Vladimir Vizgin

A recently declassified draft of the first official history of the Soviet atomic project dates from late 1952 or early 1953. The manuscript had not been fully completed, and its planned publication was called off after the arrest of L.P. Beria in June 1953. Nevertheless, the «Beria History» contains important, non-trivial information about the project. The present article analyzes it in comparison with a similar account of the Manhattan project, the well-known Smyth report. It uses the criteria recently applied for analogous comparative analysis by M. Walker and M. Yamazaki, but also pays attention to additional cultural and political aspects: the nuclear community and its ethos, the cult of the atom, and the different stage of the Cold War during which this manuscript was produced.