his work and Beria removed Slavsky from all his high posts, it was Muzrukov who succeeded in returning Efim Pavlovich to atomic projects. Yes, and it was difficult to replace him, because then he was the most knowledgeable expert in the country. And he was the talented leader. He lived, by the way, 93 years.
“The human memory keeps pleasant recollections. I am excited at the case related to hunting for saigas in the Kalmykia steppes. I think it’s worth telling about it and the reader is awaiting interesting facts.”
“You know the moments of my long life as well as I do, because I told you.”
“That case is not taken into account. You could have just told about some event not being sure that the author would be interested, because for so many years I have been listening to you, remembering, appreciating, weighing, building up my line of interrogation, because, as an investigator, I need to extract maximum information. Today is another thing, our conversation is recorded, then I can only decipher this conversation.”
“Okay, let's try. As avid hunters, we immediately became friends with Efim Pavlovich Slavsky, back in 1948 at “Mayak”. Yes, and problems he had with Beria were because of addiction to hunting. Even this did not prevent us from continuing to go hunting together. After his appointment to the Deputy Minister of Medium Machine Building of the USSR, seems in 1949, he often visited us, and each time I was assigned to meet him. Well, there were always guns in the car, the outfit that matched the weather conditions, and brandy was also at hand. We managed to wander through the woods and shoot something. We went to the drivers for the triple fish soup. This has become a kind of ritual.
In 1957, Efim Pavlovich became our minister. I had already moved to Pyatigorsk by that time. I had worked at “Mayak” for about seven years, the most difficult and significant years of my long life. For more than half a century I have been languishing in Pyatigorsk, although even here I could not sit idle.”
“Yes, I have heard about your “inactive” period of life: the city of Lermontov was built almost from scratch, several car maintenance stations, four luxury sanatoriums for nuclear scientists in each of the Mineralnye Vody cities, the runway at Mineralnye Vody airport, a television tower on Mount Mashuk, a polyclinic of the “Impuls” plant, residential buildings for employees… But let's get to the point, how about hunting?”
“Every year Efim Pavlovich came to rest in our region. Most often he stayed at the “Krasnye kamni”, but he also liked to relax in our departmental sanatoriums “XXII Partsyezd” in Pyatigorsk, where Nina Vladimirovna Nikonova worked as the chief medical officer for many years, “Beshtau” in Zheleznovodsk, “50 let Oktyabrya” in Yessentuki, “Dzinal” in Kislovodsk and the fact that these sanatoriums appeared is the main credit of the minister.
That time Slavsky stayed at the “Krasnye kamni”, then the most prestigious sanatorium of our region. Usually he was met by a retinue from among the secretaries of the city committees where it was planned to spend his vacation. That was how it was supposed to be. Anyway, no one could occupy my “hunting niche” because our passion for hunting lasted almost until his death. So he called and said to give, say, about ten days for acclimatization and then we would go to Kalmykia. It must be taken into account that the saigas are wild, roving animals. Thousands of their herds are constantly moving across the steppes, at least in those years when their livestock was excessive and numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Rafailov, a very good and professional hunter, worked with me as the head of the personnel department. He had to be sent to Kalmykia a day earlier in order to learn in advance from the hunters where saiga herds drifted. We left in two cars: one guest car, the Volga assigned to minister, and my official UAZ vehicle, with guns, uniforms, food, alcohol stocks. This time there were two ministers. In addition to ours, there was Tikhomirov, the minister of chemical industry or chemical engineering. Before the Muscovites, it was necessary not to lose face and arrange not only hunting, but an overnight stay, food.
We arrived at the appointed place, Rafailov reported to Efim Pavlovich the situation and the approximate place of appearance of the herd. We settled in places and waited for the hunters to chase saigas towards us. Soon there came the approaching roar of hoofs, and a herd of thousands of wild, uncontrollable animals was moving. I was even afraid that we would be crippled or trampled down. After all everything went right and after the first shots the herd changed direction, suffering some losses. Slavsky shot down three, Tikhomirov one and I and Rafailov one each. And then there was an improvised lunch with shulum and shashlyks. For your future book on alcohol consumption this episode may not be suitable because we drank our beloved Armenian brandy very little, about 250 grams per person, and the age of my boss and friend didn’t allow consume more. Although, in fairness, I should admit that in our youth none of us drank much.
I delivered our trophies to the Lermontosky ORS (workers' supply department) to the refrigerator where the experts skinned them (took off their skins), and the next day, together with the driver, I took two carcasses wrapped in white sheets to the ministers. And there highly qualified cooks prepared intricate dishes to my friends. Memorable photographs were left from that hunt and the minister at all subsequent meetings said, “I remember the “Krasnye kamni” and that our hunt in Kalmykia”.
“You once said that Academician Khariton was also a passionate hunter.”
“Yes, Yuliy Borisovich loved hunting, but he was not a professional. He loved nature very much, to wander through the forest with a gun, sit by the fire, talk about life. Quiet, modest, conflict-free man, a genius and the greatest scientist. I say this because I worked alongside him for many years, I know the opinion of the famous academicians about him… I am proud that fate gave so many interesting meetings with worthy, one might say, outstanding figures of the twentieth century, and academician Yuliy Borisovich Khariton one of the first in this line.”
“In one of your stories, there was the name of a renowned military commander who was the only one four times Hero of the Soviet Union in our country, not counting condescending relation of Soviet people to the fun of Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgiy Konstantinovich Zhukov. Didn’t you happen to go hunting with him?”
“Imagine, it happened. And surprisingly, as many as four times. But it is a long story.”
“Not at all, I have enough patience.”
“Well then, listen. At one of the meetings held at “Mayak” conducted by the chairman of a special committee formed to solve the problem of creating an atomic bomb in the USSR, Lavrentiy Beria raised the issue of providing milk and dairy products to the employees of our plant who suffered during the tests and received irradiation exposure. To be fair, it must be said that he resolved organizational issues quickly, without delays. All his instructions to the party and Soviet local authorities were executed instantly. So thnt time, the next day, a decree was issued by the Sverdlovsk Regional Executive Committee on the transfer of the state farm to us to create our own dairy production and provide milk products to all who were affected. Thus, the Kuluyevsky State Farm with seventeen thousand hectares of arable land was transferred to “Mayak”. And here a rather large cattle making quite a big herd of dairy cows arrived in railway carriages. There were pig farms and a few flocks of sheep in the state farm. The director appointed a good person who had a special education – Pavel Vasilyevich. I must say that the entire vast territory of the plant, due to its special secrecy, was fenced around the perimeter with barbed wire and strictly guarded. But along the same perimeter, the additional ten kilometers of space in front of the fence were also controlled by our guards, special services, rangers. Together with the state farm we got a lake on the border with the Sverdlovsk region, which even before the war was chosen by the Ural military district. Stocked up with valuable breeds of fish and good for hunting. In the end, at the request of the administration of the military district, they began with us to use this already mastered lake as if we were giving it them for rent. On the other, opposite shore, our guys had already built something like a summer holiday camp for fishing. By the way, I forgot to say that, in
