First Aired: September 12nd, 1994
Status: Ended
Network: Discovery
Summary: This film recounts the history of the Soviet atomic bomb project from the Russian perspective. Recognizing the threat that Hitler’s Germany posed to them, the Soviets organized espionage rings to obtain atomic secrets from Germany and the United States. The film asserts that espionage intelligence reports about atomic developments in Germany and the United States played a significant role in getting Stalin to begin the former Soviet Union’s atomic program. Interviews with members of the KGB, Soviet spies including the infamous Klaus Fuchs, Soviet physicists, and designers of the Soviet atomic bomb explain the political motivations to spy, and analyze the motivations behind the construction of the bomb. The film is the first in a three part series titled The Red Bomb detailing Soviet espionage efforts and the Soviet urgency to develop nuclear arms.
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Episode Statistics:
# of Episodes: 3
# of Episodes I watched: 0
# of Episodes I haven't watched: 3
Last Episode I watched: -
Last Aired Episode
Season 1 - Episode 3: In the Name of Peace
Air Date: September 26th, 1994
Summary: This final episode addresses the legacy of the Red Bomb, and the steady stream of scientists who became disenchanted with the project after seeing the potential devastation it could cause.
By the time the Stalinist regime gives way to the era of Khrushchev, Russia and its rival are almost neck and neck. One war may be over, but another is just beginning. As rivalry deepens into outright hostility, can the quest to produce the ultimate atom bomb really be explained "in the name of peace"?
As the race accelerates, simple bomb tests are replaced by full-scale battle exercises and the spectre of nuclear war looms ever closer. The Soviets are plundering Czechoslovakian mines for their rich uranium reserves, and Russia upgrades its nuclear facilities, making Arzamas-16 and Semipalatinsk-21 into model cities for nuclear scientists and their families – furnished with dream homes, luxury shops and good schools (though the cities are untraceable on the map, and their inhabitants have no address). Archive footage of an imitation battle gives a hint of the war that never was – though most of the "sacrificies" are sheep and horses, stationed in the trenches in the name of military research. The Red Army evacuate farmers out of the chosen patch of countryside, allowing them to return a few days later, with nuclear dust still hanging in the air. (In the ensuing years, the local hospital saw a huge increase in tumour patients – a trend that the government did its utmost to conceal.)
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