The Soviet Union and the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency

Abstract

The Soviet Union responded sceptically to Eisenhower’s ‘Atoms for Peace’ speech in December 1953 but eventually entered negotiations on the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency. It believed the IAEA would provide opportunities for political influence and scientific collaboration. It did not want the peaceful uses of atomic energy around the world to be dominated by the United States. It pressed for close ties between the new agency and the United Nations and supported India and other developing countries in their opposition to safeguards. The new Agency was to be a forum for competition as well as cooperation.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank William Burr, James Goodby, and Elisabeth Roehrlich for help and advice, and the Nuclear Reading Group at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University, for comments on an earlier draft.

Notes

¹ “Iz dnevnika V.M. Molotova 7oe dekabria 1953g. Priem amerikanskogo posla Bolena v 15:00,” Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsial’no-Politicheskoi Istorii (RGASPI), f. 82, op. 2, d. 1087, ll. 105–107.

² Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Address before the General Assembly of the United Nations on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States. Dwight D. Eisenhower 1953 (Washington DC: USGPO, 1960), 813–22, 816, 817, 820, 821.

³ Quoted by McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival: Choices about the Bomb in the First Fifty Years (New York: Random House, 1988), 288.

⁴ Eisenhower, “Address before the General Assembly,” 822; Entry for December 10, 1953, in Robert H. Ferrell, ed., The Eisenhower Diaries (WW Norton: New York, 1981), 261–2.

⁵ “Statement by the Secretary of State to the North Atlantic Council Ministerial Session, Paris, April 23, 1954,” Department of State, Office of the Historian, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) 1952–1954, Vol. V, Pt. 1, 512. At a National Security Council meeting on March 31, 1953 ‘the President and Secretary Dulles were in complete agreement that somehow or other the tabu which surrounds the use of atomic weapons would have to be destroyed’: “Memorandum of Discussion at a Special Meeting of the NSC, March 31, 1953,” FRUS 1952–1954, Vol. XV, Pt. 1, 827. See also John Krige, “Atoms for Peace, Scientific Internationalism and Scientific Intelligence,” Osiris 21, no. 1 (2006): 161–81; Martin J. Medhurst, “Atoms for Peace and Nuclear Hegemony: The Rhetorical Structure of a Cold War Campaign,” Armed Forces and Society 23, no. 4 (1997): 571–93.

⁶ IAEA Statute, in David Fischer, History of the International Atomic Agency: The First Forty Years (Vienna: the Agency, 1997), 471.

⁷ Ian Hurd, International Organizations: Politics, Law, Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 2.

⁸ Ibid., 10.

⁹ See, for example, Richard G. Hewlett and Jack M. Holl, Atoms for Peace and War 1953–1961: Eisenhower and the Atomic Energy Commission (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); Paul C. Szasz, The Law and Practices of the International Atomic Energy Agency (Vienna: International Atomic Agency, 1970); Lawrence Scheinman, The International Atomic Energy Agency and World Nuclear Order (Washington DC: Resources for the Future, 1987). This paper draws on Roland Timerbaev’s indispensable Rossiia i iadernoe nerasprostranenie (Moscow: Nauka, 1999) and on newly available documents from various archives.

¹⁰ “Proposals for an International Atomic Development Authority,” Department of State Bulletin XIV, no. 364 (1946): 1056–1062.

¹¹ D. Skobel’tsyn to L.P. Beria and V.M. Molotov, 12 October 1946, Vestnik Ministerstva Inostrannykh Del SSSR, July 15, 1991, 40. A.A. Gromyko to V.M. Molotov, June 7, 1950, with a draft memorandum on the atomic question: RGASPI, f. 82, op. 2, d. 1087, ll. 77–82.

¹² “Proposals for an International Atomic Development Authority,” 1059.

¹³ Ibid., 1060.

¹⁴ David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939–1956 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 158.

¹⁵ “Address by the Soviet Representative (Gromyko) to the UNAEC, June 19, 1946,” Documents on Disarmament, 17–24.

¹⁶ D. Skobel’tsyn to L.P. Beria and V.M. Molotov, October 12, 1946, 39–40. Beria was chairman of the Special Committee on the Atomic Bomb. Instructions to the Soviet delegation at the UNAEC evidently came from the Special Committee as well as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

¹⁷ “Replies to questions put by Mr. Hugh Baillie, President of the United Press of America,” 28 October 1946, and “Replies to questions put by Mr. Elliot Roosevelt, in an Interview,” 21 December 1946, both in J.V. Stalin, Collected Works Volume 16, Marxists Internet Archive (2008) www.marxists.org (accessed May 5, 2014).

¹⁸ Skobel’tsyn to Beria and Molotov, October 12, 1946, 39–40.

¹⁹ “Soviet Proposals Introduced in the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission, June 11, 1947,” Documents on Disarmament, 85–8.

²⁰ Bertrand Goldschmidt, “A Forerunner of the NPT? The Soviet Proposals of 1947,” International Atomic Energy Agency Bulletin 28, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 58–64.

²¹ All this was set out in a memorandum from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Central Committee on 28 February 1955. See Timerbaev, Rossiia i iadernoe nerasprostranenie, 95–6.

²² “Rasporiazhenie GKO No. 2352ss ‘Ob organizatsii rabot po uranu”’, September 28, 1942, in L.D. Riabev, gen. ed., Atomnyi Proekt SSSR: Dokumenty i Materialy (hereafter AP SSSR) Volume I, Book 1 (Moscow: Nauka, 1998), 269–71.

²³ “Postanovlenie GOKO No. 9887ss/op ‘O Spetsial’nom komitete pri GOKO,’” 20 August 1945, AP SSSR, Volume II, Book 1 (Moscow-Sarov: Nauka, VNIIEF, 1999), 11–13.

²⁴ “Protokol No. 7 zasedaniia Spetsial’nogo komiteta pri Sovnarkome SSSR,” AP SSSR Volume II, Book 1, 41; “Protokol No. 8 Tekhnicheskogo soveta Spetsial’nogo komiteta pri Sovnarkome SSSR,” 13 November 1945, AP SSSR, Volume II, Book 4 (Moscow-Sarov: Nauka VNIIEF, 2003), 38.

²⁵ Kurchatov to Beriia, April 17, 1947, in I.V. Kurchatov, Sobranie nauchnykh trudov: v 6 T., Vol. 6 (Moscow: Nauka, 2013) 115–16.

²⁶ “Postanovlenie SM SSSR No 2030-788ss/op: O nauchno-issledovatel’skikh, proektnykh i eksperimental’nykh rabotakh po ispol’zovaniiu atomnoi energii dlia mirnykh tselei,” 16 May 1950, AP SSSR Volume II, Book 5 (Moscow-Sarov: Nauka, VNIIEF, 2005), 215–17.

²⁷ Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, 346–8.

²⁸ “Voprosy Ministerstva srednego mashinostroeniia, 31 August–1 September 1953,” AP SSSR, Volume II, Book 5, 798-799.

²⁹ Timerbaev, Rossiia i iadernoe nerasprostranenie, 86.

³⁰ “Statement by the Soviet Government on President Eisenhower’s ‘Atoms for Peace’ Address,” December 21, 1953, in Documents on Disarmament 1945–1959, Volume 1 1945–1956 (Washington DC: Dept. of State: USGPO, 1960), 401–407, 406.

³¹ “Draft Declaration Handed to Secretary Dulles by Mr. Molotov, Berlin, January 30, 1954,” in US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Atoms for Peace Manual: A Compilation of Official Materials on International Cooperation For Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, December 1953–July 1955 (Washington DC: United States Government Printing Office (USGPO), 1955), 264–5. The exchanges between the Soviet Union and the United States up to September 23, 1954 were published by the Soviet government in 1954, with American agreement. See K peregovoram mezhdu pravitel’stvom SSSR i pravitel’stvom SShA po atomnoi probleme (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1954).

³² Speech of John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State, before the Council on Foreign Relations, 12 January 1954, Documents on American Foreign Relations 1954 (New York: Harper & Bros, 1955), 7–15.

³³ “Outline of an International Atomic Energy Agency,” March 19, 1954, in Atoms for Peace Manual, 266–9.

³⁴ “Soviet Aide Memoire of April 27,” in Atoms for Peace Manual, 269–74, 271.

³⁵ “Memorandum of Conversation, by the Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs (Merchant),” May 1, 1954, FRUS 1952–1954 Vol. II, Part 2, National Security Affairs, 1413–16, 1416.

³⁶ Gerard C. Smith, Disarming Diplomat: The Memoirs of Gerard C. Smith, Arms Control Negotiator (Lanham: Madison Books, 1996), 38.

³⁷ “Informal Paper Left With Mr. Molotov by Secretary Dulles, Geneva, May 1, 1954,” in Atoms for Peace Manual, 274.

³⁸ Ibid. A more elaborate response to Molotov was provided by a State Department memorandum given to the Soviet Ambassador on July 9, 1954: Ibid. 274–8.

³⁹ “Aide Memoire Handed to Ambassador Bohlen by Mr. Gromyko, Moscow, September 22, 1954,” in Atoms for Peace Manual, 278–82.

⁴⁰ Hewlett and Holl, Atoms for Peace and War 1953–1961, 228–32.

⁴¹ “Atomic Energy,” in Atoms for Peace Manual, 284.

⁴² “The Soviet Foreign Ministry to the United States Embassy in the Soviet Union,” FRUS, 1952–1954 Volume II, Part 2, National Security Affairs, 1567–9.

⁴³ “Postanovlenie Prezidiuma TsK KPSS ‘Ob oznakomlenii obshchestvennosti s ustroistvom atomnoi elektrostantsii v SSSR,’” 15 January 1955, Akademiia nauk v resheniiakh TsK KPSS: Biuro Prezidiuma, Prezidium, Sekretariat TsK KPSS, 1952–1958 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2010), 216–17.

⁴⁴ V. Larin, Mezhdunarodnoe agentstvo po atomnoi energii (Moscow: Gosiurizdat, 1957), 8–9. Larin was the nom-de-plume of V.I. Oberemko, a consultant on the peaceful uses of atomic energy to the Foreign Ministry’s Department of International Organisations. See Timerbaev, Rossiia i iadernoe nerasprostranenie, 80.

⁴⁵ “Pamiatnaia zapiska, vruchennaia zamestitelem ministra inostrannykh del SSSR V.A. Zorinym vremennomu poverennomu v delakh SShA v SSSR g-nu W. Walmsley 18 iiulia 1955 goda v Moskve,” Mezhdunarodnaia zhizn’ no. 10 (1956): 133–4.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 133.

⁴⁷ “Talks on Diversion of Fissile Material, Geneva, 22–29 August 1955,” AB6.1592, TNA; Hewlett and Holl, Atoms for Peace and War, 314–17.

⁴⁸ “Opasnosti atomnoi voiny i predlozhenie prezidenta Eizenkhauera,” AP SSSR Vol. III, Book 2 (Moscow-Sarov: Nauka, VNIIEF, 2009), 163–6.

⁴⁹ Timerbaev, Rossiia i iadernoe nerasprostranenie, 94–5.

⁵⁰ Timerbaev, Rossiia i iadernoe nerasprostranenie, 94. Timerbaev provides no date for this memorandum but it was evidently written in the summer of 1954, before the Soviet Union informed Washington that it would continue discussions.

⁵¹ V. Malyshev and I. Kurchatov to G.M. Malenkov, April 29, 1954, in I.V. Kurchatov, Sobranie nauchnykh trudov, 129–30.

⁵² Liu Yanqiong and Liu Jifeng, “Analysis of Soviet Technology Transfer in the Development of China’s Nuclear Weapons,” Comparative Technology Transfer and Society 7, no. 1 (April 2009): 66–110.

⁵³ V. Malyshev, B. Vannikov, I. Kurchatov to the Central Committee of the CPSU, December 28, 1954, in Kurchatov, Sobranie nauchnykh trudov, 134–6.

⁵⁴ Susanna Schrafstetter and Stephen Twigge, Avoiding Armageddon: Europe, the United States, and the Struggle for Nuclear Nonproliferation, 1945–1970 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004), 55–6.

⁵⁵ The July 1954 report of an expert commission, headed by Kurchatov, on research in some areas of nuclear physics pointed to a serious lag in recent years, one of the reasons being the complete absence of contact with foreign scientists: “Postanovlenie AN SSSR, 9 iiulia 1954g.,” RGASPI f. 5, op. 17, d. 458, ll. 48ff.

⁵⁶ Timerbaev, Rossiia i iadernoe nerasprostranenie, 103.

⁵⁷ This emerges very clearly from the collection of documents in Akademiia nauk v resheniiakh TsK KPSS.

⁵⁸ Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, 351–4.

⁵⁹ Fischer, History of the IAEA, 32. On atomic euphoria in the Soviet Union see Paul R. Josephson, Red Atom: Russia’s Nuclear Power Program from Stalin to Today (New York: WH Freeman, 2000).

⁶⁰ Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, 360–62.

⁶¹ Fischer, History of the IAEA, 35.

⁶² “Nota, peredannaia gosudarstvennym departamentom SShA posol’stvu SSSR v SShA 29 iiuliia 1955 goda v Vashingtone,” Mezhdunarodnaia Zhizn’ no. 10 (1956): 134–41.

⁶³ “Pamiatnaia zapiska,” 143–4.

⁶⁴ Timerbaev, Rossiia i iadernoe nerasprostranenie, 102–103.

⁶⁵ Ibid., 104.

⁶⁶ Ibid., 105–106.

⁶⁷ “History of the Draft Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency as adopted by the Twelve-Nation Working Level Meeting on April 18, 1956,” NA RG 326 Division of International Affairs records relating to the formation of the IAEA 1954–1957, Box 8 international affairs 12-5 statute. This is a legislative history of the Washington Working Level meeting prepared by James Goodby after the meeting. I am grateful to Ambassador Goodby and to William Burr for drawing this document to my attention and providing me with a copy of it and of the document cited in the next footnote. See also Astrid Forland, Negotiating Supranational Rules: The Genesis of the International Atomic Energy Agency Safeguards System (Bergen: University of Bergen, 1998), 75–8.

⁶⁸ Wadsworth, “Report of the Chairman, United States Delegation to the Working Level Meeting on the Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency February 27, 1956 through April 18, 1956,” Memorandum to Dulles, April 26, 1954, p. 7. NA RG 326 Division of International Affairs records relating to the formation of the IAEA 1954-57, box 8 international affairs 12-5 working level meeting.

⁶⁹ Larin, Mezhdunarodnoe agentstvo, 61.

⁷⁰ Fischer, History of the IAEA, 29.

⁷¹ Larin, Mezhdunarodnoe agentstvo, 61.

⁷² Timerbaev, Rossiia i iadernoe nerasprostranenie, 107–108.

⁷³ Ibid., 108–10; Bertrand Goldschmidt, "The Origins of the International Atomic Energy Agency," in International Atomic Energy Authority: Personal Reflections (Vienna: The Agency, 1997), 9–13; Larin, Mezhdunarodnoe agentstvo, 64–71.

⁷⁴ Goldschmidt, “The Origins,” 12–13. Forland, Negotiating Supranational Rules, 67–74.

⁷⁵ For the US figures see “Summary of Declassified Nuclear Stockpile Information,” US Department of Energy, Office of the Press Secretary, Washington, DC 20585, June 27, 1994. For the Soviet estimates see NRDC Nuclear Archive, Table of USSR/Russian Nuclear Warheads 1949–1975, nrdc.org/nuclear/nudb/datab10.asp (accessed May 7, 2015).

⁷⁶ Wadsworth, Memorandum to Dulles, April 26, 1954, 8.

⁷⁷ “Kratkoe izlozhenie doklada V.M. Molotova na profsoiuznom sobranii sotrudnikov Predstavitel’stva SSSR pri MAGATE, “Ob itogakh 5-oi General’noi konferentsii MAGATE i nashikh zadachakh,” October 19, 1961. RGASPI f. 82, op. 2, d. 1416B, ll. 65–9.

⁷⁸ Wadsworth, Memorandum to Dulles, April 26, 1954, 7–8.

⁷⁹ Fischer, History of the International Atomic Energy Agency, 44.

⁸⁰ Larin, Mezhdunarodnoe agentstvo.

⁸¹ “Kratkoe izlozhenie,” 68–9.