BBC - Science at War (1998) Part 4 Russia's Nuclear Patriots

Scientific breakthroughs in the practice of warfare world. The twentieth century witnessed the arrival of science as the most potent force a country could wield - in peace or at war. Of the enduring legacies from the two world wars that changed all aspects of life—from economics, to justice, to the nature of warfare itself—the scientific and technological legacies of World War II had a profound and permanent effect on life after 1945. Technologies developed during World War II for the purpose of winning the war found new uses as commercial products in the decades that followed the war's end. This series of six programs shows how scientific breakthroughs in the practice of warfare have shaped the age in which we live. Each episode examines a key area of science - from physics to engineering and the life sciences - and shows the impact they had both at the time and on later generations. Scientists and military planners explain the role they have played in the discoveries and the series features both archive and specially shot film.

Part 4 Russia's Nuclear Patriots

Working under intense political pressure, fear of execution and with near-primitive technology, the Soviets, headed by a young Andrei Sakharov, were still able to produce a deliverable H-bomb way ahead of Western predations.. For the U.S the possibility of Soviet nuclear dominance was too terrible to contemplate – and the Cold War was about to enter its most terrifying phase. The story had begun in the ruins of Hiroshima in 1945. In a state of shock, Soviet observers were able to report to Stalin that their spies had been correct, the American atomic bomb was a weapon of incredible destructive capability. In an immediate and massive mobilisation of scientific manpower, the Soviets were able to match their enemies atomic achievements after only four years. So began a scientific tit for tat which was to define the nuclear age for the next forty years. By 1961, Soviet scientists were ready to test the most powerful bomb ever. It would, said Premier Nikita Khrushchev, 'hang over the heads of the Capitalists like a Sword of Damocles'. At over 100 megatons, the force of the explosion would be equal to that of 10,000 Hiroshima bombs. The brinkmanship of the Cuban missile crisis a year later demonstrated to the world how tenuous the stalemate had become. Using previously unseen archive film and first time interviews with surviving witnesses, Russia's Nuclear Patriots tells the story of the unknown men and women of Russia who dedicated their lives to the development of the Hydrogen bomb – the greatest weapon of mass destruction ever known.

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