Josef Stalin's Bomb
An interesting bit of history -- from
Yahoo/Reuters:
In Stalin's bomb lab, dreams of preservation
Behind a thicket of weeds and broken window panes, one of the former Soviet Union's dark secrets is the laboratory where captured German scientists worked to build an atomic bomb for Josef Stalin.
The Sukhumi Institute still exists, in a state of limbo. Limping along under semi-siege in Abkhazia, a breakaway region of Georgia whose existence the rest of the world does not recognize, its Cold War past has been all but forgotten.
Once, around 250 German specialists lived here with their families and built centrifuges to separate uranium isotopes. Now a money-making sideline for the few scientists who keep the institute's research going is designing household heaters.
Deputy director Vladimir Kunitsky does have ambitious hopes for the institute, which was nearly wrecked by the separatist war that engulfed this region on the shores of the Black Sea after the Soviet Union collapsed.
He would like to turn part of the former bomb laboratory into a sanatorium, combining cutting-edge treatments using radioactive sources and a beautiful location a short walk from the Black Sea.
"We are preserving some kind of potential," he said in his bare office, where the paint is peeling off the walls.
The article underplays the conflict that happened here:
which was nearly wrecked by the separatist war that engulfed this region on the shores of the Black Sea after the Soviet Union collapsed
Over 200 physicists and other scientists fled and moved the institute from Sukhumi to Tbilisi(
here and
here). The
conflict is your typical top-heavy government
supressing any individual that may raise a questioning voice. Don't read if you have a vivid imagination or a weak stomach -- this is not fiction -- this is reality -- some people like doing this kind of crap. Che Guevara was a perfect example of a person like this.
Posted by DaveH at June 25, 2008 9:03 PM