ABSTRACT
The historical roots of Soviet nuclear engineering can be traced back to the 1920s and 1930s, when physicists and chemists in the service of the new Bolshevik state began to conduct experimental studies of the atom’s inner structure. This research took place in a distinctly urban geography, tying into a metropolitan lifestyle and featuring strong connections to higher education. Leningrad, the former Imperial capital, emerged as the main scientific hotspot in this context. It hosted two key institutions. The first was the Physical-Technical X-Ray Institute, which focused on research in modern physics and was located in the city’s northern outskirts. The other was the State Radium Institute, whose buildings were in the same area. It specialized in the chemistry of radioactive elements, building on a research tradition established well before World War I by the famous Russian scholar Vladimir Vernadsky. 19 The two institutes complemented each other in a way that would prove decisive for the future: the physicists laid the groundwork for understanding the atom and controlling nuclear chain reactions, while the radiochemists paved the way for mastery over what would become the nuclear fuel cycle.
