Atoms for Socialism: The Birth of a Czechoslovak-Soviet Nuclear Utopia

Abstract

Abstract This article focuses on the popular image of the nuclear future of Czechoslovakia in the mid-1950s and analyzes the push for a Czechoslovak-Soviet nuclear utopia. The article describes the foreign orientation of Czechoslovakia's nuclear research through 1955 and the first joint nuclear activities between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. The article also shows how Czechoslovak-Soviet friendship was integrated in practice into the image of the peaceful use of nuclear energy, and it analyzes the image of civilian nuclear activities that was presented to Czechs and Slovaks in a campaign of popularization in the mid-1950s. Soviet “nuclear assistance” to Czechoslovakia, announced in January 1955, corresponded with a change in the popular vision of the nuclear age in Czechoslovakia when a remote nuclear future was transformed into a “lived utopia.”