernst”.
However, the NKVD still managed to extract several tons of low-enriched uranium in .

The primary tasks were the organization of industrial production of plutonium-239 and uranium-235. To solve the first problem, it was necessary to create an experimental and then industrial nuclear reactor, and build a radiochemical and special metallurgical workshop. To solve the second problem, the construction of a plant for the separation of uranium isotopes by the diffusion method was launched.
The solution to these problems turned out to be possible as a result of the creation of industrial technologies, the organization of production and production of the necessary large quantities of pure uranium metal, uranium oxide, uranium hexafluoride, other uranium compounds, high-purity graphite and a number of other special materials, and the creation of a complex of new industrial units and devices. The insufficient volume of uranium ore mining and uranium concentrate production in the USSR (the first plant for the production of uranium concentrate - “Combine No. 6 of the NKVD of the USSR” in Tajikistan was founded in 1945) during this period was compensated by captured raw materials and products of uranium enterprises in Eastern Europe, with which the USSR entered into corresponding agreements.
In 1945, the Government of the USSR made the following most important decisions:
- on the creation at the Kirov Plant (Leningrad) of two special development bureaus designed to develop equipment that produces uranium enriched in the 235 isotope by gas diffusion;
- on the start of construction in the Middle Urals (near the village of Verkh-Neyvinsky) of a diffusion plant for the production of enriched uranium-235;
- on the organization of a laboratory for work on the creation of heavy water reactors using natural uranium;
- on the selection of a site and the start of construction in the Southern Urals of the country's first plant for the production of plutonium-239.
The enterprise in the Southern Urals should have included:
- uranium-graphite reactor using natural uranium (plant “A”);
- radiochemical production for the separation of plutonium-239 from natural uranium irradiated in a reactor (plant “B”);
- chemical and metallurgical production for the production of highly pure metallic plutonium (plant “B”).
Participation of German specialists in the nuclear project

In 1945, hundreds of German scientists related to the nuclear problem were brought from Germany to the USSR. Most (about 300 people) of them were brought to Sukhumi and secretly housed in the former estates of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich and millionaire Smetsky (sanatoriums “Sinop” and “Agudzery”). Equipment was exported to the USSR from the German Institute of Chemistry and Metallurgy, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics, Siemens electrical laboratories, and the Physical Institute of the German Post Office. Three out of four German cyclotrons, powerful magnets, electron microscopes, oscilloscopes, high-voltage transformers, and ultra-precise instruments were brought to the USSR. In November 1945, the Directorate of Special Institutes (9th Directorate of the NKVD of the USSR) was created within the NKVD of the USSR to manage the work on the use of German specialists.
The Sinop sanatorium was called “Object A” - it was led by Baron Manfred von Ardenne. “Agudzers” became “Object “G”” - it was headed by Gustav Hertz. Outstanding scientists worked at objects “A” and “G” - Nikolaus Riehl, Max Vollmer, who built the first installation for the production of heavy water in the USSR, Peter Thiessen, designer of nickel filters for gas diffusion separation of uranium isotopes, Max Steenbeck and Gernot Zippe, who worked on centrifugal separation method and subsequently received patents for gas centrifuges in the West. On the basis of objects “A” and “D” (SFTI) was later created.
Some leading German specialists were awarded USSR government awards for this work, including the Stalin Prize.
In the period 1954-1959, German specialists moved to the GDR at different times (Gernot Zippe to Austria).

Construction of a gas diffusion plant in Novouralsk

In 1946, at the production base of plant No. 261 of the People's Commissariat of Aviation Industry in Novouralsk, the construction of a gas diffusion plant began, called Combine No. 813 (plant D-1) and intended for the production of highly enriched uranium. The plant produced its first products in 1949.

Construction of uranium hexafluoride production in Kirovo-Chepetsk

Over time, on the site of the selected construction site, a whole complex of industrial enterprises, buildings and structures was erected, interconnected by a network of roads and railways, a heat and power supply system, industrial water supply and sewerage. At different times, the secret city was called differently, but the most famous name is Chelyabinsk-40 or “Sorokovka”. Currently, the industrial complex, which was originally called plant No. 817, is called the Mayak production association, and the city on the shore of Lake Irtyash, in which Mayak PA workers and members of their families live, has been named Ozersk.
In November 1945, geological surveys began at the selected site, and from the beginning of December the first builders began to arrive.
The first head of construction (1946-1947) was Ya. D. Rappoport, later he was replaced by Major General M. M. Tsarevsky. The chief construction engineer was V. A. Saprykin, the first director of the future enterprise was P. T. Bystrov (from April 17, 1946), who was replaced by E. P. Slavsky (from July 10, 1947), and then B. G. Muzrukov (since December 1, 1947). I.V. Kurchatov was appointed scientific director of the plant.

Construction of Arzamas-16

Products

Development of the design of atomic bombs

Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 1286-525ss “On the plan for the deployment of KB-11 work at Laboratory No. 2 of the USSR Academy of Sciences” determined the first tasks of KB-11: the creation, under the scientific leadership of Laboratory No. 2 (Academician I.V. Kurchatov), of atomic bombs, conventionally called in the resolution “jet engines C”, in two versions: RDS-1 - implosion type with plutonium and the RDS-2 gun-type atomic bomb with uranium-235.
Tactical and technical specifications for the RDS-1 and RDS-2 designs were to be developed by July 1, 1946, and the designs of their main components by July 1, 1947. The fully manufactured RDS-1 bomb was to be submitted for state testing for an explosion when installed on the ground by January 1, 1948, in an aviation version - by March 1, 1948, and the RDS-2 bomb - by June 1, 1948 and January 1, 1949, respectively. Work on the creation of structures should have be carried out in parallel with the organization of special laboratories in KB-11 and the deployment of work in these laboratories. Such short deadlines and the organization of parallel work also became possible thanks to the receipt of some intelligence data about American atomic bombs in the USSR.
Research laboratories and design departments of KB-11 began to expand their activities directly in

The first Soviet charge for an atomic bomb was successfully tested at the Semipalatinsk test site (Kazakhstan).

This event was preceded by long and difficult work by physicists. The beginning of work on nuclear fission in the USSR can be considered the 1920s. Since the 1930s, nuclear physics has become one of the main directions of domestic physical science, and in October 1940, for the first time in the USSR, a group of Soviet scientists made a proposal to use atomic energy for weapons purposes, submitting an application to the Invention Department of the Red Army "On the use of uranium as a explosive and toxic substances."
The war that began in June 1941 and the evacuation of scientific institutes dealing with problems of nuclear physics interrupted work on the creation of atomic weapons in the country. But already in the autumn of 1941, the USSR began to receive intelligence information about secret intensive research work being carried out in Great Britain and the USA aimed at developing methods for using atomic energy for military purposes and creating explosives of enormous destructive power.
This information forced, despite the war, to resume work on uranium in the USSR. On September 28, 1942, the secret decree of the State Defense Committee No. 2352ss “On the organization of work on uranium” was signed, according to which research on the use of atomic energy was resumed.

In February 1943, Igor Kurchatov was appointed scientific director of work on the atomic problem. In Moscow, headed by Kurchatov, Laboratory No. 2 of the USSR Academy of Sciences was created (now the National Research Center Kurchatov Institute), which began to study atomic energy.

Initially, the general management of the atomic problem was carried out by the Deputy Chairman of the State Defense Committee (GKO) of the USSR, Vyacheslav Molotov. But on August 20, 1945 (a few days after the US atomic bombing of Japanese cities), the State Defense Committee decided to create a Special Committee, headed by Lavrentiy Beria. He became the curator of the Soviet atomic project.

At the same time, the First Main Directorate under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR (later the Ministry of Medium Engineering of the USSR, now the State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom) was created for the direct management of research, design, engineering organizations and industrial enterprises involved in the Soviet nuclear project. Boris Vannikov, who had previously been the People's Commissar of Ammunition, became the head of the PGU.
In April 1946, the design bureau KB-11 (now the Russian Federal Nuclear Center - VNIIEF) was created at Laboratory No. 2 - one of the most secret enterprises for the development of domestic nuclear weapons, the chief designer of which was Yuli Khariton. Plant No. 550 of the People's Commissariat of Ammunition, which produced artillery shell casings, was chosen as the base for the deployment of KB-11.

The top-secret facility was located 75 kilometers from the city of Arzamas (Gorky region, now Nizhny Novgorod region) on the territory of the former Sarov Monastery.

KB-11 was tasked with creating an atomic bomb in two versions. In the first of them, the working substance should be plutonium, in the second - uranium-235. In mid-1948, work on the uranium option was stopped due to its relatively low efficiency compared to the cost of nuclear materials.

The first domestic atomic bomb had the official designation RDS-1. It was deciphered in different ways: “Russia does it itself,” “The Motherland gives it to Stalin,” etc. But in the official decree of the USSR Council of Ministers of June 21, 1946, it was encrypted as “Special jet engine (“S”).

The creation of the first Soviet atomic bomb RDS-1 was carried out taking into account the available materials according to the scheme of the US plutonium bomb tested in 1945. These materials were provided by Soviet foreign intelligence. An important source of information was Klaus Fuchs, a German physicist who participated in work on the nuclear programs of the USA and Great Britain.

Intelligence materials on the American plutonium charge for an atomic bomb made it possible to reduce the time needed to create the first Soviet charge, although many of the technical solutions of the American prototype were not the best. Even at the initial stages, Soviet specialists could offer the best solutions for both the charge as a whole and its individual components. Therefore, the first atomic bomb charge tested by the USSR was more primitive and less effective than the original version of the charge proposed by Soviet scientists in early 1949. But in order to reliably and quickly demonstrate that the USSR also possesses atomic weapons, it was decided to use a charge created according to the American design in the first test.

The charge for the RDS-1 atomic bomb was a multilayer structure in which the active substance, plutonium, was transferred to a supercritical state by compressing it through a converging spherical detonation wave in the explosive.

RDS-1 was an aircraft atomic bomb weighing 4.7 tons, with a diameter of 1.5 meters and a length of 3.3 meters. It was developed in relation to the Tu-4 aircraft, the bomb bay of which allowed the placement of a “product” with a diameter of no more than 1.5 meters. Plutonium was used as fissile material in the bomb.

To produce an atomic bomb charge, a plant was built in the city of Chelyabinsk-40 in the Southern Urals under the conditional number 817 (now the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Mayak Production Association). The plant consisted of the first Soviet industrial reactor for producing plutonium, a radiochemical plant for separating plutonium from irradiated a uranium reactor, and a plant for producing products from metallic plutonium.

The reactor at Plant 817 was brought to its design capacity in June 1948, and a year later the plant received the required amount of plutonium to make the first charge for an atomic bomb.

The site for the test site where it was planned to test the charge was chosen in the Irtysh steppe, approximately 170 kilometers west of Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan. A plain with a diameter of approximately 20 kilometers, surrounded from the south, west and north by low mountains, was allocated for the test site. In the east of this space there were small hills.

Construction of the training ground, called training ground No. 2 of the USSR Ministry of Armed Forces (later the USSR Ministry of Defense), began in 1947, and was largely completed by July 1949.

For testing at the test site, an experimental site with a diameter of 10 kilometers was prepared, divided into sectors. It was equipped with special facilities to ensure testing, observation and recording of physical research. In the center of the experimental field, a metal lattice tower 37.5 meters high was mounted, designed to install the RDS-1 charge. At a distance of one kilometer from the center, an underground building was built for equipment that recorded light, neutron and gamma fluxes of a nuclear explosion. To study the impact of a nuclear explosion, sections of metro tunnels, fragments of airfield runways were built on the experimental field, and samples of aircraft, tanks, artillery rocket launchers, and ship superstructures of various types were placed. To ensure the operation of the physical sector, 44 structures were built at the test site and a cable network with a length of 560 kilometers was laid.

In June-July 1949, two groups of KB-11 workers with auxiliary equipment and household supplies were sent to the test site, and on July 24 a group of specialists arrived there, who were supposed to be directly involved in preparing the atomic bomb for testing.

On August 5, 1949, the government commission for testing the RDS-1 gave a conclusion that the test site was completely ready.

On August 21, a plutonium charge and four neutron fuses were delivered to the test site by a special train, one of which was to be used to detonate a warhead.

On August 24, 1949, Kurchatov arrived at the training ground. By August 26, all preparatory work at the site was completed. The head of the experiment, Kurchatov, gave the order to test the RDS-1 on August 29 at eight o'clock in the morning local time and to carry out preparatory operations starting at eight o'clock in the morning on August 27.

On the morning of August 27, assembly of the combat product began near the central tower. On the afternoon of August 28, demolition workers carried out a final full inspection of the tower, prepared the automation for detonation and checked the demolition cable line.

At four o'clock in the afternoon on August 28, a plutonium charge and neutron fuses for it were delivered to the workshop near the tower. The final installation of the charge was completed by three o'clock in the morning on August 29. At four o'clock in the morning, installers rolled the product out of the assembly shop along a rail track and installed it in the tower's freight elevator cage, and then lifted the charge to the top of the tower. By six o'clock the charge was equipped with fuses and connected to the blasting circuit. Then the evacuation of all people from the test field began.

Due to the worsening weather, Kurchatov decided to postpone the explosion from 8.00 to 7.00.

At 6.35, the operators turned on the power to the automation system. 12 minutes before the explosion the field machine was turned on. 20 seconds before the explosion, the operator turned on the main connector (switch) connecting the product to the automatic control system. From that moment on, all operations were performed by an automatic device. Six seconds before the explosion, the main mechanism of the machine turned on the power of the product and some of the field instruments, and one second turned on all the other instruments and issued an explosion signal.

At exactly seven o'clock on August 29, 1949, the entire area was illuminated with a blinding light, which signaled that the USSR had successfully completed the development and testing of its first atomic bomb charge.

The charge power was 22 kilotons of TNT.

20 minutes after the explosion, two tanks equipped with lead protection were sent to the center of the field to conduct radiation reconnaissance and inspect the center of the field. Reconnaissance determined that all structures in the center of the field had been demolished. At the site of the tower, a crater gaped; the soil in the center of the field melted, and a continuous crust of slag formed. Civil buildings and industrial structures were completely or partially destroyed.

The equipment used in the experiment made it possible to carry out optical observations and measurements of heat flow, shock wave parameters, characteristics of neutron and gamma radiation, determine the level of radioactive contamination of the area in the area of the explosion and along the trail of the explosion cloud, and study the impact of the damaging factors of a nuclear explosion on biological objects.

For the successful development and testing of a charge for an atomic bomb, several closed decrees of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated October 29, 1949 awarded orders and medals of the USSR to a large group of leading researchers, designers, and technologists; many were awarded the title of Stalin Prize laureates, and more than 30 people received the title of Hero of Socialist Labor.

As a result of the successful test of the RDS-1, the USSR abolished the American monopoly on the possession of atomic weapons, becoming the second nuclear power in the world.

The long and difficult work of physicists. The beginning of work on nuclear fission in the USSR can be considered the 1920s. Since the 1930s, nuclear physics has become one of the main directions of domestic physical science, and in October 1940, for the first time in the USSR, a group of Soviet scientists made a proposal to use atomic energy for weapons purposes, submitting an application to the Invention Department of the Red Army "On the use of uranium as a explosive and toxic substances."
In April 1946, the design bureau KB-11 (now the Russian Federal Nuclear Center - VNIIEF) was created at Laboratory No. 2 - one of the most secret enterprises for the development of domestic nuclear weapons, the chief designer of which was Yuli Khariton. Plant No. 550 of the People's Commissariat of Ammunition, which produced artillery shell casings, was chosen as the base for the deployment of KB-11.
The top-secret facility was located 75 kilometers from the city of Arzamas (Gorky region, now Nizhny Novgorod region) on the territory of the former Sarov Monastery.

KB-11 was tasked with creating an atomic bomb in two versions. In the first of them, the working substance should be plutonium, in the second - uranium-235. In mid-1948, work on the uranium option was stopped due to its relatively low efficiency compared to the cost of nuclear materials.

The first domestic atomic bomb had the official designation RDS-1. It was deciphered in different ways: “Russia does it itself,” “The Motherland gives it to Stalin,” etc. But in the official decree of the USSR Council of Ministers of June 21, 1946, it was encrypted as “Special jet engine” (“S”).

The creation of the first Soviet atomic bomb RDS-1 was carried out taking into account the available materials according to the scheme of the US plutonium bomb tested in 1945. These materials were provided by Soviet foreign intelligence. An important source of information was Klaus Fuchs, a German physicist who participated in work on the nuclear programs of the USA and Great Britain.

Intelligence materials on the American plutonium charge for an atomic bomb made it possible to reduce the time needed to create the first Soviet charge, although many of the technical solutions of the American prototype were not the best. Even at the initial stages, Soviet specialists could offer the best solutions for both the charge as a whole and its individual components. Therefore, the first atomic bomb charge tested by the USSR was more primitive and less effective than the original version of the charge proposed by Soviet scientists in early 1949. But in order to reliably and quickly demonstrate that the USSR also possesses atomic weapons, it was decided to use a charge created according to the American design in the first test.

The charge for the RDS-1 atomic bomb was made in the form of a multilayer structure, in which the transfer of the active substance, plutonium, to a supercritical state was carried out by compressing it through a converging spherical detonation wave in the explosive.

RDS-1 was an aircraft atomic bomb weighing 4.7 tons, with a diameter of 1.5 meters and a length of 3.3 meters.

It was developed in relation to the Tu-4 aircraft, the bomb bay of which allowed the placement of a “product” with a diameter of no more than 1.5 meters. Plutonium was used as fissile material in the bomb.

Structurally, the RDS-1 bomb consisted of a nuclear charge; explosive device and automatic charge detonation system with safety systems; the ballistic body of the aerial bomb, which housed the nuclear charge and automatic detonation.

To produce an atomic bomb charge, a plant was built in the city of Chelyabinsk-40 in the Southern Urals under the conditional number 817 (now the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Mayak Production Association). The plant consisted of the first Soviet industrial reactor for producing plutonium, a radiochemical plant for separating plutonium from irradiated a uranium reactor, and a plant for producing products from metallic plutonium.

The reactor at Plant 817 was brought to full capacity in June 1948, and a year later the plant received the required amount of plutonium to make the first charge for an atomic bomb.

The site for the test site where it was planned to test the charge was chosen in the Irtysh steppe, approximately 170 kilometers west of Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan. A plain with a diameter of approximately 20 kilometers, surrounded from the south, west and north by low mountains, was allocated for the test site. In the east of this space there were small hills.

Construction of the training ground, called training ground No. 2 of the Ministry of the Armed Forces of the USSR (later the Ministry of Defense of the USSR), began in 1947, and by July 1949 it was largely completed.

For testing at the test site, an experimental site with a diameter of 10 kilometers was prepared, divided into sectors. It was equipped with special facilities to ensure testing, observation and recording of physical research.

In the center of the experimental field, a metal lattice tower 37.5 meters high was mounted, designed to install the RDS-1 charge.

At a distance of one kilometer from the center, an underground building was built for equipment that recorded light, neutron and gamma fluxes of a nuclear explosion. To study the impact of a nuclear explosion, sections of metro tunnels, fragments of airfield runways were built on the experimental field, and samples of aircraft, tanks, artillery rocket launchers, and ship superstructures of various types were placed. To ensure the operation of the physical sector, 44 structures were built at the test site and a cable network with a length of 560 kilometers was laid.

On August 5, 1949, the government commission for testing the RDS-1 gave a conclusion on the full readiness of the test site and proposed to carry out detailed testing of the assembly and detonation operations of the product within 15 days. The test was scheduled for the last days of August. Igor Kurchatov was appointed scientific director of the trial.

In the period from August 10 to August 26, 10 rehearsals were held to control the test field and the charge detonation equipment, as well as three training exercises with the launch of all equipment and four detonations of full-scale explosives with an aluminum ball from automatic detonation.

On August 21, a plutonium charge and four neutron fuses were delivered to the test site by a special train, one of which was to be used to detonate a warhead.

On August 24, Kurchatov arrived at the training ground. By August 26, all preparatory work at the site was completed.

Kurchatov gave the order to test the RDS-1 on August 29 at eight o’clock in the morning local time.

At four o'clock in the afternoon on August 28, a plutonium charge and neutron fuses for it were delivered to the workshop near the tower. At about 12 at night, in the assembly workshop on the site in the center of the field, the final assembly of the product began - the insertion of the main unit into it, that is, a charge of plutonium and a neutron fuse. At three in the morning on August 29, the installation of the product was completed.

By six o'clock in the morning the charge was lifted onto the test tower, it was equipped with fuses and connected to the demolition circuit.

Due to worsening weather, it was decided to move the explosion one hour earlier.

At 6.35, the operators turned on the power to the automation system. At 6.48 minutes the field machine was turned on. 20 seconds before the explosion, the main connector (switch) connecting the RDS-1 product to the automatic control system was turned on.

At exactly seven o'clock in the morning on August 29, 1949, the entire area was illuminated with a dazzling light, which signaled that the USSR had successfully completed the development and testing of its first atomic bomb charge.

20 minutes after the explosion, two tanks equipped with lead protection were sent to the center of the field to conduct radiation reconnaissance and inspect the center of the field. Reconnaissance determined that all structures in the center of the field had been demolished. At the site of the tower, a crater gaped; the soil in the center of the field melted, and a continuous crust of slag formed. Civil buildings and industrial structures were completely or partially destroyed.

The equipment used in the experiment made it possible to carry out optical observations and measurements of heat flow, shock wave parameters, characteristics of neutron and gamma radiation, determine the level of radioactive contamination of the area in the area of the explosion and along the trail of the explosion cloud, and study the impact of the damaging factors of a nuclear explosion on biological objects.

The energy release of the explosion was 22 kilotons (in TNT equivalent).

For the successful development and testing of a charge for an atomic bomb, several closed decrees of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated October 29, 1949 awarded orders and medals of the USSR to a large group of leading researchers, designers, and technologists; many were awarded the title of Stalin Prize laureates, and the direct developers of the nuclear charge received the title of Hero of Socialist Labor.

As a result of the successful test of the RDS-1, the USSR abolished the American monopoly on the possession of atomic weapons, becoming the second nuclear power in the world.

The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources

Under what conditions and with what efforts did the country, which survived the most terrible war of the twentieth century, create its atomic shield?
Almost seven decades ago, on October 29, 1949, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued four top-secret decrees awarding 845 people the titles of Heroes of Socialist Labor, the Order of Lenin, the Red Banner of Labor and the Badge of Honor. In none of them was it said in relation to any of the recipients what exactly he was awarded for: the standard wording “for exceptional services to the state while performing a special task” appeared everywhere. Even for the Soviet Union, accustomed to secrecy, this was a rare occurrence. Meanwhile, the recipients themselves knew very well, of course, what kind of “exceptional merits” were meant. All 845 people were, to a greater or lesser extent, directly connected with the creation of the first nuclear bomb of the USSR.
It was not strange for the awardees that both the project itself and its success were shrouded in a dense veil of secrecy. After all, they all knew well that they owed their success to a large extent to the courage and professionalism of Soviet intelligence officers, who for eight years had been supplying scientists and engineers with top-secret information from abroad. And such a high assessment that the creators of the Soviet atomic bomb deserved was not exaggerated. As one of the creators of the bomb, academician Yuli Khariton, recalled, at the presentation ceremony Stalin suddenly said: “If we had been one to a year and a half late, we would probably have tried this charge on ourselves.” And this is not an exaggeration...

Atomic bomb sample... 1940
The Soviet Union came to the idea of creating a bomb that uses the energy of a nuclear chain reaction almost simultaneously with Germany and the United States. The first officially considered project of this type of weapon was presented in 1940 by a group of scientists from the Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology under the leadership of Friedrich Lange. It was in this project that for the first time in the USSR, a scheme for detonating conventional explosives, which later became classic for all nuclear weapons, was proposed, due to which two subcritical masses of uranium are almost instantly formed into a supercritical one.
The project received negative reviews and was not considered further. But the work on which it was based continued, and not only in Kharkov. At least four large institutes were involved in atomic issues in the pre-war USSR - in Leningrad, Kharkov and Moscow, and the work was supervised by the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, Vyacheslav Molotov. Soon after the presentation of Lange's project, in January 1941, the Soviet government made a logical decision to classify domestic atomic research. It was clear that they could really lead to the creation of a new type of powerful technology, and such information should not be scattered, especially since it was at that time that the first intelligence data on the American atomic project was received - and Moscow did not want to risk its own.
The natural course of events was interrupted by the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. But, despite the fact that all Soviet industry and science were very quickly transferred to a military footing and began to provide the army with the most urgent developments and inventions, strength and means were also found to continue the atomic project. Although not right away. The resumption of research must be counted from the resolution of the State Defense Committee of February 11, 1943, which stipulated the beginning of practical work on the creation of an atomic bomb.

Project "Enormoz"
By this time, Soviet foreign intelligence was already working hard to obtain information on the Enormoz project - this is how the American atomic project was called in operational documents. The first meaningful data indicating that the West was seriously engaged in the creation of uranium weapons came from the London station in September 1941. And at the end of the same year, a message comes from the same source that America and Great Britain agreed to coordinate the efforts of their scientists in the field of atomic energy research. In war conditions, this could only be interpreted in one way: the allies were working on creating atomic weapons. And in February 1942, intelligence received documentary evidence that Germany was actively doing the same thing.
As the efforts of Soviet scientists, working according to their own plans, advanced, intelligence work intensified to obtain information about the American and British atomic projects. In December 1942, it became finally clear that the United States was clearly ahead of Britain in this area, and the main efforts were focused on obtaining data from overseas. In fact, every step of the participants in the “Manhattan Project,” as the work on creating the atomic bomb in the United States was called, was tightly controlled by Soviet intelligence. Suffice it to say that the most detailed information about the structure of the first real atomic bomb was received in Moscow less than two weeks after it was assembled in America.
That is why the boastful message of the new US President Harry Truman, who decided to stun Stalin at the Potsdam Conference with a statement that America had a new weapon of unprecedented destructive power, did not cause the reaction that the American was counting on. The Soviet leader listened calmly, nodded, and said nothing. Foreigners were sure that Stalin simply did not understand anything. In fact, the leader of the USSR sensibly appreciated Truman’s words and on the same evening demanded that Soviet specialists speed up work on creating their own atomic bomb as much as possible. But it was no longer possible to overtake America. Less than a month later, the first atomic mushroom grew over Hiroshima, and three days later - over Nagasaki. And over the Soviet Union hung the shadow of a new, nuclear war, and not with anyone, but with former allies.

Time forward!
Now, seventy years later, no one is surprised that the Soviet Union received the much-needed reserve of time to create its own superbomb, despite sharply deteriorating relations with ex-partners in the anti-Hitler coalition. After all, already on March 5, 1946, six months after the first atomic bombings, Winston Churchill’s famous Fulton speech was made, which marked the beginning of the Cold War. But, according to the plans of Washington and its allies, it was supposed to develop into a hot one later - at the end of 1949. After all, as it was hoped overseas, the USSR was not supposed to receive its own atomic weapons before the mid-1950s, which means there was nowhere to rush.
Atomic bomb tests. Photo: U.S. Air Force/AR

From today's heights, it seems surprising that the date of the start of the new world war - or rather, one of the dates of one of the main plans, Fleetwood - and the date of testing the first Soviet nuclear bomb: 1949. But in reality everything is natural. The foreign policy situation was heating up quickly, the former allies were speaking more and more harshly to each other. And in 1948, it became absolutely clear that Moscow and Washington, apparently, would no longer be able to come to an agreement with each other. Hence the need to count down the time before the start of a new war: a year is the deadline during which countries that have recently emerged from a colossal war can fully prepare for a new one, moreover, with a state that bore the brunt of the Victory on its shoulders. Even the nuclear monopoly did not give the United States the opportunity to shorten the preparation for war.

Foreign “accents” of the Soviet atomic bomb
We all understood this perfectly well. Since 1945, all work related to the atomic project has sharply intensified. During the first two post-war years, the USSR, tormented by the war and having lost a considerable part of its industrial potential, managed to create a colossal nuclear industry from scratch. Future nuclear centers emerged, such as Chelyabinsk-40, Arzamas-16, Obninsk, and large scientific institutes and production facilities emerged.
Not so long ago, a common point of view on the Soviet atomic project was this: they say, if not for intelligence, USSR scientists would not have been able to create any atomic bomb. In reality, everything was far from being as clear as the revisionists of Russian history tried to show. In fact, the data obtained by Soviet intelligence about the American atomic project allowed our scientists to avoid many mistakes that their American colleagues who had gone ahead inevitably had to make (whom, let us recall, the war did not seriously interfere with their work: the enemy did not invade US territory, and the country did not lose a few months half of the industry). In addition, intelligence data undoubtedly helped Soviet specialists evaluate the most advantageous designs and technical solutions that made it possible to assemble their own, more advanced atomic bomb.
And if we talk about the degree of foreign influence on the Soviet nuclear project, then, rather, we need to remember the several hundred German nuclear specialists who worked at two secret facilities near Sukhumi - in the prototype of the future Sukhumi Institute of Physics and Technology. They really helped greatly to advance work on the “product” - the first atomic bomb of the USSR, so much so that many of them were awarded Soviet orders by the same secret decrees of October 29, 1949. Most of these specialists went back to Germany five years later, settling mostly in the GDR (although there were some who went to the West).
Objectively speaking, the first Soviet atomic bomb had, so to speak, more than one “accent.” After all, it was born as a result of a colossal cooperation of efforts of many people - both those who worked on the project of their own free will, and those who were involved in the work as prisoners of war or interned specialists. But the country, which at all costs needed to quickly obtain weapons that would equalize its chances with the ex-allies who were rapidly turning into mortal enemies, had no time for sentimentality.

Russia does it itself!
In the documents relating to the creation of the first nuclear bomb of the USSR, the term “product”, which later became popular, had not yet been encountered. Much more often it was officially called a “special jet engine,” or RDS for short. Although, of course, there was nothing reactive in the work on this design: the whole point was only in the strictest requirements of secrecy.
With the light hand of Academician Yuli Khariton, the unofficial decoding “Russia does it itself” very quickly became attached to the abbreviation RDS. There was a considerable amount of irony in this, since everyone knew how much the information obtained by intelligence had given our nuclear scientists, but also a large share of truth. After all, if the design of the first Soviet nuclear bomb was very similar to the American one (simply because the most optimal one was chosen, and the laws of physics and mathematics do not have national characteristics), then, say, the ballistic body and electronic filling of the first bomb were a purely domestic development.
When work on the Soviet atomic project had progressed far enough, the USSR leadership formulated tactical and technical requirements for the first atomic bombs. It was decided to simultaneously develop two types: an implosion-type plutonium bomb and a cannon-type uranium bomb, similar to that used by the Americans. The first received the RDS-1 index, the second, respectively, RDS-2.
According to the plan, RDS-1 was to be submitted for state tests by explosion in January 1948. But these deadlines could not be met: problems arose with the production and processing of the required amount of weapons-grade plutonium for its equipment. It was received only a year and a half later, in August 1949, and immediately went to Arzamas-16, where the first Soviet atomic bomb was almost ready. Within a few days, specialists from the future VNIIEF completed the assembly of the “product”, and it went to the Semipalatinsk test site for testing.

The first rivet of Russia's nuclear shield
The first nuclear bomb of the USSR was detonated at seven o'clock in the morning on August 29, 1949. Almost a month passed before overseas people recovered from the shock caused by intelligence reports about the successful testing of our own “big stick” in our country. Only on September 23, Harry Truman, who had not so long ago boastfully informed Stalin about America’s successes in creating atomic weapons, made a statement that the same type of weapons was now available in the USSR.

Presentation of a multimedia installation in honor of the 65th anniversary of the creation of the first Soviet atomic bomb. Photo: Geodakyan Artem / TASS

Oddly enough, Moscow was in no hurry to confirm the Americans’ statements. On the contrary, TASS actually came out with a refutation of the American statement, arguing that the whole point is the colossal scale of construction in the USSR, which also involves the use of blasting operations using the latest technologies. True, at the end of the Tassov statement there was a more than transparent hint about possessing its own nuclear weapons. The agency reminded everyone interested that back on November 6, 1947, USSR Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov stated that no secret of the atomic bomb had existed for a long time.
And this was twice true. By 1947, no information about atomic weapons was any longer a secret for the USSR, and by the end of the summer of 1949, it was no longer a secret to anyone that the Soviet Union had restored strategic parity with its main rival, the United States. A parity that has persisted for six decades. Parity, which is supported by Russia’s nuclear shield and which began on the eve of the Great Patriotic War.