Who Knew What and When Did They Know It? Michael Gordin Looks at Cold War Uncertainties

Ellen Gilbert

It seems apt that Michael Gordin’s book Red Cloud at Dawn: Truman, Stalin, and the End of the Atomic Monopoly opens with William Blake’s poem “The Tyger.” A “fearful symmetry” truly is at the heart of this new volume by the Princeton University Professor of History and Director of the Program in Russian and Eurasian Studies.

Mr. Gordin discussed his book, which he described as “an international history,” at Labyrinth Books last week, noting that the period it described was “bounded by explosions,” beginning with the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945, and ending with the Soviet’s test of their own atomic bomb, “First Lightning,” in 1949. (First Lightning was also dubbed “Joe 1” by Americans, after the then-Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.)

“This is fundamentally a book about intelligence,” Mr. Gordin said, emphasizing how fraught with suspicion on both sides the process of gathering information was — and still is. The automatic response to the release of any information by either government, he said, would necessarily be “‘Why tell it; why tell it now?’ and ‘Is it complete?’”

“Every decision the Soviets made about their own development of an atomic bomb was informed by the fact that the U.S. had a monopoly on them after 1945,” Mr. Gordin observed. The obverse was equally true, with the U.S. trying to keep on top of developments in the Soviet Union.

Epistemological questions abounded, said Mr. Gordin, as each side wondered “how much do they know that I know that they know…” and “how people perceived what other people perceived.” The question became “how you act in a world where every reaction caused a counter reaction,” any one of which could be fatal.

Mr. Gordin described scribbled messages on shreds of newsprint written in invisible ink based on a code using Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” as characteristic of espionage operations of the day. He likened the cumbersome system used by the U.S. to detect foreign nuclear activity in the late 1940s to “dusting the outside of the Empire State Building for fingerprints every day.”

In response to an audience member’s question about whether or not the Soviets would have developed their own atomic bomb if the U.S. hadn’t already done so, Mr. Gordin said he honestly didn’t know.

In the context of another question, more than one audience member was surprised to learn that President Harry Truman did not actually give the command for a second atomic bomb to be dropped on Nagasaki. Truman had given a blanket order for the atomic bombing to begin, Mr. Gordin explained, and the Nagasaki bombing followed, the way any other fire-bombing would occur once an order was given. After Nagaski, however, Truman gave a stop order, saying he would determine when and if another atomic bomb would be used.

Mr. Gordin expressed admiration for the work of journalist Stephanie Cooke, who was scheduled to discuss her research on nuclear energy later that evening at a Coalition for Peace Action event. He is currently writing a review of her most recent book, In Mortal Hands: A Cautionary History of the Nuclear Age, and he described it as “incredibly interesting,” noting that it picks up where his book ends. “The history of nuclear energy is usually given short shrift,” he observed, and that’s unfortunate, since using atomic power is often seen “as a way to redeem the existence of nuclear bombs.”

As for concerns about the use of nuclear weapons in today’s world, Mr. Gordin said that questions regarding reliable intelligence still abound, and that you could take quotes from 1949, replace the name “Russia” with “Iran,” and “have today’s news.”

“The questions are the same,” he concluded. “Maybe this time the answer will be different.”

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