Constructing Nuclear Culture under Soviet-Style Communism: The Hungarian Experience

In the mid-1950s, Atoms for Peace provided a crucial boost for the study of nuclear physics in Hungary, a country that fell under Communist rule and Soviet domination after World War II. Several small, insulated centers of nuclear research already existed, but after President Dwight Eisenhower's speech to the United Nations General Assembly on 3 December 1953, calling for the development of Atoms for Peace programs, Hungary's efforts began to grow quickly. In the glow of the moment, with significant support from the government and the ruling Communist party, Hungarian physicists established new research centers, bought and constructed instruments, published specialized books and journals, held conferences, and organized university courses and programs to train experts both at home and in the USSR. These activities constituted a new, vibrant nuclear culture encompassing diverse areas of life (agriculture, medicine, and some parts of industry) and eventually some cooperative links with Western and Soviet-bloc scientific communities.