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The Soviet Union tests its first nuclear device

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The device known as RDS-1 was detonated at the Semipalatinsk test site in the Kazakh steppe, several years earlier than most American estimates had expected, and detected by American air sampling. Its design owed a great deal to intelligence obtained from the Manhattan Project. The immediate strategic consequence was the end of the American monopoly and the decision, taken in the following months, to proceed with thermonuclear weapons; the political consequence was the atmosphere in which NSC-68 was written and accepted.

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Assembled narrative · 1

Assembled from 11 blocks · 1 evidence · 5 related

  1. Story
  2. The device known as RDS-1 was detonated at the Semipalatinsk test site in the Kazakh steppe, several years earlier than most American estimates had expected, and detected by American air sampling. Its design owed a great deal to intelligence obtained from the Manhattan Project. The immediate strategic consequence was the end of the American monopoly and the decision, taken in the following months, to proceed with thermonuclear weapons; the political consequence was the atmosphere in which NSC-68 was written and accepted.
  3. Knowledge
  4. NSC-68
  5. The Soviet Union tests its first nuclear device
  6. Connections
  7. NSC-68
  8. Containment
  9. The Soviet Union tests its first nuclear device
  10. Evidence
  11. Supports the 1950 date, the authorship associated with Paul Nitze, the argument for a large sustained peacetime build-up and the indivisibility framing of the confrontation. V55 verification basis: NOT consulted — www.archives.gov is blocked by the environment's egress proxy; nothing is quoted from the document and no budget figure is given.
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/atlas?object=EVT_RDS1_TEST_1949&experience=EVT_RDS1_TEST_1949