In the spring of 1988, the shipbuilding company Wärtsilä in Helsinki, Finland, delivered the newest addition to the Soviet nuclear fleet: the icebreaker Taymyr. It was a rare occasion: During the Cold War, only two countries had built nuclear icebreakers, the gigantic vessels capable of opening up the Northern Sea Route (see figure 1). The first was the Soviet Union, which had expertise in nuclear propulsion and a long Arctic coastline. The second was Finland, a small country that had no expertise in building nuclear-powered vessels, no direct access to Arctic waters, and a lack of domestic demand for polar icebreakers.
Nuclear-powered ships carried heavy-weighted political meaning during the Cold War contest for ideological supremacy and national preeminence. They radiated state power, the capability of homegrown engineers, and national prowess.1 That the Soviet Union, a nuclear superpower, ordered those imposing vessels from its small neighbor instead of...
