Evil Empire Bombpix

The young Tolstoy is inspired to write War and Peace by "RDS-37", the first Soviet hydrogen bomb. As he later put it, "I seemed to see the narrative unfold as the bomb spread its terrible mantle ever more widely across the heavens." On the subject of terrible mantles, Lev Nikolaevich is sporting the Russian Crimean War Officers' GI rainwear-cum-bivouac tent. Yielding 1.6 megaton on 22 November 1955, RDS-37 delighted everyone, except three people who were killed when its shock wave caused a building to collapse.

The seriously mean young man above is Joseph Stalin with "Joe 1", the first Soviet atomic bomb> (22 kiloton, 29 August 1949, Semipalatinsk Test Site). Standing behind him is Igor Kurchatov, who led the team that, with a little help from Julius Rosenberg and others, built the weapon. Lavrenti Beria, Stalin's unspeakable secret-police chief, oversaw the project, which Kurchatov completed despite crippling shortages of materials and rampant official paranoia. Beria suspected a scientific conspiracy and was determined to remain unimpressed. Just before Joe 1 went off, he said to Kurchatov "Nothing will come of it, Igor" (Great Bomb Quotes, vol. iv, p. 374).

A wistful Yuri Gagarin turns away from "Chagan", as Soviet youth begin to crave the colour and variety of USA bomb designs. Grimly monochromatic Russian bomb aesthetics were based on the fear-inducing chiaroscuro of Stalin's moustache. [ "Chagan", 34 kiloton, shaft detonation, Semipalatinsk Test Site, 15 January 1965. This site, in Kazakhstan, was USSR's principal testing ground for nuclear weapons. It was closed in July 2000.]

poke Joe to go home