Constellation of fading stars
The Soviet atomic epic is one of the most exciting and exciting pages of not only the world stories science and technology, but in general, world history in general. Even the history of the American Manhattan project is less dramatic, less saturated and less instructive than ours, especially in its human dimension. The brightness of the natures and the fate of the first Soviet atomic scientists pleiad is comparable only with a galaxy of Soviet rocket makers.RUSSIA DOES SAME
By the time of deployment armory atomic works - if we count their beginning from the summer of 1945, the Soviet Union with honor passed the hardest military test that fell to its lot during the Great Patriotic War, but was half-destroyed. The war, of course, moved something forward, but more - slowed down or threw it back. The same Kharkiv Phystech lay in ruins, and on what, and on Soviet atomic physics, the war affected the most sad way. Moreover, after the victory of the USSR, it found itself in a state of, if not a legal, then a systemic blockade by the developed West.
And in such extremely difficult conditions in a matter of years - since the US nuclear monopoly meant a mortal threat to the future of our country - it was necessary to create their own nuclear weapons. And this was tantamount to creating a new industry, and even a complex of new branches of science and technology, and actually transforming a number of existing industries.
Take, for example, the problem of precision instrument making ...
Physicists, chemists, research engineers of the atomic problem needed new, diverse instruments of high sensitivity and high accuracy. The prewar five-year plans gave us — for the first time in the history of Russia — domestic instrumentation, but after the war with Hitler Germany, the country's instrumentation did not recover from its consequences. The instrument-making plants of Kharkov, Kiev and other cities occupied by the enemy during the war years were destroyed. The factories of Leningrad and Moscow also suffered during the war years and were not fully restored.
On the other hand, new requirements for the accuracy of instruments have also created new difficulties - our industry has not previously manufactured such precision instruments. Many hundreds of devices needed to be developed anew.
In the United States, a large number of firms were engaged in the design and manufacture of scientific instruments. Only the manufacture of instruments for measuring and controlling nuclear radiation was carried out by 78 firms, and long-term ties with instrument-making firms in Germany, England, France and Switzerland made it easier for American specialists to design new instruments.
We have the same ...
Before the war, the Soviet instrument-making industry was far behind as compared with other sectors of the domestic economy, and not surprisingly, it was the youngest. Now, attempts to purchase appliances abroad have met with direct opposition from the US government. Many US companies refused to accept orders from Amtorg, a Soviet foreign trade organization for trade with the United States. And only one nuclear reactor was installed about 8 thousand. Different devices. There was only one way out - to organize the development and manufacture of new devices in their own country. Among them were many new ones working on completely different principles that had not previously been used in the world instrument making.
As a result, from 1946 to 1952 the year, instrument-making plants of the USSR manufactured 135,5 thousand devices of new designs and more than 230 thousand typical devices for the needs of the nuclear industry. At the same time, along with the creation of instrumentation and various kinds of regulators, a series of special manipulators were designed and manufactured that reproduce the movements of human hands and hands and allow remotely performing subtle and complex operations.
It was necessary to create new brands of glass for chemical glassware and apparatuses, new brands of enamels, new materials for crucibles and molds for melting and casting uranium, as well as new plastic compositions that are resistant in aggressive media ...
There was an acute question about furnaces for smelting uranium. There was no place to get the furnaces - vacuum furnaces were built in the USA, but the White House imposed a ban on the sale of such furnaces in the USSR. And the Soviet trust "Electric" was created 50 various types of furnaces.
The absence of the necessary vacuum technology across the whole range of tasks has also become a serious problem, and its resolution is a major victory. Without vacuum equipment, it is impossible to develop many of the most important physical research and the work of the most important engineering and physical structures. Before the start of the Atomic Project in the USSR, the development of research work on vacuum technology was limited to a very weak base of two laboratories, and the need for vacuum equipment was enormous. One vacuum gauge of various types was required only for one 1947 year over 3 thousand, backing pumps over 4,5 thousand, and high vacuum diffusion pumps over 2 thousand.
Special high-vacuum oils, putties, vacuum-tight rubber products, vacuum valves, valves, bellows, etc. were required.
And we also did it ourselves! Our research institutes were able to create powerful high-vacuum units with a capacity of 10 – 20 and even 40 thousand liters per second. In terms of power and quality, Soviet high-vacuum pumps of the early 50-s surpassed the latest American models ...
The new instrument-making is only one of the problems, and in fact there was also the most complicated problem of the “product” - uranium and plutonium of weapons condition ... and ultra-pure graphite ...
However, the top of the scientific and technological "iceberg" of the atomic problem was, of course, Bomba herself - our "firstborn" RDS-1.
This abbreviation is decoded differently, but the documents are accurate only with respect to the first two letters, for the official correspondence includes "Jet engine" C "... It is believed that" C "means" Stalin ", but this is not a fact. The developers themselves had an informal decoding in the course: “Russia makes itself” ...
RDS-1 was developed in KB-11, which was located in the Mordovian village of Sarov (later: “Moscow-Center 300”, “Arzamas-75”, “Kremlin”, “Arzamas-16”, now Sarov). We will talk about the first gunsmiths further, and everything that will be discussed will be united according to one common feature: their “round” or “semicircular anniversaries” fall on 2014 year ...
NUCLEAR NUMEROLOGY
I am not a fan of numerology, but at some point - taking up the question - I was stunned by how rich 2014 had been in the year on the anniversaries of the most resounding and glorious "atomic" figures, beginning with the 110 anniversary of the founder of KB-11 and "Arzamas-16" three times Hero of Socialist Labor academician Yuli Khariton and the 100 anniversary of the leading theorist of KB-11 three times Hero of Socialist Labor academician Yakov Zeldovich ...
But 2014 marks 110 as the birthday of three times Hero of Socialist Labor Nikolai Dukhov, twice Hero of Socialist Labor Boris Muzrukov, prominent organizer of the nuclear industry Hero of Socialist Labor Vladimir Alferov, and prominent weapons physicist Vitaly Aleksandrovich, laureate of the Lenin and Stalin prizes ...
In 2014, 105 marks the birth of the twice Hero of Socialist Labor Samvel Kocharyants, 100 since the birth of the Heroes of Socialist Labor, physicist Viktor Davidenko, one of the organizers of the nuclear industry, Nikolai Pavlov, and director of the Communist pilot plant of KB-11 Evgenia Shelatonya ...
The 100 anniversary of the original experimenter, Lenin Prize winner and two Stalin Prizes Viktor Nekrutkin is being performed. Finally, 2014 anniversary of gas dynamics Boris Ledenev - twice winner of the Stalin lira and laureate of the Lenin Prize, 95 anniversary of major physicist-gunsmith of the Hero of Socialist Labor Mikhail Shumayev and mathematician Arzamas-90 mathematician Nikolai Dmitriev - laureate of the Socialist Worker of the Socialist Labor Mikhail Shumayev and mathematician Nikolai Dmitriyev in the “Arzamas-16” mathematician Nikolai Dmitriev - the liraf of the Socialist Labor Year Mikhail Shumayev and mathematician Nikolai Dmitriyev in the “Arzamas-85” mathematician Nikolai Dmitriev, the liberty of the Socialist Worker Michael Shumayev and the legendary Arzamas 80 mathematician Nikolai Dmitriev - the liraf of the Socialist Labor Hero Shumayev ... And this is not counting the 50 anniversary of the Hero of Socialist Labor Academician Boris Litvinov and the XNUMX anniversary of the first "atomic" Minister of the Russian Federation Academician Viktor Mikhailov - gunsmiths of the XNUMX's "appeal" when rohodtsev changed the era of "storm and onslaught."
A whole constellation of "atomic" stars of the first magnitude!
Some of them shine with a triple gold glitter ... Someone had one or two "Golden Stars" on their chests, someone wore stars also on shoulder straps of generals of engineering services ... And someone, figuratively speaking, had only "a star in forehead "... But they all made up pride, glory and - most importantly - the intellectual power and business power of our Atomic Project.
I repeat: the article refers only to those who were involved in a kind of 2014 “atomic numerology” of the year. But if we take the full composition of the leading purely weapon figures of the Atomic Project, connected with KB-11, that is, with the development of nuclear weapons directly, then only two people are beyond this “numerology” of birth dates! Three times Hero of Socialist Labor Kirill Shchelkin, Khariton’s deputy for KB-11 and founder of the Scientific Research Institute-1011 - a nuclear backup center in the Urals, and Pavel Zernov - first director of KB-11, twice Hero of Socialist Labor. At the same time, in 2014, we celebrate the 50 anniversary of the death of the last ...
The greater part of the cohort of great gunsmiths is related to the date of birth with the years ending in the 4 number, as are the years of the birth of two outstanding organizers of the nuclear industry, two Heroes of Socialist Labor: Mikhail Pervukhin and Vasily Makhnev, whose 110-year anniversaries also fall on 2014 year.
For the same year, by the way, the 55 anniversary from the date of formation, according to the Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and USSR Council, is a separate charging KB-1 consisting of KB-11.
Curious, in fact, a fact ...
DESTINIES THAT CREATED AGES ...
And each was a person with a fate worthy of novels and films. Their destinies not only intermarried with the century, but also created it - that “atomic” century, the reality of which was nuclear stability, ensured by the presence of Russian nuclear weapons in the world.
Here is the unforgettable Yuli Borisovich Khariton with his three stars of the Hero, with the memory of the meeting with Stalin, about the minutes when “UB” next to Beria listened to the countdown on the day of the RDS-1 test in August 1949 on the Semipalatinsk test site ...
Khariton headed KB-11 as chief designer since its foundation in 1946, and from 1959, he became the permanent supervisor of Arzamas-16 - the All-Union Research Institute of Experimental Physics (VNIIEF), up to 1992. In his office under a glass bulb was a piece of burned, caked earth, taken in the epicenter of the explosion of the first Soviet thermonuclear bomb RDS-6. Khariton called Brezhnev at least once a month, and the secretaries of the Central Committee on defense issues almost every day, just inquire about health ...
Khariton worked for Ioffe, for Rutherford, in 1939 – 1941, together with Zeldovich, he developed the theory of a branching nuclear chain reaction, and then they worked together on a weapon at the Sarov “Object”.
Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich, Sakharov's friend, became a prominent and colorful figure not only in physics - he was also popular with the female part of KB-11, had a light character and - not a shadow of formality. “YAB” - on the Sarov “Object” this abbreviation was as popular as “YB”, - March 8 was born. Maybe because of his women and loved?
And here is the unforgettable Boris Glebovich Muzrukov ... Ever since the war, Beria knew him well, he was in the sphere of attention of Stalin ... His first "Golden Star" was Major General Engineeringtank Muzrukov received services as the director of the military Uralmash - for tanks. Twice he became a Hero in 1949 - in the group of the very first twice Heroes, for organizing the production of the first Soviet plutonium for RDS-1 at plant No. 817.
From 1955 to 1974, the year Muzrukov was the director of KB-11 (VNIIEF), and all generations of Soviet nuclear warheads and ammunition, including those currently in service, passed through it. However, he was not honored with the third "Golden Star" - past conflicts with the famous Minister of Sredmash Yefim Slavsky - three times Hero ... played their part ...
Already seriously ill, Muzrukov phoned Rosa Nazaryan, director of the Sarov city library. Mayakovsky, with whom he was well known as a reader ...
- Pick me something ...
- Classics?
- No, the classics will be hard for me now ...
- Well?
- I do not know…
And Rosa Ivanovna brought him a record with bird songs from the sound magazine “Krugozor” ...
The next day, Muzrukov called:
- You know how I felt good ... It has not been so good for a long time ...
Boris Glebovich was from the cohort that built the new Russia - first industrial, armor, and then - nuclear missile ...10 June 1948 in Moscow, in the Kremlin, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR Joseph Stalin signed, and Yakov Chadayev, the Head of the Affairs of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, countersigned (signed) with his signature the Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 1991-775c / op frames. " The letters "ss / op" meant "top secret - a special folder", and KB-11 was a multifaceted in its functions top-secret "Object", the only task of which was then solving the Soviet atomic problem.
The decree instructed Nikolai Bulganin, Minister of the USSR Armed Forces, to seconde Nikolay Dukhov Laboratory No. 2 of the USSR Academy of Sciences to the position of Deputy Chief Designer of KB-11 while simultaneously introducing him to the Scientific and Technical Council of Laboratory of the USSR-2 on questions of KB-11.
By decree on Dukhov (as well as on the Captain 1 rank Vladimir Ivanovich Alferov, who was sent to the “Object” at the same time), special conditions “regarding leaving them in the Soviet Army and material support” were distributed. Obviously, the appointment of Dukhov was affected by the fact that Pavel Zernov, the director of KB-11, knew him well - from the war, from the Urals.
So the forty-four-year-old designer of heavy tanks of the type KV and IS of the Spirits, by the will of fate and Stalin's decree, got into the first Soviet bombode.
As the creator of armored vehicles, Nikolai Leonidovich was by that time not only established, but also deservedly recognized, a major figure, a Hero of Socialist Labor ... He had a war at the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant (factory number XXUMX), where he built tanks. After the war, the plant began a program on the arable tractor C-100, and wide all-Union fame came to Dukhov, its portraits were printed in newspapers and magazines.
However, this did not last long - Dukhov is sent to the “atomic” First Chief Directorate, and until the end of his life he finds himself in the strictest “secret list”. Begins a “bombshell”, the quietest in public fame and the loudest in global results stage of professional and human destiny.
After the arrival of Dukhova and Alferov on the “Object”, the scientific design sector of KB-11 was divided into two divisions - NKS-1 and NKS-2. Major General of the tank engineering service Dukhov became deputy chief designer Khariton and head of the NKS-1. The captain of the 1 rank Alferov received the NKC-2 also with the rank of deputy chief designer.
Physicist Vitaly Alexandrovich, gas dynamics Viktor Nekrutkin, like mathematician Nikolai Dmitriev, were not decorated with “Golden Stars” heroes, but their involvement — not in leadership, but in work on the atomic problem — was also of great importance for its success.
Victor Nekrutkin, Doctor of Technical Sciences, knew ups and downs, but he could outwardly give an idea that fundamentally changes the overall mass characteristics of the “product”, and only the author of the idea knew how many sleepless nights were behind this “on the move” ...
Vitaly Alexandrovich, before the war, was the first in the USSR to receive heavy water in a semi-industrial installation, he worked at the Oblast since 1947, and died at the age of fifty-five - in 1959. One of the streets in the center of Sarov is named after him.
The great worker Dmitriev did not pursue official and formal recognition, he did not even become a candidate of science, but when physicists from Sarov came to Moscow to applied mathematicians with a difficult problem, they often heard: "And you have Kolya Dmitriev." Alas, there were more problems than Dmitriev’s time — a scientist as original and talented as he was able-bodied. In the 1949 year - in the 25 years, after successfully testing the RDS-1, Dmitriev received his first Order of the Red Banner of Labor for developing the theory of the first atomic bomb. The mathematician Dmitriev was also an interesting physicist, and once about him, a modest, officially recognized colleague, said: “The doctorate degree will not add anything to the name Dmitriev”.
Viktor Davidenko received the Order of the Red Banner of Labor and the Stalin Prize for the development of the proven design of the neutron fuse of the first atomic bomb, and later became the author of the pioneering idea that immediately gave the warhead a look close to modern.
Boris Ledenev, who passed away in 50 years, like his colleagues, could write a novel about his life - only working with 1958 through 1960 a year with an atomic adviser in China was worth something! One problem - the most exciting pages of the novel would have no less than “top secret” ...
Private Mikhail Shumaev in 1942, he immediately fell into the thicket of Stalingrad, was seriously wounded, demobilized. In 1950, one year after the RDS-1 test, he graduated from the Moscow State University Physics Department and was sent to KB-11, starting there with the problems of a “hydrogen”, that is, thermonuclear, bomb. Working already at the “New Object” - in the Ural Scientific Research Institute-1011, he became the author of an exceptionally successful charge scheme, in the everyday life of the developers called “Shumayevka” ...
It was a time of a special attitude towards life — actively creative and therefore exceptionally productive. The fable that there are no irreplaceable people is in the high run for those who are just as easy to replace. And all the “atomic” anniversaries of 2014 of the year were personalities, people were special, each of them was irreplaceable and unique, but ...
IF STARS GASYAT, MEANS THAT SOMEONE NEEDS
Today they talk a lot about the need to maintain continuity, traditions, etc. But tradition is alive and lives when it is transmitted from a living person to a living person. I do not argue, said trite. But from the fact that "2 x 2 = 4" - the truth is banal, its loyalty does not decrease, on the one hand.
On the other hand, the traditions of nuclear weapons work are becoming more and more extinct and are fading, first of all, in their most vital aspect - the professional one. The absence of full-scale tests for the past twenty-four years has led to the emergence of two or three generations of nuclear weapons developers, in which the living tradition of the craft - the craft in the exact sense of the word - is heated from generation to generation, if not dying. However, this is a topic of a separate difficult and difficult conversation, and continuing the topic of this article, I will say that the moral traditions of nuclear weapons work are dying, because the living memory of those luminaries who once began this work dies. And the abundantly commemorative 2014 year confirms this once again.
How the weapon center and the city where they lived and worked should be honored for the atomic anniversaries of 2014; the industry, the power and glory of which they created; the country and the people for whose safety they spared no strength and health?
2014 year is the year of Khariton, Zeldovich, Dukhov, Muzrukov ... These first-class names alone are enough for a loud nationwide action, including events at the level of the president and the premier, and the creation of a series of documentaries, and the organization of thematic programs on the main television channels, and publishing books and albums, and writing essays and articles ...
Since its inception, the atomic side of life in Russia has been firmly closed from unnecessary views. And in the first years there was, of course, a reason. In America, in the year 1945, the book by Henry Smith “Atomic Energy for Military Purposes” was openly published. The official report on the development of the atomic bomb under the supervision of the US government. " In 1946, she was transferred and published in the USSR.
However, when the US atomic monopoly was abolished, at the initiative of Beria, curator of the Atomic Project of the USSR, work began on writing the Russian version of the Smith report, and the secretariat of the Special Committee, with the participation of atomic industry specialists, prepared in 1952 – 1953 for an open publication compilation History of Atomic Energy in USSR". In fact, the collection was to be a report of the USSR government to the peoples of the USSR — a time came when people had to learn that they were undernourished, had long jackets, lived closely after the war, not least because the funds were spent on securing Russia's peaceful future.
The Soviet people had to find out also what a magnificent feat and in what short time it had accomplished by creating not only an atomic bomb, but also a new powerful branch of the economy — an atomic bomb. And created not for war, but in the name of peace. In the draft collection there were such words: “The atomic bomb in the hands of the Soviet people is a guarantee of peace. Nehru, the Prime Minister of India, correctly assessed the significance of the Soviet atomic bomb, saying: “The significance of atomic discovery may help prevent war.”
The above text is a statement of the Soviet official view of the problem of nuclear weapons. In the West, the US atomic bomb was officially and openly regarded as a means of dictatorship, as a weapon for a completely possible nuclear attack on the USSR. The Soviet leadership immediately considered nuclear weapons as a factor in stabilizing and deterring potential aggression. And this is a historical fact! Russia has always been organically alien to destruction, death, war — unlike the current West and the United States, which can no longer live without killing, destroying, and not suppressing the will and freedom of nations.
As a result, unfortunately, the atomic problem in the USSR was not disclosed even minimally, and it did not occupy the place it was supposed to occupy in the public consciousness. When they began to declassify it - in the years of the “catastroika”, the main gunsmiths of the country were publicly put up almost as cannibals and moral monsters ...
Subsequently, the situation has somehow straightened, but over the past decades, Russian society has not instilled pride in its nuclear weapons - the only nuclear weapons in the world that were created to prevent war ... Pop stars we know better than Khariton.
Yes, what am I saying! Even "Yub" in Russia really do not know, and what can we say about the Spirit, Muzrukov and their outstanding and great colleagues, starting with Academician Kurchatov!
Since its inception, 2014 could have become the year of Russia's new discovery of its glorious atomic history, it could have become the “year of the nuclear shield”! So why he did not they still? Who needs historical unconsciousness? Why do our stars go out? Why do we make historically indifferent?
On January 7, 105 celebrated the birth of the twice Hero of Socialist Labor, the chief designer of nuclear munitions, Professor Samvel Kocharyants, winner of three Stalinist, Leninist and State prizes, holder of six orders of Lenin.
February 27 turned 110 to Yub, Khariton, March 8 to Yab, Zeldovich. But how were the anniversaries of these luminaries marked? Meetings at the Academy of Sciences, almost unnoticed by the media; NTSy in the "Sarov" nuclear center, losing its former luster ...
Here, in fact, that's all.
And how many more “nuclear” anniversaries of 2014 are ahead, although it is not too late to celebrate anniversaries with dignity. Will this be done - in the framework of the “year of the nuclear shield” still not declared in Russia? Is it possible to miss such a rich reason for raising active patriotism?
Many luminaries of Sarov on their desktops under the glass lay a famous statement by Sergei Korolev: “Whoever wants to do, will find a way, who does not want to, will find an excuse”. If we want, we will find a way to rectify the situation! And excuses and the reasons - this is not for those who want it!
Do we want to have a powerful nuclear Russia? The events of the beginning of 2014, clearly showed that the external environment of Russia is hostile to her. Minimal historically, politically, geopolitically, economically and morally justified (actually necessary) “Crimean” actions of Russia immediately showed that no one except Russia needs a strong Russia. Where are all the assurances of "partnership", "cooperation for peace" and so on ...
But strong Russia is nuclear Russia. But can it remain effectively nuclear without nationally and on a large scale declared respect for its nuclear history? And is it possible today to say that such respect is in our society?
In the sky of Russia, with the beginning of its "atomic" history, the brightest constellation of "atomic giants" flared up. Their merits deserve to be known even by children, and even future Russian scientists and engineers do not know them today. And today, our “atomic constellation” must already be spoken of as a fading constellation. And this is not an overexposure and not an exaggeration, but a sad and disturbing fact!
However, if we really use the "star" images, we can recall that the fading stars are able at some point to flash the brightest flash of the Supernova. And what awaits nuclear Russia - a supernova revival or a black hole?
Modern nuclear Russia has enough professional problems. But it is unlikely that they will be resolved if state and public attention to the moral problems of national nuclear weapons work is not demonstrated - at the highest level including. But moral problems are connected with tradition, and tradition does not live without historical memory.
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