Phys. perspect.

11 (2009) 169197
1422-6944/09/02016929
DOI 10.1007/s00016-007-0377-8

The Paternity of the H-Bombs:

Soviet-American Perspectives
Gennady Gorelik*
There are major problems in the history of the American and Soviet hydrogen bombs. They are
associated with the Teller-Ulam and Teller-Oppenheimer controversies, and the question of whether
the design of the Soviet H-bomb was an independent conception. Because of the scarcity of documentary evidence, these problems have little chance of being settled if the histories of the two
are considered separately within their national frameworks. Considered comparatively, however,
they can help clarify these problems separately and convert them into different facets of this most
important segment in the history of the thermonuclear age.The recently disclosed evidence on the
history of the Soviet H-bomb, in particular, on Klaus Fuchss key idea of radiation implosion, validates Edward Tellers view on the invention of the H-bomb, including his understatement of his
own accomplishment and his concern about the benefits and head start that the Soviet H-bomb
program could have gotten from Fuchss espionage. In addition, the Russian perspective on the
realities of illusory worlds during the Cold War helps us see these illusory worldviews as largely
responsible for the intensity of the H-bomb debate in the United States.

Key words: Andrei Sakharov; Edward Teller; Stanislaw Ulam; J. Robert Oppenheimer;
Hans A. Bethe; Carson Mark; Yakov Zeldovich; Klaus Fuchs; Vitaly Ginzburg; Lev
Landau; Laszlo Tisza; Cold War; Hydrogen bomb; radiation implosion.

Teller, Sakharov, Secrecy, and Parallel Histories

The theoretical physicists Edward Teller (19082003) and Andrei Sakharov
(19211989), the fathers of the American and Soviet H-bombs, had contrasting social
and political roles during the Cold War. The American physicist invariably advocated
a policy from the position of strength, which largely agreed with that of the American
government. The Russian physicist, after a dramatic change of view in 19671968, dissented from the Soviet government and advocated a policy of Soviet-American cooperation and rapprochement by means of intellectual freedom and other human rights.
No less contrasting were the prevailing public images of the two physicists. Teller
was perceived as Dr. Strangelove, a heartless theorist ready to do anything for the sake
of new and ever more powerful weapons, and for his personal aggrandizement, while
Sakharov allegedly repented for having designed those terrible bombs and, by way of
redemption, transformed himself into an altruistic pacifist, as was acknowledged by the
Nobel Peace Prize for 1975.
* Gennady Gorelik is a research fellow in the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at
Boston University and is the author of biographies of Matvei Bronstein and Andrei Sakharov.

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Sakharovs posthumously published autobiography,1 together with documents that

were declassified after the demise of the Soviet regime, made clear that his popular
image was flawed: Sakharov never repented for his military inventions, was no pacifist,
and his humanitarian conversion was brought about by his professional knowledge of
strategic weaponry and by his awareness of the machinery of the Soviet system.
Nonetheless, this did not alter the position he had adopted in 1968: Peace, progress,
human rights these three goals are insolubly linked to one another: it is impossible to
achieve one of these goals if the other two are ignored. This is how he formulated his
views in his Nobel Lecture, which, of course, the Soviet authorities prevented him from
delivering in person.2
Teller neither changed his political views nor was he deprived of his right to express
them (except for classification restrictions). Two major accusations damaged Tellers
public image as related to the H-bomb. He was blamed for belittling Stanislaw Ulams
1951 contribution to the invention of the H-bomb, and he was held responsible for the
ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the Atomic bomb, owing to his testimony at the infamous 1954 hearing before the Atomic Energy Commissions Gray
Board. Oppenheimers opposition to the development of the H-bomb in 1949 became
a key justification for not reinstating his security clearance.
Sakharov (figure 1) strongly disagreed with Tellers persistent advocacy of atmospheric nuclear testing and strategic antiballistic missile defense. Still, Sakharov
believed that many American physicists had been unfair in their attitude toward Teller.
Sakharov saw the conflict of Oppenheimer and Teller on the H-bomb issue as a tragic confrontation of two outstanding persons, each of whom deserved respect, since
each of them was certain he had right on his side and was morally obligated to go to
the end in the name of that truth.3
It is easy to question Sakharovs ability to comprehend the confrontation of the two
American physicists because he lived too far away from the American scene to probe
the Strangelove-like mind of Teller, and to judge whether Oppenheimer was like
Prometheus, Proteus, or Faust three characterizations of him that have been
employed in the American discourse.4 The Oppenheimer-Teller controversy, of course,
involved much more than physics; it involved political figures up to and including the
President of the United States.
The issue of who invented the H-bomb appears to be simpler to understand, since it
evidently involved only physics and the ethics of coauthorship. Sakharov never
addressed the TellerUlam controversy, and probably was unaware of the tensions it
generated among American scientists. In any case, he probably would not have spoken
out on it because of classification restrictions. As he put it in his Memoirs, which he
wrote during his years of internal exile:
I write with certain omissions about my life and work between 1948 and 1968,
required by a commitment to maintain secrecy. I consider myself bound for life by
this commitment to keep state and military secrets, which I undertook voluntarily in
1948, no matter what life may bring.5
Top Secret restrictions unquestionably hinder our understanding of the invention of
the H-bomb on both sides of the Iron Curtain. In the United States, the focus of our

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Fig. 1. Andrei Sakharov (19211989). Credit: Photograph by Yousuf Karsh Yousuf Karsh/Retna
Ltd.

problem is Tellers and Ulams controversial coinvention of the H-bomb design in 1951,
which was tested in 1952. In the Soviet Union, the focus is on the controversial independence of Sakharovs and Yakov Zeldovichs conception of the Third Idea for the
design in 1954, which was tested in 1955. Secrecy, however, is not only a problem but
also an opportunity for the historian of science, because these developments constitute
two isolated or parallel realizations of the same story, which in the Soviet case was
opened up for research after the collapse of the Soviet regime when important archives
were declassified and veterans of the Soviet thermonuclear program could be interviewed. As a result, the Soviet and American stories of the development of the H-bomb
shed light on each other. Further, from a philosophical point of view, the two stories
shed light on what was accidental and contingent in these stories, and what conditions
were necessary for enabling these scientific and technological developments to succeed.

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Fig. 2. Cartoon sketches of Edward Teller (19082003, left) by George Gamov and of Stanislaw Ulam
(19091984) by Shatzi Davis. Source: George Gamow, My World Line: An Informal Autobiography
(New York: Viking, 1970), p. 153.

The Paternity of the H-Bomb

The turning point in the history of the American H-bomb took place in 19501951. It
began with calculations of mathematician Stanislaw Ulam (in collaboration with Cornelius J. Everett) that indicated the infeasibility of the intended H-bomb design (the
so-called Classical Super). The invention of a workable H-bomb, according to the
canonical version, was initiated by Ulam in early 1951 when he suggested a breakthrough idea, which Teller developed into the thermonuclear design known as the
Teller-Ulam configuration. In this canonical version equal credit is ascribed to Teller
and Ulam (figure 2).6
There are some problems with the canonical version, however. First, Teller disagreed
with it. When a journalist asked him not for the first time whether it was true that
51 percent of the credit belonged to him and 49 percent to Ulam, Teller poignantly
claimed 101 percent of the credit and gave Ulam minus one percent.7 Tellers claim
did not convince those who devalued all of Tellers judgments after his testimony
against Oppenheimer in 1954. And a sardonic rebuff was: Teller may be the father of
the hydrogen bomb, but Ulam surely slept with the mother.8
A much more serious problem for the canonical version was posed by Hans A.
Bethe (figure 3), whose integrity has never been called into question. An outstanding

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Fig. 3. Hans A. Bethe (19062005). Source: Bethe, Comments on the History of the H-Bomb (ref.
61), p. 42.

theoretical physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1967, Bethe headed the
Theoretical Division of the Los Alamos laboratory during World War II. He also
became the first historian of the American H-bomb with full access to classified documents when in May 1952 he wrote his Memorandum on the History of the Thermonuclear Program. In it he cited Teller as the discoverer of an entirely new
approach to thermonuclear reactions, which was a matter of inspiration and was
therefore, unpredictable and largely accidental.9 Bethe, a strong defender of
Oppenheimer, repeated his opinion in 1954 at the Oppenheimer hearing when he
spoke of Tellers stroke of genius in the invention of the H-bomb.10 Further, in 1968
(and in 1997) Bethe reminded his readers that the crucial invention was made in 1951,
by Teller, 11 and in 1988 he summarized his views by stating that Teller contributed
more ideas at every stage of the H-bomb program than anyone else, and this fact
should never be obscured.12

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Paradoxically, Bethes judgment has been widely ignored, and Teller himself was the
first to disagree with Bethes high regard for his accomplishments. Teller responded to
Bethes 1952 Memorandum by remarking that: It is difficult to argue to what extent
an invention is accidental: most difficult for someone who did not make the invention
himself, and he then claimed that his idea for the 1951 design was just a modification
of an idea that was generally known in 1946.13
Without directly challenging Bethes opinion and Tellers modesty, popular histories
base the canonical version on the opinions of other colleagues of Teller, such as Carson
Mark, who headed the Theoretical Division of the Los Alamos laboratory from 1947
until 1973:
Ulam felt that he invented the new approach to the hydrogen bomb. Teller didnt
wish to recognize that. I think I know exactly what happened in the interaction of
those two. Edward [Teller] would violently disagree with what I would say. It would
be much closer to Ulams view of how it happened.14
But if Bethe and Mark, so well informed and so close to the epicenter of the events, differ so substantially in their opinions of the relative contributions of Ulam and Teller, it
should be truly difficult to uncover the truth of the matter, and might not be easier
even if the primary document in question Ulam and Tellers report of March 1951,
Hydrodynamic Lenses and Radiation Mirrors were declassified, because all
descriptions of this report agree that it is in fact two reports under a single title. Thus,
Ulams Hydrodynamic Lenses is about compressing a thermonuclear charge by
means of the hydrodynamic forces released in a primary atomic explosion, and Tellers
Radiation Mirrors is about compressing a thermonuclear charge by using the radiation released in a primary atomic explosion, that is, by radiation implosion. Without
going into technical details, Ulams idea proved to be infeasible, while Tellers became
the basic principle of a thermonuclear bomb.
The question therefore is: How great was the creative distance between Ulams
and Tellers ideas? In Bethes view, it was huge; in Marks view, it was quite small. To
deal with this question exclusively within the context of the development of the American H-bomb, one has to tread on shaky ground, namely, one has to compare the opinions of two distinguished experts, Bethe and Mark, and additionally, the professional
commitments of the mathematicians Ulam and Mark and those of the theoretical
physicists Teller and Bethe. In this way, one might hope to understand why these
experts differed so substantially in their opinions, rather than to determine whose were
right and whose were wrong. Note, however, that Tellers remark above relates to both
the theoretical physicist Bethe and the mathematician Mark who did not make the
invention and also indicates that he did not make the invention by himself alone.
One expert, however, who did make the invention by himself was living in the parallel
secret world the world of the Soviet H-bomb.

Espionage and the Parallel Secret World

The parallel story began with the first bits of intelligence on the American H-bomb
that came to the U.S.S.R. in 1945 as part of the information obtained by the massive

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Fig. 4. Klaus Fuchs (19111988). Credit: Courtesy of Klaus Fuchs-Kittowski. A sketch of an advanced
design for the H-bomb in Fuchss 1948 intelligence report. Credit: Courtesy of the author.

Soviet espionage effort on the American A-bomb. This information spurred the initiation of a small-scale Soviet H-bomb research program under Yakov Zeldovich, who as
the chief theorist of the Soviet A-bomb project had access to the espionage information. The Soviet version of the American Classical Super was named Tube (Truba)
because of its cylindrical shape. Zeldovichs main work, however, was on the Soviet Abomb, which was tested in the U.S.S.R. in 1949.15
Three years later, in the spring of 1948, Klaus Fuchs (figure 4) provided the major
portion of the intelligence on the American H-bomb to the Soviets. His information
seemed so elaborate that the Soviet leaders perceived it as proof of an intensive American H-bomb effort, which was the reason that, a few months later, in the summer 1948,
an additional theoretical group under Igor Tamm was established to assist Zeldovichs
team. Tamms group included his students Andrei Sakharov and Vitaly Ginzburg, and
very soon thereafter, in the fall of 1948, Sakharov invented a brand-new design for a
thermonuclear bomb that employed a special way of compressing a spherically layered
configuration, dubbed Layercake (Sloyka). Ginzburg then added his idea to use a specific thermonuclear explosive, Li6D, dubbed Lidochka (a Russian female pet name for
Lydia). Tamm and his group subsequently developed Layercake, which was tested successfully in August 1953.
Meanwhile, Zeldovich and his group continued to work on the imported Tube
design until late 1953, when it was acknowledged as a dead end. The Americans had
reached this conclusion about four years earlier. This, incidentally, is straightforward

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Phys. perspect.

proof that there was no Soviet H-bomb espionage after 1950, when the calculations initiated by Ulam, and implemented by him together with Everett and Enrico Fermi,16
indicated that the Classical Super was infeasible. At the same time, this is evidence that
indicates the importance of Ulams contribution to the development of the American
H-bomb.
A new phase in the Soviet H-bomb project began in early 1954 with the realization
of a double dead end the failure of the imported Tube design, and the failure to significantly improve the Layercake design. That led the top Soviet H-bomb theorists to
focus on the idea of so-called atomic compression, the use of an A-bomb to compress
Layercake. Documentary evidence dates this major turn of events as January 14, 1954.
It took a further few months for the Soviets to discover the Russian analogue of the
American radiation-implosion design.
One of the most surprising facts about the history of the Soviet H-bomb was the failure of Soviet intelligence (or the success of American counterintelligence) to know
that the American thermonuclear test (Mike) of November 1, 1952, was ten megatons
in magnitude. There is good evidence that the Soviets believed that Mikes yield was
comparable to that of their Layercake (namely, 0.4 megaton).17 The Soviet program of
remote registration of nuclear explosions was launched in late 1953, and the Soviets
registered the first U.S. nuclear test on March 26, 1954, but they were able to determine
only dates and types of nuclear explosions rather than yields during 1954.18
It is important to emphasize that the general idea of atomic compression was suggested by Sakharov in his first report on Layercake, in January 1949, where he proposed the use of an additional plutonium charge for a preliminary compression of
Layercake.19 This was two years before Ulam conceived his idea to use hydrodynamic lenses, and five years before Sakharov discovered the Soviet analogue of Tellers idea
to use radiation mirrors. This chronology of the development of the Soviet H-bomb
supports Bethes opinion that Teller made the crucial invention for the American Hbomb, and that it was more than just a modification of Ulams idea. At the same time,
it supports Tellers statement that his invention was a variation of an idea that was generally known in 1946: The main principle of radiation implosion was stated at a conference on the thermonuclear bomb, in the spring of 1946. Dr. Bethe did not attend this
conference, but Dr. Fuchs did. 20
Indeed, the most remarkable feature of Fuchss espionage report of 1948 is that it
included the idea of radiation implosion (although it was employed within the framework of the Classical Super). This important fact was first brought to light in 1996 by
German Goncharov, a Russian nuclear veteran turned historian, based upon his
research on declassified materials in the Soviet archives.21 He published another
declassified portion of Fuchss report in 2005 an excerpt describing the tenfold compression owing to radiation implosion, which substantiates his earlier disclosure.22
Fuchss involvement in thermonuclear history also was indicated in a document, Policy and Progress in the H-Bomb Program: A Chronology of Leading Events, prepared
by the U.S. Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy and dated January 1, 1953, a
sanitized and declassified version of which mentioned a Fuchs-von Neumann patent
that was filed on May 28, 1946, although a short description of it was deleted. Fuchss

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espionage report of 1948, which was studied by Goncharov, evidently contained quite
a bit of detailed information.
Since no Americans subsequently commented on Goncharovs ten-year-old claim,
the detailed nature of the Fuchs-von Neumann patent of 1946 apparently is still classified, although the 1953 chronology of the American H-bomb cited above was declassified in the 1970s. Ironically, therefore, thanks to Goncharovs disclosures, in the absence
of American comments on them it seems that the key idea of radiation implosion was
coinvented by Fuchs. When Fuchs was in prison and was asked whether von Neumann
had suggested the idea of radiation implosion to ignite the H-bomb, he stated laughingly that this was his, Fuchs, suggestion.23 In other words, the foremost atomic spy
was a grandfather of the H-bomb.
The Russian-Soviet evidence thus makes Tellers comments on the invention of the
H-bomb look honest and evenhanded instead of theatrically modest and greedy for
fame. It also makes reasonable Tellers understatement in 1954 of the brilliance of his
invention:
I think it was neither a great achievement nor a brilliant one. It just had to be done.
I must say it was not completely easy. But I do believe that if the laboratory
with such excellent people like Fermi and Bethe and others, would have gone after
the problem, probably some of these people would have had either the same brilliant idea or another one much sooner.
[It] was just necessary that somebody should be looking and looking, with some
intensity and some conviction that there is also something there.24
This sounds reasonable, because on the other side of the globe Sakharov, who himself
was looking and looking, with some intensity and some conviction, came to the
same brilliant idea with no knowledge of Fuchss espionage report of 1948. At the
same time, since it took Teller five long years to realize the potential of radiation implosion (and also Sakharov to invent this idea anew), one can appreciate Bethes high
opinion of Tellers contribution and Fermis characterization of Teller as a genius and
the hero of the H-development.25
What was indispensable for inventing the H-bomb both in the United States and in
the Soviet Union was the termination of its initial, infeasible designs. In the United
States, Ulams crucial contribution was his calculations that initiated the termination of
the Classical Super design in 1950. In the Soviet Union, there were two initial designs
that had to be eliminated the Tube (that is, Classical Super) and Layercake designs,
whose terminations resulted from a more collective enterprise that included the top
Soviet theorist Lev Landau.26
As to the fatherhood of the American H-bomb, Ulam himself seemed modest
regarding his brainchild: It was not new physics. Its not to my mind any such very
great intellectual feat. It was partly chance. It could have come a year earlier or two
years earlier. 27 Carson Mark, the main witness for the prosecution of Teller, or perhaps better, for the promotion of Ulam, asserted that Tellers followers were more
responsible than Teller himself for Tellers inflated reputation, and that the sobriquet
Father of the H-bomb was to some extent forced on him. 28

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It is hardly possible to definitely answer the question of whether Ulams idea of

hydrodynamic lenses helped Teller to come to his idea of radiation mirrors, and if it did,
to what extent. Even Bethes answer, which tips the scales heavily in Tellers favor and
is also supported by Sakharovs thermonuclear autobiography, cannot be the final
word, since in the history of science and technology the birth of a new idea is often
veiled in mist, and involves entangled impulses, intuitive breakthroughs, specific innovative ideas, and critical developments. Thus, it is reasonable to believe both Teller and
Ulam, as well as Bethe, and to take their subjective views as honest and essentially
complementary, rather than contradictory.

The Third Idea

We have seen that the history of the Soviet H-bomb can elucidate the history of the
American H-bomb. The converse is also true. For four decades information on the history of the Soviet nuclear weapon was even more restricted than information on Soviet society in general. That Andrei Sakharov played a vital role in making the Soviet Hbomb was not officially acknowledged in the Soviet Union until the late 1980s. And
Sakharov himself, despite his political dissent, faithfully observed his commitment not
to reveal state secrets. In his Memoirs, written in the 1980s, he used only very general
ascriptions, such as the First and Second Ideas that led to the first Soviet thermonuclear bomb in 1953, and the Third Idea that led to the full-blown H-bomb in 1955. He
did not even use historical Russian terms like Layercake and Tube, since they reflected geometrical properties of the designs.
Regarding the initial Tube design, the Zeroth idea of the Zeldovich group,
Sakharov surmised only in the 1980s that it was based upon espionage:
I gave it no thought at the time, but I now believe that the design developed by the
Zeldovich group for a hydrogen bomb was directly inspired by information acquired
through espionage. However, I have no proof of this.29
His choice of words implies that he had no access to Fuchss 1948 espionage report.
Only after Sakharovs death in 1989 was it disclosed that the First Idea was to use a
special configuration, the Layercake, that the Second Idea was to use a specific thermonuclear explosive, Li6D, and that the Third Idea (the historical Russian term was
Printsip Okruzheniya, or Principle of Surrounding) was to use the equivalent of radiation implosion. No one thereafter has doubted that the Soviets invented the Layercake
design independently, but that they invented the Third Idea independently has been
questioned. Sakharov himself contributed to this uncertainty, because while in his
Memoirs he straightforwardly acknowledged his and Ginzburgs respective inventions
of the First and Second Ideas, his description of the emergence of the Third Idea was
ambiguous and indecisive:
Apparently, several people in our theoretical departments came up with the third
idea simultaneously. I was one of them. I think that I understood the basic physics
and mathematical aspects of the third idea at a very early stage. As a result, and

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Fig. 5. Edward Teller (seated) with veterans of the Soviet H-bomb project at a semi-closed conference
on the history of the H-bomb at Livermore Laboratory in 1997. Standing (left to right): Yuri Styazhkin
(?), Thomas C. Reed, Vladimir Ogorodnikov (?), Nikolay Komov, Hero of Socialist Labor German
Goncharov, Anotoly Mikhaylov (?), Hero of Socialist Labor Lev Feokistov, the author. Credit: Courtesy of Thomas C. Reed.

also due to the respect I had earned by then, my role in the acceptance and execution of the third idea was perhaps a decisive one. But the role of Zeldovich, [Yuri]
Trutnev, and several others was undoubtedly very great and perhaps they understood and foresaw the prospects and difficulties of the third idea as well as I.30
How could several people come up with a brainchild like the Third Idea simultaneously? Its too sudden emergence urged Lev Feoktistov (figure 5), a Soviet H-bomb veteran, to question the Soviet originality of this idea. Feoktistov had worked under Zeldovich since 1951 and knew him quite well, but he had never heard Zeldovich confirm
his invention of the Third Idea, although Zeldovich was not overly humble about taking credit and priority for his ideas.31 To Feoktistov, the Third Idea seems to have
dropped from the sky, and he implied that someone presumably some American
had propelled this idea into the Soviet firmament. Feoktistov concluded his article,
The Hydrogen Bomb: Who Betrayed Its Secret? by declaring that he had the feeling that we werent entirely independent at that time. 32
Feoktistovs amazement about the sudden emergence of the Third Idea must be
taken seriously. The history of the American H-bomb helps us here. Recall that Bethe
characterized Tellers invention of radiation implosion as an unpredictable and accidental discovery and a stroke of genius. If Bethe had imagined that there might have
been some extraneous source of Tellers discovery such as espionage Bethe would
not have described Tellers invention as he did. Nor would Feoktistov have described

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Phys. perspect.

the invention of the Third Idea as a surprise if he had believed that Zeldovich had
invented it independently.
The history of the American H-bomb can also shed light on Sakharovs strange
combination of ambiguity and indecisiveness regarding priority in his account of the
invention of the Third Idea. Zeldovich had studied Fuchss 1948 espionage report
before Sakharov joined the Soviet H-bomb project. Zeldovich, an honest man of science, could not claim coauthorship of the Third Idea, the embryo of which he was
familiar with from Fuchss report, if he had failed to appreciate its significance before
Sakharov achieved his insight, the Third Idea, in the spring of 1954.* Nevertheless, if
Zeldovich later used some ideas from Fuchss report in developing the Third Idea, that
would strengthen his contribution in Sakharovs eyes, so that Sakharovs perception of
its origin really had to be ambiguous. Sakharov apparently tried to describe honestly,
without going into classified technical details, a picture that to him was indeed
ambiguous.
This complicated combination of Sakharovs actual knowledge, surmises, and lack of
knowledge conforms to Zeldovichs great appreciation of Sakharovs talent at the time
when the Third Idea was born.33 As Zeldovich put it: I can understand and take the
measure of other physicists, but Sakharov hes something else, something special. 34
Zeldovich grasped Sakharovs uniqueness when they were working together to create
Soviet thermonuclear weapons.

On Scientific Secrets
The comparative histories of the American and Soviet H-bombs could be summarized
by saying that the main difference between the two was that American physicists had
to make one big leap, from the infeasible Classical Super to the radiation-implosion
design, while Soviets physicists had to make two smaller leaps, from the Tube (Classical Super) to the Layercake design and then to the radiation-implosion design. This
comparison also secures for both Teller and Sakharov the title of Father of the Hbomb, although neither endorsed such a simplistic sobriquet.
Behind this simplistic ascription, however, lie deep philosophical issues the nature
of a scientific discovery and that of a scientific secret. The notion of a scientific secret
was popular outside of the scientific community, but scientists themselves were skeptical about it. Thus, soon after the use of the A-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Frederick Seitz and Hans Bethe, for example, rejected the notion of an atomic secret
when they predicted that an A-bomb would be made within five years by any of several scientifically developed countries, including the Soviet Union.35 At the end of that
period, however, in the heat of the H-bomb debate, Bethes view had changed: He now

* According to the testimony of Yu. Romanov, Sakharov's closest associate: The third idea
emerged in the spring of 1954. It began when Sakharov brought the theorists together and set
forth his idea about the high coefficient of reflection of impulse radiation from the walls made
of heavy material. Yu. Romanov interview by the author, November 11, 1992.

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spoke of Tellers discovery of radiation implosion as virtually irreproducible elsewhere.

The independence of the development of the American and Soviet H-bombs, however, strengthens Bethes original position, that over time leading scientists usually discover the same scientific secrets independently.

Edward Teller and the Realities of Illusory Worlds

Comparison of the histories of the American and Soviet H-bombs helps to clarify the
Teller-Ulam controversy and to substantiate the roles of Teller and Sakharov as the
founding fathers of thermonuclear weaponry. We also have to understand, however,
why their public reputations are so different: Sakharovs every word is taken on trust,
while Tellers is suspect. Tellers negative reputation stemmed from the Teller-Oppenheimer controversy, which centered on Tellers and Oppenheimers opposing stances
on the H-bomb. This controversy, unlike the Teller-Ulam controversy, was mainly concerned with political and moral attitudes and motivations, worldviews, and perspectives. Here again a Russian perspective can aid our understanding.
Soviet Russia troubled Teller more deeply than any other foreign state: He dealt
with Soviet riddles wrapped in mysteries most of his life. Many of those Soviet riddles
have been unraveled in recent years through the declassification of documents in Soviet archives and compel us to revisit and reassess Soviet civilization. Focusing on the history of H-bombs, I must first say a few words about the Soviet theoretical physicist Lev
Landau, Nobel Laureate in Physics for 1962, who along with Andrei Sakharov had
more to do with Teller than any of their Soviet colleagues.
Landau was one of Tellers earliest Soviet contacts, and the interaction of the two
offers a forceful counterexample to the view that Tellers normal behavior was to
enhance his own scientific standing and to claim priority at the expense of his coauthors (as, allegedly, was the case with Ulam). Consider Tellers preface, entitled An
Historical Note, in R. Engelmans 1972 monograph on the Jahn-Teller effect.36
Tellers main point in it was to indicate why the [Jahn-Teller] effect should carry the
name of Landau. Landaus contribution, in fact, was merely a remark he made to
Teller in a private conversation in 1934 at Niels Bohrs Institute in Copenhagen. That
was their last meeting, and the last trip that Landau made outside the U.S.S.R. They
had become friends in 1930 while both were staying at Bohrs Institute. By 1972, Landau had been dead for four years, so Tellers acknowledgment of Landaus contribution does not look like the kind of authorial egotism that is usually and popularly
attributed to Teller.

Beyond Science and Military Technology

The darkest blemish on Tellers public image stemmed from his testimony at Oppenheimers security hearing in 1954. To place this in context, we now know that behind
the scenes there were vigorous efforts in some parts of the U.S. government and Armed
Services to exclude Oppenheimer, the father of the A-bomb, from governmental policy making.37 In the words of an official document, Oppenheimer

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strongly opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb: (1) on moral grounds, (2)
by claiming that it was not feasible, (3) by claiming that there were insufficient facilities and scientific personnel to carry on the development, and (4) that it was not
politically desirable.38
While Oppenheimers opposition to the H-bomb apparently was the driving force
behind the governments actions, the turning point in his security hearing was his
admission of lying to security officers in 1943, and his laconic explanation for it in 1954:
Because I was an idiot.39 There are good reasons to believe that the management of
the Oppenheimer hearing was a crime against the high ideals of justice, but with hindsight it hardly was a blunder on the part of the U.S. government in light of the ominous
realities of the Cold War.
In his testimony, Teller expressed his belief in Oppenheimers loyalty to the United
States but admitted that he might be a security risk:
I believe that Dr. Oppenheimers character is such that he would not knowingly
and willingly do anything that is designed to endanger the safety of this country. To
the extent, therefore, that your question is directed toward intent, I would say I do
not see any reason to deny clearance.
If it is a question of wisdom and judgment, as demonstrated by actions since 1945,
then I would say one would be wiser not to grant clearance. I must say that I am
myself a little bit confused on this issue, particularly as it refers to a person of
Oppenheimers prestige and influence.40
To Teller, Oppenheimers actions were exceedingly hard to understand and frankly
appeared to [him] confused and complicated, which was why Teller would like to see
the vital interests of this country in hands which I understand better, and therefore
trust more. 41
Teller was not mentioned in the conclusion of the official documents of the hearing,
but according to prominent colleagues: Most university physicists never forgave Teller
for that testimony. 42 It is not clear, however, whether most university physicists
believed that Teller had no right to think as he did, nor had no right to express his views
as he had when asked to do so. Nor is it clear whether they believed that Tellers statements actually reflected his views about Oppenheimer and the vital interests of his
country. John Archibald Wheeler was one of Tellers few American colleagues who
believed that Tellers integrity forced him to testify as he had.43
As for Russian views on the Teller-Oppenheimer controversy, they were quite different. In 1980 a political commentator for the main Soviet newspaper, Pravda, wrote
that Teller had sold his talent to the military-industrial complex of the USA and had
accused his colleague R. Oppenheimer of treason because the latter was against further development of nuclear weapons. 44 By contrast, Sakharovs view was that the
very fact that Teller was bucking the tide, going against the majority opinion is evidence in his favor. 45 Both Russians knew well what they were writing about the
Soviet journalist about venality, and the Soviet physicist about bucking tides.
It seems clear today that Oppenheimer and many who shared his opposition to the
H-bomb proved to be wrong. The H-bomb proved to be feasible, and is arguably no

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more immoral than the A-bomb (or the low-tech weapons employed in Stalins and
Hitlers labor and death camps), and also has been a powerful peacekeeper as a
weapon of MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction).
Could Teller have been right in his support for the H-bomb and in his unwavering
antagonism toward the Soviet Union? Alternatively, we might ask: What knowledge
could Teller have had that was not available to his colleagues? For many years only one
answer made the rounds that Teller had seen enough of communism in his Hungarian youth to comprehend its hidden, cruel nature. This explanation, however, is hard to
take seriously, because in 1919, when the communists came to power in Hungary, Teller
was only eleven years old, and the Hungarian communists were in power for only a few
months and had held no show trials and had sent no one to Gulags.

The Anti-Communist and his Two Socialist Friends

Teller revealed a personal reason for his anti-Sovietism only in the late 1990s.46 He had
never been to the Soviet Union, but he had obtained important insights into the Soviet regime from two friends, the theoretical physicists and socialists Laszlo Tisza and
Lev Landau. Teller first met Tisza in the mid-1920s while attending secondary school in
Budapest; he became friends with Landau in 1930 while they were at Bohrs Institute
in Copenhagen. Tiszas and Landaus primary commitment and passion was physics,
but both believed in socialism and that the socialism being created in the U.S.S.R. was
the bright future of humankind. Teller was not predisposed to socialism, but this did not
hinder his friendship with them. In the early 1930s, the passionate Landau never tired
of mocking bourgeois life and was proud of his Soviet homeland, while the even-tempered Tisza was arrested as a communist by the Hungarian government. Teller visited
Tisza in prison and helped him complete his Ph.D. dissertation.47 After his release from
prison, Tisza could not find a position in Western Europe, so Teller wrote a letter of recommendation for him to Landau, who at that time was launching his now-famous
school of physics in Kharkov.
Tisza (figure 6) spent three years in Kharkov, learned Russian, and completed his
(second) dissertation under Landau. He had begun lecturing when the Great Terror
struck in 1937. He witnessed the destruction of one of the outstanding scientific centers
in the country when scientists who were dedicated to their socialist homeland were
arrested. Landau had to flee to Moscow and was arrested there in 1938. Tisza luckily
slipped out of the Soviet Union, leaving his socialist illusions behind. When he arrived
in the United States in 1941 and met Teller again there, he told Teller about what he
had seen in Russia and about his disillusionment with socialism.48
One must know Laszlo Tisza personally to appreciate his reliability as a witness: He
is a calm, sensible man who is devoted to his science, someone who combines a deep
respect for his great colleagues of the past with a critical attitude toward their errors.
Teller had good reasons to trust his friends eyewitness account. That a first-rate scientific institution had been destroyed, and that his socialist friend and world-class physicist Lev Landau had been imprisoned, told Teller more about the Soviet regime than
all of the political events that the media had publicized. Another source of Tellers

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Fig. 6. Laszlo Tisza (b. 1907) and the list of those who passed the Teorminimum examinations in
Kharkov in 1935 in Lev Landaus handwriting. Tiszas name is number 5 on the list. Credit: Courtesy of
Laszlo Tisza.

insight into the Soviet regime was George Gamow, who like himself was no socialist.
Gamow had fled the U.S.S.R. in 1933 after having had some firsthand experiences with
the early Stalinist regime, and the following year had arranged to have Teller appointed as his colleague at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Teller concluded that Stalins Communism was not much better than the Nazi dictatorship of
Hitler. 49
Teller never saw Landau again and therefore did not know that after the Great Terror of 1937 he agreed fully with Landau politically. Thus, thanks to transcripts of KGB
wiretaps (which survived the Soviet Union), we know what Landau thought of the
Soviet regime in 1957:
Our regime, as I know it from 1937 on, is definitely a fascist regime, and it could not
change by itself in any simple way. As long as this regime exists, its even ludicrous
to hope that it will develop into anything decent. If our regime is unable to fall
down in a peaceful way, then a third World War with all its attendant horrors is
inevitable.... Our leaders are fascists from head to toe. They can be more liberal or
less liberal, but their ideas are fascist.50
By that time Landau knew that Nikita Khrushchev was a much more liberal Soviet
leader than Stalin had been, but he also understood that the Soviet system of govern-

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Fig. 7. Lev Landau (19081968) as a prisoner in 19381939. Source: Landaus KGB file.

ment had not changed it had remained Stalinist. Landau had said as much after the
Communist Partys Twentieth Congress in 1956, where Khrushchev had exposed Stalins cult of personality (the Soviet euphemism for the Stalinist terror), and after Soviet troops had crushed the popular Hungarian uprising that same year. As Landau put
it:
The Hungarian revolution means that virtually the entire Hungarian population
rose up against their oppressors, that is, against a small Hungarian clique, but mainly against ours. Ours stands in blood literally up to their waists. I consider what the
Hungarians did the greatest achievement. They were the first in our time to do
severe damage, to deal a real stunning blow to the Jesuit idea of our time [that is,
Soviet Communism].51
While Landau (figure 7) clearly understood and witnessed the nature of the Soviet
regime personally during the year he spent in Stalins prison (19381939), Teller had no
such firsthand experience. But he did have a chance to see the power of communist ideology at firsthand: One of his close colleagues at Los Alamos had been Klaus Fuchs,
with whom he had worked until Fuchs returned to Britain in 1946. Three years later,
they both participated in a conference on nuclear physics in England a few months
before Fuchs was arrested as a Soviet spy. Teller may well have been even more
shocked than others at Fuchss treachery, but his reaction to Fuchss arrest was not personal, as seen in a letter he wrote to a close friend soon thereafter:

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You remember Klaus Fuchs? I never liked him very particularly, but [my wife] Mici
did. He was too reserved for my taste although he was always very nice. He must
have been living under an incredible stress. Quite a few people here [at Los Alamos] are furious at Fuchs. They feel personally insulted. I do not feel that way. We
should have learned what kind of a system the communist party is and what kind of
demands it makes on its members. Fuchs probably decided when he was 20 years old
(and when he saw Nazism coming in Germany) that the communists are the only
hope. He decided that before he ever became a scientist. From that time on his
whole life was built around that idea.
People always do this: They underestimated the Nazis and they underestimate
now the communists. Then the disaster comes, and then the same people who would
not believe that trouble is ahead get very angry at individual communists or individual Nazis.52
A half-century later, Teller described Fuchs as a very nice person, a highly intelligent
person, and told an interviewer that: I could not disagree with his actions more than
I do, yet he behaved as a friend, and somehow I cannot think about it in very different
terms. 53
Both Teller and Landau thus saw a social and political system that was at fault rather
than individual, evil leaders. This also seems consonant with the view of a theoretical
physicist: Two theoretical physicists with very different personal and social biographies
had come to the same conclusion.
Why did Teller not reveal the personal reason for his anti-Soviet paranoia until the
late 1990s? Why did he not talk about his two socialist friends who had experienced the
cruelty of Soviet socialism at firsthand? He did not answer this question when I asked
him directly. He just said it was not his job to tell stories. 54 So as a historian I have to
guess and speculate that during the Cold War Teller, aware of his negative public image
among American physicists, was unwilling to burden his old friends in Moscow (Landau) and in Boston (Tisza) by making them in some way partly responsible for it.

Creating an Illusory World to Justify Oneself

Many American physicists and other academics did not share Tellers (and Landaus)
attitude toward the Soviet system, and were not prepared to liken Stalin to Hitler
(despite the similarities between their two regimes). They could believe that Russia
had always been very friendly to science, as Oppenheimer put it in 1945 during a discussion of atomic policy toward the U.S.S.R.,55 and they could think of Stalin as a partner in the super-chess game of world politics, rather than as a dictator who was prepared to break any rule of the game if he saw an advantage in doing so.
The Iron Curtain was opaque in both directions, and its opaqueness contributed to
illusions on both sides of it. Quite a few Westerners idealized the real Soviet socialism for too long owing to their ignorance of Soviet realities, and too many Soviet people were enchanted by socialistic fairytales owing to the total Soviet control of information. As a result, the fathers of the Soviet H-bomb, Andrei Sakharov and Vitaly
Ginzburg, mourned Stalins death in March 1953. Soon thereafter they felt ashamed for

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doing so, but it took many years for them to realize that they unwittingly had been used
by the Soviet regime. In Sakharovs words, he had to create an illusory world, to justify [him]self. Sakharov continued:
I very quickly banished Stalin from that world. But state, country, and Communist
ideals remained. It took years for me to understand and feel how much substitution,
speculation, deceit, and lack of correspondence with reality there was in those concepts. At first I thought, despite everything that I saw with my own eyes, that the
Soviet state was a breakthrough into the future, a kind of prototype (albeit a still
imperfect one) for all countries (such is the power of mass ideology). Then I came
to view our state on equal terms with the rest: that is to say, they all have flaws
bureaucracy, social inequality, secret police, espionage and counterespionage, and
a distrust of the actions and intentions of other states. That could be called the theory of symmetry: all governments and regimes to a first approximation are bad, all
peoples are oppressed, and all are threatened by common dangers. But then, in
my dissident years I came to the conclusion that we cannot speak about symmetry
between a cancer cell and a normal one. Yet our [Soviet] state is similar to a cancer
cell with its messianism and expansionism, its totalitarian suppression of dissent,
the authoritarian structure of power, with a total absence of public control in the
most important decisions in domestic and foreign policy, a closed society that does
not inform its citizens of anything substantial, closed to the outside world, without
freedom of travel or the exchange of information.56
In the 1970s Sakharov compared his homeland to a gigantic concentration camp and
found as the appropriate description of its system the appellation totalitarian socialism. 57
Bitter personal experiences in building their illusory world apparently helped the
fathers of the Soviet H-bomb to understand the illusory world of their American counterparts. Sakharov believed that the illusory hope of Oppenheimer and other American opponents of the H-bomb was that the United States should serve as a good example to Stalin. Here, however, is what Vitaly Ginzburg (figure 8) had to say:
While I visited the US [in the early 1990s] I saw a film on J. R. Oppenheimer and felt
bitterness. All the good guys, like Oppenheimers brother and others, were lefties, and
all of them believed that the U.S. should not make an atomic weapon, that Russians
were good guys and so on. At the same time the bad guys, including security officers,
understood the situation. Now we know this. How Stalin might be given superiority?!
This scoundrel I am convinced would not hesitate to strike the West.58
Historians of science can readily confirm that to err is human. Some of the greatest scientists like Einstein and Bohr were mistaken more than once. Sakharov too was
mistaken when, in 1961, he trusted Khrushchev, who was convinced that making the
Soviet 100-megaton H-bomb would help to ban the testing of nuclear weapons. Teller
also was qualified to make mistakes, but his alleged overvaluing the idea of the Hbomb, his exaggerated concern about Fuchss help in making the Soviet H-bomb, and
his anti-Soviet paranoia all these obsessions look quite reasonable with the benefit of hindsight.

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Fig. 8. Edward Teller (19082003) and Vitaly Ginzburg (b. 1916), the cofather of the Soviet H-bomb,
in 1992. Credit: Photograph by Fred Rothwarf; courtesy of American Institute of Physics Emilio Segr
Visual Archives, Physics Today Collection.

After the collapse of the Soviet regime, Teller visited post-Soviet Russia, where his
Russian colleagues came to see that his anti-Soviet stand was in no way anti-Russian.
But his general views of the past did not change, as he made clear in his 2001 autobiography where, in particular, he related his disagreements with Bethe about the Hbomb. Bethe responded in a review of Tellers book that surprised many physicists and
others. Thus, unlike most of the reviews, which were harshly negative, Bethes was positive. Not only did Bethe strongly recommend Tellers fascinating Memoirs, he
wrote compassionately about his former friend, colleague, and opponent who had suffered three exiles: He had been forced to leave Hungary, then Germany; now a large
portion of the scientific community ostracized him. 59 As to the H-bomb, Bethe, one
of its firmest opponents a half-century earlier, softened his stand, admitting that neither side had a strong argument, and that when President Truman decided that the
United States should to go ahead and make the H-bomb he had no choice in the political atmosphere of the time. 60
Bethe also knew that he was wrong in 1950 when he was hoping to prove that thermonuclear weapons could not be made, and in 1954 when he did not believe that the
Russians were indeed already engaged in a thermonuclear program by 1949. 61
In Russia, Sakharov knew very well that the Soviets had been engaged in H-bomb
research well before he conceived his Layercake design in 1948, and he believed that
the H-bomb was inevitable, although his understanding of the political setting in which
it had been made had changed radically. He believed that the Soviet leaders

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would never give up attempts to create new kinds of weaponry. All steps by the
Americans of a temporary or permanent rejection of developing thermonuclear
weapons would have been seen either as a clever feint, or as the manifestation of
stupidity. In both cases, the reaction would have been the sameavoid the trap and
immediately take advantage of the enemys stupidity.62
Sakharovs opinion is supported by that of Yuly Khariton, the scientific head of the
Soviet nuclear-weapons program, where Sakharov was his deputy.63

Parallels and Perpendiculars

When Sakharov was asked by an American scientist on May 28, 1987, whether he saw
a parallel between himself and Robert Oppenheimer, he answered There are parallels
between me and both Oppenheimer and Teller.64 Sakharov, like Oppenheimer, experienced a transition from high official esteem to humiliation and, like Teller, he became
alienated from the majority of his colleagues. This was the basis for his take on his
American counterparts, seeing their opposition as a tragic confrontation of two outstanding persons. But their tragedies were very different: Oppenheimers was of an
internal, while Tellers was of an external nature.
Ulam diagnosed Oppenheimers tragedy as follows: He was more intelligent,
receptive, and brilliantly critical than deeply original. Also he was caught in his own
web, a web not of politics but of phrasing.65 Silvan S. Schweber gave a similar diagnosis, characterizing Oppenheimer (figure 9) as a Protean man who could not integrate
his views and activities into a coherent whole.66 Changes in Oppenheimers external
circumstances destroyed any temporary coherence. No one seems to be able to make
sense of Oppenheimers famously incompatible statements regarding the A-bomb he
fathered and the H-bomb Teller fathered. Best known is Oppenheimers apologia of
1947: the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose. 67
Nonscientists were greatly impressed with Oppenheimers confession, but his close colleague I.I. Rabi, for example, rejected it (while eagerly defending Oppenheimer personally).68 Oppenheimer himself never clearly denounced the use of atomic bombs on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 1988 a Russian writer tried to get Sakharov to speak about
his own Oppenheimer complex, and could not believe his ears when the humanitarian Russian physicist told him that he felt no such guilt at all.69 Sakharov, like many
other concerned scientists, felt professional and moral responsibility to explain the
nature of the nuclear-missile threat to civilization, but this had nothing to do with any
notion of sin.
During his 1954 hearing Oppenheimer appeared to be unwilling to use his powerful
intellect to defend himself, and his vulnerability seemed to urge his colleagues to
defend him from his persecutors, even though they were skeptical about some aspects
of his personality. Those who attempted to provide a coherent rationale for Oppenheimers behavior, as evidence of a kind of political and moral philosophy, had to select
particular clues and actions to do so. Not surprisingly, they reached quite different conclusions.

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Fig. 9. J. Robert Oppenheimer (19041967). Credit: Courtesy of American Institute of Physics Emilio
Segr Visual Archives.

William Borden, who initiated the Oppenheimer case, imposed one of the first
rationalizations by arguing that it was impossible to account for Oppenheimers behavior unless he was a secret Soviet agent. Borden, with his obsession and integrity, thus
used his own yardstick to comprehend Oppenheimer.70 But the notion of integrity as
coherent wholeness was hardly Oppenheimers definition. Many others, though with
the opposite intention, fell prey to that same kind of problem when they tried to rationalize Oppenheimers behavior by portraying him as a humanitarian peacemaker with
a Promethean (rather than Protean) personality.
Tellers 1954 testimony implied no rationale for Oppenheimers actions: it would be
presumptuous and wrong on my part if I would try in any way to analyze his motives.
Having then stated his confidence in Oppenheimers loyalty to the United States, Teller
admitted that Oppenheimer had acted in a way that for him was exceedingly hard to

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understand. Indeed, it is still exceedingly hard to understand Oppenheimers shift in

emphasizing the immorality of the H-bomb in 1949 and its sweetness in 1951. The only
way to make sense of this seems to be by reversing the chronological sequence of his
statements like these:
Before the bomb was made, Oppenheimer said, When you see something that is
technically sweet you go ahead and do it. After the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in a chilling speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
in 1947, he said: In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.71
Unlike Oppenheimers confused and complicated irrationality, Tellers attitude
toward the making of the H-bomb was quite rational (even if politically incorrect).
Whether an irrational governmental adviser is a security risk is a debatable question.
In any case, Tellers positive answer to this question, as well as his understanding of the
vital interests of his country, differed from that of most of his colleagues. This was
Tellers personal tragedy, one of an external nature.
A good Russian way to look at Tellers tragedy is through the prism of Andrei
Sakharovs discovery that he created an illusory world to justify himself. Although he
lived far from the American arena, Sakharovs life experience is uniquely relevant,
because it included both Teller-like and Oppenheimer-like components. Let us generalize Sakharovs personal Soviet discovery by assuming that any reasonably coherent
worldview is an illusory world to justify the worldviewer. This would not be too far
from a characterization of the lives of Sakharov, Teller, and Oppenheimer: Theoretical
physicists are accustomed to dealing with the illusory worlds of a theory and checking
its correspondence to experimental reality, and they are aware that although the theory is inevitably illusory, it could be more or less valid.
The worldview of Tellers opponents was sturdy enough to survive in the absence of
a good half of experimental reality the Russian half and to be insensitive to the rare
experimental data that emerged from behind its horizon. Two pieces of such data were
published in the United States in 1951 in the form of two books written by the physicists Fritz Houtermans and Alexander Weissberg, both of which were based upon their
personal experiences in the Soviet Union, including their years of imprisonment
there.72 Both, like Landau and Tisza, were eyewitnesses of the tragedy in Kharkov, and
both exposed and revealed detailed pictures of Stalins terror machine, including its
system of Gulags. Nevertheless, neither book helped American physicists and other
academics to see the gruesome similarity of Stalins regime to Hitlers.
The Gulag system was established in the 1930s, and during Stalins last years a major
American newspaper, The New York Times, published a few, quite accurate and realistic accounts of these Soviet slave-labor camps.73 Nevertheless, the word Gulag did not
enter the English language until the late 1970s (after the Soviet regime, on a good whim
of its then-leader Khrushchev, actually had endorsed Aleksandr Solzhenitsyns writings
of the early 1960s, and after Solzhenitsyn had been banished from his homeland in
1974). Anne Applebaum has recently explained the nature of this kind of blindness of
the American public.74

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Fig. 10. Matvei Petrovich Bronstein (19061938) in his last photograph. Source: Gorelik and Frenkel,
Matvei Petrovich Bronstein (ref. 77), p. 204.

Many American physicists and other academics apparently accepted Sakharovs

theory of symmetry, that all governments are bad, all peoples are oppressed, and all
are threatened by common dangers. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, they seemingly
were aware of how bad American bourgeois democracy was, but failed to see how
much worse the so-called genuine Soviet democracy was, with its cancerous nature
and its similarity to the Nazi political system.
I thus suggest that illusory worldviews were largely responsible for the heat of the
H-bomb debate in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and for the scientific politics of the Oppenheimer case. I do not wish to belittle the difficulty in
achieving disillusionment. For concerned American scientists, it was not easy to liken
Stalin to Hitler just a few years after Uncle Joe had been a major ally of Uncle Sam in

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the battle against Hitler. After the war, the American immigrants Albert Einstein and
Leo Szilard wrote letters to Stalin, but before and during the war no one tried their
luck in writing to Hitler.
To my mind, Russia today provides a more tragic indication of the exceeding sturdiness of illusions. In contrast to Landau and Sakharov, who in Soviet times came to see
Stalin as next to Hitler in the court of history, polls today in Russia have found that 50
percent of Russians view Stalins role in Russian history as positive, and 40 percent
would like to have a leader like Stalin today.75 This after ample evidence has been published in post-Soviet Russia on Stalins responsibility for the deaths of millions of people. There are, for example, Stalins execution lists. About four hundred of these lists
have survived, each containing about a hundred names, for a total of about forty thousand human beings, all of whom were executed in 19371938 with the direct personal
endorsement of Stalin, whose signature appears on each of these lists.76
One of those who was executed was Matvei Bronstein (figure 10), a 30-year-old theoretical physicist, a pioneer in quantum gravity and cosmology, and author of three
wonderful books on science for children. I have researched and written his biography
and studied his KGB file, so I know this enemy of the people well.77 Stalin signed the
execution list with Bronsteins name on it on February 3, 1938. Two weeks later, there
was a trial that lasted a half-hour (according to his KGB file), which that same day
was followed by his execution.
It is quite clear that the Great Leader had no idea who Matvei Bronstein was, and
the same was true for most of the forty thousand human beings who happened to be
on those lists when Stalin pronounced them dead. That is why I tend to agree with
Sakharov that Oppenheimers hope that not making the H-bomb would provide a
good American example for Stalin would not have worked. And this urges me to
appreciate Sakharovs perspective about the hard realities of illusory worldviews, even
those held by leading physicists.

Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Priscilla McMillan for helping me understand the American side of my
story by presenting an opposing view in a most informative and friendly way, to Sam
Schweber for critical remarks on my paper, and to the Colloquium on the History of
Science and Technology at the University of Minnesota and the Boston Colloquium for
Philosophy of Science for opportunities to present my findings and speculations and to
engage in stimulating discussions. Finally, I thank Roger H. Stuewer for his careful and
thoughtful editorial work on my paper.

References
1 Andrei Sakharov, Vospominaniya (New York: Izd-vo im. Chehova, 1990); for the 2nd edition
(Moscow: Prava cheloveka, 1996), see the website < http://www.sakharov-center.ru/asfcd/auth/
auth_book.xtmpl?id=87766&aid=232 >; Andrei Sakharov, Memoirs, translated from the Russian
by Richard Lourie (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990).
2 Andrei Sakharov. Peace, Progress, and Human Rights, Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1975, in D.

194

3
4

5
6

7
8

10

11

12

13

14
15

16
17
18

Gennady Gorelik

Phys. perspect.

ter Haar, D.V. Chudnovsky, and G.V. Chudnovsky, ed., Academician Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov
Collected Scientific Works (New York and Basel: Marcel Dekker, Inc., 1982), pp. 291-303, and in
Tore Frgsmyr, ed., Nobel Lectures Including Presentation and Acceptance Speeches and Laureates Biographies. Peace 19711980 (Singapore, New Jersey, London, Hong Kong: World Scientific,
1997), pp. 122133; see also the website <http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1975/
sakharov-lecture.html >; Gennady Gorelik with Antonina W. Bouis, The World of Andrei
Sakharov: A Russian Physicists Path to Freedom (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,
2005), p. 327.
Quoted in Gorelik with Bouis, The World of Andrei Sakharov (ref. 2) , p. 349.
Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert
Oppenheimer (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005); Silvan S. Schweber, J. Robert Oppenheimer:
Proteus Unbound, Science in Context 16 (2003), 219242; Dennis Overbye, Dr. Atomic:
Unthinkable Yet Immortal, The New York Times (October 18, 2005), F1, F4.
Quoted in Gorelik with Bouis, The World of Andrei Sakharov (ref. 2), p. 269.
See, for example, Richard Rhodes, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1995), pp. 455481; Teller, Edward, Encyclopdia Britannica Online
(December 2, 2007), website <http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-9071607>.
Mark Feeney, Force of physics, The Boston Globe (December 11, 2001), D2, D7; on D7.
Quoted in Kosta Tsipis, Edward Teller And the Folly Of Star Wars [Review of William J. Broad,
Tellers War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992)], Washington Post (February 23, 1992), Book
World, p. 5.
Hans A. Bethe, Memorandum on the History of the Thermonuclear Program, May 28, 1952,
<http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/nuclear/bethe-52.htm>; see also Chuck Hansen, US Nuclear
Weapons: The Secret History (Arlington, Texas: Aerofax and New York: Orion Books, 1988), pp.
49-50.
Testimony of Hans Bethe, in United States Atomic Energy Commission, In the Matter of J. Robert
Oppenheimer. Transcript of Hearing before Personnel Security Board, Washington, D.C., April 12,
1954, through May 6, 1954 (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1954; facsimile reprinted Cambridge, Mass. and London: The MIT Press, 1971), pp. 323340; quote on p. 330;
partially reprinted at the website http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/Oppenheimer/OppyTrial2.shtml; quote on p. 2.
H.A. Bethe, J. Robert Oppenheimer 1904-1967, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal
Society 14 (1968), 391416; on 404; idem, J. Robert Oppenheimer April 22, 1904February 18,
1967, National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Biographical Memoirs 71
(1997), 175218; on 197.
Hans A. Bethe, Observations on the Development of the H-Bomb [1954], in Herbert F. York,
The Advisors: Oppenheimer, Teller, and the Superbomb With a historical essay by Hans A. Bethe
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), Appendix II, pp. 163181.
Edward Teller, Comments on Bethes History of the Thermonuclear Program, August 14, 1952,
in Policy and Progress in the H-Bomb Program: A Chronology of Leading Events, Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, January 1, 1953, p. 78; Chuck Hansen, The Swords of Armageddon: U.S.
Nuclear Weapons Development since 1945. Vol. 3 (CD-R: Sunnyvale, Calif: Chukelea Publications,
1995), pp. 35, n. 88, 191.
Quoted in Rhodes, Dark Sun (ref. 6), p. 471.
German Goncharov, Termoyaderny proekt SSSR: predystoriya i desyat let puti k termoyadernoy
bombe [Thermonuclear Project of the USSR: History and Ten-Year Road to Thermonuclear
Bomb], in V. Vizgin, ed., Istoriya sovetskogo Atomnogo proekta. Dokumenty, vospominaniya, issledovaniya [History of the Soviet Atomic Project. Documents, recollections, research papers] (St.
Petersburg: Russkiy khristianskiy gumanitarnyy institut, 2002), pp. 49147; especially p. 70.
S.M. Ulam, Adventures of a Mathematician (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1976; new edition
Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 213219.
Goncharov, Termoyaderny proekt SSSR (ref. 15), p. 111.
Evgeni Lobikov interviews by the author, April 6 and October 25, 2007. Evgeni Lobikov. I.K.
Kikoin nauchnyy rukovoditel problemy obnaruzheniya yadernyh vzryvov na bolshih rasstoy-

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aniyah ot epitsentra [I.K. Kikoin, the scientific head of the program of remote long-distance registration of nuclear explosions], MS. 2007.
Goncharov, Termoyaderny proekt SSSR (ref. 15), p. 89.
Teller, Comments on Bethes History (ref. 13), p. 78; Hansen, Swords of Armageddon (ref. 13), p.
36.
German A. Goncharov, Thermonuclear Milestones: (1) The American Effort, Physics Today 49
(November 1996), 4448; idem, (2) Beginnings of the Soviet H-Bomb Program, ibid., 5054; on
52.
G.A. Goncharov, The extraordinarily beautiful physical principle of thermonuclear charge design
(on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the test of RDS-37 the first Soviet two-stage thermonuclear charge), Physics-Uspekhi 48 (November 2005),11871196; on 11911192.
Gregg Herken, Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller (New York, Henry Holt, 2002), p. 374, n. 92.
Testimony of Edward Teller, in Oppenheimer Transcript (ref. 10), p. 714; reproduced in Edward
Teller with Judith L. Shoolery, Memoirs: A Twentieth-Century Journey in Science and Politics (Cambridge, Mass: Perseus Publishing, 2001), p. 579.
Quoted in Jay Orear, Enrico Fermi: The Master Scientist (Cornell: Laboratory of Elementary Particle Physics, Cornell University, 2004), p. 53; see also the website <http://dspace.library.cornell.
edu/handle/1812/62>.
Boris Ioffe, Bez retushi. Portrety fizikov na fone epohi [Without the retouching. Portraits of the
physicists against the background of epoch] (Moscow: Fazis, 2004), pp.135136.
Quoted in Rhodes, Dark Sun (ref. 6), pp. 468469.
Quoted in Priscilla J. McMillan, The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Birth of the Modern
Arms Race (New York: Viking, 2005), p. 287, n. 14.
Sakharov, Memoirs (ref. 1), p. 94.
Quoted in Gorelik with Bouis, The World of Andrei Sakharov (ref. 2), p. 177.
Lev Feoktistov interview by the author, February 24, 1995.
Lev Feoktistov, Vodorodnaya bomba: Kto zhe vydal ee sekret? [The H-bomb: Who Gave Away
the Secret?], in E.P. Velikhov, ed., International Symposium: Science and Society: History of the
Soviet Atomic Project (40s50s) [Mezhdunarodnyy simpozium: Nauka i obschestvo: Istoriya sovetskogo atomnogo proekta (40-e50-e gody)], Dubna, 1418 May 1996, Proceedings. Vol. 1 (Moscow:
IZDAT, 1997), pp. 223230; on p. 230.
Semen Gershtein, On the path towards universal weak interaction, in R. A. Sunyaev, ed. Zeldovich: Reminiscences (Boca Raton, Florida: CRC, 2004), pp. 141165; on pp. 152, 159.
Quoted in Vitaly Ginzburg, O fenomene Sakharova [On the phenomenon of Sakharov], in
Vitaly Ginzburg, O fizike i astrofizike [On physics and astrophysics] (Moscow: Kvantum, 1995), pp.
465498; on p. 465.
Frederick Seitz and Hans Bethe, How Close is The Danger? in Dexter Masters and Katharine
Way, ed., One World or None (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1946; London: Latimer House,
1947), pp. 4246; on p. 46; pp. 92101; on p. 101.
Edward Teller, An Historical Note, in R. Engelman, The Jahn-Teller Effect in Molecules and
Crystals (London, New York, Sydney, Toronto: Wiley-Interscience, 1972), p. v.
McMillan, Ruin (ref. 28).
United States Atomic Energy Commission, In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Texts of Principal Documents and Letters of Personnel Security Board General Manager Commissioners, Washington, D.C., April 12, 1954, through May 6, 1954. Findings and Recommendation of the Personnel
Security Board In the Matter of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1954), p. 12; facsimile reprinted Cambridge, Mass. and London: The MIT
Press, 1971), p. [1010]. For the complete text, see also the website <http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/
avalon/abomb/opp01.htm >.
Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer, in Oppenheimer Transcript (ref. 10), p. 137.
Testimony of Edward Teller, in Oppenheimer Transcript (ref. 10), p. 726; reproduced in Teller,
Memoirs (ref. 24), p. 600.
Ibid., p. 710; 572.

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42 Harold Brown and Michael May, Edward Teller in the Public Arena, Phys. Today 57 (August
2004), 5153; on 51.
43 Kip S. Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps: Einsteins Outrageous Legacy (New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1994), p. 235.
44 A. Tolkunov, Mister Teller and Co., Pravda (November 12, 1980), p.3.
45 Sakharov, Vospominaniya (ref. 1), p. 146.
46 Edward Teller, Science and Morality, Science 280 (May 22, 1998), 12001201.
47 Laszlo Tisza interview by the author, May 28, 1999.
48 Laszlo Tisza interview by the author, February 28, 1998.
49 E. Teller, The History of the American Hydrogen Bomb, in Velikhov, International Symposium
(ref. 32), pp. 256263; on p. 258.
50 Bukovskys Soviet Archives; see the website <http://psi.ece.jhu.edu/~kaplan/IRUSS/BUK/
GBARC/pdfs/sovter74/land-17.pdf>.
51 Quoted in Gorelik with Bouis, The World of Andrei Sakharov (ref. 2), p. 202.
52 Teller to Maria Goeppert-Mayer, undated; quoted in Teller, Memoirs (ref. 24), pp. 275276.
53 Michael Lennick, A Final Interview with the Most Controversial Father of the Atomic Age,
Edward Teller, American Heritage of Invention & Technology 21, No. 1 (Summer 2005), 4040; on
46.
54 Edward Teller interview by Lorna Arnold, German Goncharov, Gennady Gorelik, and David Holloway, Stanford University, April 19, 2001.
55 Notes of the Interim Committee Meeting, Thursday, 31 May 1945, website <http://www.
nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issures/nuclear-weapons/history/pre-cold-war/interim-committee/interim-committee-internal-notes_1945-05-31.htm >, p. 4 [Original Notes, p. 10].
56 Quoted in Gorelik with Bouis, The World of Andrei Sakharov (ref. 2), pp. 299300.
57 A. Sakharov, v borbe za mir (Frankfurt/Main: Posev, 1973), p. 157; A.D. Sakharov, O strane i mire
[About the Country and the World], in A.D. Sakharov, Trevoga i nadezhda [Alarm and hope]
(Moscow: Inter-Verso, 1991), pp. 86150; on p. 138.
58 Vitaly Ginzburg interview by the author, March 28, 1992.
59 Hans A. Bethe, Edward Teller: A Long Look Back, Phys. Today 54 (November 2001), 5556; on
56.
60 Ibid.
61 Hans A. Bethe, Comments on The History of the H-Bomb, Los Alamos Science 3, No. 3 (Fall
1982), 4253; quotations on 51. Although Bethe termed this essay a (slightly edited) version of
his Observations [1954] (ref. 12), these quotations do not appear in Appendix II to York, Advisors (ref. 12), which explains why Bethe wrote in his 1988 introduction to Appendix II that it was
adapted from his 1954 essay.
62 Quoted in Gorelik with Bouis, The World of Andrei Sakharov (ref. 2), p. 349.
63 David Holloway, V poiskah Kharitona [In search for Khariton], in V. Goldansky, ed., Yuliy
Borisovich Khariton, put dlinoyu v vek [Yuly Borisovich Khariton, the century-long way]
(Moscow: Nauka, 2005), pp. 499505; on 501.
64 Quoted in Alan and Rochelle McGowan, A Conversation with Andrei Sakharov and Elena Bonner, SIPIscope 15, No. 2 (JuneJuly 1987), 111; on 9.
65 Ulam, Adventures (ref. 16), p. 224.
66 Schweber, Oppenheimer (ref. 4), pp. 219242.
67 Quoted in Lawrence Badash, Scientists and the Development of Nuclear Weapons: From Fission to
the Limited Test Ban Treaty, 19391963 (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1995), p. 57.
68 Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus (ref. 4), pp. 388389.
69 Zhit na zemle, i zhit dolgo [To Live on Earth, and to Live Long], Dialog A. Sakharova i A.
Adamovicha; vedet V. Sinel`nikov 1988 [Dialog between A. Sakharov and A. Adamovich moderated by V. Sinkelnikov in 1988], in Sakharov, Trevoga i nadezhda [Alarm and hope] (ref. 57), p. 322.
70 McMillan, Ruin (ref. 28), pp. 173175.
71 Quoted in Gina Kolata, Clone: The Road to Dolly, and the Path Ahead (New York: William Morrow & Company, 1998), p. 8.
72 F. Beck and W. Godin [pseudonyms of F.G. Houtermans and K.F. Schteppa], Russian Purge and the

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Extraction of Confession, translated by Eric Mosbacher and David Porter (New York: The Viking
Press, 1951); Alexander Weissberg, The Accused, translated by Edward Fitzgerald (New York,
Simon and Schuster, 1951).
C.L. Sulzberger, Soviet Forced Labor Held Economic Asset in Study, The New York Times (June
30, 1948), 6; Harry Schwartz, Soviet Data Show Slave Labor Role, ibid. (December 17, 1950), 20;
Geza B. Grosschmid, Russias Slave Labor, ibid. (July 5, 1953), Letters to The Times, E7.
Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History (New York: Doubleday, 2003).
Poll lauds Stalin on anniversary, The Guardian (March 5, 2005), website <http://www.guardian.
co.uk/russia/article/0,2763,1431072,00.html>.
For these lists with Stalins signature I. St. on them, see the website <http://www.memo.ru/
history/vkvs/spiski/pg06333p.htm> at the website of Memorial (International historical-enlightenment, human rights and humanitarian society) http://www.memo.ru/eng/index.htm.
Gennady E. Gorelik and Victor Ya. Frenkel, Matvei Petrovich Bronstein and Soviet Theoretical
Physics in the Thirties, translated by Valentina M. Levina (Basel, Boston, Berlin: Birkhuser Verlag, 1994); G.E. Gorelik, Matvei Bronstein and quantum gravity: 70th anniversary of the unsolved
problem, Physics-Uspekhi 48 (October 2005), 10391053.
Center for Philosophy and History of Science
Boston University
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e-mail: gorelik@bu.edu