"[1] At age 20, Vannikov joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and was its devout follower who engaged in the revolutionary politics as his role as an inspector in the People's Commissariat.

[3] In 1945, Vannikov became involved in security matters when he was appointed in the 1st Chief Directorate— this appointment also allowed him to be involved in the Soviet program of nuclear weapons as a program manager, overseeing the arms logistics and ammunition.The Soviet People's Commissar for Internal Affairs at that time, Lavrenty Beria, and according to the accounts of Chertok, "Vannikov’s tremendous contribution was to eliminate problems in ammunitions production and delivery.

Therefore, it was not the least bit surprising that Stalin and Beriya, despite Vannikov's past and his Jewish ethnicity, put him in charge of all operations for the development of the atomic bomb as head of the First Main Directorate.

": 8–9  He inadvertently helped the Russian scientists Yulii Khariton and Igor Kurchatov to understand the problem of fission by walking close to their test reactor.

After Beria's arrest and death in 1953, Vannikov joined the Bulganin's government as the First Deputy Minister of Medium Machine-Building Ministry which consolidated the entire Soviet nuclear program when the First, Second, and Third Main Directorates were merged; the code-name for nuclear-related R&D and production in the USSR).