Red Atom: Russia's Nuclear Power Program from Stalin to Today (review)

Red Atom: Russia's Nuclear Power Program from Stalin to Today. By Paul R. Josephson. New York: W. H. Freeman, 1999. Pp. x+352. $26.95.

Paul Josephson's detailed history of the Soviet nuclear program provides a cautionary tale in "big technology run amok" (p. 4). Driven relentlessly forward by the party quest for legitimacy, with nuclear power "at the center of visions of a radiant communist future," the Soviet nuclear program acquired a deadly momentum whose "legacy of failure and radioactive waste suggests radiance of a different and dangerous sort" (p. 3). Influential engineers and scientists rode this momentum to a privileged position in post-Stalinist society, fueling the Soviet nuclear juggernaut with their training, expertise, and harebrained schemes. From nuclear submarines and portable power generators to massive water diversion projects and food irradiation programs, no realm of Soviet society was untouched by visions of the radiant future.

Josephson explores the dynamics of technological momentum in a noncapitalist society, the first such detailed study in the Soviet field. The one-party system, and its suppression of doubts about science and technology as a panacea, provided an ideal breeding ground for scientific and technological hubris. It encouraged an unholy alliance in the post-Stalin era between party leaders and the scientists and engineers upon whom they increasingly depended for their legitimacy. Blinded by initial successes and by the luxury of not having to subject failed experiments to public scrutiny, the Soviet nuclear establishment pushed for the early standardization of fundamental components of nuclear technology and the "industrialization" of nuclear power production. Operators with only a rudimentary knowledge of nuclear technology believed in the infallibility of Soviet science and technology. They stood at the controls, oblivious to the potential disaster.

The Soviet Republic of Ukraine, home to Chernobyl, was at the forefront of the Soviet nuclear industry's momentum. When operators in the control room of reactor unit 4 in Chernobyl initiated a controlled safety experiment, more than the reactor blew up: so, too, did the political legitimacy and self-perception that had become so intertwined with the atom. As a central slogan of Soviet nuclear industry put it: "Let the atom be a worker, not a soldier" (p. 38). The atom, ironically, turned out to be a wrecker--the term applied to "enemies of the people" in the engineering and scientific establishments during the Stalin-era show trials.

Each of Josephson's chapters follows the engineers and scientists who helped build momentum for the industry at institutes and production facilities across the Soviet Union. One of the book's weaknesses emerges from this approach. By mostly focusing on the recollections of scientists and engineers, Josephson not surprisingly paints a portrait of a society (and party) increasingly controlled by scientists and engineers. More attention to party records and officials from outside the industry would have helped to test his argument that harnessing the atom became a core component of party legitimacy in the post-Stalin era. What were the limits of technological momentum in the Soviet system, and of the alliance between scientists and engineers and the party elite? As Josephson points out in a fascinating section on food irradiation programs, concerns from both party officials and consumers "stopped the Soviet program dead in its tracks by the end of the 1970s" (p. 164). This might have served as a starting point for exploring inertia as well as momentum in the Soviet nuclear nexus.

Josephson also claims that "in the minds of most Soviet citizens the power of the atom was the key to building a modern society free from shortages and wants" (p. 5). Perhaps this is true, but where is the supporting evidence? Was nuclear power really so crucial "in building Soviet identity in the post-Stalin world" (p. 21)? While Soviet power relied upon science and large-scale technologies for legitimacy, it also encouraged traditional arts and crafts (which it...