"The Balance of Power" by Polina Dashkova, summary

This historical detective novel was written in 2014. It is a direct sequel to The Pact (2012) and forms a duology with it about the hidden dynamics of the pre-war era. The narrative spans the period from late 1939 to the autumn of 1940, when the world’s leading powers secretly approached the creation of nuclear weapons.

Dangerous Dancing in the Kremlin and a Siberian Discovery

In December 1939, Bolshoi Theater soloist Maria Krylova danced the role of Jeanne at a Kremlin banquet in honor of Joseph Stalin’s sixtieth birthday. She replaced the injured Olga Lepeshinskaya. The performance was a success, and Stalin applauded the ballerina, but Masha was tormented by anxiety about her wartime friend Maya Suzdaltsev, who had suffered frostbite on his feet in the Finnish War.

Masha’s husband, Ilya Krylov, serves as a special adviser for Germany in the Special Sector of the Central Committee — the leader’s personal secretariat. He meets his wife after the banquet. A hidden tension awaits them at home.

Masha’s father, aircraft designer Pyotr Akimov, returns from a business trip to Irkutsk. There, he meets his university professor, Mark Mazur. The former academician served time in solitary confinement and is living in Siberian exile. Mazur assembled a compact optical resonator and isolated nine grams of enriched uranium-235. Fearing a new arrest, the professor gave Akimov an unaddressed letter. Akimov is afraid to give the manuscript directly to his son-in-law and asks his roommate, Dr. Karl Stern, to act as an intermediary.

Secret threads of European intelligence

Stern, a German psychiatrist who treated Hitler in 1918 at Pasewalk Hospital and now a consultant to the Soviet secret services and a teacher at the Special Purpose School, attempts to convey information about Mazur’s developments to Special Advisor Krylov, recognizing the threat posed by the Nazis’ acquisition of an atomic bomb.

In Germany, physicists from the Kaiser Wilhelm Society are conducting research within the framework of the Uranium Club. Associate Professor Emma Bracht assists her husband, Hermann, at the institute in Dahlem and secretly assists her father-in-law, the eminent radiophysicist Werner Bracht. The old man left the institute, unwilling to serve the regime, and is constructing a device for induced emission in the attic of his home.

British agent Ossip Katz (Italian journalist Giovanni Casolli), under the supervision of contact René Thibault, collects information in Europe about the Third Reich’s uranium project. In Berlin, Ossip is assisted by German Foreign Ministry employee Gabriele von Horvak, a former lover who maintains secret contacts with Moscow.

Stern sends a request to the Axis through an Italian diplomatic priest: it is necessary to find out the plans of Werner Bracht, Masur’s long-time collaborator.

Losses and guesses

In Leningrad, Mai Suzdaltsev, crippled at the front, in a fit of despair, shoots Stalin’s portrait at the military recruitment office, after which the guards kill him. The Bolshoi Theater personnel officer interrogates Masha. The ballerina faints from shock, but soon learns she is pregnant. The chief choreographer removes Maria from solo roles, sending her to teach at a ballet school.

The head of Soviet military intelligence, Ivan Proskurov, sends a young officer, Dmitry Rodionov, to Irkutsk. Rodionov witnesses Mazur’s device in action and takes the container containing the uranium for examination in Leningrad. Mazur writes a sincere and warning letter to his German colleague, Bracht, urging him to hide the resonator from the Nazis. Shortly after Rodionov’s departure, the elderly professor dies of pneumonia.

In Berlin, Emma Bracht figures out how to use her father-in-law’s inventions to separate uranium isotopes. She secretly copies the designs of Werner’s device and submits a request to her military supervisor, Kurt Diebner, hoping to head her own research laboratory.

Saving the world from superweapons

The academic authorities in Leningrad reject the late Mazur’s invention, but Proskurov and Krylov decide to send a warning to Berlin through Gabrielle. Returning from Moscow, Gabi informs Casolli of the message. Osya finds an excuse to meet with old Bracht: she conveys news of the young son of the Polish maid Agnieszka, found through Catholic channels in Poland.

In Charlottenburg Park, Osya hands Werner Masur’s letter. After reading his deceased friend’s words, Werner Bracht understands the danger of the discovery and firmly promises to destroy the drawings and not publish the reports.

Hermann Bracht finds Emma’s notes about uranium and the resonator at home. Believing his father’s experiments to be madness and his wife’s condition to be mental illness, Hermann burns the papers in the fireplace. Werner Bracht hides the device and secretly leaves for neutral Sweden to join his colleague Lise Meitner. The Nazi uranium project loses its method for rapid enrichment of uranium.

In Moscow, Masha and Ilya have a daughter, Lena.

The further fates of the characters

After a nervous breakdown, Emma Bracht was never able to restore her calculations. After 1945, the Brachts worked on the Soviet atomic project in Sukhumi and later returned to East Germany.

Werner Bracht returned to Germany in 1946, received state awards from the Federal Republic of Germany, and died in 1962. According to his will, the archive containing Masur’s letter was published only in 1992.

Lise Meitner taught at Cambridge and remained friends with Werner until the end of her days.

Osya Katz served in British intelligence, participated in the sabotage of a heavy water plant in Norway and the capture of German physicists in 1945, and then settled in London. Gabrielle and her husband, Maximilian, survived Gestapo arrest after the 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler.

Lieutenant General Ivan Proskurov was arrested in June 1941 and executed in the autumn near Kuibyshev; he was posthumously rehabilitated in 1954.

Dmitry Rodionov married Mazur’s daughter Evgenia, served in the Great Patriotic War in intelligence, and rose to the rank of general.

Dr. Karl Stern died of a heart attack in Moscow on June 22, 1941.

Ilya Krylov worked in the Central Committee apparatus until 1953. Maria Krylova returned to the stage of the Bolshoi Theater, performed at the front, and became a People’s Artist of the USSR.

Vasya Akimov went to the front as a volunteer and died during the storming of Berlin in May 1945.