The special lectureA Special Session on the History of the Soviet Nuclear Program(Sessions 3 to 6 of 2023) under the High-End Lecture Series on Northeast Asian Country and Regional Studies was successfully held at Jilin University on March 30–31 and April 4–5, 2023. Co-hosted by the Northeast Asia Research Center, the School of Northeast Asian Studies, the Northeast Asian Studies College, and the JLU–MSU Center for Historical Studies of Jilin University, the lecture was delivered both offline and online simultaneously.

The School of Northeast Asian Studies invited Senior Researcher Natalia Viktorovna Melnikova from the Institute of History and Archaeology of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences to share her research insights on the history of talent policies for the Soviet nuclear program. The lecture was presided over by Professor Zhang Guangxiang, Distinguished Professor of the Kuang Yaming Scholars Program and Director of the JLU–MSU Center for Historical Studies. At the opening of the lecture, Professor Zhang extended a warm welcome to Researcher Melnikova and introduced her academic experience and research expertise.

Researcher Melnikova specializes in social history, everyday life history, and the history of the Soviet nuclear program and atomic energy. Her long-term research focuses on the training of Soviet nuclear specialists and daily life in secret nuclear cities. The Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences boasts unique advantages in relevant research: it holds a wealth of first-hand archival materials and enables convenient field investigations, which greatly facilitate our understanding of historical facts and in-depth research.

Over four sessions, Researcher Melnikova presented multiple dimensions of the history of talent policies for the Soviet nuclear program from the perspectives of personnel training and education, labor mobilization and incentive mechanisms, as well as population and daily life in secret nuclear cities. Supported by abundant archival documents, historical photographs, statistical charts, text analysis and bibliometric methods, her presentations were thorough and well-documented. Major scientific and technological breakthroughs rely on leading outstanding scientists. Their roles and influences in nuclear weapons development and the arms race constitute a vital perspective for understanding the interplay between scientific progress and the Cold War, offering broad room for further in-depth exploration.

At the closing of the lecture, Professor Zhang Guangxiang entrusted Dr. Zhao Wanxin to summarize the lecture content and report the research progress of Jilin University’s Russian History Research Team. Under Professor Zhang’s research plan, the research group for the Major Project of the National Social Science FundTranslation, Collation and Research of Archival Documents on the Soviet Nuclear Programplans to publish a 600,000-character monograph and a multi-volume archival collection as its final outcomes.

International exchanges with Russian scholars have made outstanding contributions to boosting the internationalization of historical talent training, advancing the Double First-Class Initiative of Jilin University, broadening the horizons of the Russian History Research Team, elevating its research capacity and theoretical literacy, and laying a solid foundation for producing more high-quality academic achievements.