Nuclear Energy and Soviet Life: Popularizing a Technology and a Political Program in Soviet Popular Media, 1945–65

Alarmed by the detonation of the first U.S. atomic bomb at Alamogordo, New Mexico, and the bombardment of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet Union launched a crash program to develop its own nuclear device in 1945. At the same time, Stalin’s propaganda machinery started developing the rhetorical tools for attacking the atomic monopoly of the United States. Once the Soviet Union had exploded it own nuclear bomb in 1949, the narrative shifted to explain that while still committed to disarmament, the Soviet Union had to defend itself against the imperialist aggressors and therefore needed its own nuclear arsenal. At the same time, the Soviets pushed ahead with civilian nuclear applications, launching the world’s first nuclear power plant in June 1954.

These successes, intertwined with the country’s political doctrine, were presented to Soviet citizens in myriads of ways, one of which were popular-scientific journals such as Nauka i Zhizn (Science and Life). This paper uses the representations of nuclear energy in this journal to show how sophisticated public education went hand in hand with prescriptions for the individual reader. The two decades from 1945 to 1965 reflect not only changes in the presentation of nuclear energy and the concepts of popular learning; they also show shifting expectations about each individual’s role in the construction of a Communist society.