In October 1961 a Soviet plane dropped a hydrogen bomb over Novaya Zemlya, the long, seahorse-shaped Arctic archipelago between the Barents and Kara Seas. The 50-megaton “Tsar Bomba,” as it has been nicknamed (its creators called it “Big Ivan”), is the most powerful weapon ever detonated. Astonishingly, its light was visible from a distance of 1,000 kilometers. But it was also just one of more than 200 such tests conducted on or above the islands over 45 years, tests with severe environmental consequences.
Tsar Bomba makes a surprisingly brief appearance in the final pages of Paul Josephson's ample book (p. 378). Although Josephson occasionally mentions Novaya Zemlya, he does not discuss its military role, except for the offshore dumping of nuclear components from the Lenin icebreaker in the 1960s (p. 347). This omission reflects the orientation of the volume as a whole: despite its strengths, The Conquest of the Russian...