How it was №1664 01/16/2001 (2001)

The first Soviet atomic bomb, 1949.

It is widely known that in the Soviet Union work on the creation of an atomic bomb began in 1943.

But very few people know that back in the late 30-ies in the Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology, a group of young scientists began nuclear research.

About this little known "Kharkov project", about work on the creation of the first Soviet atomic bomb, as well as the reasons for delays in the development of the project are told participants of the program: veteran of Soviet foreign intelligence Vladimir Barkovsky, one of the creators of the Kharkov project Vladimir Shpinel, professor Arkady Brish and professor Anatoly Sudoplatov (fragment of the interview).

One of the main leaders of the Soviet atomic program, Academician Nikolai Dollezhal, also gave his last interview.

Used footage chronicles of different years: the meeting of Stalin with US President Truman in Potsdam, the dumping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the study period of the Great The Patriotic War, the meeting of Stalin, Molotov and Beria with Academician Kurchatov in the USSR Academy of Sciences, the Rosenberg case, the nuclear test site in Los Alamos, the tests in Semipalatinsk.