To shed light on the social, political, economic, and technical complexities and contingencies that tend to get obliterated in official narratives, I used three major data sources: archival documents, in-depth interviews with nuclear specialists, and published sources (primary and secondary). All three types of sources, to varying degrees, raise the question of whether they can be trusted. Especially in published Soviet sources, the analyst has to decipher a language in which political rhetoric was intricately woven into the texture of even fairly technical narratives. The classic technique of triangulation—that is, checking whether the stories people tell can be backed up with either published or archival sources—often works too well to be reliable in the Soviet context. This remarkable overlap should instead be interpreted as proof of the pervasiveness of Soviet ideology. I used two strategies to get around this problem. The first was to compare Soviet sources with foreign ones, such as CIA reports, publications by the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment, non-Soviet reports from international conferences related to nuclear energy, as well as reports from foreign delegations visiting Soviet nuclear facilities. The second strategy was to consult dry, matter-of-fact institutional memory, preserved in administrative document collections. Studying these documents over an extended period, as I was able to, helped me get a “feel” for the style of these documents and understand the unmarked “codes” (for example, what a “satisfactory” evaluation meant became clear only when I found an “unsatisfactory” one). The eerie consistency of discursive choices also made clear how Soviet political ideology could become relatively straightforward to “decode,” at least for those unwilling to buy into the dream of a communist future.
Archival Sources
During extensive research in Russia during 2003 and on subsequent research trips, I consulted archival collections ranging from administrative documents pertaining to the nuclear power industry in its various stages, to governmental and institutional protocols of different agencies, legal documents, and scientists’ personal records. Archival material relating to the civilian nuclear industry is still largely classified. The archives of the Ministry of Atomic Energy (now Rosatom, Gosudarstvennaia korporatsiia po atomnoi energii), the archives of the Kurchatov Institute and NIKIET, as well as the archive at the IPPE/FEI at Obninsk are still closed, at least to most foreign researchers, and the documents relating to nuclear power in the Central Committee's Sector for Mechanical Engineering (in the Russian State Archive for Contemporary History, RGANI) have not been declassified either. So far, the only documentation on nuclear power plants is preserved in the Russian State Archive for the Economy (RGAE). This archive holds collections of the Ministry of Energy and Electrification (Minenergo), collections of Gosplan's Sector for Electrification, and collections of the State Committee for Science and Technology's (GKNT) Council on New Technologies for the Power Industry. All of these organizations were involved with the nuclear power industry to some degree, and although some documents relating to nuclear plants have been removed from the binders (after having been listed in the table of contents), the majority are accessible to researchers.
The document collection of Minenergo at the Russian State Archive for the Economy (RGAE, fond 7964) contains the majority of documents that this research is based on. It holds decrees and orders for long-term planning in the power industry, annual reports on the ministry's activities, transcripts of meetings of the ministry's decision-making council (kollegiia) and of meetings convened by the minister or his deputies, decrees issued by the minister, reports to the Council of Ministers, correspondence with Gosplan, Gosstroi, and GKNT, material relating to assignments by the Council of Ministers involving the construction and operation of nuclear power plants, and decisions regarding proposals and complaints by citizens to the Minenergo apparatus.
Additionally, the collection holds annual reports from individual nuclear power plants to Glavatomenergo, and from Glavatomenergo to the ministry (reports on financial activities, progress in construction work, etc.). It includes transcripts of technical meetings, orders issued by Glavatomenergo, decisions regarding the financial and project design of nuclear power plants, and decisions by Glavatomenergo's accounting commission (balansovaia komissiia). These latter documents are an extraordinary source: they very briefly summarize the annual reports from the individual power plants, outline the main achievements and shortcomings (where the plant's management met the plan, exceeded it, or failed), formulaically assess the plant's work as “satisfactory” (udovletvoritel’no), and make suggestions and give instructions for the following year. These documents offer a comparative view of all nuclear power plants under construction and in operation. The critical comments in these summaries are open and sharp, and sometimes include warnings to the plant's management. Beginning in 1978, Soiuzatomenergo takes Glavatomenergo's place; the collection holds orders, transcripts of meetings convened by Soiuzatomenergo's director, and decisions by Soiuzatomenergo's accounting commission affecting the activities of nuclear power plants.1
The same archive, RGAE, holds a small collection of documents pertaining to Glavatomenergo (1956–1959) that is separate from the Minenergo collection (RGAE, fond 9599). It contains annual financial plans for the construction of nuclear power plants, transcripts of meetings and decisions made by Glavatomenergo, reports of technical meetings, reports of siting commissions, as well as specific reports on the construction of the Beloiarsk and Novo-Voronezh nuclear power plants.
Several groups of documents from the collection on the State Committee for Planning, Gosplan (RGAE, fond 4372), relate to the nuclear power industry. There are documents pertaining to Gosplan's Sector for Electrification (Otdel elektrifikatsii, responsible for planning the construction of new power plants) and the Sector for Electricity Distribution (Otdel raspredeleniia elektroenergii). The opisi extend from 1945/1955 (op. 54) to 1975 (op. 66) and contain documents on construction management, directives from the government regarding construction, reconstruction, and start-up of industrial facilities (in particular with regard to the development of the power industry), transcripts of meetings on priority construction projects, reports on plan fulfillment, projections of electricity demand, and material to substantiate revisions to plans.
Some documents from the State Committee for Science and Technology (GKNT) collection (RGAE, fond 9480, 1950–1975) also relate to the nuclear power industry. I reviewed correspondence with the Council of Ministers, the Central Committee, the Academy of Sciences, individual ministries, and scientific and technological institutes about introducing innovative technologies in industry, in particular in the power industry; plans and reports about the implementation of new technologies; and reports of meetings held by GKNT's Scientific-Technical Council on questions relating to the power industry and electrification.
The Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ARAN) holds more recent documents than the slightly outdated guidebook (putevoditel’) that was available to me had suggested, but I have found relatively few collections that relate directly to the nuclear power industry. In the collection of the Academy's Commission on Nuclear Energy, documentation goes as far as the late 1970s. The information mostly concerns research reactors, schedules for conducting experiments at the available facilities, and the coordination of nuclear research across the various Soviet republics.2 The documents from the Scientific-Technical Sector within the Scientific Council of the Presidium of the Soviet Academy of Sciences include plans and draft decrees (proekty postanovlenii) for the development of nuclear physics research, correspondence with domestic and international organizations involved in the development of nuclear energy applications (among other themes, on the standardization of radiation hazards, and the use of radioactive isotopes), articles and permissions for publication, materials relating to the United Nations Conferences on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in Geneva, and summaries of foreign press reports on the Soviet contributions to these and other conferences.3 Several collections of academicians’ personal documents, which relate to the period of interest to the nuclear power industry, are currently being processed. In 2003, the documents pertaining to Anatolii Aleksandrov's tenure as the Academy's president became available.4
The Youth League (Komsomol) archive, now a branch of the Russian State Archive for Social and Political History (RGASPI), holds textual and, more fascinatingly, visual materials on nuclear power plant construction sites that had been declared Komsomol “shock-work” sites, that is, construction projects that relied on cohorts of enthusiastic young workers from the Komsomol for their timely completion. The collection contains correspondence between the Komsomol administration in Moscow and these construction sites, newspaper clippings (e.g., from Pravda and Molodaia gvardiia) about the success of Komsomol brigades,5 and photo albums of Komsomol brigades on nuclear power plant construction sites.6 There are also minutes of Komsomol conventions7 and materials relating to them,8 as well as transcripts of Komsomol conventions that include parts pertaining to the nuclear industry.9 In addition, there are reports from Komsomol brigades10 and materials relating to decrees that the VLKSM bureau and Minenergo issued.11 Not all of the Komsomol archive's documents relating to nuclear power have been declassified.12
Among the few declassified document collections at the Russian State Archive for Contemporary History (RGANI), fond 89 is a collection of documents that became available to the public in the wake of the Communist Party trials under President Yeltsin.13 This collection also contains documents on the lawsuit following the Chernobyl accident (O sudebnom razbiratel'stve ugolovnogo dela, sviazannogo s avariei na ChAES).14 The small number of RGANI's declassified documents pertaining to the apparatus of the Central Committee (fond 5, Apparat TsK KPSS) contain one subcollection relating to the Sector for Mechanical Engineering (Otdel mashinostroeniia, opis’ 40). A few of these documents are connected to the nuclear power industry, especially the early period.15
The Russian State Archive for Scientific and Technical Documentation (RGANTD) in Samara contains managerial documents from a wide range of scientific and technical institutes and construction bureaus involved with designing and manufacturing equipment for the nuclear industry. Among these institutes are the All-Union Thermal Engineering Institute named after F. E. Dzerzhinskii,16 the State Power Engineering Institute named after G. M. Krzhizhanovskii,17 and certain Chief Administrations of the All-Union State Planning Institute “Teploelektroproekt,” 18 all subordinate to the Ministry of Energy and Electrification (Minenergo). The archive also holds documents from the Institute for Nuclear Power Engineering under the Ministry of Power Engineering,19 and the only documents relating to the former Ministry of Atomic Energy that I was able to review freely: documents from the Institute “Atomenergoproekt” for the years 1986–1992.20
Interviews
I conducted twenty-eight interviews with veterans of the Soviet nuclear power program in Moscow, Obninsk, Visaginas, and Vienna between 2001 and 2006, and six more interviews with a slightly different focus in Dresden, Saint Petersburg, Kiev, and Vienna in 2011 and 2012. Although some of these experts had retired by the time I approached them, many were willing to share their insights and considerable experience with me.
I planned these interviews to complement information that was not available in accessible archives, or to provide the kind of stories that would never have ended up in written form in the first place. I started with only a few contacts through private referrals, who subsequently referred me to others.21 On occasion, I approached potential interviewees at conferences I attended, I contacted a publishing house for a potential interviewee's contact information, or I used the Internet to find someone's work phone number and then made blind calls. My affiliation with the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute for the History of Science and Technology was often very helpful, but the value of personal networks trumped every other method.
The semistructured interviews followed a list of questions but frequently departed from it, especially when the specific expertise of the individual I was talking to prompted different questions and led in new directions. Often, informal conversation after an interview (on the way to the metro, for example) or during a break provided insights as enlightening as those I was able to record. I sent the list of questions, along with a summary of my research project, to my interviewees in advance, and then recorded the actual interviews with their permission. For the text of the book, I transcribed critical passages and translated them into English.
Published Sources
Few Western publications have focused exclusively on the civilian applications of nuclear energy in the Soviet Union. An exception is Paul R. Josephson's Red Atom: Russia's Nuclear Power Program from Stalin to Today, which covers a broad spectrum of applications in the power industry, biology, medicine, and the food industry.22 Maria Vasilieva explores the history of decision making in and for the nuclear power industry (nuclear power reactors and propulsion reactors) in her comprehensive study Soleils rouges: L’ambition nucléaire soviétique.23 In the former Soviet Union, by contrast, the history of nuclear energy has been the subject of numerous books over the past twenty years. While the military project still attracts more attention, civilian nuclear technologies have moved to center stage either explicitly (as in the five edited volumes by Viktor A. Sidorenko on the history of nuclear power in the Soviet Union and Russia),24 or as part of memoirs or other books published on the occasion of anniversaries of important scientists, policymakers, institutes, or agencies (for example, many publications were devoted to the centennials of the birth of Efim Slavskii, Anatolii Aleksandrov, Igor Kurchatov, and Aleksandr Leipunskii).25 Other books on prominent Soviet nuclear scientists and important organizations, and historical accounts presented from the perspective of different institutes, have appeared as well.26 Many of these publications are celebratory rather than analytical, but since they often include contributions from a range of authors, there are sections that provide alternative perspectives.27
The five volumes edited by Sidorenko are particularly useful for students of Soviet nuclear power. The first volume, which appeared in 2001, features an essay by Goncharov on the early period of the Soviet nuclear power industry (Pervyi period razvitiia atomnoi energetiki v SSSR), which had been issued as a preprint by the Kurchatov Institute in 1990;28 a reprint of Kurchatov's 1956 speech at Harwell;29 a programmatic conference essay by Anatolii Aleksandrov from 1968;30 and essays on the history of the Obninsk and the Beloiarsk nuclear power plants as well as on the history of military uranium-graphite reactors, pressurized water reactors, RBMKs, fast breeder reactors, and gas-cooled reactors. The first volume also includes chapters by Sidorenko on the management of nuclear power plants and on nuclear safety.31
The second volume (published in 2002) contains essays on the history of the VVER. They focus on the development of this reactor design for power reactors, on the specific design of fuel elements, on computer programs for computing the core's parameters, on the history of the Novo-Voronezh nuclear power plant and further developments, and on safety issues.32 This volume also has a chapter by Sidorenko on “scientific management” (nauchnoe rukovodstvo) in the nuclear power industry.33
Volume 3, which came out in 2003, is devoted to the history of the RBMK.34 It contains essays on the history of the design development in the Kurchatov Institute (Institute of Atomic Energy), on the first RBMK, including specific technical features of this reactor type, and on the creation of a full-scale RBMK simulator.
Volume 4 (published in 2002) is subtitled “Lessons from the Chernobyl Accident” (Uroki avarii na Chernobyl'skoi AES). It includes reprints of several important reports published in the years following the accident,35 as well as Sidorenko's personal report to the Central Committee.36
And volume 5, which came out in 2004, concludes the discussion of the nuclear power industry by describing the development of small power reactors. Among others, the chapters depict the mobile nuclear power plant TES-3, the Bilibino nuclear power plant, and current projects involving floating nuclear power plants.37 These books are extremely useful collections of personal accounts from participants in the Soviet nuclear power program. They are not official accounts, and therefore rarely include archival or other scholarly references.
By contrast, the archives of the former Ministry of Atomic Energy (Minatom)38 and the Russian Research Center “Kurchatov Institute” (previously the Institute of Atomic Energy)39 have been publishing selected archival documents and essays on the atomic project. Former employees of top nuclear policymaking bodies have put together useful compilations of facts and figures—for example, those produced by former Minatom associate Arkadii Kruglov.40
Historical journals like Voprosy istorii estestvoznanii i tekhniki (Issues in the History of Science and Technology, published by the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute for the History of Science and Technology), Istoriia nauki i tekhniki (History of Science and Technology), and even specialized technical periodicals like Atomnaia energiia (Atomic Energy), have also been publishing material related to the nuclear power industry. Historian of physics Vladimir Vizgin (from the Academy's Institute for the History of Science and Technology) edited two volumes on the history of the Soviet atomic project.41 Conference proceedings provide valuable overviews of contemporary assessments of the nuclear history of the Soviet Union,42 and published “strategies” for the country's future energy policy provide updates on the still-changing plans.43
The privilege of conducting research in the post-Soviet era was brought home to me in working with publications that couldn't have been published under Soviet rule, in particular, fairly outspoken memoirs and critical assessments. As participants in the nuclear program, both military and civilian, are reaching retirement age, personal memoirs have been appearing, some of them self-published.44 These accounts rely on the private memories of participants. One former reactor operator, Mikhail Grabovskii, has turned to a new literary form, “documentary novels” (dokumental’nye povesti), as he calls them, to describe the history of the Soviet nuclear industry.45 Vladimir Gubarev, former chief science editor of Pravda, has also written on the history of the Soviet nuclear industry. His books are fascinating because they're based on archival material only he was able to gain access to, and easy to read due to their journalistic style.46
A vast body of literature has been published on the Chernobyl disaster, apart from the reports appearing in official Soviet journals and through the International Atomic Energy Agency.47 Publications on Chernobyl include technical assessments,48 publications related to consequences of the accident for public health and the environment,49 publications that address specific consequences for former Soviet regions (in particular, Belorus50 and Ukraine51), and a range of Russian and international publications on general issues related to the accident.52 In addition, dramatized treatments of the accident were published; among the well-known ones are Iurii Shcherbak's Chernobyl: A Documentary Story and Vladimir Gubarev's Sarcophagus: A Tragedy.53 The Internet has become an indispensable resource for researchers, as well as a way for authors to publish material they could not otherwise find an outlet for. In addition, archival material and interview transcripts are often available online.54
Some post-Soviet publications on the Russian and Soviet economy reference the power industry in particular.55 On the history of electrification, for example, I have used contemporary Soviet sources, which best convey the spirit of ambitious growth.56 Several books have come out on Aleksei Kosygin, and some of his speeches have been published separately.57 In 1996, Alla Iaroshinskaia, former advisor to President Boris Yeltsin, edited a Nuclear Encyclopedia, which was evenly criticized by nuclear power promoters and opponents but contains a great deal of helpful information.58 Another useful reference work is Who Is Who in Nuclear Power Engineering and Industry of Russia.59 Recent industry publications sometimes include historical sections—for example, a publication by the Sverdlovsk (Ekaterinburg) branch of NIKIET.60 Other publications can be expected as key documents are declassified.