Can Russia Be Great?

In the 1950s, many Americans feared that the Soviet Union would surpass the United States as the world’s leading power. The Soviet Union had the world’s largest territory, the third-largest population, and the second-largest economy, and it produced more oil and gas than Saudi Arabia. Moreover, the USSR possessed nearly half of the world’s nuclear weapons, had more men under arms than the U.S., and had the most people employed in research and development. It detonated a hydrogen bomb in 1952, only one year after the U.S., and it was the first to launch a satellite into space, in 1957.