I am currently teaching English and Russia, and a substantial number of people I have talked to are laboring under the impression that the Soviets had the A-bomb before the US did. This seems incorrect to me. What is the history and the historiography behind this?
The Soviet Union did not explode their first atomic bomb until 1949. There were a small number of Russian scientists that worked on the theory of nuclear fission before 1941, but it wasn't until after Germany collapsed, that Stalin ordered the Soviet atomic bomb program to be put into high gear. Stalin also put Beria in charge of that program. It was far more secretive and done with far less concern towards the worker's safety than the US Army's bomb program. Details of the Soviet Union's A- Bomb can be found in this book "Beria: Stalin's First Lieutenant" by Amy Knight (1993)