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2005-2006 Fellows

David Holloway

Stanford University
Departments of History and Political Science                                        Stanford Institute for International Studies

David Holloway is the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History, a professor of political science, and an SIIS senior fellow. He was co-director of CISAC from 1991 to 1997, and director of SIIS from 1998 to 2003. His research focuses on the international history of nuclear weapons, on science and technology in the Soviet Union, and on the relationship between international history and international relations theory. His book Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956 (Yale University Press, 1994) was chosen by the New York Times Book Review as one of the 11 best books of 1994, and it won the Vucinich and Shulman prizes of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. Holloway also wrote The Soviet Union and the Arms Race (1983) and co-authored The Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative: Technical, Political and Arms Control Assessment (1984).

Project Summary

Holloway’s book project focuses on the life of Yulii Borisovich Khariton, the Soviet nuclear physicist who directed the first Soviet nuclear weapons laboratory from 1946 to 1992.   Holloway will address not only the politics of Khariton’s professional involvement with Stalin, but also the role of Khariton’s Jewish identity and the moral and psychological issues involved in his work.  Holloway views Khariton as a “striking example of political conformism, and all the more interesting because his conformism appears to have been genuine, not a mask behind which he hid his real views.”  Personal interviews with Khariton at his laboratory, as well as memoirs and declassified documents will inform Holloway’s writing.