an expert in chemical engineering, so let's work together! We need a reactor to produce plutonium.” Ivan Nikiforovich smiled slyly, “I will not lie, I did not hear the conversation, and could not hear it. But read in the interview. Truely, many-many years later. Looks very much like Kurchatov. Well, and that Dollezhal was also a man of incredible mind and immediately understood what it was for and noticed that his scientific interests “do not coincide with atomic science…”
Kurchatov said, “You used to work at the molecular level – now work at the nuclear!” Igor Vasilyevich was witty, everyone knew that. And that he loved jokes, they also knew, but all the same, they swallowed the bait.
And now I remembered the galoshes. So here he gave people a lot to laugh at. All took galoshes at the entrance to the laboratory. And all the galoshes were with the same flannel crimson lining, they so shined, so shined! Well, so, as not to confuse this “mellow shine”, the initials of the host were attached to galoshes. So our Beard changed the initials of the chiefs of quite high rank. Laughter lasted for an hour when they tried to shove their shoes in their own… I almost said “sleigh”. Although it was really that way.
Here one more… All of us there, at “Mayak”, knew about the top secrecy in the “Kurchatov establishment” at Lubyanka: you couldn’t take out even a piece of paper – everything was accountable. If you have taken a sheet, wrote it up – hand it over on receipt. It was impossible to break the security. And Igor Vasilyevich took it, yes he acted outrageously: he burnt the paper in an ashtray and then laughed, “And it smelled of broken security in the room for a long time…”
Let's stop for a while. Let us give Ivan Nikiforovich the opportunity to get over the excitement of unwittingly reviving memories.
Author's retreat
The documents I have studied, and they are publications in the press, recollections of eyewitnesses, the books by V. Novoselov and V. Tolstikov – “Mysteries of Sorokovka 40th)", P. Zhuravlev – "My Atomic Age", the documentary book of V. Brokhovich "The "Mayak" Chemical Plant", a collective jubilee collection, "The Creators of the Atomic Shield", dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the city of Ozersk (the former Chelyabinsk-40 with the famous "Mayak") created a picture of a difficult and heroic time. The picture, frankly speaking, of not the bright tone…
After the Americans dropped atomic bombs on Hirosima and Nagasaki in August 1945, and the world first learned about the consequences of this terrible monster, Stalin immediately responded to this alarming event: Americans need what we are made of.
This meant that the Soviet development of a nuclear project, begun in 1943 and interrupted by urgent military concerns, should be promptly restored. And naturally, it was necessary to mobilize the Soviet scientists involved in this problem: physicists, chemists, workers of small and medium special engineering to implement the task.
We needed a sensible scientific project manager.
In the Kremlin, the Politburo considered two candidates – Igor Vasilyevich KURCHATOV and Abram Isaakovich ALIKHANOV, a highly educated person who was a student of the famous physicist Ioffe. It was Alikhanov who in 1943 during the elections to the Academy of Sciences became academician, beating Kurchatov. Now it is Kurchatov's turn to go around Alikhanov by half a length.
Lavrentiy Beria, ingratiating and deliberating, turned to Stalin, "Maybe after all Kurchatov?"
"Kurchatov, let it be Kurchatov," Stalin agreed meekly, obviously pleased.
Igor Vasilyevich was assigned officer in both the Kremlin and the Lubyanka under the watchful eye of the KGB! There he studied the drawings, diagrams, documents, delivered to Moscow from abroad.
What kind of documents were they? Where from and who had got them? How many more undeciphered stirlitz are waiting for a date with our curiosity and ignorance? At what a cost and ingenuity, what savvy, how many lives of our intelligence officers had lost obtaining these secret documents, we, obviously, will never know. The truth can be learnt by our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Probably…
But the "feat of our intelligence officers” is the subject of a special conversation, true heroes of the invisible front, and, of course, the dream of cinematographists and writers.
Igor Vasilyevich appreciated the significance of these documents: these were well-known guidelines for scientific research on the uranium problem, enabling our scientists to avoid many mistakes and reduce the time to create their own nuclear bomb.
Do I have to say that all this was kept as top secret?!
Alikhanov was not just famous in the country at that time, but all over the world. But the preference given by the highest party leadership to Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov had no effect on their friendly relations. There were never any disagreements, envy and offenses between academicians, they remained friends and likeminded people.
In those years, secret laboratory № 3, which was headed by Alikhanov, was later transformed into the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics (ITEP), dealt with the same uranium problems as Laboratory No. 2, which became Kurchatov atomic center.
The difference is that the first atomic bomb told the world about the Soviet Union's nuclear viability in 1949, and the first test of the hydrogen bomb – the even more terrifying creation of the human mind (or – madness?) – happened in 1955.
It was then that academicians Alikhanov, Kurchatov, Alexandrov and Vinogradov appealed to the country's party leadership with a letter in which they warned the Central Committee against using this super-weapon, which threatens the world with complete destruction:
“We need to resolve all the differences between world powers only by political methods. We need new international policy. The new war is simply impossible.”
Our politicians accepted and understood the meaning of this document in their own way. Malenkov supported the pacifist concern of scientists. Khrushchev held the letter and at the right moment used it “political myopia” against Georgiy Maksimilianovich Malenkov and overthrew the party comrade without pity.
Let us mentally return to the meeting of the Politburo, where the candidacy of the scientific director of the atomic project was approved. I imagine that “sacred” horror on the faces and in the eyes of the members of the Stalinist Politburo when Alikhanov's name and patronymic were spoken aloud: Abram Isaakovich. Readers of the new democratic society cannot understand that horror: what of it that Alikhanov has the face of “Caucasian nationality”?
What of the fact that his name and patronymic, on the contrary, are clearly of not “Caucasian origin”? But in those distant years everything had the meaning – down to the shape of the nose and ears. And during the interview Alikhanov behaved too independently, he was non-partisan, which was generally considered unacceptable for a Soviet scientist of such a rank.
There was no subordination at the institute, which was headed by Alikhanov: it was possible to communicate with colleagues at any time. Such a “rampant democracy” in the Soviet institution was almost a challenge to the existing order and the state system itself.
And another significant, almost criminal touch – Yuriy Orlov, one of the most seditious Soviet dissidents, Doctor of Physics and Mathematics, worked at the institute of Alikhanov. Endless “cleansing” didn't help, Alikhanov knew how to take a punch.
He was “forgiven” everything – his name and patronymic, and his Caucasian appearance, and independence, and non-partisanship, and Yuriy Orlov (for the time being, of course).
