WI: Einstein goes to the USSR instead of the USA?

Wikipedia says that Einstein was visiting the USA when Hitler came to power in Germany, which made him decide to stay instead of returning, as he had realized life as a Jew would be rather inconvenient under the NSDAP. What if he does not visit the USA, and instead once the Hitler comes to power, he decides to go to the USSR?

He was a socialist and thought highly of Lenin, so it seems within the realm of possibility that he would chose the USSR, which is also closer. Maybe the NKVD offers to smuggle him in. So what happens next?
 
Even if he were treated well and convinced Szilard, Wigner, etc. to flee East instead of West, Stalin didn't have the resources to build an atom-bomb early enough to stop the Nazis (if that's where this is going).
 
Even if he were treated well and convinced Szilard, Wigner, etc. to flee East instead of West, Stalin didn't have the resources to build an atom-bomb early enough to stop the Nazis (if that's where this is going).

But if that happen, what are the effects on Project Manhattan?
 
But if that happen, what are the effects on Project Manhattan?

Probably no Project Manhattan. It was started seriously after a letter from Einstein to Roosevelt. In the USSR he might not have even been made aware of the Germans attempt to create a bomb. If he did though i doubt he'd write a letter to Stalin, or Roosevelt(if he even could from there).
 
But if that happen, what are the effects on Project Manhattan?
Minimal, the USA's atomic project's start might get slightly delayed (a few weeks or months at most), if even that (probably some other expert will fill in as the "famous name" needed to convince Roosevelt). Actual project will probably proceed as OTL.

Meanwhile Einstein probably gets purged and sent to the gulag in one of Stalin's purges or something.
 
The Americans were always reluctant to research atomic weapons. The breakthrough was Lauritsen sitting in a MAUD meeting and discovering how much had been discovered regarding fission. If the UK stands alone against the Reich with a reluctant, isolationist US, that isn't happening especially with the cost and the belief the Atlantic is obstacle enough.
 
He was a socialist and thought highly of Lenin, so it seems within the realm of possibility that he would chose the USSR, which is also closer. Maybe the NKVD offers to smuggle him in. So what happens next?

Then Einstein gets his mind changed. He was fond of personal liberty. In the USSR he would end up in the Gulag.
 
Then Einstein gets his mind changed. He was fond of personal liberty. In the USSR he would end up in the Gulag.

Maybe a brief stint in the mines, then probably to a sharashka (skunkworks) alongside other scientists like Sakharov and Theremin, and ordered to help build lasers and atom bombs and other practical extrapolations of his theoretical physics.
 
I doubt a free-thinking, liberal, Jewish intellectual such as Einstein would like the idea of life in the USSR.

You'd be surprised. There was a period in the 20s and early 30s when the USSR was seen to be the new exciting thing, a success of the People against the Oppressors and the future Socialist Paradise. People (including not a few free-thinking, liberal, Jewish intellectuals) moved to the USSR from all over Europe and even the US.

Most of them ended up deeply regretting their decisions, of course.

Einstein specifically lacks the socialist background that would make it easy to see him in this context, but it's not as big a stretch as it might seem, looking back from today.
 

Deleted member 94680

You'd be surprised. There was a period in the 20s and early 30s when the USSR was seen to be the new exciting thing, a success of the People against the Oppressors and the future Socialist Paradise. People (including not a few free-thinking, liberal, Jewish intellectuals) moved to the USSR from all over Europe and even the US.

But by 1935? Or by the time he wanted to leave the US? In ‘33 alone the Holodomor is at its peak and slave labour is being used to build the White Sea Canal.
 
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