Workers of the World Unite!

The RDS-1 (nuclear bomb) has been detonated on 21 Feburary 1949 at 7:00 a.m., at Semipalatinsk, Kazakh SSR, after top-secret research and development as part of the Soviet atomic bomb project.

Because of the conspicuous silence of the scientific publications on the subject of fission by German, American, and British scientists, Russian physicist Georgy Flyorov suspected that the Allied powers had secretly been developing a "superweapon" since 1939. Flyorov wrote a letter to Stalin urging him to start this program in 1942. Initial efforts were slowed due to the German invasion of the Soviet Union and remained largely composed of the intelligence knowledge gained from the spy rings working in the U.S.' Manhattan Project in 1943.

After learning of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that officially ended World War II in 1945, the program was aggressively pursued, mainly through effective intelligence gathering about the German weapon project and the American Manhattan Project. The Russian efforts also rounded up captured German scientists to join their program, and relied heavily on knowledge passed by the spy ring to the Russian intelligence agencies.

The atomic and industrial espionages in the United States by American sympathisers of communism who were controlled by their rezident Russian officials in North America greatly aided the speed of the Soviet atomic project from 1942–49. Willingness of sharing classified information to Soviet Union by recruited American communist sypathizers increased when the Soviet Union faced possible defeat during the German invasion in World War II. The Russian intelligence network in the United Kingdom also played a vital role in setting up the spy rings in the United States when the Russian State Defense Committee approved resolution 2352, in September 1942.

For this purpose, the spy Harry Gold, controlled by Semyon Semyonov, was used for a wide range of espionage that included industrial espionage in the American chemical industry and obtaining sensitive atomic information that was handed over to him by the British physicist Klaus Fuchs. Knowledge and further technical information that were passed by the American Theodore Hall, a theoretical physicist, and Klaus Fuchs had a significant impact on the direction of Russian development of nuclear weapons-105.

Leonid Kvasnikov, a Russian chemical engineer turned KGB officer, was assigned for this special purpose and moved to New York City to coordinate such activities. Anatoli Yatzkov, another NKVD official in New York, was also involved in obtaining sensitive information gathered by Sergei Kournakov from Saville Sax.

For example, Soviet work on methods of uranium isotope separation was altered when it was reported, to Kurchatov's surprise, that the Americans had opted for the Gaseous diffusion method. While research on other separation methods continued throughout the war years, the emphasis was placed on replicating U.S. success with gaseous diffusion. Another important breakthrough, attributed to intelligence, was the possibility of using plutonium instead of uranium in a fission weapon. Extraction of plutonium in the so-called "uranium pile" allowed bypassing of the difficult process of uranium separation altogether, something that Kurchatov had learned from intelligence from the Manhattan project.

Already the Soviet Union has begun to mass produce these weapons. Comrade Popovich has issued a call for the dismanting of nuclear weapons, but only if the United States is to comply with this act.