The Red Bomb

It's 1945, and Soviet propaganda films are inviting all Russia to celebrate the glorious victory of communism. But the misery, poverty and devastation on the streets of Moscow tell quite a different story, while the defeat of Nazi Germany has only cleared the way for a new foe as Western antagonism towards communism grows. And – perhaps the greatest blow to Soviet pride – America has just won the race to produce the first atom bomb. The West can't afford to be complacent, however. In Russia, new and secret departments have sprung up to take on the USA's "Manhattan Project". Codenamed "Bureau 2", "Department S" and "Operation Enormous", their exact functions remaining mysterious even to insiders. While the NKVD intelligence network, under Beria, work round the clock to obtain the secret recipe from the Americans, starving gulag prisoners are forced down the mines in Tajikistan, while new metropolises are being built in sequestered locations for the sole purpose of nuclear research. An excellent overview of the project that harnessed all Russia's energies, culminating in the first Red Bomb – tested just four years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The sight of the first-ever Soviet mushroom cloud broke down the reserve of scientists and spymasters alike, as Igor Kurchatov crushed Lavrenty Beria in his ecstatic embrace.

A more detailed investigation of Russia's nuclear coming-of-age, this episode traces the atom bomb back to its infancy – to a time when state-sponsored Russian physicists were sent to Cambridge in pursuit of an obscure new technology. But the Bolshevik government was slow to catch on to the strategic importance of atomic energy, continually dismissing it in favour of good old traditional weapons. The Americans had Einstein, Niels Bohr and a state-of-the-art testing base in New Mexico. Meanwhile, the Russians had a "tiny cluttered laboratory" in central Moscow (later upgraded to a tent in a muddy field) and no uranium to speak of. Told by the men who were involved, this is a tale of success against the odds, achieved thanks to an eccentric yet dedicated network of scientists and spies (including a bicycling femme fatale nicknamed "Red Sonya"), and the fatal negligence of MI5.

This final episode addresses the legacy of the Red Bomb, and the steady stream of scientists who became disenchanted with the project after seeing the potential devastation it could cause. By the time the Stalinist regime gives way to the era of Khrushchev, Russia and its rival are almost neck and neck. One war may be over, but another is just beginning. As rivalry deepens into outright hostility, can the quest to produce the ultimate atom bomb really be explained "in the name of peace"? As the race accelerates, simple bomb tests are replaced by full-scale battle exercises and the spectre of nuclear war looms ever closer. The Soviets are plundering Czechoslovakian mines for their rich uranium reserves, and Russia upgrades its nuclear facilities, making Arzamas-16 and Semipalatinsk-21 into model cities for nuclear scientists and their families – furnished with dream homes, luxury shops and good schools (though the cities are untraceable on the map, and their inhabitants have no address). Archive footage of an imitation battle gives a hint of the war that never was – though most of the "sacrificies" are sheep and horses, stationed in the trenches in the name of military research. The Red Army evacuate farmers out of the chosen patch of countryside, allowing them to return a few days later, with nuclear dust still hanging in the air. (In the ensuing years, the local hospital saw a huge increase in tumour patients – a trend that the government did its utmost to conceal.)