Home search Nuclear Weapon ArchiveDisclaimer

Soviet Atomic Espionage During World War II

The Curious Case of the KGB Plans for the First Atomic Bomb

Last changed 10 April 1998

In 1992 the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (the successor to the KGB) released for publication a collection of documents on atomic espionage during World War II. This collection was included in the Russian-language journal Voprosy Istorii Estestvoznaniia i Tekhniki (Problems in the History of Science and Technology, commonly abbreviated VIET), issue No.3, 1992 (Pgs. 97-134) under the (translated) name of On the Origins of the Soviet Atomic Project: Role of the Intelligence Service 1941 - 1946 edited by V. P. Visgin.

This set of documents showed the extraordinary amount of detailed information regarding the Manhattan Project that Soviet intelligence had acquired during the war. The motivation for releasing these documents appears to have been an effort to burnish the reputation of the RFIS/KGB, which was severely discredited in the wake of the collapse of the Moscow Putsch in August 1991.

Among the documents released were two documents designated (for publication convenience) No. 12 and No. 13 that contained specific information about the design of the "Gadget", the implosion bomb design developed at Los Alamos and later dropped on Nagasaki as a bomb known as Fat Man. Document No. 13 in particular contained a great deal of very detailed design information, which at the time helped the Soviet Union build an exact copy of the device that was detonated in the first Soviet nuclear test in 1949. The information in this document is the first, and so far (as of 1998) the only, detailed description of an actual nuclear weapon design ever published

While the issue was being prepared for printing (or possibly already being printed), U.S. scholar David Holloway of Stanford University saw it and became concerned about these two documents on pages 126-129.

At Holloway's suggestion, these documents were shown to Yuli Khariton, one of the leading figures in the Soviet nuclear weapons program, who felt they should not be published due to the detailed information they contained. Subsequently high officials in the Ministry of Atomic Energy decided to stop publication, and issued orders that all copies of this issue be recalled.

This story has been recounted in print several times (with some variations), such as by the following:

One of the variations in this story concerns just how widely this issue was actually circulated. Sagdeev claims that actual distribution was prevented entirely. Leshkov says 200-300 copies were distributed in Russia, and were then rounded up. Sudoplatov et al also claim it was partially distributed in Russia but that the copies were recalled and confiscated. Holloway and Rhodes say much the same thing, and this version of the story was also confirmed to me by Dr. Gennady Gorelik, who was directly involved in this affair. Holloway also adds however:"The whole set of documents has been quoted in the Russian press, ...".

The books by Holloway, Sudoplatov et al, and Rhodes all draw upon these documents in various ways. Special Tasks published extensive selections from these documents, but omitted documents 12 and 13 entirely due to their sensitive nature. Rhodes published a partial translation of Document 13 (see pages 193-195), again omitting material that he deemed especially sensitive.

Out of curiosity I checked at a local university library (UCLA) to see if they carried this journal, and if so, whether a copy of this issue - perhaps edited - might be in the collection. I discovered that UCLA did indeed carry the journal, and that further more found a complete unedited copy of this issue bound in to the 1992 edition. Subsequently I have been able to check at several other universities that carry VIET, and found the complete issue in all of them. This indicates that the distribution of this issue of VIET was commonplace.

It would seem then that the story that the issue was only partially distributed, and that these copies were all effectively withdrawn from circulation is just that - a story and nothing more.

My suspicion is that in fact ALL issues were distributed, internationally as well as within Russia. The supposed "recall" within Russia was mere window dressing to distract attention from what was actually a complete debacle.

Clearly any party (for example, Iraq) who is interested in such relatively primitive weapon designs, and has anything remotely approaching the means necessary to actually construct such a device, will have long ago acquired a copy of this article. Maintaining the pretense that this material has been successfully "protected" serves no purpose but to delude the public.

Accordingly, with the generous assistance of a skilled translator, I have prepared the complete texts of these two documents for publication in English on the World Wide Web for use by scholars and researchers. To read them click here: On the Origins of the Soviet Atomic Project: Role of the Intelligence Service 1941 - 1946.

If Anyone is Interested in Helping Out...

I would like to investigate the question of how extensively this issue was distributed further. Not being able to roam the globe (or even the U.S.) checking research libraries myself, I need assistance from other interested parties. If anyone out there is interested in the subject of atomic history and has access to a good research library (such as a university) please check its collection. If it carries VIET please tell me whether this issue is present or not (I'd like to know either way).

Note:
The task of checking library collections is complicated by the vagaries of transliteration and translation, neither of which is an exact science. The name of the journal is also rendered as:
Voprossi Istorii Estestvoznania i Tekhniki,
Questions of History of Natural Science and Technology

Other variations are possible.