Plot synopsis

USSR, 1938–1949. As the world reacts to the discovery of nuclear fission and races in secret toward the bomb, the Soviet Union lags behind, trapped in Stalin’s terror, the Hitler–Stalin pact, and a deep distrust of its own scientists. At the center of the story stand Igor Kurchatov, a gifted physicist with a prophet’s beard, the ruthless security chief Lavrenti Beria, and a small circle of Jewish and “cosmopolitan” scientists working under constant threat of arrest. Fed by intelligence stolen from Britain and the United States, the Soviets launch a crash program to build an atomic industry, powered by 750,000 prisoners, semi-coerced soldiers, and young engineers. In plutonium labs, young women handle deadly materials with no real protection, believing they are saving the Motherland from an inevitable nuclear war. Meanwhile, an ideological campaign brands leading physicists as “rootless cosmopolitans,” destroys genetics as a “whore of imperialism,” and comes close to wrecking the atomic project itself. Kurchatov is forced to confront Stalin with a stark choice: “Either ideological games, or the bomb.” On 29 August 1949, in the Kazakh steppe, the first Soviet nuclear explosion becomes the triumphant and tragic climax of a story where scientific brilliance, ideological madness, and human sacrifice are inseparably intertwined.

commentaries

Сценарии телесериала «Исторические хроники с Николаем Сванидзе», с 1934го по 1953 год. [Scénarios de la série télévisée « Chroniques historiques avec Nikolaï Svanidzé », de 1934 à 1953], Marina ZHUKOVA, Амфора, 2014

- Screenplay

Selected in the following festivals or events :

- Historical Chronicles with Nikolay Svanidze, (kinoglaz.fr), 2026

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