LLove story under the H-bomb shadow
K. E. FilipchukNovosibirsk State Pedagogical University,630 126, Novosibirsk, RussiaZ. K. SilagadzeBudker Institute of Nuclear Physics andNovosibirsk State University, 630 090, Novosibirsk, Russia
Abstract
The physics is created by human beings with all weaknesses ofhuman nature. This story caught our attention since it demonstrateshow fragile the human destiny is and even genius cannot find freedomand preserve human dignity in the face of the totalitarian state. a r X i v : . [ phy s i c s . s o c - ph ] M a r It is not true that in the history of mankind, a great idea meant morethan a bayonet’s spike or howitzer shell. Powerful rulers and despots bentinto a ram’s horn the greatest geniuses of their time, and the dark instinctstip the scales much faster than the most obvious truth ...” - so said thecharacter of the novel “Stealing the Moon” of Georgian writer KonstantineGamsakhurdia.The following touching story, which we have learned from the diary of aremarkable physicist Mikhail Shifman [1], adds another detail to the broaderpicture of how the last century’s greatest tyrant Stalin bent into a ram’s hornthe whole country. Should he not want to have a hydrogen bomb, to bendinto the ram’s horn the rest of the world too, there would be no story. Butlet’s start from a distance.1969, Moscow, a grand reception in honor of the President of Czechoslo-vakia, Ludwig Svoboda. A nice looking woman, guest at the reception, beinga bit late, enters deep into the room and appears close to the General Secre-tary Brezhnev. Ludwig Svoboda abruptly drops his talk to Marshal Konev,leaves him, runs up to the woman, hugs and kisses her and says “our daugh-ter?”. “No”, - replies the woman, - “mine.”The woman’s name was Olga. Her and Czechoslovakia’s future president’sways had crossed in the military 1942, during the formation of the CzechArmy. At that time, Olga, despite her thirty years, was very silly and naivein her own words, and she was sure of the infallibility of the Soviet regime.So when she was asked to inform the organs about the moods of the Czechs,as she did never hide her communications with them, she agreed full ofpatriotic enthusiasm. She dreamt that she would reveal the spy plots. Herhusband, who worked at the Lubyanka, already did this work before the war.Sometimes she and her husband went to a party and then some of thosepresent there were arrested. Then, Olga did not attach any importance tothis, and only much later found out what was it about.Olga, of course, did not disclose any spy conspiracy. Maybe because,unlike her husband, she could not prevaricate. Instead happened a love-affair with Ludwig Svoboda. This was true love. Many years later, she wrotethat she thinks she and Ludwig were halves of each other.They separated a year later when the Czechs were sent to the front. Inparting, Ludwig told her ”Olia, believe me, I need only you. Soon I’ll comeback for you after we win and we’ll be together! My dear, my dear, do not2orget me. I do not need anybody but you.”But our story is not about this love affair. Olga had many romantic affairsin her life. She was a human being, not an angel, the same being true for herosof her affairs as well. Many in that stormy time fell in love and separateda lot of times. And after the revolution manners were frivolous. Mother ofthe future secret physicist Janick (so Olga called him), former graduate ofthe Faculty of Philology at the Sorbonne, was terribly shocked by her son’smanners who drove his first love in his room through the dining room withno shame. Janick and Olga would meet after many years at Arzamas-16,in a secret atomic center in the Gorky region, where Soviet thermonuclearweapons were being developed. But this meeting to take place, the fate stillhad to weave its intricate patterns.Curators of Olga in the organs were not happy about her performanceand decided to scare her. Shortly before sending the Czechs to the frontier,Olga was approached by her curator Viktor and was asked to follow him.”Instead of helping us, you have confused all our cards. I have a warrantfor your arrest. Look, you intend to go home with bread, but your son iswaiting in vain, he will not get bread, he will be taken to the orphanage. Heis now an orphan!” - He said. Olga was not arrested then, but only few yearslater. She was careless in conversation with a mate to call Stalin ambitiousand cruel. After a while, her friend was arrested, and then Olga. Five yearsof imprisonment for the anti-Soviet agitation. The mate confirmed at theconfrontation that Olga really called Stalin ambitious and cruel. When Olgawas interrogated in her turn, six days in a row and all night long withoutsleep, she signed all what they wanted in the end, so she understood andforgave her friend.Fortunately, in the former life, before the concentration camp, she hadtime to get an education and became a good architect. And in those daysprison labor was widely used in the Soviet Union for large-scale projects likethe nuclear one. So she found herself in a secret city of Arzamas-16 andbegan to design a five-story apartment building there. Later, she decoratedcottages for the bosses and for nuclear physicists.Janick’s way to Arzamas-16 was different. In 1946, a secret seminar onthe hydrogen bomb creation problems was held in the U.S. initiated by Teller.Soviet government became aware of this seminar at once as the seminar wasattended by Klaus Fuchs, a Soviet spy who passed atomic secrets to Sovietintelligence. Creation of the hydrogen bomb required a lot of calculations andtheoretical work and for this purpose the Soviet government mobilized almost3he entire mathematical potential of the Academy of Sciences. The young andtalented physicist Janick then headed the theoretical division of the Instituteof Chemical Physics, and he was assigned to coordinate the calculations of thehydrogen bomb. So he was sent to Arzamas-16. According to the memoirsof Sakharov [2], Arzamas-16, this strange product of that era, “was a kindof symbiosis of ultramodern Research Institute, pilot plants, test sites - anda big concentration camp ... Prisoners built plants, testing grounds, roads,housing for future employees. They themselves lived in barracks and went towork under an escort of accompanied shepherds.”At the beginning, only prisoners with very long terms worked at theobject that covered a vast area with a solid fence of barbed wire, of whichthe inhabitants of the surrounding poor villages thought that one made “atrial communism” there [2]. We guess the intention was that they could nottell anyone about the object after their release. But one day, about fiftyof them made a real revolt and were killed in an unequal battle with thedivisions of the NKVD. After the incident, only prisoners with small terms,like Olga, who had something to loose, have been engaged in work at thefacility. The released prisoners were sent in perpetual exile in Magadan or inother similar places where they could not tell anything to anyone.So Olga and Janick met in Arzamas-16. The beginning of their romancewas extravagant. After a date, Janick offered to Olga a ride on a motorcycle.But their journey was short; the bike snorted and stood up on a countryroad. Janick looked at his watch, jumped off the bike and ran away, leavingOlga among cows. A few days later Janick came back and began to date Olgaas though nothing had happened. Janick told Olga that he, like Thumbelina(he was smaller than Olga) wanted to warm the frozen heart of the swallow,so big and beautiful.And the heart of the swallow melted. On warm summer evenings, theywere going to the river to look as beavers cut away trees and built dams.They swung on a thrown over the river birch drinking vodka with orangejuice to keep warm when the birch broke and they fell into the water. Olgaand Janick appeared everywhere together.Janick wanted a child and Olga became pregnant. It seemed everythingwas going well. After a successful testing of the atomic bomb, Janick re-ceived the title of hero. Stalin gave him a dacha near Moscow. They got apermission to bring Olga’s son from her first marriage to her. They had theirown house where they lived together with Janick. The swallow slowly beganto stretch her wings. 4nce, when Janick went to Moscow as usually, Olga was called by thepolice chief Shutov and he proposed to cooperate, that meant to becomean informer. Olga refused. “Think, you will have a child, and yet we cansend you there where Makar doesn’t pasture his calves. What you haveexperienced in your life until now, this is just flowers” - said Shutov.In the evening, going to bed, Olga thought she should accept, for thesake of the child. But in the morning, she realized that she could not beatthe deal with her conscience. She was arrested and two days later sent there“where Makar doesn’t pasture his calves”. For the two days, during whichshe remained in the area, neither Janick, nor any other of Olga’s friends, butthe son, have visited her. They were afraid. It is true, Janick never opposedto the Soviet system, and treated its superhuman strength, most likely, witha tremulous delight. At least, that’s how Janick remembered, according tothe memoirs of Sakharov [2], his dinner with the KGB head of the Sovietoccupation zone of Germany in 1945, where he was invited during his dutyjourney to Peenem¨unde. The purpose of the business trip was to familiarizewith the German work on the ballistic missile V-2.Soon God’s punishment overtook Shutov. Lightning killed his only daugh-ter, indeed the beautiful creature, and he himself was dismissed from work.But the diabolical carousel in the fate of Olga was already running. In Jan-uary 1951, in a crooked corner of the earth, a thousand kilometers fromMagadan, in the seventy degree frost Olga gave birth to Janick’s daughter,the one about who Svoboda would ask afterwards whether she was his daugh-ter. There was no health post in the village. Only a neighbor, the wife of alocal bandit Leshka, who once worked in the medical unit, was helping Olga.Janick was aware of these cases. Though he did not venture to visit Olgathen in the zone, but he borrowed money from Sakharov and transferred itto her. And afterwards he tried to ease her plight. He told Sakharov that thefloor in the house where Olga gave birth, was covered with a few centimetersthick layer of ice. After twenty years, Janick introduced to Sakharov hisMagadan born daughter at a scientific conference in Kiev. Sakharov remem-bered that Janick was always dreaming to gather his children together oneday, and he had six of them, from different women.Olga was again saved by her specialization. She was transferred intoVytegra (a town in the Vologda region, near Lake Onega) in a project team,and she joined the welcoming and friendly staff. In 1952, she traveled toMoscow and met Janick. Only then she learned that Janick was married, wasmarried for a long time, since 1937. Impossibility to continue the relationship5ith a married man was without question.Olga lived until 2000, survived Stalin, Janick, and even the Soviet Union,the great and terrible country, which suddenly vanished like a smoke on asummer day. All of the above we have learned from her memories [3].It remains for us to open the cards. If anyone has not guessed yet, thesecret physicist Janick was Yakov Zeldovich, an exceptionally talented physi-cist, of the level of Landau. The famous British physicist Hawking oncewrote about him that before he met him, he thought that Zeldovich was anickname of the whole group, and not of a real person, so numerous anddiverse were his scientific works.Yes, he was a genius in physics, but a love story with Olga uncovershis human dimension. We cannot say that he was simply a coward. WhenSakharov was out of favor and was deprived of all his awards, at the inter-national congress Zeldovich asked Grischuk to ask him a question after areport “Yakov Borisovich, why were you sitting at the plenary session withthe stars of Hero, but have come here without them?” he allegedly prepareda joke. The question was asked and Yakov Borisovich said “I did not wearmy awards for the reason that here is a man who deserves them more thanI do, but who cannot wear them yet”, expressing in this encrypted form hisprotest against the fact that Sakharov was deprived of his deserved awards[4]. However, Zeldovich was a very cautious man and did not support Sakha-rov openly, although respected him as a physicist very much. Kombergprovides a funny story[4]. Once Andrei Dmitrievich delivered a talk at theZeldovich’s department about his work on a multi-sheet universe, illustratingthe story by the models made from sheets of paper glued together. Afterthe report Yakov Borisovich asked around for an unnecessary newspaper.Everyone thought he would cut his own version of the Multi-sheet world fromthe newspaper. Instead, Zeldovich put the newspaper on the floor near thefeet of surprised Sakharov, theatrically knelt before him and said: “AndreiDmitrievich! Well, come on, stop dealing with this nonsense. After all, thereare very important problems in cosmology that no one but you can solve.Well, work at least on quantum gravity.”Yes, the human dimension of great men is not always as perfect as ourimagination sometimes draws, and maybe some jealous guardians of the otherpeople’s morality would condemn Janick. But it would be better if we justappreciate our current relative freedom, and remember that the “freedomis never more than one generation away from extinction” (Ronald Reagan, ormer President of the USA). Otherwise, we will be bent again into theram’s horn, and will be afraid to visit a pregnant girlfriend, which is sentto the edge of the world there “where Makar doesn’t pasture his calves”, foralleged misdeeds. юбовная история на фоне водородной бомбы К. Е. Филипчук
Новосибирский государственный педагогический университет,630 126, Новосибирск
З. К. Силагадзе
Институт Ядерной Физики им. Будкера иНовосибирский Государственный Университет, 630 090, Новосибирск
Аннотация
Физику создают человеческие существа со всеми слабостямичеловеческой природы. Эта история привлекла наше внимание, по-скольку она демонстрирует, насколько хрупкой является человече-ская судьба, и даже гений не может обрести свободу и сохранитьчеловеческое достоинство в условиях тоталитарного государства.
Список литературы