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For 40 years the Soviet-American nuclear arms race dominated world politics, yet the Soviet nuclear establishment was shrouded in secrecy. Now that the Cold War is over and the Soviet Union has collapsed, it is possible to answer questions that have intrigued policy-makers and the public. This text traces the history of Soviet nuclear policy from develoments in physics in the 1920s to the testing of the hydrogen bomb and the emergence of nuclear deterrence in the mid-1950s. It tells how Stalin launched a crash atomic programme only after the Americans bombed Hiroshima and showed that the bomb could be built; how the information handed over to the Soviets by Klaus Fuchs helped in the creation of their first bomb; how the scientific intelligentsia, which included such men as Andre Sakharov, interacted with the police apparatus headed by Lavrentii Beria; what steps Stalin took to counter US atomic diplomacy; how the nuclear project saved Soviet physics and enabled it to survive as an island of intellectual automony in a totalitarian society; and what happened when, after Staliln's death, Soviet scientists argued that a nuclear war might extinguish all life on earth. This book throws light on Soviet policy at the height of the Cold War, illuminates a central but hitherto secret element of the Stalinist system, and puts into perspective the tragic legacy of this programme today - environmental damage, a vast network of institutes and factories and a huge stockpile of unwanted weapons.