Kharkiv, 1940: Nuclear prelude
Virtually all media on the post-Soviet territory recently reminded their readers that 60 years ago the Soviet Union activated its first nuclear weapon, an A-bomb, on the trial ground at Semipalatinsk, in Kazakhstan. Some authors insisted that the nuclear project team, headed by Igor Kurchatov and supervised by Lavrenty Beria, simply copied the US project, stolen by Soviet intelligence agents four years previously. Other authors insisted that no such intelligence would have ever produced an A-bomb without the top-notch expertise of Soviet physicists. Still others tried to steer the middle course, saying that everyone involved did their best.
Somehow, no one mentioned the fact that a decade before the nuclear explosion at Semipalatinsk, the nuclear bomb concept, its design, and the technology to obtain enriched uranium were actually developed at the Ukrainian Institute of Physics and Technology (UFTI), then located in Kharkiv, Ukraine.
This discovery was not coincidental, considering that Kharkiv ranked among the world’s leading nuclear research centers at the time.
When the issue of Ukraine’s “executed Renaissance” of the 1920s and early 1930s is discussed, it all boils down to the humanitarian sphere: literature, the theater, the cinema, and education. Meanwhile, that period of national revival — the process of forming a modern Ukrainian nation, to be precise, even if under close Bolshevik supervision — gave a strong impetus to various sciences and technologies in Ukraine, from psychology to nuclear physics to biochemistry, mathematics, electric welding, and to aircraft construction. Ukraine was internationally acclaimed in all these spheres. In fact, without Ukraine’s concepts, the process of evolution of world civilization would have slowed down. Because of Stalin’s purges in the 1930s, Soviet Ukraine’s research potential went down, including in nuclear physics, but even then Ukraine’s potential sufficed for it to keep pace with the world’s leading researchers, while the NKVD denied any foreign contacts for fear of espionage.
I will not attempt to identify all those who worked for the UFTI at that time or later. I will mention several names — people who were directly involved in the A-bomb project. The first name that comes to mind is that of Aleksandr Leipunsky. He was born in the vicinity of Grodno, Belarus. In 1929 he was appointed deputy director of the UFTI. He became director of the UFTI in 1935. In the early 1930s, on his initiative, the UFTI carried out the fusion of lithium, using accelerated protons, for the first time in the USSR and for the second time in world practice. In 1934–35, he worked with the Cavendish Laboratory, Department of Physics, University of Cambridge, with none other than Rutherford. It was there that Leipunsky provided his first experimental proof of the neutrino hypothesis.
He was arrested in 1938 on charges of espionage on behalf of Poland. Fortunately, several months later he was released from prison (unlike a number of his colleagues), but he was not reinstated as the UFTI director. Leipunsky had to make do as a research fellow at the UFTI’s radioactivity laboratory. He also supervised the development of the institute’s cyclotron.
In 1939 he led the research team in the project “Studies of Uranium Fission.” In 1940 his book Delenie yader (Nuclear Fission) appeared in print and was followed by Delenie urana (Uranium Fission) in 1941. In 1940 his Ph.D. student Viktor Maslov of Kharkiv (he had just defended his thesis) and the Kyiv University graduate Volodymyr Shpinel (he had also worked with the UFTI) submitted a claim for the discovery they called “On the Use of Uranium as an Explosive and Chemical Agent.”
Below are excerpts from this application.
“It is generally known from the latest developments in physics that a sufficient amount of uranium (precisely when the amount of uranium is considerably larger than the free passage of neutrons therein) may cause an explosion that will have a tremendous devastating effect. This is explained by the incredible speed with which uranium develops a fission chain reaction that causes the nuclei to fall apart and release a huge amount of energy (several million times greater than that of the chemical reactions resulting from conventional explosives)…
“The following is evidence that it is possible to use uranium to cause an explosion, and the method is specified… The problem of employing uranium to cause an explosion boils down to obtaining an amount of uranium considerably larger than the critical one… and getting it as soon as possible…
“The following construction can serve as an example of how this principle is implemented. A uranium bomb may have a spherical shape, divided inside into pyramid-like sectors with their tops in the center of this sphere and their bases on its surface. These chamber-like sectors can accommodate an amount of uranium slightly smaller than the critical one. The walls of these chambers must be hollow and contain water or any other liquid-friendly agents (paraffin, etc.). The surface of these walls must be covered with explosives that contain cadmium, mercury or boron — in other words, elements that can intensively absorb neutrons that are slowed down by the water layer (e.g., cadmium acetylenide). The presence of these agents, even if in a small amount but with the water layer, makes it impossible for the neutrons to escape a chamber and enter another one, thus triggering off a chain reaction within the sphere. At the required moment, using any kind of device within the sphere, it is possible to cause an explosion of the intermediate layers…”
Ladies and gentlemen, that was back in 1940, when most of the world’s leading physicists had no concept of the A-bomb, they were busy practicing physics, trying to move forward, dealing with phenomena of this incredibly puzzling world. They made headway, as evidenced by the A-bomb developed in the US in 1945 and copied by the Soviet Union in 1949 — with a plutonium ball in the center (it could be made using enriched uranium, but then the size of the bomb would be larger). Installed in this ball was a neutron-emitting source. The ball was girded by neutron reflectors made from uranium metal, then a layer of aluminum with the adjacent 32 pyramidal fillets made from a mixture of TNT and hexogen. Every such fillet has a detonator. These detonators must be activated simultaneously, whereupon the plutonium ball will be squeezed, its density will exceed the critical level, and a chain reaction will start causing a nuclear blast.
Apparently, there are lots of things in common, and this is not coincidental. But let me repeat myself: it was back in 1940, when no one in Great Britain, America or Germany was able to sketch the design of an A-bomb. Indeed, there was a team of researchers in France, headed by Frederic Joliot-Curie, who patented the blueprints of a nuclear reactor and an A-bomb — but no one in Kharkiv knew because of the Iron Curtain was put in place in the mid-1930s, rather than in the second half of the 1940s. Furthermore, the Second World War was shortly to break out, so any exchange of scientific data was out of the question.
To quote further from the patent application submitted by the two authors: “Regarding uranium explosion: Apart from its colossal devastating effect (apparently, the development of a uranium bomb capable of destroying cities such as London or Berlin will not be a problem)…” Now pause to consider the implication: London or Berlin! An incredibly accurate reflection of the epoch. Great Britain and Germany. Any scientist realized that these were the main potential obstacles for the Soviet Union on its way to world-wide dominance.
However, there was another extremely important aspect: “When detonated, a uranium bomb produces fallout and it contaminates a thousand times more than any of the available chemical warfare weapons. Considering that these after-blast effects continue for a while — for hours, and some of them for days and even weeks — in a gaseous state, being carried over great distances while preserving their murderous capacity, it is hard to say which of these specifics — the incredibly devastating effect or the contaminating factor — of a uranium blast are most attractive to the military.”
Some of the readers are likely to be shocked by the bloodthirsty enthusiasm of these young Ukrainian scientists who sought to annihilate the population of such big cities as London and Berlin. Once again, this is nothing else but a mental model of that epoch.
Maslov and Shpinel’s patent application is an accurate description of a nuclear blast and its consequences, too accurate for that period, as though both scientists had used a time machine and witnessed the consequences of 20th-century nuclear tests and the Hiroshima tragedy. As it was, their contemporaries failed to see any prospects in the application. For example, Academician Khlopin, supposedly versed in nuclear physics, wrote in his findings on the application: “Regarding the first application (there were other applications submitted, with Friedrich Lange as a co-author, specifying the enriched uranium technology — S.H.), I must point out that this issue is actually ungrounded today. Moreover, and as a matter of fact, the whole thing is strongly reminiscent of science fiction.”
Maslov (the only Communist Party member among the authors of the applications) refused to give up struggle. He challenged the findings submitted by reputed scientists and sent a letter to the newly appointed Defense Minister Marshal Semen Tymoshenko. In his letter he stressed: “The purely scientific aspect of the matter is now in a phase that allows us to step up work aimed at the practical use of uranium. To this end, I would strongly suggest the setting up of a special uranium research laboratory at one of the institutes. This would make it possible for us to conduct further studies while keeping constantly in touch with the top-notch technicians, chemists, physicists, and experts in our military domain. We particularly need cooperation with the best of designers and chemists.”
In conclusion, Maslov wrote the number of his party membership card (2377049) and his postal address in Kharkiv. The Soviet defense minister received the letter plus a commentary made by an anonymous expert: “This project is not substantiated by experimental findings.” How could it have been substantiated without any such experiments performed by anyone else? As it was, the Soviet leadership had its dignity to uphold — in other words, everyone waited for the bourgeoisie to take the first step. Then a scapegoat would be found to answer for the Soviets lagging behind. Otherwise, there was no carte blanche for domestic prodigies.
Contemporary eyewitness sources have it that the young researchers persisted in trying to find someone “upstairs” to understand their problem and secure budget appropriations. They were only too well aware of the scope of such studies and the kind of equipment they would require; also, that it would take time to receive positive results. They had every phase of the project carefully thought out, except that there was nothing on record. The NKVD’s massive arrests on espionage charges made Maslov, Shpinel, and Lange use flimsy to write their formulas and designs on. These they kept in secret places known only to them, and eventually burned them all.
In 1942, Second Lieutenant Viktor Maslov, who had volunteered for front-line duty, died after a wound sustained in action. Volodymyr Shpinel and Aleksandr Leipunovsky would live a long life, although they would live and work outside Ukraine. Their application dated Dec. 7, 1946, would eventually become Certificate of Authorship No. 6353, but with a Top Secret stamp; the same was true of their application (together with Friedrich Lange) for a method to separate uranium isotopes using a gas centrifuge. Ironically, Soviet intelligence officers had had a hard time stealing this method from the United States, but they did it. After the war Volodymyr Shpinel was summoned to Lubyanka, where he was received by Major General Pavel Meshik. Shpinel would tell journalists during the perestroika campaign that he was shown into the major general’s office, “a large room with windows looking onto Lubyanka Square, where I shook hands with a sturdy man who then opened a wall safe hidden under the oak panels and produced the application Viktor Maslov and I had written. ‘Do you recognize this?’ he asked. ‘Lavrenty Pavlovich [Beria] and I discussed it recently… How could you and Maslov have conceived this complicated idea of an A-bomb even before the war? Back in 1940, neither we, nor the Americans or the British, had a notion of it. Toward the end of the war, it was much easier for Kurchatov and his team, even more so after the war, for we had literally heaps of data on the American bomb for them.”
Shpinel also confidently told journalists that, if they had been provided the right kind of financing and organization, the USSR would have developed its own A-bomb in 1945. When asked if this would have benefited the world at the time, the physicist paused to think it over, said nothing, and shook his head mournfully.
