Surely You’re Joking, Comrade Beria

In my recent article on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Tsar Bomba test, I relied very heavily on Russian sources that were digitized by Rosatom, the Russian nuclear agency. For whatever reason, Rosatom has been dedicating an impressive amount of resources to Soviet nuclear history, radically transforming what is easily available to scholars outside of Russia. The extraordinarily useful series of (curated, redacted) archival documents, Atomniy Projekt SSSR (Atomic Project of the Soviet Union), for example, went nearly overnight from being something only existed in full in a handful of libraries in the United States (I was proud to make sure that the Niels Bohr Library at the American Institute of Physics has a complete set), to being easily accessible through the Rosatom Digital Library.

But I’m not here to talk about the stuff that’s useful to scholars. I’m here to talk about their section on “Atomic Fun” from the Soviet atomic bomb project. This is a collection of, as they put it, “funny stories.”

I couldn’t help myself. Yes, this is a parody — yes, it is joke cuts both ways.

It’s an odd concept. It’s hard to imagine the Department of Energy creating an “Atomic Fun” exhibit. It’s not that there wouldn’t be things to say — the history of the US nuclear program involves some amusing stories. Think about Feynman’s Los Alamos antics, sneaking through fences and (ho ho!) cracking safes with classified documents in them. Think about Niels Bohr sending a letter to British scientists after the Nazis occupied Denmark, telling them he was okay, and asking them to forward the message to MAUD RAY KENT. The British thought it was an anagram for RAYDUM TAKEN — radium taken! The Nazis are definitely building a bomb! They named their own secret bomb effort the MAUD Committee after this sage warning! But (ho ho!) it turned out that Bohr was just trying to send a hopeful message to the former governess of his children, Maud Ray, who lived in the county of Kent. Whoops!

The problem is, of course, that such levity gets undercut by a) the horrific accounts of what happened to the Japanese victims of the atomic bombs, b) other disturbing legacies of people who are rightly classified as victims of the US nuclear complex (downwinders, exposed plant employees, the Marshallese, etc.), and c) a reminder that we are having some laughs in the service of the building of weapons of mass destruction and there’s something inherently problematic about that. 

We can make some jokes about the Manhattan Project and nuclear testing, but they have to be a little askew from actual history and reality. Source: XKCD, obviously.

But maybe Russia is different. Maybe they’ve just got a deeper sense of pathos, and a sense of shared victimhood. The Soviet atomic bombs were built under Stalin. Lavrenty Beria, one of the most fearsome figures in Soviet history, ran the program. Forced GULAG labor was used for the project, under horrendous conditions. The whole thing is just so dark that maybe, perhaps, you can get away with a little humor — maybe it’s a necessary thing. Maybe it’s a Freudian release of tension: you have to sometimes laugh, as a country and a culture, so you don’t just cry.

Or maybe it’s part of the “Stalin wasn’t so bad” nationalist revisionism that has been building in Putin’s 21st-century Russian Federation. I don’t know.

Either way, I find it fascinating. 

Let’s start with my favorite story from the website, “And they didn’t get shot,” which happens to be the very first one I read when I first found the site some time back. Note that this is my own interpretive translation from the Russian.

They didn’t get shot

The head of the nuclear project, Lavrenty Beria, arrived in the Urals, at a new facility under construction. It was a cold autumn; there was nothing at the new site but mud, and driving there required going off-road. There was no housing, other than barracks. Prisoners were still hard at work laying the foundations.

The engineers waited, fearful of the famously harsh NKVD chief. Beria, in his trademark black leather coat, emerged from the car and grabbed his lower back in pain, having been bounced around by the rough ground. The engineers went cold as the thought raced through their minds: “He’ll send us to the Gulag!

The distinguished guest was assigned to the best barrack for his overnight stay. As soon as Beria lay down, the bed he was on collapsed underneath him! The engineers were petrified: “Someone’s getting shot!” 

In the morning, it was discovered that a prisoner had stolen Beria’s black leather coat. The engineers were horrified: “He’ll shoot everyone!”

But in the end, Beria did not shoot anyone. After returning to Moscow, he issued orders to provide the workers of the facility with better food and sent them new furniture. The end.

Humor is sometimes described as subverted expectations, so I guess it works out: we all thought were going to be imprisoned or executed by one of the most terrifying men in the Soviet Union — who imprisoned millions and had thousands shot in the head (and we won’t even bring up the rapes) — but instead, we weren’t! Hilarious!

Most of the stories are not quite this on-the-nose about the circumstances of the Soviet nuclear complex; they fall into the genre of “scientists are clever, except when they’re not, and both of those can be humorous,” which really is the Feynman-style approach, even if the Russian sense of humor is a little different. But there are also lots of ones that, in their own way, take the terror-absurdist situation of working for Stalin and try to turn it into something amusing. An example:

Dead flies

Every evening, the young nuclear engineers at Arzamas-16 (KB-11) who worked with radioactive substances had to hand over their laboratory to the commandant of the military guard. But one night, the commandant was unusually late, leaving them waiting for hours. To amuse themselves, the engineers caught and killed flies, and piled up them by the window. 

– “What’s this?” the commandant asked sternly, after he finally arrived.

– “Flies,” the engineers replied.

– “They’re dead..!?” the commandant asked.

— “Yes, they died… from radiation…” the engineers ad-libbed.

The commandant immediately vanished. He would never come to the laboratory personally again, instead sending assistants. 

The premise of the humor is the same as those in Feynman’s tales about Los Alamos, which I find interesting: dumb military flacks versus clever and bored scientists. But it’s got a much more sinister undertone when you transpose it to the land of Mayak and Chernobyl. 

Here’s another one, which is a twist on classic “misunderstanding” jokes:

Deadlines for everyone

A group of engineers arrived at the construction of a secret facility. At the gate they were greeted by a stern major who had a placard behind him which read: 

        Keep in mind these important lines
        Working hard shortens your time 

“What happened?” the worried engineers asked. “Did the government cut the deadlines for the project?” 

“The poster is not for you,” the major consoled them, “but for the prisoners working here.”

Ah, the engineers misunderstood a message that was meant for the prison labor force, not them! A classic Soviet-era mistake!

I am torn between finding these sorts of things to be exceedingly bizarre and frankly offensive, versus being impressed that the Russian nuclear agency is willing to be so… transparent (?) about the insane situation of the Soviet nuclear program. 

Some of the stories are more in the line of “hooray for Soviet scientists” genre, which I find a lot less interesting. There’s one about Yuri Trutnev visiting Los Alamos in the 1990s and having a picnic with American scientists. Suddenly, a snake emerges from under a stone, and everyone backs away except for Trutnev, who steps forward and spits on its head, and is then celebrated as the “hero of the day.” Ho, hum.

And there are a couple “scientist says something somewhat amusing” stories, such as one who, after a briefing on some kind of “smart,” self-aiming delivery system, remarks, “If the bomb becomes too smart, maybe it won’t want to fall out of the plane!” OK. I guess.

But let’s leave with one that manages to be one of these “revealing” jokes, but isn’t quite as dismal as the others:

Information collection

Uranium mining in the USSR was highly classified. Even high-ranking officials from the Soviet nuclear ministry did not know the details of it. Once, one of these leaders received an American delegation. 

– “Where do you mine your uranium?” one of the guests asked.

– “Everywhere! We have a large country!” the Soviet leader replied. 

The Americans approached a large map of the USSR: “According to our satellite intelligence, you do it here, here, and here.”

– “Well, your intelligence is confused,” the leader explained, and eventually saw the delegation off. But after they had left, he rubbed his hands together gleefully: “Finally, I, too, know where the uranium is mined!”

Who says you can’t have a little clean, atomic humor at the expense of Soviet secrecy?