Item COLD WAR 28/20 - Transcript of interview with nuclear physicist Arkadi Brish, 1996

Typescript transcript of interview with Arkadi Brish, relating to the Soviet atomic bomb development programme, 1945-1949; the importance of Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, Commissar for Internal Affairs, in the Soviet nuclear development programme, 1945-1949; the detonation of the first Soviet atomic bomb, Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan, USSR, 29 Aug 1949; the Soviet exploitation of espionage to further the development of nuclear weapons, 1945-1949; the size of the Soviet nuclear arsenal, 1955; the Soviet thermonuclear (hydrogen) bomb development programme, 1949-1953; the Cuban Missile Crisis, Oct 1962; the launch of the Soviet Sputnik I and Sputnik II Earth orbiting satellites via SS-6 'Sapwood' Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM), Oct and Nov 1957; the detonation by the USSR of a 50 megaton nuclear weapon, Novaya Zemlya Island, USSR, 30 Oct 1961; the announcement of the US Atoms for Peace programme to share nuclear knowledge with other countries, 1953; the characters of Yuli Khariton, Scientific Director of Arzamas 16, the Soviet nuclear weapons research complex, 1946-1992, and Igor Vasilevich Kurchatov, Scientific Director, Soviet nuclear development programme, 1945-1953. 21pp