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Soviet Union and weapons of mass destruction
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The Soviet Union had, by 1991, the world's largest stockpiles of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. It carried out its first nuclear test in 1949 and its first multi-stage thermonuclear test in 1955. It was one of the five nuclear-weapon states of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and its biological warfare program was in violation of its ratification of the Biological Weapons Convention. These programs were inherited primarily by Russia.
In 1991, the Soviet Union possessed approximately 29,000 nuclear warheads. The Soviet Armed Forces operated a nuclear triad that deployed over 10,000 strategic nuclear weapons: 6,280 warheads assigned to the Strategic Rocket Forces' 1,334 intercontinental ballistic missiles, 3,626 warheads to the Soviet Navy's 914 submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and 974 cruise missiles and bombs to Long Range Aviation's 106 Tu-95MS and Tu-160 bombers.
The Soviet Union conducted 715 nuclear tests, second only to the United States. These were primarily at Semipalatinsk Test Site, and Novaya Zemlya, where the most powerful nuclear test ever, the Tsar Bomba at 50 megatons, was conducted in 1961. The Soviet Union, with the US and UK, joined the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty banning non-underground tests. Its nuclear weapons infrastructure saw many radioactive contamination events; the 1957 Kyshtym disaster remains the worst military accident on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale.
The global Cold War saw many nuclear crises. During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Soviet nuclear warheads and missiles were briefly stationed in Cuba, often considered the closest call with World War III. Nuclear tensions again crescendoed during the 1969 Sino-Soviet border conflict, as Soviet leadership threatened a massive nuclear attack on China. Soviet nuclear weapons were also stationed in the Warsaw Pact countries of Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, and Poland, as well as Mongolia and potentially Egypt.
Following the December 1991 dissolution of the Union, tactical warheads stationed across post-Soviet states were withdrawn to Russia by May 1992.[1] Strategic warheads between Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan were also withdrawn by 1996, under the Lisbon Protocol and Budapest Memorandum.[2]
The Soviet chemical weapons program became the largest in world history.[3] Russia in 1993 declared almost 40,000 tons of chemical weapons.[4] The program produced Novichok, VR, sarin, and soman nerve agents, as well as lewisite, mustard, and phosgene, and others. In 1978, Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was killed in London, allegedly with the toxin ricin, by Bulgaria's State Security with the aid of the Soviet KGB.
The Soviet biological weapons program was the world's largest, longest, and most sophisticated biological warfare project. It weaponized and stockpiled the biological agents that cause anthrax, plague, tularemia, smallpox, botulism and others. Genetic engineering improved agent stability and antibiotic resistance. The program employed a peak of 65,000 people and annually produced, for example, 100 tons of smallpox. The Sverdlovsk anthrax leak, which led to at least 68 deaths, began to reveal the extent of the program, continued by defectors including Ken Alibek and Vladimir Pasechnik.
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Nuclear weapons
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Delivery systems
Russia's early nuclear triad – a Project 629 SSB, an R-9 ICBM and a Myasishchev M-4 strategic bomber
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Russia's late Cold War nuclear triad – a Project 667BDRM Delfin SSBN, an R-36M2 ICBM and a Tupolev Tu-95 strategic bomber
Strategic
In 1991, the USSR possessed approximately 29,000 nuclear warheads. The Soviet Armed Forces operated a nuclear triad that deployed over 10,000 strategic nuclear weapons: 6,280 warheads assigned to the Strategic Rocket Forces' 1,334 intercontinental ballistic missiles, 3,626 warheads to the Soviet Navy's 914 submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and 974 cruise missiles and bombs to Long Range Aviation's 106 Tu-95MS and Tu-160 bombers. Its most modern strategic missiles were the land-based RT-2PM Topol, RT-23 Molodets, and UR-100N, and submarine-based R-29RM, R-39, and R-29.[5]
An estimated 3,000 nuclear weapons tipped surface-to-air missiles, and 100 tipped the ABM-1 and ABM-3 anti-ballistic missile systems around the capital city Moscow.[5]
Tactical
Another 11,000 tactical nuclear weapons were assigned to land and naval tactical aircraft, missiles, nuclear artillery, and anti-submarine weapons including torpedoes and depth charges.[5]
Tactical nuclear missiles included the R-17 Elbrus, 9K52 Luna-M, and OTR-21 Tochka. The largest nuclear artillery, 240 mm diameter, were delivered by the M240 towed mortar and 2S4 Tyulpan self-propelled mortar.[5]
Tactical nuclear aircraft included the Mikoyan MiG-27, Sukhoi Su-24 and Su-17 fighters, maritime patrol Beriev Be-12, Ilyushin Il-38, and Tu-142, carrier-based Kamov Ka-27 and Ka-25 helicopters,[5] and Kiev-class carrier-based Yakovlev Yak-38 vertical take-off and landing fighter.[6] The think tank SIPRI considered the long-range bombers the Tu-22M, Tu-95K22, Tu-22 and Tu-16 to be assigned only "non-strategic" warheads,[5] although these aircraft are sometimes considered strategic.[citation needed]
Early development
The Soviet atomic bomb project was authorized by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union to develop nuclear weapons during and after World War II.[7][8]
Physicist Georgy Flyorov, suspecting a Western Allied nuclear program, urged Stalin to start research in 1942.[8][9]: 78–79 Early efforts were made at Laboratory No. 2 in Moscow, led by Igor Kurchatov, and by Soviet-sympathizing atomic spies in the US Manhattan Project.[7] Subsequent efforts involved plutonium production at Mayak in Chelyabinsk and weapon research and assembly at KB-11 in Sarov.
After Stalin learned of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the nuclear program was accelerated through intelligence gathering on the US and German nuclear weapon programs.[10] Espionage coups, especially via Klaus Fuchs and David Greenglass, included detailed descriptions of the implosion-type Fat Man bomb and plutonium production. In the final months of the war, the Soviet "Russian Alsos" task force competed against the Western Allies' Alsos Mission to capture German and Austrian nuclear scientists and material, including refined uranium and cyclotrons.[11]: 242–243 The Soviet project utilized East German industry for further uranium mining, refinement, and instrument manufacture. Lavrentiy Beria was placed in charge of the atomic project, and the replication of the Fat Man bomb was prioritized.[12]
The Manhattan Project had established a monopoly on the global uranium market. The Soviet project relied on SAG Wismut in East Germany and the development of the Taboshar mine in Tajikistan. Domestic large-scale production of high purity graphite and high purity uranium metal, to construct plutonium production reactors, was a significant challenge.
In late 1946, F-1, the first nuclear reactor outside North America, achieved criticality at Laboratory No. 2. In mid-1948, the A-1 plutonium production reactor became operational at the Mayak site, and in mid-1949, the first plutonium metal was separated.[13] The first nuclear weapon was assembled at the KB-11 design bureau, led by Yulii Khariton, in the closed city of Arzamas-16 (Sarov).[14]
On 29 August 1949, the Soviet Union secretly conducted its first weapon test, RDS-1, at the Semipalatinsk Test Site of the Kazakh SSR.[7] Simultaneously, project scientists had been developing conceptual thermonuclear weapons. The US detection of the test, via anticipatory atmospheric fallout monitoring, led to a US crash program to develop thermonuclear weapons, opening of the nuclear arms race of the Cold War.
Boosted fission and multi-stage thermonuclear weapons were developed during the 1950s, testing expanded to Novaya Zemlya and Kapustin Yar, and fissile material production sites grew, including the invention of the gas centrifuge. The program created demand for nuclear weapons delivery, command and control, and early warning, influencing the Soviet space program. Soviet nuclear weapons played a major role in the Cold War, including the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Sino-Soviet border conflict.Production sites
Three sites in the Russian SFSR produced 125.2 tons of weapons-grade plutonium from 1948 to 1991, with a consistent production peak between 1967 and 1989. Following the Moscow test reactor F-1 in 1946, the Mayak site in Chelyabinsk-40 began construction. The first plutonium production reactor A-1 began operation in 1948, fuelling the RDS-1 test. The Mayak site received nine further reactors were constructed. Of these, four were used for plutonium production, the other six reactors primarily produced tritium for thermonuclear weapons. Plutonium was also produced by five reactors at the Siberian Chemical Combine in Tomsk-7, and three reactors at the Mining and Chemical Combine in Krasnoyarsk-26. In this period, Mayak produced 30.9 tons, the Siberian Chemical Combine produced 54.9 tons, and the Mining and Chemical Combine produced 39.4 tons.[15]
Russian sites ultimately produced 1,250 tons of highly enriched uranium (uncertainty ±120 tons) from 1949 to 2010, excluding HEU produced for naval nuclear reactors. Of this, 500 tons was downblended by the Megatons to Megawatts Program, and a further hundred tons were used in production research reactors, nuclear tests, and other downblending programs. Russia is now believed to possess 656 tons between HEU stockpiles and HEU inside weapons themselves. This began with the SU-20 electromagnetic separation plant, but the Soviet project quickly followed the Manhattan Project's gaseous diffusion scheme, constructing the D-1 plant in Sverdlovsk-44, eventually becoming the Ural Electrochemical Combine. The D-1 plant could produce 0.01 million SWU/year. The development of the gas centrifuge and waves of modernizations brought the Ural Electrochemical Combine to 11.9 million SWU/year by 1993. Further enrichment plants were built at the Siberian Chemical Combine, the Zelenogorsk Electrochemical Plant and the Angarsk Electrochemical Combine.[16]
Nuclear testing
The Soviet Union used three major test sites: Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan, Novaya Zemlya in the extreme north, and Kapustin Yar.
Notable tests at Semipalatinsk following RDS-1 include RDS-4, the first Soviet tactical nuclear weapon, RDS-6s, the first Soviet weapon to use thermonuclear reactions in a layer cake design, sometimes called a boosted fission weapon, and RDS-37, the first Soviet true two-stage thermonuclear weapon.[17]
Novaya Zemlya was the site of further megaton-range explosions, including the Tsar Bomba, the largest weapon ever detonated, and the Raduga live test of an R-13 submarine-launched ballistic missile. Kapustin Yar was used for high-altitude nuclear tests launched by missiles, including the 1961 tests and Project K tests.
The Soviet Army also conducted the Totskoye nuclear exercise in Orenburg Oblast, 1954, in which 45,000 soldiers and hundreds of tanks, self-propelled guns, and armored personnel carriers were maneuvered through the blast zone of an RDS-4 nuclear bomb.[18][19] After the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, underground testing continued at Semipalatinsk and Novaya Zemlya until 1990.[20] The Soviet Union also developed "clean" thermonuclear weapons, including weapons with only deuterium as thermonuclear fuel, used in a brief program of peaceful nuclear explosions.[21][22][23]
Espionage and intelligence gathering
During the Eisenhower administration, the US believed that successful aerial reconnaissance of the Soviet Union's nuclear facilities would be more likely than successful human intelligence. Thus it deployed a range of aircraft on overflights, including the Boeing RB-47 Stratojet and later the Lockheed U-2. A U-2 was famously shot down in 1960, causing international embarrassment to the US, after which it began transitioning to reconnaissance satellites.[24] Under Project Genetrix in 1956, the US also launched high-altitude balloons for reconnaissance, which US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles justified saying "international law is obscure on the question of who owns the upper air".[25][26]
The US also attempted a range of methods for a nuclear detonation detection system, including Project Grab Bag's air sampling balloons, and Project Mogul's infrasound monitoring balloons.
On 8 August 1974, the Central Intelligence Agency's Project Azorian obtained Soviet nuclear weapons in the form of nuclear torpedoes, from the sunken wreck of the Soviet submarine K-129 (1960). However, the raising ship Glomar Explorer lost the submarine's section containing the R-13 ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads, and codebooks and decoding machines.[27]
In the late Cold War, the US developed a decapitation strike plan codenamed Canopy Wing, which would infiltrate and interfere with Soviet nuclear command and control in the event of conflict, including potentially supplying false commands to Soviet pilots via computer-generated voices.[28]
Foreign stationing
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The Soviet Union practiced nuclear stationing during the Cold War, primarily with Warsaw Pact countries. It stationed nuclear weapons in East Germany,[29] Czechoslovakia, Hungary,[30] Poland,[31] and Mongolia, as well as briefly in Cuba during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.[32]
Cuba
Under Operation Anadyr during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet Union brough an estimated 100 nuclear warheads to Cuba. Of these, 80 were assigned to FKR-1 cruise missiles, 12 to 9K52 Luna-M rocket, and 6 to 8 to R-12 Dvina missiles, although 42 Dvina missiles had been imported. Ilyushin Il-28 medium bombers had also been imported in crates, but were not unpacked, with 6 gravity bombs available to them.[33]
Other
It is possible that similar arrangements were made with Bulgaria, but no sources have been found to date. In 1963, in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Socialist Republic of Romania made a secret declaration to the United States that it did not host Soviet nuclear weapons, and that it would wish to remain neutral rather than uphold its Warsaw Pact obligations in the event of a superpower conflict.[34]
Some historical evidence indicates during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the Soviet Union deployed nuclear weapons to Egypt, including possibly providing two warheads to Soviet Scud missile brigades, as well as the typical nuclear weapons stored on ships and submarines of the 5th Operational Squadron based in Syria.[35]
Crises
Cuban Missile Crisis
Sino-Soviet border conflict
In 1969, following the border conflict Battle of Zhenbao Island in March, the USSR considered a massive nuclear attack on China, targeting cities and nuclear facilities. It made military activity in the Russian Far East, and informed its allies and the United States of this potential attack. The Chinese government and archives were evacuated from Beijing while the People's Liberation Army scattered from its bases. The crisis abated when US secretary of state Henry Kissinger informed the Soviet Union that an attack on China would be met by a US nuclear attack on 130 Soviet cities.[37][38][39] According to the U.S. Department of State, one of the two main "after-the-fact explanations" for the Joint Chiefs of Staff Readiness Test conducted by the U.S. military in October 1969 was to deter a possible Soviet nuclear strike against the People's Republic of China.[40][41]
Post-dissolution
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Following the December 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, the hundreds of tactical warheads stationed in each of the fourteen other former Soviet republics were withdrawn to Russia by May 1992.[1] The over two thousand strategic warheads, stationed between Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, were withdrawn to Russia by November 1996, under the Lisbon Protocol and Budapest Memorandum.[2]
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Chemical weapons
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| This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (December 2025) |
Russia declared an arsenal of 39,967 metric tons of chemical agents, including the nerve agents sarin, soman, and VR, as well as lewisite, mustard, and phosgene, when it signed the CWC in 1993.[42] The USSR also investigated and produced Novichok agents, hydrogen cyanide, ricin.[43][44] By comparison, 27,770 metric tons were declared for the United States chemical weapons program in 1997.[45]
By the time of the Soviet Union's dissolution in 1991, its chemical weapons research institute, GosNIIOKhT, employed approximately 6,000 people. The employees worked in Novocheboksarsk and Volgograd on nerve agent production, in Dzerzinsk on blister agent production, in Shikhany on testing, and in Nukus, Uzbekistan on testing.[46][47]
Novichok agents were designed to be undetectable and unprotectable by NATO equipment, safer to handle, and circumvent the Chemical Weapons Convention list of controlled precursors, classes of chemical and physical form.[44][48][49]
David Wise, in his book Cassidy's Run, implies that the FBI program Operation Shocker may have led the Soviet Union to develop Novichok agents. The program aimed to feed false information about US chemical and biological programs to the Soviet Union, and the Novichok agents may have resulted from false US research on a "GJ" codenamed agent.[50]
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Biological weapons
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The Soviet Union covertly operated the world's largest, longest, and most sophisticated biological weapons program, thereby violating its obligations as a party to the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972.[51] The Soviet program began in the 1920s and lasted until at least September 1992 but has possibly been continued by Russian Federation after that.[51][52]
By 1960, numerous military-purposed biological research facilities existed throughout the Soviet Union. Although the former USSR also signed the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), the Soviet authorities subsequently augmented their biowarfare programs. Over the course of its history, the Soviet program is known to have weaponized and stockpiled the following bio-agents[53] (and to have pursued basic research on many more):
- Bacillus anthracis (anthrax)[54]
- Yersinia pestis (plague)[54]
- Francisella tularensis (tularemia)
- Burkholderia mallei (glanders)
- Brucella sp. (brucellosis)
- Coxiella burnetii (Q fever)
- Marburg marbugvirus (Marburg virus disease)
- Alphavirus venezuelan (Venezuelan equine encephalitis)
- Orthopoxvirus variola (smallpox)[54]
- Other orthopoxviruses[54]
- Botulinum toxin (botulism)
- Enterotoxin type B (toxic shock syndrome)
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References
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