Was There a Real “Mineshaft Gap”? Bomb Shelters in the USSR, 1945–1962
During
the Cold War, the nature, intent, and scale of Soviet civil defense
were the subject of heated debate in the West. Some analysts claimed
that the USSR possessed a massive civil defense program capable of
seriously destabilizing the strategic nuclear balance. This article
draws on previously unexamined archival sources to investigate Soviet
shelter construction from 1953, when the USSR's civil defense forces
began planning for nuclear war, until the Cuban missile crisis in
October 1962. These documents indicate that shelter construction
consumed the majority of Soviet civil defense funding and was conducted
by order of the Council of Ministers. Although the shelters were
inadequate both technologically and quantitatively to protect the Soviet
population from an all-out U.S. thermonuclear attack, they existed in
significant numbers and represented a considerable expenditure of
limited Soviet resources. These new revelations provide important
insights into Soviet thinking about nuclear war during the Khrushchev
era.
