Who Was Who In Creating The 'Tsar Bomba'? Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was keen to show off the U.S.S.R.'s military prowess, so he ordered the creation of the most powerful bomb ever made. The Soviet Union was also working on developing a hydrogen bomb and managed to detonate its first true one in 1955. The United States had already tested the world's first hydrogen bomb - called 'Mike' - in 1952 and their biggest nuclear device - called 'Castle Bravo' - in 1954.
The Military Race Is OnĪt the beginning of the 1960s, the relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States was tense - the countries were in the middle of the Cold War, struggling for geopolitical, ideological, and military dominance. While its original purpose was to prove to the world, and especially to the United States, that the Soviet Union was capable of producing such devices, it also brought a surprising twist to the future testing of nukes. The 'Tsar Bomba,' as it became known, was 10 times more powerful than all the munitions used during World War II. On October 30, 1961, the Soviet Union tested the largest nuclear device ever created.
