Who helped the Soviets develop an atomic bomb?

Answer 1

The spies that gave the plans to the Soviets during the war:

• Ted Hall
• Klaus Fuchs
• the Rosenburgs
• Greenglass
• etc.

But the Soviets probably did not need this as they had their own team of scientists that could figure this out. The spies probably only sped up development by a year or two.

• Igor Kurchatov
• Yuli Khariton
• Yakov Zeldovich
• Georgii Flyorov
• Abram Fedorovich Ioffe
• Andrei Sakharov
• etc.

Answer 2

No outside country helped the U.S.S.R. develop its first atomic bomb. The Soviet atomic bomb project was solely indigenous, using only Soviet citizens.

However, the Soviet project was greatly aided by significant espionage of the American/British Manhattan Project. While no plans for bombs were stolen, a great deal of very relevant scientific information was passed on to the Soviets from several mid-level scientists and workers inside the Manhattan Project itself; the best known of these was Klaus Fuchs. While this knowledge was not absolutely critical to development of an atomic bomb (the Soviets had more than enough capable scientists working on the project to have created a bomb solely on their own), the knowledge was nonetheless very important, and greatly accelerated the work - primarily letting the Soviets know which avenues of research the Americans had tried and abandoned, and which areas were considered "useful" to pursue. Sometimes knowing what not to do is as important (or even more important) than knowing what to do.

For comparison, the Manhattan Project ran from roughly 1940 to 1945 at a full "crash" basis. The Soviet project started in late 1942, but did not really attain crash basis until 1945, and even then, was significantly smaller in size than the Manhattan Project. The Soviet's first atomic bomb test was in 1949. Thus, the Soviets were able to create a bomb in roughly the same amount of time that the Americans did, with a project less than half the size.

Answer 3

Klaus Fuchs and Ted Hall provided much Classified Mannhattan Project technical data.

Answer 4

oppenheimer