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The soviet thermonuclear weapons program was aided heavily by Klaus Fuchs. Fuchs’ most valuable contribution to the Soviet weapons program concerned the hydrogen bomb. The idea of a hydrogen bomb arose from discussions between Enrico Fermi and Edward Teller in 1941. From 1943 Teller lectured at Los Alamos on what he called the “super.” Following their meeting, Fermi was convinced by Teller to present a series of lectures detailing the current state of research into thermonuclear weapons. In September 1945 Fuchs passed a synopsis of these lectures to the Soviets. This information was important to the Soviets, but not solely for the information about the US bomb project. The importance of this material lay in that it confirmed that the United States were working on their own thermonuclear weapon research. Although the information provided by Fuchs regarding the thermonuclear weapons research was not seen as entirely beneficial, it still provided the Soviet Union with knowledge such as the properties of tritium. Following Fuch's return, Soviet experts spent time researching his findings for themselves. Even though the soviets did contain some original ideas, the findings of this research served to confirm Fuch's notes from the American lectures on the matter. After his return to England in mid-1946, Fuchs was not again in touch with Soviet intelligence until September 1947, when his controller confimed the Soviet interest in thermonuclear weapons. In response Fuchs provided details of the “ongoing theoretical superbomb studies in the US under the direction of Teller and Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago.” Fuchs obtained information regardless of the American Mchmahon Act, which prevented Anglo-American cooperation on nuclear weapons research. Under this act, Fuchs did not have routine access to american collaborators like Fermi and Teller. Fuchs was very close to Teller at Los Alamos, and while there Fuchs had worked on thermonuclear weapons. As Teller later recalled, “he [Fuchs] talked with me and others frequently in depth about our intensive efforts…it was easy and pleasant to discuss my work with him. He also made impressive contributions and I learned many technical facts from him.” Fuchs obtained the information, it energized the Soviets to direct new intelligence activities against research in Chicago. In February 1948 the Soviet Union formally began its hydrogen bomb program. A month later Fuchs again met with Feklisov, an event which “played an exceptional role in the subsequent course of the Soviet thermonuclear bomb program.”  

Nuclear Reduction

Two years before his death in 1989, Andrei Sakharov’s comments at a scientists’ forum helped set the stage for the elimination of thousands of nuclear ballistic missiles from the US and Soviet arsenals. Sakharov (1921–89) was recruited into the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons program in 1948, a year after he completed his doctorate. In 1949 the US detected the first Soviet test of a fission bomb, and the two countries embarked on a desperate race to design a thermonuclear hydrogen bomb that was a thousand times more powerful. Like his US counterparts, Sakharov justified his H-bomb work by pointing to the danger of the other country’s achieving a monopoly. But also like some of the US scientists who had worked on the Manhattan Project, he felt a responsibility to inform his nation’s leadership and then the world about the dangers from nuclear weapons. Sakharov’s first effort to influence policy was stimulated by his concern about possible genetic damage from long-lived radioactive carbon-14 created in the atmosphere from nitrogen-14 by the enormous fluxes of neutrons released in H-bomb tests. In 1968 a friend suggested that Sakharov write an essay about the role of the intelligentsia in world affairs. Self-publishing was the method at the time for spreading unapproved manuscripts in the Soviet Union. Many readers would create multiple copies by typing with multiple sheets of paper interleaved with carbon paper. One copy of Sakharov’s essay, “Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom,” was smuggled out of the Soviet Union and published by the New York Times. More than 18 million reprints were produced during 1968–69. After the essay was published, Sakharov was barred from returning to work in the nuclear weapons program and took a research position in Moscow. In 1980, after an interview with the New York Times in which he denounced the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the government put him beyond the reach of Western media by exiling him and his wife to Gorky. In March 1985 Gorbachev became general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. More than a year and a half later, he persuaded the Politburo, the party’s executive committee, to allow Sakharov and Bonner to return to Moscow.

Reagan’s election in 1980 led first to the intensification of the nuclear arms race and then to the largest ever public uprising against it. A powerful advocacy group, the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), had convinced Reagan that the US was falling behind in the nuclear arms race and was in mortal danger of a Soviet first nuclear strike. Many of its members obtained high-level positions in the administration, including in the Department of Defense, where they proposed to add almost 10 000 ballistic and cruise missile nuclear warheads to the US arsenal. In March 1983 President Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which would focus on developing technology to make Soviet ballistic missiles “impotent and obsolete.” The initiative communicated a less threatening image than the CPD buildup to the US public and allies. In early November 1983 the Reagan administration created a severe nuclear crisis with a NATO exercise, Able Archer, that Soviet intelligence mistook for preparations for an actual nuclear attack. Two years later the situation finally began to diffuse. Gorbachev’s first move, in August 1985, was to declare a unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing, now underground because of the 1963 atmospheric test ban. In their October 1986 Reykjavik summit, Reagan and Gorbachev agreed on the goal of nuclear disarmament. But they could not agree on a first tranche of cuts because Gorbachev insisted that Reagan commit to remaining within the constraints of the ABM Treaty for 10 years. The Reagan administration disparaged the initiative, but the Democrats, who controlled the House of Representatives until 1995 and the Senate during 1987–95, were impressed. In 1992 they were able to force the Bush administration to end US testing on the condition that other countries not test either. In 1996 the Clinton administration negotiated the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). Although that treaty has not yet been ratified by the US, China, India, Pakistan, or North Korea, only North Korea has tested since 1998.

In February 1987 a scientists forum on the reduction of nuclear weapons met in Moscow. Sakharov’s release from Gorky may have been timed so that his exile would not become an issue at the forum. The forum was viewed as an opportunity to layout viewpoints on nuclear disarmament. Sakharov argued that persuading both countries’ military leaders to abandon counterforce strategies would be virtually impossible.