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Johns Hopkins Nuclear History and Contemporary Affairs
Inheriting the Bomb: The Collapse of the USSR and the Nuclear Disarmament of Ukraine
The collapse of the Soviet Union unleashed the specter of the largest wave of nuclear proliferation in history. Why did Ukraine ultimately choose the path of nuclear disarmament?
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left its nearly 30,000 nuclear weapons spread over the territories of four newly sovereign states: Belarus, Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine. This collapse cast a shadow of profound ambiguity over the fate of the world's largest arsenal of the deadliest weapons ever created. In Inheriting the Bomb, Mariana Budjeryn reexamines the history of nuclear predicament caused by the Soviet collapse and the subsequent nuclear disarmament of the non-Russian Soviet successor states.
Although Belarus and Kazakhstan renounced their claim to Soviet nuclear weapons, Ukraine proved to be a difficult case: with its demand for recognition as a lawful successor state of the USSR, a nuclear superpower, the country became a major proliferation concern. And yet by 1994, Ukraine had acceded to the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) as a non-nuclear-weapon state and proceeded to transfer its nuclear warheads to Russia, which emerged as the sole nuclear successor of the USSR.
How was this international proliferation crisis averted? Drawing on extensive archival research in the former Soviet Union and the United States, Budjeryn uncovers a fuller and more nuanced narrative of post-Soviet denuclearization. She reconstructs Ukraine's path to nuclear disarmament to understand how its leaders made sense of the nuclear armaments their country inherited. Among the various factors that contributed to Ukraine's nuclear renunciation, including diplomatic pressure from the United States and Russia and domestic economic woes, the NPT stands out as a salient force that provided an international framework for managing the Soviet nuclear collapse.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left its nearly 30,000 nuclear weapons spread over the territories of four newly sovereign states: Belarus, Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine. This collapse cast a shadow of profound ambiguity over the fate of the world's largest arsenal of the deadliest weapons ever created. In Inheriting the Bomb, Mariana Budjeryn reexamines the history of nuclear predicament caused by the Soviet collapse and the subsequent nuclear disarmament of the non-Russian Soviet successor states.
Although Belarus and Kazakhstan renounced their claim to Soviet nuclear weapons, Ukraine proved to be a difficult case: with its demand for recognition as a lawful successor state of the USSR, a nuclear superpower, the country became a major proliferation concern. And yet by 1994, Ukraine had acceded to the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) as a non-nuclear-weapon state and proceeded to transfer its nuclear warheads to Russia, which emerged as the sole nuclear successor of the USSR.
How was this international proliferation crisis averted? Drawing on extensive archival research in the former Soviet Union and the United States, Budjeryn uncovers a fuller and more nuanced narrative of post-Soviet denuclearization. She reconstructs Ukraine's path to nuclear disarmament to understand how its leaders made sense of the nuclear armaments their country inherited. Among the various factors that contributed to Ukraine's nuclear renunciation, including diplomatic pressure from the United States and Russia and domestic economic woes, the NPT stands out as a salient force that provided an international framework for managing the Soviet nuclear collapse.
352 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 27, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 22, 2025
Budjeryn does an excellent job taking on Ukraine's nuclear disarmament following the collapse of the USSR in excruciating detail, with a nearly week-by-week overview of the tumultuous 1992-1993 period when the topic of bombs dominated the Rada. The book is not too long, however, as a result of how quickly Ukraine went from nuclear inheritors to fully dismantling their entire arsenal. She also covers similar processes of disarmament in Belarus and Kazakhstan, but Ukraine remains the focus considering the context of the Budapest memorandum and its breach by Russia following the invasion of Ukraine. It is clear that nuclear weapons would have been useful for deterring Putin's warmongering, but Budjeryn demonstrably makes note of the many challenges Ukraine would have faced had they maintained an arsenal. It would have been too costly, too technologically demanding, too defiant of both American and Russian foreign policy, and too counterproductive for the impending landmark renewal of the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1995. But it is tempting to consider how the situation in Eastern Europe would be today had Ukraine not undergone disarmament. If the United States had refused to guarantee protection for a developing nuclear program, just as how they failed to protect the Budapest memorandum, Ukrainian proliferation would have surely ended in disaster. Or, an armed Ukraine may have very well deterred any Russian aggression had the United States established security guarantees for weapons develoment. Yet it is difficult to ponder this further when considering the complete lack of credible security guarantees for Ukraine under the current Trump administration. Any additional hypothetical guarantees for a nuclear program would have surely ended, just as how American nuclear security guarantees for Western Europe are currently in massive limbo. The 2022 invasion greatly confounded Budjeryn's writing process (much of the book was written in 2021 and before); the second Trump administration would have done so even more.
June 12, 2024
This timely and fascinating book analyzes the circumstances in the 1990s that led to Ukraine (and Belarus and Kazakhstan) giving up the nuclear weapons left on their territory after the Soviet Union's 1991 collapse. This decision and the assurances that Ukraine wrung out of Russia, the US, and other nuclear powers, are often presented in the context of simple counterfactuals, as Budjeryn notes in her conclusion: "If Ukraine had kept its nuclear weapons, would Russia have invaded in 2014 and 2022?" But this book dispels the most facile versions of these events.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and its military industrial complex is messy but largely non-violent. It didn't have to turn out that way. The interlocking pieces of Soviet nuclear deterrence did not neatly split along Union Republic borders, meaning that Ukraine was home to thousands of nuclear warheads, but not the decision-making network for using them. The United States and Russian Federation faced multivariable calculi in trying to determine who was responsible for Soviet nukes while Ukrainian politicians grappled with what it meant to "inherit" Soviet nuclear forces and what the implications would be for their emergence onto the world stage. Would they arrive as responsible signatories to the many international treaties that attempted to regulate nuclear technology or would they join the ranks of other "pariah" states like Libya and North Korea?
The book tackles these questions (and more!) from a multiperspectival approach, centering Ukraine, but leaving ample room for other views. It is a detailed and fascinating account of the challenges facing the world as the Soviet Union came unspooled.
I highly recommend it for anyone wondering "Why didn't Ukraine keep its nukes?" or paying attention to the nuclear-tinged rhetoric coming out of Russia since its invasion really kicked into high gear.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and its military industrial complex is messy but largely non-violent. It didn't have to turn out that way. The interlocking pieces of Soviet nuclear deterrence did not neatly split along Union Republic borders, meaning that Ukraine was home to thousands of nuclear warheads, but not the decision-making network for using them. The United States and Russian Federation faced multivariable calculi in trying to determine who was responsible for Soviet nukes while Ukrainian politicians grappled with what it meant to "inherit" Soviet nuclear forces and what the implications would be for their emergence onto the world stage. Would they arrive as responsible signatories to the many international treaties that attempted to regulate nuclear technology or would they join the ranks of other "pariah" states like Libya and North Korea?
The book tackles these questions (and more!) from a multiperspectival approach, centering Ukraine, but leaving ample room for other views. It is a detailed and fascinating account of the challenges facing the world as the Soviet Union came unspooled.
I highly recommend it for anyone wondering "Why didn't Ukraine keep its nukes?" or paying attention to the nuclear-tinged rhetoric coming out of Russia since its invasion really kicked into high gear.
December 25, 2023
Inheriting the Bomb is a revealing probe into the Soviet Union’s nuclear break-up, the post-Union settlement of former member states, and the forces that shape nuclear decision-making and international politics. Author Mariana Budjeryn, a researcher at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and an ethnic Ukrainian, expands on her PhD dissertation to examine how Ukraine, upon the dissolution of the USSR, inherited overnight the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal, including thousands of tactical nuclear weapons, research reactors, missile factories, control and guidance infrastructure, and enriched uranium. Leveraging an exhaustive corpus of oral history interviews, memoirs, news articles, and archival documents, Budjeryn elucidates how Ukraine’s dilemma to relinquish its Soviet nuclear infrastructure was interwoven with its nascent statehood and its ultimate betrayal when Russia invaded two decades later.
In 1991, a nuclear question was foisted on Ukraine: would the country surrender to Russia its inheritance of thousands of nuclear warheads and delivery systems, and what would it receive in return? The end of the USSR precipitated the dawn of independence movements, the so-called “parade of sovereignties,” in the former member republics, as well as concerns about “loose nukes” and spiraling arms races. The major global powers quickly committed to a new regime of nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament treaties and attempted to bring the new post-Soviet nations into that fold. Ukraine, as Budjeryn describes, was the most resistant of the USSR’s nuclear heirs. Concerned about renouncing its possession of nuclear technology and material to Russia, an equally nascent but increasingly unstable post-Soviet nation, without anything in return motivated Ukrainian political and military officials to drag their feet for as long as possible. By 1994, Ukraine had begrudgingly reached a formal settlement with Russia and the US: they would surrender their possession of nuclear material, in exchange for vague “security assurances” from both nations.
According to Budjeryn, Ukraine, concerned that the security guarantees were inadequately binding, had reason to question the merits of the agreement that later became known as the Budapest Memorandum. Budjeryn describes a Ukraine that was squeezed between its quest for sovereignty and international recognition, as well as the haunting potential of an invasion by its eastern neighbor. Budjeryn concludes that Ukraine had no other option but to sign the memorandum because its claims for nuclear retention were too nuanced, its age and experience too minimal to carve out exceptions to the developing international consensus on nuclear nonproliferation, and the entreaties of the global powers were too forceful in thwarting the country’s petition to legitimate its nuclear inheritance.
However, Budjeryn seemingly thinks the security regime that ensnared Ukraine in a state of vulnerability could have been avoided. She scolds the discriminatory dual-status nature of the non-proliferation treaties that sanctioned nuclear possession for some states but not for others, fingers the “arrogant” gentleman’s club of Great Powers for refusing to “acknowledge Ukraine’s agency” over its nuclear possessions, and claims the Russian invasions starting in 2014 as the ultimate “I told you so moment” that exposed the hollowness of its security guarantees. Inheriting the Bomb is not only a story of the tortuous road to nuclear disarmament and the establishment of a multilateral nonproliferation regime, but also of how a nascent state traded its national security for sovereignty, and how that exchange would eventually come back to haunt it.
In 1991, a nuclear question was foisted on Ukraine: would the country surrender to Russia its inheritance of thousands of nuclear warheads and delivery systems, and what would it receive in return? The end of the USSR precipitated the dawn of independence movements, the so-called “parade of sovereignties,” in the former member republics, as well as concerns about “loose nukes” and spiraling arms races. The major global powers quickly committed to a new regime of nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament treaties and attempted to bring the new post-Soviet nations into that fold. Ukraine, as Budjeryn describes, was the most resistant of the USSR’s nuclear heirs. Concerned about renouncing its possession of nuclear technology and material to Russia, an equally nascent but increasingly unstable post-Soviet nation, without anything in return motivated Ukrainian political and military officials to drag their feet for as long as possible. By 1994, Ukraine had begrudgingly reached a formal settlement with Russia and the US: they would surrender their possession of nuclear material, in exchange for vague “security assurances” from both nations.
According to Budjeryn, Ukraine, concerned that the security guarantees were inadequately binding, had reason to question the merits of the agreement that later became known as the Budapest Memorandum. Budjeryn describes a Ukraine that was squeezed between its quest for sovereignty and international recognition, as well as the haunting potential of an invasion by its eastern neighbor. Budjeryn concludes that Ukraine had no other option but to sign the memorandum because its claims for nuclear retention were too nuanced, its age and experience too minimal to carve out exceptions to the developing international consensus on nuclear nonproliferation, and the entreaties of the global powers were too forceful in thwarting the country’s petition to legitimate its nuclear inheritance.
However, Budjeryn seemingly thinks the security regime that ensnared Ukraine in a state of vulnerability could have been avoided. She scolds the discriminatory dual-status nature of the non-proliferation treaties that sanctioned nuclear possession for some states but not for others, fingers the “arrogant” gentleman’s club of Great Powers for refusing to “acknowledge Ukraine’s agency” over its nuclear possessions, and claims the Russian invasions starting in 2014 as the ultimate “I told you so moment” that exposed the hollowness of its security guarantees. Inheriting the Bomb is not only a story of the tortuous road to nuclear disarmament and the establishment of a multilateral nonproliferation regime, but also of how a nascent state traded its national security for sovereignty, and how that exchange would eventually come back to haunt it.
February 4, 2023
If you're interested in learning what paved the road to the war in Europe today, this is a must-read book. Political scientist and nuclear historian Mariana Budjeryn (who also appeared on my podcast to discuss it) has written an encyclopedic account of Ukraine's nuclear disarmament after the collapse of the USSR.
Rather than attempt to definitively answer the counter-factual question of whether Ukraine in the early 1990s should have kept its nuclear inheritance to deter future Russian aggression, Budjeryn shows us how the Russia-Ukraine relationship was influenced by the nuclear issue in the weeks, months, and years after the USSR was swept into the dustbin of history. That Ukraine had no politically practical opportunity (or real desire) to hold onto its nuclear warheads after 1991 was a reflection of its continuing subordinate role in international affairs and in its relationship to Moscow. That's because Ukraine (and Belarus and Kazakhstan) was never accepted as an equal former Soviet republic to Russia. Some of this was Great Power politics, some of it was institutional or unavoidable. Ukraine claimed it possessed the very weapons it was dedicated to getting rid of, because its new leaders wanted Russia and the U.S. to respect its new sovereignty and guarantee its security in exchange for giving up what was rightfully theirs (the nukes), at least in their eyes.
But the U.S. was hellbent on preventing any new nuclear states from emerging after 1991, and Russia wasn't interested in treating Ukraine as an equal, let alone recognize the legitimacy of its sovereign independence. And there was no "in between" under the NPT's international regime. You either were a nuclear-weapon state or not one. You could not claim temporary status as possessor of nukes on the way to disarmament. So when the three nations signed the Budapest agreement in 1994, the security guarantees Ukraine negotiated amounted to little more than unenforceable assurances. That was proven to be the case in 2014 when Russia invaded Crimea and the West didn't intervene, as no one expected it would.
Budjeryn is a clear-eyed analyst who dispenses with highly technical matters in accessible prose. This is not a book about nuclear science (thank goodness). But the text is loaded with lots of abbreviations for the different kinds of weapons, international bodies, and treaties. Keep a bookmark in the glossary for easy reference if you forget what LEU or HEU or START or MFA or CIS stands for.
As mentioned, this is an encyclopedic record of nuclear diplomacy among Ukraine, the U.S., and Russia with sprinkles of anecdote to lighten the density. In other words, this is not narrative history written in a dramatic style. It's a bit dry, but that's okay because the information is important.
The book is worth reading for Budjeryn's conclusion alone, written as Russia's armies began destroying her home country. And its most memorable passages are Budjeryn's brief reflections on childhood in Soviet Ukraine, the village of her grandparents, the whispers over the dinner table about the history Moscow hid from its subjects, and the aftermath of Chernobyl. Chernobyl influenced everything that came after it in Ukrainian politics, and to its credit Ukraine more or less voluntarily gave up its nuclear weapons. Rather than chastise them for a "blunder," they should be applauded for understanding that nuclear "deterrence" would likely have been proven an illusion.
Rather than attempt to definitively answer the counter-factual question of whether Ukraine in the early 1990s should have kept its nuclear inheritance to deter future Russian aggression, Budjeryn shows us how the Russia-Ukraine relationship was influenced by the nuclear issue in the weeks, months, and years after the USSR was swept into the dustbin of history. That Ukraine had no politically practical opportunity (or real desire) to hold onto its nuclear warheads after 1991 was a reflection of its continuing subordinate role in international affairs and in its relationship to Moscow. That's because Ukraine (and Belarus and Kazakhstan) was never accepted as an equal former Soviet republic to Russia. Some of this was Great Power politics, some of it was institutional or unavoidable. Ukraine claimed it possessed the very weapons it was dedicated to getting rid of, because its new leaders wanted Russia and the U.S. to respect its new sovereignty and guarantee its security in exchange for giving up what was rightfully theirs (the nukes), at least in their eyes.
But the U.S. was hellbent on preventing any new nuclear states from emerging after 1991, and Russia wasn't interested in treating Ukraine as an equal, let alone recognize the legitimacy of its sovereign independence. And there was no "in between" under the NPT's international regime. You either were a nuclear-weapon state or not one. You could not claim temporary status as possessor of nukes on the way to disarmament. So when the three nations signed the Budapest agreement in 1994, the security guarantees Ukraine negotiated amounted to little more than unenforceable assurances. That was proven to be the case in 2014 when Russia invaded Crimea and the West didn't intervene, as no one expected it would.
Budjeryn is a clear-eyed analyst who dispenses with highly technical matters in accessible prose. This is not a book about nuclear science (thank goodness). But the text is loaded with lots of abbreviations for the different kinds of weapons, international bodies, and treaties. Keep a bookmark in the glossary for easy reference if you forget what LEU or HEU or START or MFA or CIS stands for.
As mentioned, this is an encyclopedic record of nuclear diplomacy among Ukraine, the U.S., and Russia with sprinkles of anecdote to lighten the density. In other words, this is not narrative history written in a dramatic style. It's a bit dry, but that's okay because the information is important.
The book is worth reading for Budjeryn's conclusion alone, written as Russia's armies began destroying her home country. And its most memorable passages are Budjeryn's brief reflections on childhood in Soviet Ukraine, the village of her grandparents, the whispers over the dinner table about the history Moscow hid from its subjects, and the aftermath of Chernobyl. Chernobyl influenced everything that came after it in Ukrainian politics, and to its credit Ukraine more or less voluntarily gave up its nuclear weapons. Rather than chastise them for a "blunder," they should be applauded for understanding that nuclear "deterrence" would likely have been proven an illusion.
January 2, 2025
Mariana Budjeryn does a great job on rewinding the events of ≈1990-1994 years, following the collapse of Soviet Union & how the tension around "who's going to keep nuclear weapons" evolved.
Short summary would be that Ukraine was pretty much bullied into giving up of what remained on its territory. "Nuclear club" countries didn't want anybody else to join the party. Russia was considered as an inheritor of Soviet Union in regards of keeping its place in that club.
There were plenty of other factors involved, most visible ones would be:
- Ukraine didn't have a technical possibility of using the weapons (despite supplying a fair share of scientists & engineers who were involved in the creation - Soviet Union army was quite paranoid)
- cracking that would have taken several years and several dozens billions dollars, newborn country couldn't afford that
- there were significant "anti-all-nuclear" moods among the population
Having a nuclear weapon would have been a decent deterrent against possible aggressors. That would likely have helped with "being treated seriously" on the globe politics stage.
Ukraine realized all of that. There were multiple rounds of negotiations which ultimately resulted in Budapest Memorandum. Three countries promised to defend Ukraine. One of them, Russia, betrayed and invaded instead.
Author's point is that Ukraine wouldn't have been able to keep nuclear weapons anyway. In the best case, that would have resulted in mass sactions and pariah status for the country. Worst case: no independence at all. Giving up nuclears was the price for it.
However, as I'm writing this summary, it's almost a three years anniversary of Russia's mass scale attack on Ukraine. Moreover, this war started in 2014, with the annexation of Crimea. I highly doubt any country would willingly give up their means of protection after such an example.
I'm giving only 4 stars as the language is somewhat heavy to read. It's full with names and references (≈20% of the pages are about bibliography and such).
Obligatory ending: fuck Russia and Putin.
Short summary would be that Ukraine was pretty much bullied into giving up of what remained on its territory. "Nuclear club" countries didn't want anybody else to join the party. Russia was considered as an inheritor of Soviet Union in regards of keeping its place in that club.
There were plenty of other factors involved, most visible ones would be:
- Ukraine didn't have a technical possibility of using the weapons (despite supplying a fair share of scientists & engineers who were involved in the creation - Soviet Union army was quite paranoid)
- cracking that would have taken several years and several dozens billions dollars, newborn country couldn't afford that
- there were significant "anti-all-nuclear" moods among the population
Having a nuclear weapon would have been a decent deterrent against possible aggressors. That would likely have helped with "being treated seriously" on the globe politics stage.
Ukraine realized all of that. There were multiple rounds of negotiations which ultimately resulted in Budapest Memorandum. Three countries promised to defend Ukraine. One of them, Russia, betrayed and invaded instead.
Author's point is that Ukraine wouldn't have been able to keep nuclear weapons anyway. In the best case, that would have resulted in mass sactions and pariah status for the country. Worst case: no independence at all. Giving up nuclears was the price for it.
However, as I'm writing this summary, it's almost a three years anniversary of Russia's mass scale attack on Ukraine. Moreover, this war started in 2014, with the annexation of Crimea. I highly doubt any country would willingly give up their means of protection after such an example.
I'm giving only 4 stars as the language is somewhat heavy to read. It's full with names and references (≈20% of the pages are about bibliography and such).
Obligatory ending: fuck Russia and Putin.
September 18, 2025
Книга супер, поки не доходиш до висновків. Таке враження ніби їх писала зовсім інша людина. Наприклад для мене є загадкою як історикиня, яка зробила таке чудове дослідження, могла допустити 2 грубі фактологічні факапи (фактично цитата руснявої пропаганди):
1. «росія захопила Крим без жодного пострілу» - тобто загибель прапорщика Сергія Кокуріна від вогнепальної зброї це без жодного пострілу?
2. «до 2015 року загинуло близько 14 тис людей, здебільшого цивільних» - це взагалі чи не цитата з рашатудей. По перше, згідно звітів ООН це число загиблих по 2021 рік і з них більшість військових, а не цивільних.
Ну і самі висновки зовсім не відповідають дослідженню. В передмові і власне висновках зазначається що ця історія не про те як сильні змушують слабких робити те що їм хочеться. Тоді як в самому дослідженні власне йдеться лише про це. Коли сильним вигідно ДНЯЗ працює, коли не вигідно - то ні, і можна дозволити Індії та Пакистану офіційно мати ядерку, а Ізраїлю неофіційно.
1. «росія захопила Крим без жодного пострілу» - тобто загибель прапорщика Сергія Кокуріна від вогнепальної зброї це без жодного пострілу?
2. «до 2015 року загинуло близько 14 тис людей, здебільшого цивільних» - це взагалі чи не цитата з рашатудей. По перше, згідно звітів ООН це число загиблих по 2021 рік і з них більшість військових, а не цивільних.
Ну і самі висновки зовсім не відповідають дослідженню. В передмові і власне висновках зазначається що ця історія не про те як сильні змушують слабких робити те що їм хочеться. Тоді як в самому дослідженні власне йдеться лише про це. Коли сильним вигідно ДНЯЗ працює, коли не вигідно - то ні, і можна дозволити Індії та Пакистану офіційно мати ядерку, а Ізраїлю неофіційно.
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