Why am I passionate about this?
I visited Moscow for the first time in 1964. The Cold War was in full swing. I was still at school, learning beginners' Russian. I returned a few years later as a graduate student. By this point I was hopelessly infected with an incurable and progressive disease: curiosity about the Soviet Union under communism. I was full of questions, many of which could not be answered for decades, until communist rule collapsed. Becoming a professional scholar, I spent the next half-century studying the history, economics, and politics of communist societies. The biggest obstacle was always secrecy, so it seems fitting that the system of secrecy is the topic of my most recent book.
Mark's book list on working inside Soviet communism
Why did Mark love this book?
In August 1949 (I was four months old), Lavrentii Beria, Stalin’s chief of secret police, attended the first Soviet atomic bomb test. He had medals in one pocket and a gun in the other. The medals were for the case of success, and the gun for failure.
This book tells an amazing story of scientific prowess and espionage under tyranny. Stalin distrusted the atomic scientists and kept them under continual surveillance, but he could not do without them and had to protect them for their knowledge.
Any reader who is occasionally baffled by science will sympathize, however unwillingly.
1 author picked Stalin and the Bomb as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
For forty years the Soviet-American nuclear arms race dominated world politics, yet the Soviet nuclear establishment was shrouded in secrecy. Now that the Cold War is over and the Soviet Union has collapsed, it is possible to answer questions that have intrigued policymakers and the public for years. How did the Soviet Union build its atomic and hydrogen bombs? What role did espionage play? How did the American atomic monopoly affect Stalin's foreign policy? What was the relationship between Soviet nuclear scientists and the country's political leaders? This spellbinding book answers these questions by tracing the history of Soviet nuclear…