The Spirit of Russian Science

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Author: Michael Levinshtein

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Published by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. P O Box 128, Farrer Road, Singapore 912805 USA office: Suite 1B, 1060 Main Street, River Edge, NJ 07661 UK office: 57 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9HE

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

THE SPIRIT OF RUSSIAN SCIENCE Copyright © 2002 by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission from the Publisher.

For photocopying of material in this volume, please pay a copying fee through the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. In this case permission to photocopy is not required from the publisher.

ISBN 981-02-4946-2

Printed in Singapore.

To my friends

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CONTENTS

Preface

xi

Introduction

1

Incident Report

1

The Grad-student, the Supervisor and the Mounting

1

Historic Roots

4

Seminars

5

Joint Work

5

You are Defaming Your Nation

6

The Triplet-Singlet Transition

6

The Peculiar National Habit

8

Latin and Greek Letters

9

Passionarity

11

Table of Ranks

14

Tea Seminar

15

Seminars Which Did Not Take Place

19

Rosa Kuleshova and the Theoretician

19

Misunderstanding

20

Orders

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Orders About Discharges

23

Order No 4. On Conservation of the Angular Momentum

24

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The Spirit of Russian Science

Order No 7. About Publications Marked with the Roman Numeral X

25

Order No 14. About Urgent Problems

26

Order No 16. About the Theft of a Tea-kettle and the Damage to a Lock

27

Winter Schools

29

Plan of Cultural Program for the 2nd Semiconductor School of the IOFFE Institute

29

Nemesis

30

The Stress Put in the Right Way

32

About the Mystery of a Woman’s Soul

34

Operator of a Secondary Quantization

36

Electron in a Potential Well

37

The Odessa “PentaBoris”

38

Foreigners at the IOFFE Institute

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An American Glory, Glory, Alleluia!

39

Beer

40

The Kuban Cossacks

43

Saying Good-bye in the Slavonic Way

44

Digression: An Article Into a Foreign Journal

47

A Grad-student from Munich

49

Profane Faith

51

Digression: The “Smell” of Science

53

Checks on the Roads

56

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Russians Abroad

63

Mr. Ulyanov in Finland

63

Population of Rumania

64

I Am Not a Boy for Them

66

Analginum and the Attendant Commodities

68

The Gate

69

The Texas Marquees

71

Little Secrets of Theoreticians

75

Admonition to the Experimentalist

75

Admonition to the Theorist

76

The Optimal Conditions for the Work

76

True Pride

77

Short Sketches on Social Life

81

Late 60s

81

Early 70s Vodka in the Context of a Strictly Scientific Approach

81

The Lenin Komsomol Prize

82

Late 70s The Experience of Social-political Defloration

87

Academic and Reactor

90

Late 80s A Tank and a Bug

91

Physical Society at the IOFFE Institute

92

Late 90s The Last Order

95

Conclusion

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PREFACE

Many years ago, in December of 1966, I first crossed the threshold one of the largest, most famous, and best research institutes of Russia. The official name of the Institute sounded most solemn and impressive: “The Leningrad Physical-Technical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, named after A. F. Ioffe, awarded the Medals of Lenin and the Red Banner”. In short — “PhysTech”. In the West this Institute is well known as “The Ioffe”. I was fascinated by the atmosphere, by the way people interacted and by their attitude towards life, which I called “The Spirit of PhysTech”. Later, I was assured this surprising spirit is characteristic not only of the Ioffe but also of Science of Russia in general. One could not help feeling it, and it was very difficult to define. A lifetime has passed, and I still cannot find a definition for that wonderful spirit. Therefore, I decided to do what little I could, to illustrate the way it manifests itself, showing it by examples still retained in my memory. This book is a collection of such examples. That spirit is passing away: new times are coming, and as has always been the case, new Gods are replacing the old ones. Why should I conceal that, I like the new ones far less, and I can only repeat the words of the poet: People write, and time wipes out, It wipes out everything they spell. But tell me, — if the ear dies, Must the sound die as well? It gets quieter and lower, I can decipher just a part, And still I hear, not by ear, But by my soul, by my heart.

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INTRODUCTION Incident Report One of the first stories (perhaps the very first) which I heard at the Ioffe was the following. A fireman on duty, during graveyard shift, was inspecting the premises entrusted to him. Opening all the doors with his own key, he discovered in one of the rooms a Senior Researcher and a Laboratory Assistant in a situation that might be called rather delicate. The brave fireman took the trouble to draw up an INCIDENT REPORT that according to the regulations was presented to the deputy director of the Institute. In those days, the SENIOR RESEARCHER was considered to be “persona grate”, a kind of an “embryo of fame” and the deputy director did not dare punish the guilty man on his own authority. So, the INCIDENT REPORT was deferred to the desk of the ACADEMICIAN, the Director of the Institute. The latter drew his famous resolution that he wrote in the top left corner, slantwise: “Adultery at one’s spare time offers no threat to fire safety. To the archive”. The case was buried in oblivion.

The Grad-student, the Supervisor and the Mounting The next incident took place within my memory, almost in front of my eyes. For a year and a half a grad-student was assembling a set-up. He was laboring 10–12 hours a day, day by day, 6 days per week. He had to deal with glass blowers, and mechanics, with plumbers, electricians, and welders. He procured and elicited, he stole details

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THE SPIRIT OF RUSSIAN SCIENCE

of machines, and he cut, screwed, blew, cleaned, adjusted, and checked up, he remade and refitted over and over… At long last, the final tests showed that the set-up was ready. It was operational! Now one could grow samples, measure them, give them to others… One could make conclusions, write articles, and… you can never tell, but why not?! One might even present and defend one’s Thesis on time! It was clear as day, that this historic moment was to be celebrated. And the grad-student did! When three days later he came to the laboratory, the Group Supervisor informed the grad-student: “Your further work at this set up is INEXPEDIENT. Another grad-student will work at it. And you start mounting another set up at which you will “make your thesis”. The grad-student set up a howl and rushed off to the Head of the Laboratory. The latter had reached that age and position when one takes close to heart only one’s own troubles. In such cases the subordinates must know better than bother the boss. Their knowhow to manage that is considered to be their best virtue, just like writing good articles, so that their boss might give his name as a co-author without even taking the trouble to read them. “My dear”, said the Head of the Lab, “I’ve known your Group Supervisor for quite a few years. He is a conscientious and responsible person who always acts sensibly, so it is always possible to come to an agreement with him in an amicable way. I am sure you will come to some agreement. By the way, your second year here is coming to the end, and you have not published anything yet”. “But I have been assembling the set-up, haven’t I?! Provided I am given an opportunity to work at it, there are to be publications and I hope I’ll be able to present my Thesis…” “Oh, yes, my dear, arrange it with your Group Supervisor. And do not forget about your publications, the attestation is not far off ”. The grad-student whimpered and trudged to the Group Supervisor. “How dare you to complain about me?! You, SOB! Consider yourself fired! We are having the attestation in two months and I’ll give you all hell!”

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The Group Supervisor usually came to his office by 11 a.m. On that day the grad-student was there by 8 a.m. When the Group Supervisor entered the room where the set-up had been the day before, he found the grad-student taking a break, sitting on the frame. There was not a single glass vessel, a single piece of quartz larger than a dime in the room. The dust of glass and quartz — the remnants of the setup — evenly covered the floor. Not only that! There was not a single whole union, or a single pipe that had not been bent, or a single piece of wire longer than 5 cm, or a single cutting that had not be disfigured. Everything, that hard work, good health, fury, and the feeling that one is right could unleash and destroy in 3 hours was unleashed and destroyed. The Super visor howled and rushed to the Head of the Laboratory. However, from the heights the latter has achieved, the misfortunes of the Supervisor did not seem to him to be more important than those of the grad-student. “My dear”, the Head of the Laboratory said, “You have been working with the grad-student for a year and a half. More than once I’ve heard from you that he is a conscientious and responsible person who always acts sensibly, so it is always possible to come to an agreement with him in an amicable way. He got heated of course, that’s certain. But, to prosecute? Oh, no, for pity’s sake! Just think what a stain it would be on the Laboratory and on the Group, too… I am sure everything will somehow work out…” And indeed, it was. The grad-student changed jobs. He went to work at the neighboring enterprise and a few years later returned to the Ioffe. He defended his Thesis and even became the recipient of one of the most honorary scientific prizes. I can’t help recalling Alexey K. Tolstoy’s words: Fellow of the Council he became, So very soon, so very soon. A good example for us to take! But luck comes once in a blue moon.

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Historic Roots …Mikhaylo Lomonosov,* who was enrolled in 1742 as grad-student at this Academy, and during all this time behaved improperly, had not justified hopes laid on him by the Professors. He often drank hard, kicked up rows and fights, and in September of 1742 was taken to the police station. Besides, while a special commission was working at the Academy, the above Mikhaylo Lomonosov displayed absolute disrespect to his Professors, humiliating and insulting them. Since such awful behavior could never be allowed at any academy, on February 21, a special decision was made that Lomonosov should not be allowed to attend any Conferences at the Academy. On April 26, 1743, before noon, Lomonosov, heavily drunk, insolently appeared in the chamber where Conferences were usually held. There was no one there at that time, only Professor Vitzgeim and some clerks working there. Lomonosov, without greeting anyone and without taking off his hat, walked past them to the department of geography, and while passing by the Professor’s table, he stopped and made a most disgracing gesture with his hand before their faces. He let forth a stream of threats. He cursed loudly, using very bad language and threatened Professor Vitzgeim to “set right” his teeth, and calling Councilor Shumakher a thief. He mocked them, he repeated those insinuations many times, and demanded that all those curses should be registered. (May 11, 1743) Materials for the History of Russian Academy of Sciences

* Mikhail V. Lomonosov is considered to be “the founder of Russian science”. His

name is but little known in the West, but in Russia every pupil knows him. As usual in such cases, the school-texts depict Lomonosov as a personification of virtue, a mine of information, and a knight in shining armour.

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SEMINARS Joint Work At scientific seminars, chairman is, as a rule, seated at the front. Upon introducing the reporter, the chairman takes his seat in the first row, and unless something extraordinary happens, he quietly begins to snooze, retaining a pose that is full of dignity and respect towards the speaker. Exceptional cases are but very rare occasions: the reader of the report is a brilliant speaker, or his/her work must be of tremendous interest, or else, some disputable or troublemaking work is being presented. The work the grad-student was recounting on that day was quite ordinary. His gift as a speaker left much to be desired… Besides, the work had been made together with the chairman, the Head of the Laboratory. So it was no wonder that quite soon the Head of the Seminar appeared to be in the arms of Morpheus. Meanwhile, about 15 minutes later, a young man, one of those who delves into every detail, began to question a point which was unclear to him. The grad-student began explaining it and then it became clear that it was not an obscurity in style, but an out and out mistake. As often happens, everybody began to yell simultaneously, interrupting each other. So, the head of the laboratory woke up. Cautiously looking around and making sure he had not lost face, he cocked his ear and a few minutes later everything was clear to him. “Volodya”, — he addressed the grad-student who was being attacked. Silence fell. “Volodya, do you know the Chinese saying that it is not the mistake that disgraces a man but the unwillingness to correct it. This work is weak as it is, and with this mistake it is premature to submit it for publication.” “But N.N .! It is our joint work. You are co-author!! And it has already been accepted for publication!!!”

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There was an awkward silence, but the senior fellow soon found a way out: “That is no reason to present it in such a bad way!”

You are Defaming Your Nation There is no rule of man which cannot allow for an exception. One of the highly respected Heads of the Laboratory (or maybe even of the Department), on the contrary, liked to sit in the last row, skillfully gaining all the strategic advantages of that position. A presentation was being made by a researcher from Moscow. The theme of the talk was vexingly close to that of one of the gradstudents of the laboratory. Being the person concerned, and not very clever, the grad-student began finding fault with the presenter no sooner than the latter had opened his mouth. Being Jewish, i.e. quite a passionate person, he made his remarks in a tone far from academic. The presenter behaved with dignity and parried the attacks of the grad-student not without humor, which made the latter even hotter under the collar. At last the situation became indecent. The Head of the Laboratory (and maybe even of the Department), a very tall man, whose motions were never hasty, rose from his seat in the last row and, his gait slouching like that of a cavalryman, walked unhurriedly along the aisle to the first row. Walking past the grad-student, who was sitting near the aisle, he slightly bent his head and pronounced in a low but quite distinct voice: “You are defaming your nation”, after which he walked on and sat down in the first row. The seminar went on without any further incidents or interference.

The Triplet-Singlet Transition The desire and ability to get to the root of things constitutes an attractive peculiarity of the Russian scientific character; even if in

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doing so it is necessary to cut open the speaker’s abdomen and rummage in his bowels. A presenter in Russia is always ready to be interrupted at any point of his or her presentation. Any participant of a seminar or conference may interfere whenever he-or-she likes and ask in the plainest language any question. It was the early 70s, and on All-Union Conference on Semiconductor Physics was taking place in Kiev. The Head of the Department presented the results of work recently done in his department; he was, quite naturally, co-author… He presented the material brilliantly: “As far back as the ancient times, the Greeks knew… When Newton observed the interference rings, it was already then that, in principle,… However…” A young theoretician standing behind me rapturously said to someone older than himself: “Look here, he is a genius! I know for sure that just 2 days ago he knew nothing whatsoever about this work!” The second man answered composedly: “Wait for the questions…” The presentation came to an end. A young boy stood up and, blushing, asked the presenter: “Will you tell me, please! Your effect is based on the transition from state A to state B, isn’t it? But state A is a singlet while state B is a triplet. And such transitions are forbidden by selection rules. So how can this be?” There was complete silence followed by a confident answer. “Here this transition is allowed”. The young theoretician behind my back sighed “Oh!” The audience was silent. Here, the famous middle-aged (as it seemed to me then) theoretician P woke up and in his innocence asked, “Look here…, what are you saying? How can you get such a transition allowed?” To argue with P about it? For the entire audience, the speaker included, the outcome is clear beforehand. A heavy silence lasted a whole minute. For a moment a desire to tell the truth, “I don’t know”, was written on the presenter’s face. But it vanished immediately, and the presenter, who was on the brink of the precipice, fell down into it to the accompaniment of the Homeric, joyful laughter of the audience; “Being Head of the Department, I can’t enter into details… My coauthor will answer this question….”

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The Peculiar National Habit It is hardly possible to overestimate the benefit to science of the above tradition. However, just like any other man-made establishment, when carried to its extreme, it become its polar opposite… My young friend (M ), recently graduated from the University, was in the Theoretical Department and devoted himself wholly, with the ardor of youth, to scientific intercourse, trying not to miss a single seminar. Usually after the seminars come to an end, M called his brother and an old friend of mine (S), and we would go out together to have lunch. We walked from the building Z , and M walked from the main block. When M was 10 steps apart from us, he began shouting, addressing mainly S: “Damn, what a pity you were not there! I wish you had attended that seminar! Saul (or Zhenya or L yonya) has discovered something quite wonderful, which fully transforms all our ideas…” S twisting his mouth and putting his hand into his pocket, produced cigarettes, matches and begins smoking his cigarette, obviously enjoying it. Then he severely asked “How else can I tell you? What’s the good of your seminar? Perhaps you’ll say it yourself?” M looked at him reproachfully and began mumbling somewhat plaintively “How can you say it without having been there, without having heard anything…” “I attended that bloody seminar of yours a couple of times, and I’ll never set foot there again”, answered S as severely as before. “If you’d like to know, our seminar is one of the best, and maybe the very best seminar in the world in the field theory!” “It’s not a seminar, it’s a Sabbath!” S replied, getting wound up “You know, when I study a problem for two months, then no one in the world, you see, NO ONE can tell me anything new about this problem. As for your assemblage Saul himself had been working * All the three interlocutors belonged to the above-mentioned nation.

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at that problem a whole YEAR, perhaps more. And no sooner he writes on the board the first equation, than your Jewish mob*, begins shouting “Where from have you got that term? In the right side of the equation you ought to have added the term describing the pairwise interaction!” Or else some other foolish thing. “How can you, asshole†, discuss the term that you see for the first time, while I have been staring at it for a year! And you want me to attend your provincial din?!” M ashamed, does not answer. We walked on and then S, without changing the stern expression of his face, asks: “So what did Saul tell you about the gluon?” And young M, forgetting everything, begins to speak breathlessly…

Latin and Greek Letters One of Leningrad’s most prominent Hebrewists, Full Professor, member of the International Commission involved in the processing and publication of the Qumran’s manuscripts, was invited to make a presentation on philosophy at the All-Institute Seminar. The topic of his presentation was — “Certain events at the beginning of the new era”. I do not remember why, but everybody was very excited. When, 15 minutes before the beginning, I approached the assembly hall, the door was locked and the corridor before it resembled a market place in Israel. Exactly at the appointed time the presenter appeared and informed the audience that he had recently returned from Rome where he participated in the Third (or maybe the Fourth?) International Congress at which about 500 participants from more than 80 countries had been present. The participants discussed 5 (five) famous lines from Joseph Flavius which said that while Pontius Pilate was the Prosecutor of Judaea, a certain man named Joshua was crucified †

In the original it is much stronger.

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during the Easter festival. But as his disciples say, on the third day after the execution he was resurrected and rose to heaven… By that time I was sure that nothing could surprise me. I happened to listen to the lectures of Pushkin* scholars from which it was clear that they were not at all sorry, but on the contrary, felt happy and honored to have spent 10 years of their lives establishing exactly whether it was on the sixth or on the eighth of December that Alexander Pushkin wrote to his eighty second lover… But 500 people from 80 countries! For the third time!! Apropos the five lines!!!! And after all it is quite certain that while Pontius Pilate was the Prosecutor of Judaea, several hundred people were crucified. More than one of them had the name of Joshua… What has it to do with the ideas which divided the Roman Empire and underlie the modern civilization?… I looked around. People, much cleverer than myself, and much more erudite, listened in quiet fascination. I also began to listen, and… soon found myself quite hypnotized by that wonderful speaker. He was saying that first these lines were met in the manuscript by Flavius in the 10th century; that the manuscript was written in the Coptic language and was found on the territory of modern Syria†. He claimed that first everybody was sure that this was interpolation, i.e. the remark of some reader, written on the margin of the book and later on introduced into the basic text by some semiliterate monk-copyist. He said that much later, in quite another country, another manuscript was found in which there were the same 5 magic lines… That made the interpolation far less probable. Though, on the other hand… The reporter spoke about a wonderful discovery made by a Russian scientist on the eve of the First World War and soon forgotten in the whirlwind of events that would muddle the world… With tremendous speed he wrote those 5 lines on the board in Coptic, in Aramaic, in Greek, in Latin… * Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837) is the most famous Russian poet. †

Cited from memory, so there may be some bad mistakes here.

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When the speaker finally thanked the audience for their attention and ceased talking, I discovered that I was sitting with my mouth ajar, and apparently had been sitting in that position for an hour. The crowd began to leak out through the single open door. (In accordance with the common Russian custom only one door out of the six was open.) While I was shuffling to the door, the former doubts in the expedience of all that glamour returned to me. And then, by mere chance, I was pushed up against an old friend of mine, a man of immense knowledge, brilliant analytic intelligence and a rare depth of thought. “Mike, I asked him with an independent air, “what did you think?” Mike was deep in thought… At last he said, “How strange it is to see so many Latin and Greek letters not linked by a sign of equality”.

Passionarity Another presentation at the All-Institute seminar that was imprinted in my memory was made by a famous historian engaged in popularizing history, the author of the theory of so-called passionarity, a bright lecturer and brilliant polemist. A flourish of the pointer, and Philip’s phalanx tames the Greek polices. The phalanx of Macedonians, led by his son Alexander, cuts through the Persian Kingdom and fights the elephants on the banks of Ind. Meanwhile, we learn about the nuptial customs of the Ducks, about the design of their helmets, the length of their spears and the long range of their bows. We learn about the favorite dishes of Alexander, about the Persian roads and about the ways of tanning leather, of which Aristotle’s sandals were made… Another flourish of the pointer, and from the Arabian desert, forgotten by God, appear strange riders on horsebacks and atop camels. With lighting speed there arises a New World with its new great religion, which stretches from Toledo in the West to Samarkand in the East. We learn how to saddle the camels, why together with Arabian

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troops Jews traveled to Bukhara, what the ancient roots of Ramadan are, what customs of harems were and what rules Saladin was guided by in regard to the Christians. All those and innumerable other details merge together into a wonderful design, from whose contemplation one cannot tear himself away. The pointer moves downward, and the Vikings venture to the South-East coast of England, ravage Normandy, ransack Italy, flood Sicily with blood, discover Greenland, and land in America. We learn how they oriented in the open ocean, who are berserks, why and when “Herald saddles his horse to take part in the battle…”, how to fight with two swords simultaneously. Passionaries are the people who do not value what is precious to ordinary people: peace, ones own safety and for one’s children, pleasant leisure hours, and comfort: Day and night on horseback, Rushing about the land. Day and night crossing swords, Causing bloodshed and rack. Always forward, East and West! The eagle shining On armoured breast*. No one was aware that the audience was facing a short, stout middle-aged man with a puffy face. More than that, all of us with our flabby muscles, our pot-belles, bald-heads and short breath felt in those moments as if we were passionaries. Should the seminar have ended at that qualitative level, it would have remained in our memory as a real festival of the human spirit. Alas… the speaker came over to figures, and the trained audience regained consciousness. The lecturer postulated that passionarity, having once appeared, exists quite a definite period. He named that period. But as soon as he began proving it by examples, the audi* The verse by Joseph Brodsky

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ence who had cut their teeth on adjusting the experiments to theory began to cough, to whisper, to smirk; the arbitrariness of the criterion was seen with the naked eye. But the speaker did not notice anything, he was passing over to the main thing, “looking at these latitudinal (Macedonian, the Arabs) or longitudinal (Vikings) zones of passionarity, one cannot but come to the conclusion that at certain moments a cosmic ray cuts through the…” At that moment the secretary of the seminar said very firmly and even grimly, “It isn’t necessary here…” The speaker got silent. For several seconds he seemed to be struggling to say something, and then pronounced quietly, “That’s basically all I wanted to tell you today”. The secretary stood up and pronounced the usual phrase, “Any questions, please?” Several hands were raised in different parts of the hall, but the secretary somehow demurred. I followed his glance and grew cold… All the local “mad-men”, authors of the most intricate projects of perpetual mobile, worshippers of bio-energetic, fighters against the first and second laws of thermodynamics — all of them turned towards the speaker like sun-flowers to the sun. Apparently, the secretary was vainly looking for someone who could be expected to ask a “normal” question. However, pathologists are a passionate public, and the most passionate of them jumped up without waiting to be invited. “But that’s exactly what superconductivity is”, he cried out. I could not stand it and rushed out of the hall. A couple of minutes later people with better nerves began to leave the hall. “Well, what’s going on?” I asked a good friend of mine. “Coppers boil,” he grinned gravely. And answering to my bewildered look, he cited a poet: I see a mountain, almost buried, On which some coppers boil, and sing. In that abominable game A Jew and Frog are getting married.† †

An extract from the famous verse by Pushkin.

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I peeped timidly into the hall. A small group of people crowded in the middle of the room, shouting “The first-order phase transition…”, “Second-order…”, “It’s a percolation, that’s clear!” Akela’s howl drowned everything, “I tell you those are the same Cooper’s pairs…” The lecturer, his face quite pale, was cautiously moving towards the exit. No one paid any attention to him though.

Table of Ranks Apart from scientific and philosophic seminars, there were also socialpolitical seminars. As a rule, at those seminars the decisions of the Communist Party and the Soviet Government were elucidated. It should be admitted that in the majority of the laboratories the authorities did not manifest any special enthusiasm, believing that the qualification of the employees will enable them to read newspapers and draw their own necessary conclusions. It is clear, however, that the crucial decisions and especially those concerning science could not be left to their discretion. In late 70s, one more Decree about the rapprochement of science and industry was published, and the social-political seminar was convened in the theoretical department. Having religiously repeated the content of the Decree, the speaker, who was Party Organizer of the Department, explained that “in light” of that Decree, every first-rate theoretician must work together with the experimentalists if it is absolutely impossible to collaborate (which would be the best) with the people engaged in production. Then he asked, ”Any questions?” According to the mute agreement there were to be no questions, but…there was a question. “Do I take it in the right way that in light of this Decree, NN is to be considered a first-rate theoretician, Max Plank must be theoretician of the second rate, and Albert Einstein — of the third rate?”

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NN, chosen as a standard, was a respectable specialist who collaborated much and very fruitfully with the experimentalists. In that audience, however, that question sounded as if someone had asked, “Am I right, that in light of this Decree, a mouse is to be considered the biggest mammal, a bull somewhat smaller, and the blue whale, according to that Decree, was to be considered the smallest”. The speaker found himself in a very difficult position and his answer did him credit. “That’s right”, he said.

Tea Seminar In a Russian hut, the icon takes a place of honor. In Rome, the figures of Penates were placed near the fireplace. Sometimes I think about where one should place The Spirit of Russian Science if it were possible to represent it in the form of an icon or in shape of a domestic idol. In such cases, I usually imagine a room full of smoke on the 6th floor of some building at the Ioffe. There are two tables in there, which are so shabby that no beggar could be attracted to them, a few chairs with torn seats, and a sofa, which not even the wildest dreamer could be tempted by. Any attempt to make the room more cozy would end in failure. The curtains would gradually give way, no one taking the trouble to mend them, and sometime later they would disappear. The flowers having long since died as no one remembered to water them. Once a cactus had lived almost a year and the question was discussed more than once whether it lived off tobacco smoke. This vitality could not be explained alternative way. An icon-lamp is lit in front of the icon. Pieces of food are placed before the figures of Penates. In this room every day for more than a quarter of a century they have been serving The Spirit of Science. The oblation to this fastidious idol takes the most diverse forms… In 1982, it struck one of the rooms custodians that they should establish there a new type of seminar. That idea failed to impress anyone. A general weekly seminar had already been working many

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years at the Theoretical Department. “Private” seminars had been working in practically every section of the Theoretical Department. There are several dozens laboratories at the Ioffe Institute and practically every laboratory had its own seminar. So the idea did not strike anyone as new. More than that, it was supplemented with a number of details which made one believe that the idea not only strike him, but that it was instilled in him. As a rule, seminars take place in the morning when one’s head is fresh. That seminar was fixed for 5 p.m. Usually they try to find a comfortable spacious room (assuming that crowds of people will attend it). That seminar was to take place in that very room where not more than a score of chairs could be placed. The well-wishers pointed out that at 5 p.m. all rooms were vacant and one could choose any room one liked. The man in charge said “no!” without explaining anything. True, from the very beginning it was believed that the regular participants of the seminar would be offered tea with a bun (which was thought to be a “Dutch treat”). However, even now tea with a bun will not be tempting for any theoretician. According to the apt remark of Saltykov-Schedrin*, in 1982 “any serf had good bread and, not infrequently, cabbage soup too and with some other hot meal…”. The temptation was hardly great. Fifteen years have passed. The common weekly theoretical seminar has passed away. Many laboratory and sectional seminars no longer exist… Every five years the “tea” seminar modestly, though with dignity, celebrated its jubilee. There are 52 weeks in a year. Excluding the 3 summer months, we surmise that working if held EVERY week for 5 years the weekly seminar had to have taken place 180 times. During the first 5 years the “tea” seminar had 130 sittings, during the second 5 years — 140, during the third 5 years — 125, (mind, those years were counted from 1992!). That year prices for everything all of a sudden became 15 times higher than before, and Doctors of Science, * Mikhail E. Saltykov-Schedrin (1826–1889) is the famous Russian satirist.

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in order to sustain their families, worked as mere peddlers in small shops or delivered newspapers. And now, should I happen to walk along the corridor of the sixth floor on Thursday at 5 p.m., I am sure to see the backs of young theoreticians for whom there is no room in the small hall. Should I come nearer, they will step aside, glasses of tea in hand, giving way out of respect to my gray hair (or to my bald spot). I will look into the hall and will see a presenter at the board, dripping with sweat, and theoreticians of a venerable age sitting on the chairs, each with a glass of tea in hand. The maximum distance between the participants is 3 meters. It is difficult to be puffed up, or to tell lies at such a short distance. To play the fool while drinking tea with one’s colleagues is not easy either. Perhaps herein lies the secret of the homey atmosphere and absolute sincerity of that sacramental action in the face of The Spirit of the Science? In the roll of the presenters I see the names of the present tenured and full Professors of the Universities of the USA, England, France, Norway…, former members of the Ioffe, driven away from the country by famine. If any of them come to Petersburg, they try, as a rule, to make their presentations at the tea seminar. And everyone with whom I have discussed this topic, has said that there is nothing like that seminar in the world. At that seminar both current and eternal questions are discussed. And there is hardly any such part of physics that had not been in the field of vision of the tea seminar. Sometimes, I think about where one should place The Spirit of Russian Science if it were possible to represent it in the form of an icon or in shape of a domestic idol. Most often, I think of the small room full of tobacco smoke on the 6th floor in one of the buildings of my Institute.

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SEMINARS WHICH DID NOT TAKE PLACE Rosa Kuleshova and the Theoretician In the mid 80s, the name of Rosa Kuleshova, the famous healer and clairvoyant, was known to all the country over. Her fame could compete only with the fame of the abominable Snowman or with the Loch Ness monster. The honorable Rosa read with her fingers (and with more intimate parts of the body) letters sealed in lightproof envelops, with her hands she deviated the laser ray, she burned skeptics from a distance, cured any disease, and in case of necessity could bewitch with the evil eye. Once, at the entrance to the Ioffe’s main building, someone had hung up two issues of newspaper. One of them described the miracles performed by Rosa Kuleshova, the other contained their denunciation. After reading them both I became firmly convinced of my intellectual atheism and paid them no further heed. About 10 days later, when walking to the library, I saw N, — one of the Institute’s most prominent theoreticians, a man of perfect repute, having a keen analytic intellect, and of immense worldly wisdom. That man bent short-sighted over the newspaper describing Rosa’s exploits and studied it attentively. I passed by, returned some books, had a short chat with someone and again happened to be at the entrance. N was still standing there in the same pose and still reading as attentively as before. I could not control myself, “Dear me! What have you found in this nonsense?” I asked disrespectfully. N turned towards me, dignified. “And you, Mike, have you found nothing interesting here? In my opinion there are a lot things here which are of the upmost interest”. I grew cold… It goes without saying that the common conviction that professional study of science serves as an immunization against prejudice towards or belief in miracles is nothing but a delusion. Never before had any seminar assembled so many people as that which

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took place on that memorable day, when the presentation was made by a man who cured every disease by laying on the sick person a dog, which had been cut beforehand in the proper place. Apparently, among the PhD holders and the Doctors of Science the percentage of those who believe in the evil eye, in bio-energetics, parapsychology, and in re-incarnation is perhaps as high as among the inmates of a barrack in North-Urals prison camp. But N ? It was impossible to believe. “Look here, Mike”, N went on meanwhile”, she rotates the magnetic needle by merely making rotary motions over the compass. We must invite her to make a presentation at the All-Institute seminar. I am sure it will be most interesting and instructive for us to see it…” “But N !” I exclaimed in despair, “I am sure there is a magnet fixed in her bra! That is what is rotating the needle!!” “That’s it which is so interesting!” — N parried, returning to me my faith in humanity. The Seminar by Kuleshova never took place… And it’s a great pity, as I can see it now.

Misunderstanding One of the heads of the theoretical group felt peculiar towards those who wanted to present their theses not in those places where they were made. It is difficult to explain the reason for this hostility; reading one’s thesis at a place other than where the thesis was made is quite ordinary. It happens quite frequently. Nevertheless, that man declared repeatedly that the authors of such dissertations should be regarded as people (rather as nits) who try to slip away from the criticism of those who are familiar with their work; or as degenerates who try to plagiarize the results of their colleagues. The research fellows of that group were certainly cognizant of this oddity of their boss. But naturally they did not parade it. One fine day, the head of the big experimental laboratory addressed the secretary of that group’s seminar, a young theoretician, “Mike”, he said, “my grad-student at the University has completed


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his thesis. The thesis is all but ready, but I want him, for certain reasons, to defend his thesis not at the University, but here, at the Ioffe. I would not feel comfortable to give him a warrant from my laboratory. His dissertation, however, contains a theoretical part that is quite congenial to the interests of your group. What do you think about conducting his seminar in your section and then providing him with the warrant for his thesis defense at the Ioffe?” Such a request was quite common and therefore, seeing that his interlocutor was obviously quite embarrassed, the Head of the Laboratory was astonished. Especially since he knew the secretary to be a clever and benevolent man. “Mike, what’s wrong?” He asked. “Oh, nothing, oh, yes… You see, the presentation to be made at the seminar is to be settled by the head of the group, NN. I can’t give you an answer without consulting him…” “Is NN here now?” “It seems to me he is”, “so let’s go to him now…” A few seconds later both of them were at NN ’ s office and the Head of the Laboratory repeated his request. NN was sure that his opinion in regard to the defense of the thesis was not only common knowledge, but was also shared by all decent people. So he understood the request without ambiguity. “It’s good that you have applied directly to our group. Bring this scum here and we will beat him to a pulp! But be sure to let me have his text beforehand, so that my colleagues and myself might have time to get prepared properly…” Here NN paid attention to the fact that his interlocutor’s eyes got glassy, his face became crimson and he halted. There was a pause ending in quite an unexpected way. Making a strange sound, as if choking or coughing, the third participant rushed headlong out of the room. “I felt”, he told us later, “that should I stay there a moment longer, I would have burst out laughing in the most indecent way. I leaped out of the room and began to guffaw, splitting my sides with laughter. No sooner did I settle down, than I remember


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HOW they had stared at each other — and again I am tickled to death. Then the door opened and the head of the laboratory rushed out. He noticed what’s happened to me and asked, “Mike, so you foresaw it?” I couldn’t even answer him, just nodded. Then the door opened again and I could hardly hide myself round the corner, when NN appeared. Evidently he lagged behind, for it took him sometime to rise from his chair and walk round his table, so he shouted after the Head of the Laboratory who was running away: “Be sure to bring him here, by all means!”


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ORDERS While working at the Ioffe, I read and looked through perhaps more than a thousand different orders: about dismissal, about awards, about going to agricultural work, about improving the labor discipline, about appointments and displacements and God knows what else. To tell the truth, none of them were imprinted in my mind. The strongest impressions were made, of course, by the orders concerning discharges. But not a single one could be compared to the ancient sample.

Orders About Discharges (May 31, 1743 ) By the decree of HER EMPRESS MAJESTY, the office of the Academy of Sciences found the following employees unnecessary and unwanted, and in the interests of HER EMPRESS MAJESTY they should be dismissed from the Academy: … The schoolteacher Fisher is not qualified to teach the Russian people and does not know the Russian language well enough, besides he is quite stupid, and moreover, while at work, he is often quite drunk, and is the laughing stock of his pupils. Peter Gavrilov, a printer, has a salary of fifty rubles, and though he does his work, he is under suspicion, for he has been whipped publicly. According to the order people who are under suspicion should not be employed here. The watchman Andrey Tupov, under the charge of Professor Kraft, who is responsible for physical experiments has a salary of thirty-six rubles a year, but he does not do anything so he must be dismissed from the Academy… Materials for the History of the Academy of Sciences

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Nevertheless, there were orders in my time that I put down and keep quite carefully. Those are the ORDERS FOR THE ROOM, which preserve that very Spirit of Science, which it is so hard to define. As is well known, on the door of each office, or close to it, there is a standard signboard. In the Western Institutes such a signboard usually contains the name of the man or woman working there. But in Russia as a rule there are several people who work in one office, the signboard though contains the name of only one person who is “Responsible for the Room”. What that means, what the person is responsible for, and to whom he or she is responsible, nobody seems to know even now. And no one has ever thought about it since 1917. However, one of the Ioffe theoreticians, after he had been in charge of a room for 10 years, came to the conclusion that the high rank of the Chief of the Room imposed a certain responsibility upon him. And… he began issuing ORDERS FOR THE ROOM. He issued 22 orders. Here are four of them

Order No 4. On conservation of the angular momentum For room 000 (1) In connection with the beginning of the spring–summer season, there arises a number of organizational questions on the agenda. They are the following: the appropriate distribution of the duties; the concentration of efforts of the collective on the main problems; the control of things one is in charge of, which must not (and cannot) be substituted by petty guardianship… Among these questions angular momentum (AM) is of a considerable importance. Its conservation must become the main care of our working collective. In accordance with it I ORDER:

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(2) To make every effort to conserve AM. (3) Until the present order is canceled, to assume that Hψ = Eψ*. Chief of the room (Signature) March 23 1982

Order No 7. About publications marked † with the roman numeral X For room 000 (1) Due to some special circumstances, in the future try to restrain yourself from publishing any papers devoted to the pressing problems in the fields of solid, liquid or gaseous state physics. (2) If as an exception such a publication has taken place, item 3 of this Order comes into force. (3) One copy of that publication should be handed into the Chief of the Room for its preservation, registration, and promulgation for those interested. (4) Publications containing arithmetic mistakes, incorrect statements, results presenting no scientific significance, formulas with incorrect dimensions, as well as publications which are not clear and/or tame should be marked by the Roman numeral X and should be stored especially in accordance with established procedures. Chief of the room (Signature) June 2 1982 * The content of this section is not obligatory for those scientists who are on a business

trip, or on sick leave, or else giving birth to children or being on leave for any other circumstance enumerated in List 16-c and in other normative documents. † The symbol “X” denotes not only the Roman numeral, but also the first letter of the most popular bad Russian swear-word.

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Order No 14. About urgent problems For room 000 Section 1. I bring to the notice of all scientists a list of problems that need solving and indicate the corresponding rewards. 1. What is the nature of the fractional steps in the Hall quantum effect? Recording in the book of honor 2. What is the nature of the 1/f noise? Treadle sewing machine 3. In which case does the coffee cool sooner: if one puts sugar at once, or right before drinking? A cup of coffee 4. Why does the speed of reaction in forming nickel carbonate oscillate as function of the magnetic field? [Soviet Physics JETF 67, 2326 (1974)] A bottle of dry wine 5. Is there a solution of the equation x n + y n = z n in integer numbers x, y, z, and n > 2? (The problem of Fermat) A bottle of brandy 6. Why does a bubble which has torn itself away from the bottom of the tea kettle float up not vertically but along a spiral path? 3 rubles 7. What was the state of the Universe before the Big Bang? Promotion to the next rank 8. What is the nature of dry friction? A bottle of port 9. In what way do successive divisions of a single cell produce a human being? A set of children’s clothing made in China

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10. A neutron has flown into GaAs and collided with a nucleus of Ga. What is the probability of the generation of an electronhole pair? Perfume «Carmen» 11. The same for the collision with a nucleus of As. Eau-de-Cologne «Shipr»* 12. What is the nature of ball lighting? A business trip in North Siberia in December Section 2. To avoid abuse, the solutions of the problems indicated in Sec. 1 should be handed in sealed envelopes marked with a special symbol. Chief of the room (Signature) December 22 1982

Order No 16. About the theft of a tea-kettle and damage to a lock For room 000 Section 1. In connection with the setting in of the spring-summer period, some scientists manifest an increased hormone secretion as well as violation of the neurohumoral regulation. Meanwhile, in the room I am in charge of, a lock has been broken, and this situation has created prerequisites for the development of negative tendencies. Thus, on the night of 21st or 22nd of March of this year, unknown robbers have stolen a device for heating water up to the temperature of 373 K, based on the thermal action of the electric current (tea kettle).

* Something similar to “Old Spice”.

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Therefore I ORDER: Section 2. Captain D.G.P. is appointed to be in charge of the working group, which is to repair the lock or to install a new one in accordance with State Regulations. Section 3. Captain A.P.D. is to return the electric cord with three pins at one end and two holes at the other into its initial position. He is also to consider the question of where goes the electricity from the third pin. Section 4. The control of the execution of this ORDER I take upon myself personally. The control of myself is assigned to my immediate chief. Chief of the room (Signature) March 26 1986

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WINTER SCHOOLS Beginning in 1969, every spring the Ioffe Institute would organize Semiconductor Winter Schools. In late February or early March the “schoolboys” and “schoolgirls” went to the country for a week to attend lectures, to go skiing, to have a drink and a snack. Which of those items determined interest in these schools is a question which remained unexplored. At any rate, the 15-year-old tradition was interrupted right after the ANTI-ALCOHOL DECREE issued by Gorbachev into effect. After the persecutions stopped, it took 10 years for the community to pick it up.

Plan of Cultural Program for the 2nd Semiconductor School of the IOFFE Institute 02/21/1970 (8.30 p.m.) A party for entering into pure relations. After the relations — dancing (the person in charge Dr. Koptev Ju. I). 02/22/ (8.45 p.m.) Day off. And …a light cocktail (in the rooms). After that — dancing (the person in charge — Academic Tuchkevich V. M.). 02/23/

(11 p.m.)

Musical dramatic staging of the novel “Vasya Tyorkin” After Vasya — dancing (the person in charge Prof. Shmartsev Ju.V.).

02/24/ (11.45 p.m.) The club “Our Opinion” “Sexual intellect or intellectual sexuality?” The public debate is conducted by Prof. E. I. Adirovich. After sex — dancing. 02/25/ (8.30 p.m.) Our guest is ex-champion of the town of Minsk Academic. Zh. I. Alferov. “Spassky and myself ” — a show of Alferov’s playing chess simultaneously with many players, his eyes bandaged. After the game — dancing.

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02/26/ (Midnight) “Holography and Modern Pornography” Slides in color will be shown by Prof. M. M. Bredov. After holography — dancing. 02/27/ (11 p.m.) Small vaudeville “Much ado about nothing” performed by Dr. A. A. Kastalsky. After the ado — dancing. 02/28/ (Midnight) “Virtual-resonance-impotential movements of the body in modern dance”. Prof. Zakharchenya B. P. is speaking and showing. After that — dancing (without candles). 03/01/ (8.30 p.m.) International review: Mr. Brodsky G. “International spies among us” (with a public denunciation). After that — a banquet with dancing. 03/02 (8 p.m.) “Ways and methods of matrimonial life in the new society”. The public debate is to be conducted by Dr. Tsarenkov B. V. After that — dancing etc. 03/03/ (8.30 p.m.) Our guests are: a young producer with young starlets from the Leningrad Film Studio. “Soviet Anti-Striptease in movie”. (The person in charge is Prof. Ipatova I.P.).

Nemesis Dancing constitutes a very important and integral element of any school, which always confronted the Organizing Committee with a puzzling problem. On one hand, they had to accommodate the respectable lecturers and professors in such a way that they might be able go to sleep at least after 1 a.m. On the other hand, it was necessary to see that the most active part of the public might be able to sublimate the energy they had stored during the lectures. As a rule, some way or another everything would be O.K., although sometimes there were mishaps… At the school I am talking about, in the hall of the second floor, there was a tape-recorder and two speakers, 50 Watts each. When


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switched on full blast, they could raise the dead from their coffins from the nearest village cemetery. The “sublimers”, however, were expected to display a certain restraint and intellectual self-restriction. The most frenzied fans of Terpsichore had to be settled down in the immediate proximity of the hall. The lecturers, the members of Organizing Committee and their favorites settled on the first floor, the maximum distance from the noise. Others, depended on their luck. During the first few days, the public enjoyed themselves rather sluggishly. After 10 p.m. several pairs shuffled in the hall to quiet music till midnight, and by 12:30 a.m. the angel of silence embraced the hotel where the school was located… There were, however, two “critical days”: the eve of the day off and the last one before conclusion. Why the first critical day passed without any complications remains unknown. The storm broke on the eve of departure. After midnight the public who had previously taken some strong drinks in their rooms set the music as loud as possible. At 1 o’clock a young woman, wearing a robe, came out of her room next to the hall, approached the tape-recorder, lowered the loudness and without raising her voice explained that she wanted to sleep and at one a.m. had the right to do so. She then returned to her room quietly. About 20 people were dancing, but the woman’s inner strength and her conviction that she was right impressed them. The music was made hardly audible, which, as everybody knows, has its own advantages. Another half-hour passed. Some who were present during the incident left, others came. Little by little the music got louder and by 2 a.m in the morning the music blared loudest. Again the same young woman wearing the same robe came out of the same room and in her voice, full of an inner strength, and with the conviction of being right cited the Bill of Rights. And again she made an impression and it became quiet… An hour later new screams cut the night’s silence. For three minutes or so, people were zealously enjoying themselves. Then the door of the room was flung open, and Valkyrie rushed out of it in a transparent night gown with her hair running loosely. It was


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women who gave a shout. The men were frozen… A spear of rage cut the hall. In a single motion the tape-recorder was lifted, the wires torn out and the entire device was thrown out a window left ajar since the night was rather warm. Then before even the spriest of the men had time to close his mouth, Erinys disappeared. The angel of silence again stretched his hands over the hotel where the school was housed...

The Stress Put in the Right Way Dances, drinking and lectures — those are the three whales on whose backs, according to common opinion, the Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn Schools were based (and will be based). The importance of the second item can be easily demonstrated by the following example. In 1985, the Ioffe’s Winter School, after 16 years of fruitful work, ceased its existence. Despite the fact that the Ioffe was well off and the intellectual potential of the Institute was splendid. The reason was formulated quite distinctly by the permanent director of the Ioffe School’s Volodya Volle, “I don’t want to be imprisoned”. The point was that that year the sadly memorable Gorbachev Anti-Alcohol Law was introduced. It was organized in a sweeping Russian style. Banquets after the defense of the Thesis were prohibited. To celebrate any event at the office meant to find oneself in the hands of KGB informer. Conductors in the trains, including even the elite train “The Arrow”, would break into the compartment with the policemen, and upon discovering four people splitting a bottle, would make up an INCIDENT REPORT informing ones authorities at work of the event. Knowing quite clearly that the Schools could not exist without drinking, Volodya resigned and “science came to an end”. One should not fancy the role of alcohol primitively and imagine night orgies with fighting, crying and so on. Nothing of the kind. In the best antique traditions wine (and vodka) strengthened


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friendship, loosened the tongue, and helped to establish innocent connections and scientific contacts... At one of the Schools, a friend invited me to his room for a “wine-glass of tea”. The second guest was a theoretician and our common old acquaintance whose name was, let’s say, BAlmont, with the stress on the first syllable. This will help explain further events. We enjoyed a snack with our vodka and as habit would have it, reviling the Soviet Social and State system. There was a knock on the door and a young boy of “CentralAsian nationality” entered the room. “Who among you is BalmOnt?” he asked, stressing the last syllable. “It’s me”, said our amiable friend, who believed that it did not matter what one called you, according to the Russian saying “You may call me a pot, provided you do not put me into the oven”. “Professor N asks that you come to his room immediately”. It did not sound very polite, though perhaps that was due to the fact that the young man did not know Russian so well. Besides, the incorrect stress in the name was not accidental. Professor N had been working in France for quite a while and he would always call our friend in the manner of the French. Common acquaintances more than once pointed out to the professor that the purely Jewish name BAlmont had nothing at all to do with France, and that he would hardly be pleased at all if he were called not N but M, or W, but nothing helped. The professor had been told (more than once) an anecdote about an educated lady who was blaming a drunk man who mispronounced the word “masturbate”, putting the stress in the wrong place, “Sir! Firstly, you should say not masturbAte but mAsturbate. Secondly, will you be so kind as to step aside. The child cannot see the dick!” That did not help either… “I’ll come in a moment”, Boris Balmont said and began lacing his shoes, paying no attention to the stress being in the wrong place or to the subtlety of politeness. “Good”, the young man said, turning and making for the door. “You, fellow!” a stern voice of room’s host sounded like the voice of Providence. The young man stopped dead. “Tell Professor N


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that Boris BAlmont asked to tell him the following, “Should he again say BalmOnt with the stress at the end, Boris will make his nose bleed. And let him forget about the Luttinger Hamiltonian”. “Good”, the young man said and turning again and again making for the door. “Wait! Wait!” screamed Boris and with his shoes unlaced, rushed to the door, “I’ll go with you!” “Good”, the young man said for the third time and both of them disappeared, Boris casting a reproachful glance at us. “Yes”, the host of the room said, “we haven’t drunk quite enough, “I haven’t found the necessary words. BalmOnt!… The child cannot see the dick…”

About the Mystery of a Woman’s Soul The Winter theoretical school, called “Kaurovka”, enjoyed a very good reputation. It always took place in the Urals, where living conditions are rather severe and where, what are called the “facilities” (i.e. the lavatory, or, more exactly the latrine) are “outside the house”. A term which can be used and understood only by Russians. Ski trousers, a sweater and warm boots were considered the uniform. Fops wore sweaters with a V-neck, making it possible to see a fresh white shirt and tie underneath. However beneath the shirt an attentive eye could spot woolen underwear. One of the well known theoreticians of the Ioffe Institute upon coming to “Kaurovka” discovered that his presentation was to take place on the morning of the very last day. It goes without saying that the Organizing Committee did so on purpose; the theoretician (let us call him “A”) was famous for his wonderful oratory and for his vastly interesting presentations. It would be unjust not to make the best of it. And A started conducting an absolute siege of one of the few ladies who was a student of the school. As he would say later, the lady was willingly discussing with him problems of the theory, graciously listening to the verses of the


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disgraced Mandelstam, smiling tenderly, and enjoying the exchange of light kisses while on the ski-track. The temperature being minus 30°C it was absolutely harmless and of no consequences. But all his attempts to make any progress or to achieve some result ended in failure. A was young, fascinating, ambitious and proud. He redoubled his efforts. He wrote Hamiltonians taking account of the warping. He cited Rilke. He performed miracles on the ski-track and was participated brilliantly in the evening discussions. The lady smiled even more tenderly, complained more often about her husband in Moscow, and made some vague promises. There was just one single night left. The lady’s friend, who shared a room with her, had left the day before. A had been sitting with the lady in her room up till 3 a.m. in the morning! They emptied a bottle of famed Georgian wine, which according to his plan, was to crown the success!! And… nothing. After 3 a.m., A crawled into his room, illogically blaming the lady, covered the trousers of his best suit with a sheet of plywood, putting them under his mattress to be ironed, and began thinking of his presentation. In the morning, fresh, smart, cleanly shaven, wearing his best jacket which had been hanging for a week so that all the creases were removed, A began to make his presentation trying not to look at the lady, who was sitting in the last row and smiling, it seemed, with a special tenderness. “Questions, please”, announced the chairman. Answering one of the questions, A noticed, not without surprise, that a note was being passed from the back of the hall. It was unusual in Kaurovka to put questions forth in such secretive form. The note reached him at last. He unfolded it. “Oh, you, silly one!” was written there in the familiar hand. “Instead of wasting a week on talks, you ought to have put on this suit on the very first evening!” A told me that story ten years later. “You know”, he concluded, “till the end of my days, I may be trying to guess whether or not she wrote the truth”.


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“You are a fool”, I responded. “I bet she did not know it herself ”. “Hm! Perhaps you are right”, concluded A.

Operator of a Secondary Quantization The most unpleasant thing for any lecturer at any school, especially a Winter school, is having their lecture in the morning. People go to bed late, and young people sleep soundly. You may happen to give a lecture just to the chairman. The Organizing Committee is no fool, of course! If one oversleeps, he gets no breakfast. But if one is young it is so difficult to struggle against Morpheus… At one of the schools the lecture “On the physical nature of superconductivity” meant to enlighten the experimentalists, was fixed to take place in the morning. I struggled to overcome my sleepiness, got up, somehow put on my trousers and, in hopes of fame and good intentions, dragged myself to the hall. There my sleepiness left me in a pickle. The theoretician who was the lecturer of the same school and who was well known on the one hand for his getting up no earlier than 11 a.m. unless he were to climb up a mountain pass, but nonetheless known for his wonderful publications on various aspects of superconductivity, was there sitting in the hall. It was obvious he was going to listen to a popular lecture. “Dear me! What are you doing here?” “I want to listen to the lecture”. “Why should you? You seem to know everything as it is”. “Yes, I do. In the sense that I can calculate everything. But, between us, I do not understand what superconductivity is. Maybe I will understand it today”. It surprised me how inscrutable God’s ways are. I sat down next to him. The lecturer began beautifully, “When at the beginning of the century Kamerling Onnes… The thermal motion of electrons


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gets slower…, The current once excited in the circuit…, Mohammed’s coffin, hovering in the air, …” He mentioned numerous practical applications, a new branch of science, new problems, arising as soon as the old ones were solved,… In spite of my neighbors restraint, I felt that he was getting joyfully excited. “I am on the cusp of understanding it now”, he whispered to me. “And now”, the lecturer went on, “to move forward, let us introduce the operator of the secondary quantization…” My neighbor noisily moved his chair, got up and left the hall. It seemed to me he swore. Though I cannot warrant that.

Electron in a Potential Well At one of the schools, B , a young theoretician from Moscow, made a presentation on which some remarks were made. One of them nonplused the presenter and made him feel quite at a loss. In the evening, B came to the room which I shared with the “offender” to talk the matter over. I became a witness of a very instructive conversation. “Consider an infinite-dimensional continuum of Fermiparticles, on which the wave function is determined everywhere except perhaps at singular points”, B began. “Just a minute”, my neighbor interrupted him. And after a pause which lasted 15 seconds asked, “What is it? Electron in a potential well?” B’s face became distorted with disgust. He kept still too and then with obvious effort finally sighed “Yes!” After another pause he went on, quickly resuming his initial tempo and flourishing before our eyes, “Let us now assume that the wave function vanishes at the origin…” “Just a minute”, my neighbor again interrupted. “What is it? Is there no electron in the potential well?”


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For a moment it seemed to me that B would be sick. He swallowed several times. Then with obvious disgust he said, “No, there is not!” Some more exchanges of a similar nature and somehow everything became clear. B grew silent, got up and left.

The Odessa “PentaBoris” The May School of Theoretical Physics in Odessa is still being recalled by many theoreticians with sobs of nostalgia. One could go there with one’s wife. If one so wanted with a child. The sea, the sun, the hot sand… Most of the students basked in the sun on the beach during the breaks between the lectures. A typical “theoretical” hubbub was heard and some people lifted their head. Five young theoreticians from the Ioffe gesticulated, walking along the path towards the sea. “Odessa pentaBoris”, mumbled someone displeased. The five of them were: Boris Altshuler — now Professor of Princeton University, USA Boris Gelmont — now Professor of University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA Boris Laikhtman — now Professor of Jerusalem University, Jerusalem, Israel Boris ShklovskII — now Professor of University of Minnesota, USA Boris Spivak — now Professor of Washington University, Seattle, USA.


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FOREIGNERS AT THE IOFFE INSTITUTE An American Glory, Glory, Alleluia! It was Spring of 1968. Loud singing was heard in the hall near the library. A young man was singing “Glory, glory, alleluia!” Many of my acquaintances assured me that I was the only one who sang in the corridors of the Institute, so first of all I felt myself. Making certain that I was not the guilty party, I turned round the corner and saw a strange sight. A clean-shaven gentleman, his hair well cropped and his trousers perfectly ironed, stood singing before two theoreticians, trying in vain to make them join in that creative process. They shifted from one foot to the other. On singing the refrain three times in a most kindled manner, the gentleman raised his hand in the international greeting gesture for Victory, Victory Day was 2 days away. Grasping the flap of a friend of mine passing by, I asked him how I should have taken that, and what that actually meant. The young American theoretician, Din, got to Ioffe according to some kind of International or even Intergovernmental agreement about scientific exchange. The agreement mentioned thousands of details, but… not all of them. The senior scientist from the Ioffe went for a year to Din’s Institute alone, leaving his family in Leningrad. He went mad with joy when he learned that his salary would be $22,000 a year (this sum in 1968 is would be approximately $80,000 in 1999). Though quite soon he was invited to the Soviet Embassy and was told that he had to give practically all the money to the Embassy. What was left was just enough for the most modest food and for the souvenirs to be bought at the flea market. Din, quite naturally, came here for a year with his wife and three children. And he was about to return when he learned that his

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salary was 175 rubles per month. In accordance with the course of the dollar at the black market, i.e. its actual course, that made for about $420 a year... But everything was somehow settled. The authorities began taking steps and eventually Din’s salary was adjusted to 500 rubles a month, he was given lodging at the flat of an academician free of charge, and some other benefits. In short, they had the matter out. Din proved to be a most amiable man, quite nice, well brought up, and sociable. A month later he began shaving every other day, he stopped having his hair cut short, stopped ironing his trousers and two months later, if silent, it was impossible to distinguish him from any other theoretician at the Ioffe. Besides, he made very good progress in his Russian. His favorite phrase was “Thank you. I have understood many things”.

Beer In that very year, 1968, my friend and I sent our first article to a foreign journal. I cannot say the undertaking was unheard of, but in those days it was rather exotic. The article was returned with quite a favorable review though with a remark that the English need be “polished”. In particular, we were to point out where we meant “angels” and where “angles”. We applied to Din, he corrected the text and the article was safely published. To celebrate that occasion we invited Din to partake in some beer with us. He willingly agreed. It was decided that we would take him to the famous “CELLAR”. At the last moment, my coauthor fell ill, and the hopes of the nation were concentrated on me. When we turned round the corner and saw the entrance to the cellar, I was dumbfounded. There was a line of people that stretched for about 150 meters. “Din”, I said, “I do not think it is good here. Let’s buy beer and go to my place!”


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“OK”, answered the agreeable Din. We dropped by a shop. They did not have any beer! There was no way out for me. I brought Din to the head of the line of people who had been standing in line for two hours. And just now they were on the point of entering the Garden of Eden… “Guys! An American has come here to work with us. I am to treat him to beer. If you would be so kind, allow us to pass!” Din beamed a happy smile. But I was about to faint. The reaction might be unpredictable. It might be whatever you like, “from” – “to”. There was a 10-second pause, and… “Well, an American, we are people, aren’t we? He must be treated to beer, that goes without saying! He can’t be sent to the end of the line, can he?” The most ardent of them began knocking on the closed door. The door was opened by a huge porter, drunk as a lord. The line of people began to rumble, “the American,…beer…we are human, aren’t we?” Din obviously enjoyed it. He kept on smiling happily. The expression of the porter’s face was slowly changing from the traditional “Clear off ! Away from here!!” To something absolutely indefinite and unusual. At last, with his right hand, he opened the door before us, and with his left hand he produced from his pocket a fruit-drop in dirty paper with tobacco crumbs on it. “Come in! Just fancy, an American!” His face flushing, which was so strange that no words could describe it, he offered the sweetmeat to Din. “Take it…” Perpendicular to the long wall of the cellar were tables for 8. Parallel to the second long wall was a counter. Customers were supposed to sit down and choose from the menu one of the two sorts of beer and one of 3 snacks, which were numbered 1, 2, and 3, and wait for the waiter to come. We found the vacant seats and I started explaining to Din what those numbers denoted. Though in order to understand it one did not have to be a polyglot: all the three of them looked repulsive. There were soaked peas (no. 1), some greenish sausage (no. 2) and processed cheese (no. 3). At last a waiter came with a gait, his jacket of an indescribable color. “Well?”


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“Four bottles of ‘Moscovskoye’ beer, please…” “We’re out of ‘Moscovskoye’” “Then ‘Zhigulevskoye’, please…” “Well, the snack! Which number?” Here Din suddenly stretched his arm towards the counter and with an appreciable accent said, “That one, please!” I looked up. On the counter there was an enormous dish full of crayfish. People at the table, hearing the foreign accent ceased talking. But the waiter perceived nothing. “We are expecting an audit! You, block-head! It’s not for this bastards that crayfish are placed there!” “Thank you, I understood many things”, replied Din politely. And not only at our table, at the next 2 tables the people got silent. Even the waiter seemed to have come to his senses. I was awfully scared. “Guys, friends! He is an American! He came to work with us. I must treat him to beer. It should be done properly!…” And again that worked. We were not given crayfish, though, but they served us smoked Caspian roach, salty rusks…, someone even offered a soaked apple. Din was explained how to prepare home-brew, how to filter it through yogurt, how to take a hair of the dog that bit you. He was taught how to catch crayfish with carrion, how to choose beer, how to grind a saw. Even I could not understand everything. As for Din, though he did not understand a single word, he felt that everybody was kindhearted and was beaming happily. We had finished our beer long ago, but it was impossible to leave. Everyone wanted to treat us and it would have been impolite to refuse, they would really been offended. At long last, near 11 o’clock, when they were closing, we could hardly crawl out of the cellar. Tottering we went home, twice dropping into gateways to relieve ourselves. In front of his house Din shook my hand, “Thank you! I have understood many things!”


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The Kuban Cossacks “Din, had you ever read a Russian book before you came here? Or had seen any Russian films?” — “Yes, I had”. “What? Tolstoy? Dostoyevsky…?” “Yes, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, it’s great literature”. “Well, I see. What about films?” “I have seen only the Kuban Cossacks, I saw it twice”. “Dear me! What did you see in it? It’s shit! And you saw it twice!” “Not only me. All my friends saw it two or three times”. “Do you remember anything at all? What could you remember there? Tomatoes? Water-melons? Haven’t you seen bread in America?” “What tomatoes? What water-melons? I remember nothing of the kind. “Then what was it that could have captivated you it in that raft of shit?” “Captivated? You mean fascinated?” “Well, what did you remember?” “Not only me, all of us remembered one and the same scene. And for the sake of that scene we went to see the film two or three times”. “Do you remember, the tractor-driver and the milkmaid loved each other and wanted to get married? And they wanted to live together. But they were from different collective farms, so they had to ask the chiefs for permission to leave and move to the other collective farm, and the chiefs did not let them go. Neither him, nor her. And the young bride fell on her knees before the chief of her collective farm. She was afraid to lose her bridegroom. I was a small kid then and understood little. But my parents showed that to me and said, “Look, do you remember we read to you about slavery in America, about the black slaves? Look, this is what is taking place in Russia. A woman cannot get married because her boss does not let her go. Look! It is happening right now!’ And I cried”.


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“Oh, my God”, I thought. That was the funniest scene in the film. Everyone was laughing like mad. And no one remembers that scene now. Neither did I, until Din reminded me of it. I remembered tomatoes, water-melons, melons, carts with food, heaps of food. I remembered the actor who was throwing up a huge water-melon from palm to palm, and how that made my mouth water. Later on, when I grew up, my people recalled how difficult it was for them to manage to feed us in 1947, despite the fact that our family was not considered poor. How I hated that mendacious film, shot with pure communist cynicism in the year when people went hungry. And we would send it around all over the world together with the books of Marxism classics… “Ears of Midas”, I said aloud. “Sorry?” “Well, one cannot hide an awl in a sack”. “Sorry?” I explained. “Thank you, I have understood many things!” replied Din habitually. “Oh, no! It’s me who has understood many things. Thank you, Din”.

Saying Good-bye in the Slavonic Way The time came to leave. Din went to Moscow to have his papers registered. He returned very proud, visibly excited, and with a black eye too. Having worked a year in Russia, Din took to plain living and looked quite common. Even a most attentive and professional glance could not distinguish him as a foreigner. He did not differ from our domestic theoreticians of middle age: a worn out coat, threadbare trousers, old shoes, a two-day-old beard, and a three-monthold hair-cut. By the end of the term he spoke Russian not at all poorly.


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Approaching the USA Embassy, Din without slowing down, and without even making an attempt to produce his passport, directed his steps to the entrance. It’s quite natural that a monster appeared from the booth and howled, “Where are you going?!” Instead of answering in English or at least saying in Russian that he was American, or at the least, emphasizing his accent, Din answered in his very best Russian — “To the Embassy”. “What for?” “For the papers”. “What papers could you possibly want?” “For departure”. Here the monster performed at a tremendous rate several actions at a time. He produced a whistle on a long cord and blew into it, with another hand grasped Din by his collar, and with the other began to twist his arm, letting the whistle hang loosely on the cord. As for Din’s resistance and his cry, “Oh, you hurt me! Let me go!” the cop did not hesitate to beat him black and blue. And did that quite professionally, too. Responding to the whistle a car quickly appeared from round the corner, and Din found himself in the back seat, squeezed between the monster on his right and a man in a civilian dress to his left. The size of the man on the left was not less that that of the man on the right. The driver and one more man in the front seat looked quite impressive too. Din began to speak English. He said that he was an American citizen, that he demands a meeting with the consul, that there had been a mistake… But the man sitting next to the driver mumbled lazily, without turning his head “Volodya!” to which Volodya twisted his hand with such force that Din knew better than to go on speaking. The monster reveled in describing how he understood everything at once, how he had spotted that skunk when the latter was only approaching the embassy, and so on. It took them very little time at all to reach their destination. Din even had no idea how he appeared in a well-furnished office where a comparatively young officer was sitting behind a desk, wearing the epaulette of police captain.


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“Well, Smirnov”, he addressed the monster, and the latter began telling how as soon as he saw the skunk he realized… “What do you have to say for yourself, Mister?” the captain addressed Din. And Din spoke, in English. So as to choose just the right expression. And meanwhile his eye was getting still blacker…“And the brighter shone the Moon, the louder sang the nightingale* ”, the more pale the face of the captain grew. He howled at Smirnov, “Go out into the corridor, scum!” And turning to Din began saying in the most tender voice how it was an awful misunderstanding. That very morning they had been notified of a provocation being plotted against the American Embassy. That by no means could it justify the outrageous actions of the sergeant who will be punished severely, that they would immediately send for the doctor, and would inform the Embassy, that... The captain spoke the King’s English and by the middle of his flaming speech the good-natured Din softened. Din said he did not need anything, that they did not have to call for the doctor, or to inform the consul, that he, Din, understood everything, that no one should be punished, that he asked them only for a lift to take him to the Embassy where he was to be present, while he was running late… The captain was ready to kiss his feet, and he personally escorted him through the hall to the staircase where he was received by the gentleman who had been sitting next to the driver and who had pronounced so emphatically “Volodya!” But since then the man had quite visibly diminished in size. The features of his face acquired some subtlety and his eyes were shining so kindly and tenderly that it was impossible not to be charmed by him. “But the most interesting thing was”, Din went on, “that while we were passing the hall, Smirnov was sitting there. He observed that the captain was seeing me off, but initially he did not understand anything. The captain was to my left. He opened the door for me * The words of a very popular Russian ballad.


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to pass. At that moment I looked round and saw that, with his right hand, he was showing Smirnov a clenched fist. And what a menacing fist! And Smirnov, a small, unpresentable man, shrank on the edge of his seat. When the car stopped at the entrance to the Embassy, Din looked at his watch. Only 20 minutes had passed since the monster jumped out of his booth. “Well, did you say to the captain, “Thank you, I have understood many things?” I asked. “No, I don’t think so”, Din answered somewhat at a loss, “but I have indeed understood many things”.

Digression: An Article Into a Foreign Journal As previously mentioned, we got to know Din after my friend and I had submitted an article to a foreign journal. That was in 1968. Unfortunately, I have quite forgotten many details which followed that rather bold act. The only thing I remember is that during the meeting with the authoritative commission it was necessary to prove that the article contained nothing new either from the theoretical or practical point of view, or from the point of view of patent rights or from any other point of view. Then we were addressed at the Special and Foreign Departments. We then were given a specific paper to be enclosed in the envelope, which was not to be sealed, and was to be handed in at the office. Then a mysterious “somebody” at the Central Post Office would take that paper, would seal the envelope and mail the letter to the Editorial Board of some “physica status solidi”, published in the German Democratic Republic which was as innocuous as any Russian journal. According to our list of publications, in 1968 we published 5 articles abroad and one of them was presented at an international conference. It is not difficult to realize how we began to relish this. The main domestic journal in our field “Soviet Physics Semicon-


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ductors” published articles in one and a half or two years after their submission. It took even more time to publish an article in the “Soviet Journal of Technical Physics”. While the International Journal “Electronics Letters”, for example, published articles as little as 2 weeks after they had been accepted for publication. Besides, in those days Xeroxes were not common at all even in the West. To receive a reprint of the paper, it was necessary to send to the first author a note (postcard) with the appropriate request. That also called attention to itself and was a delicate attempt to enter into relations. So if after a publication in a domestic journal there would come 2 notes requesting a reprint, the result might be considered splendid. While a publication in the “Electronics Letters” 10 or 15 notes would be considered quite an average result. Reciting from memory the words of the poet, “In hopes of fame and of the best we look forward without a fear…”, my friend and I kept on bringing articles to the Foreign Department, and the Head of that department G kept signing them. But once, signing again, G said with a special smile, “Boys, why not relax?” “But why?” we asked without seeing the point. “Just so”, G answered vaguely. When we came again, G said with a most charming smile, “Please, leave the paper with me for a couple of days”. A few days later a Very Important Person (let’s say N.N.), called us to his office. No sooner had we entered the room than he began shouting at us. To tell the truth, I was taken aback. As a child I was shouted at by my aunts, by nurses in kindergarten, by teachers at school, later on by leaders scout camps, by trainers in the sections, by the commander and petty officers of the navy, by the deputy directors of companies, to say nothing about policemen, people in line to get beer, and not only beer… Once I asked my aunts and uncle, a former Air Force flyer, to stop shouting while I was preparing for my exams. This is what he said: “We are Jewish, people of the South and therefore very hotblooded. As for myself, I can’t help shouting…” But no one had ever shouted at me at the Ioffe Institute.


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As for my friend, a man much more resourceful than myself and very quick witted, he also stood, his mouth open. N.N. went on yelling. He was outraged that two junior researchers (he pronounced those words the way women pronounce the word “lice”) had published 40% of all the papers, published abroad by all researchers of the Department of General Physics and Astronomy of the Academy of Sciences*. He shouted that he, N.N., was not going to endure this any longer, and wondered what in general we thought about ourselves. We tried to answer most timidly, “We do it because out of consideration of prestige and priority!” But N.N. announced in a thunderous voice that he was sure to find out “to whose mill we were bringing grist and were going to do it in the future”. With an imperious gesture he sent us off. We left absolutely humiliated and began waiting. Two days later I went to my friend’s place to write an article. Then we went to the Institute and entered the main building… On the wall we saw an obituary with a portrait of N.N. and the usual official condolence. We looked at each other without saying a word. Then my friend, a very delicate, soft and well brought up man, said sternly, “N.N., Professor, Doctor of Sciences, left us without having made clear why two researchers had published their articles in “Electronics Letters”. We never again referred to it. The next year we had only one paper published abroad.

A Grad-student from Munich Professor Yanai came to the Ioffe Institute from Tokyo for 4 days. My friend and I were told to entertain him. Sorry to say it was not because we enjoyed our administration’s special confidence, it was because Professor Yanai was studying the effect which no one * The number of employees in the Department of General Physics and Astronomy of

the Academy of Sciences is several thousand people.


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else at the Ioffe Institute, except us, had anything to do with. So Professor Yanai expressed a desire to meet us. The Academy gave us a car with a silent driver and we took the Professor sightseeing. We reached the famous embankments, passed by the ancient building of the Military Medical Academy, admired the cruiser “Aurora”, once menacing, stopped before the Manchurian sphinxes, and before Peter’s house, rendering a view across the Neva river over the best fence in the world, etc., etc. Making the best of my pidgin English I tried to quote Pushkin, mentioning “the Neva dressed in granite”… Suddenly the car braked and the driver pronounced quietly but very impressively, “Tell him that it was from here that the cruiser “Aurora” fired its famous salvo at the Winter Palace, which announced the beginning of the Great Socialist October revolution”. That being quite unexpected, I lost all my pidgin English and fell silent. “What’s the matter” Professor Yanai asked, “What’s wrong?” Stammering and halting, I said that the gentleman asked me to tell him that here before us was the battleship “Aurora” which… I tried as hard as I could to explain to Professor Yanai what happened there in 1917. Suddenly, the professor interrupted me and uttered a phrase whose sense I did not grasp, “I understand everything. I was a grad-student in Munich in 1944”. We went on, and for some time the angel of silence hovered over the car… The next day from morning till night we talked about scientific topics and then Professor Yanai made a suggestion which, at the first glance, seemed quite reasonable. He suggested that after dinner we should go to the Hermitage and that the discussion should be continued in the evening in his room. We hesitated, for we imagined quite vividly how we would have to explain our behavior to a Certain Department, and at the same time we could not find a plausible excuse to reject his proposal.. There was an awkward pause, interrupted by Yanai saying, “I understand everything. I was a grad-student in Munich in 1944”.


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When we got to know him better, the middle-aged Japanese professor proved to be a most fascinating man with a remarkable sense of humor, always ready to joke and to laugh at other jokes. On the third day while we walked slowly along the beautiful park of the Polytechnic Institute towards the Ioffe, I asked, ‘Professor Yanai, are you a strict teacher? Do you often give your students “D’s?” “Oh, no”, the professor answered with an obvious regret, “I never give a “D”. And students abuse my kindness. And you?” Yanai addressed my friend. Are you a strict examiner?” “Oh, yes”, my friend answered ardently and proudly. “I want my students to know my course well!” “And what do you do if your students answer poorly?” “I knock them down and trample on them”, my friend answered without a shade of a smile. “I understand everything, I was a grad-student in Munich…” Yanai began habitually, but cut short, seeing the amicable face of his interlocutor, and his cozy and pleasant look, emitting no menace whatsoever. And the three of us, the 70-year-old Japanese professor and two Russian junior researchers burst out laughing the way one seldom laughs even with one’s own best friend.

Profane Faith According to the routine, a German was met in the airport with a piece of cardboard on which his name had been printed in capitals. The German appeared before those who met him with a backpack on his shoulders, a suitcase in his left hand and a book in his right. Shaking hands, he trustfully showed his book to everyone and pronounced very religiously “My Bible”. That was the name he gave to the English edition of book, published by two brilliant theoreticians of the Ioffe. “I am happy to meet the people who work closely with such wonderful physicists”, announced the enthusiast. “Who had worked”,


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somebody corrected him*. “Never mind!” he exclaimed, “this book is my Bible. And your Institute is my Mecca. The best experimentalists and theoreticians of the world are working here”. Though people had their own varying points of view on the matter, no one objected. In the morning, someone came to the hotel to take this believer to the Institute. On the dressing table close to his bed there lay the book. “I read this great book every day”, the German cooed, “and every time I keep on finding some new, deep thoughts”. They came to the Institute, had coffee and began, as usually, talking shop. They began by discussing an experiment, performed at the Ioffe, which somehow contradicted results obtained at the laboratory of the guest. A couple of hours later the guest began looking around with natural anxiety, and at last asked bluntly where the toilet was. Volunteers were found to keep him company, and a group of them moved to the end of the corridor. At the approach to the “temple” the German began to display signs of nervousness. When the door to the fore-room opened and a usual view appeared before the eyes of the “pilgrim” — a dilapidated wardrobe, a sack of cement in the corner, some broken devices and taps, etc., and a staunch odor became truly fool, the guest grew pale and retreated. His companions did not notice anything and began getting ready for the process anticipated by them. They opened the door to the sacred place itself… The German rushed out. Our people believing that a free man in a free country might do whatever he liked, did what they wanted, and returned to the room where the discussion was to be continued. But there was no continuation of the discussion. The guest announced in a dry voice that he no longer believed a single experiment held at the Ioffe... He proposed a certain theoretical problem for discussion.

* Both of them had emigrated.


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They began discussing a theory. An hour later, however, nature called, and the admirer of Ioffe apologized and excused himself. On coming back, his face petrified, the German long washed his hands (fortunately, there was a sink in the room), but when with all my heart someone offered him a towel, he simply cast a look at the cotton towel, which once had been white, and eschewed it for drying his hands by waving them quite elegantly. “Tell me please”, the guest asked quite unexpectedly, “where exactly did the authors of the Book work?” “Why, just here, on this very floor”, companions answered quite innocently. “Does it mean that they visited…?” He fell silent without finishing the sentence. The next day when they came to take the German to the Institute, there was an ordinary Bible in the English language on his nightstand.

Digression: The “Smell” of Science The crucial events of the last decade of the 20th century: the end of the cold war; the fall of the Berlin wall; the liberal and economic reforms in Russia had important consequences for the “smell” of Russian science. It began to acquire an unexpected nuance gaining strength with each year. In accordance with the key thesis of marketing “Everyone for himself, and only God for everyone”, the toilets at the Ioffe were divided into two categories: the first being “elite” and the second for “people”. Those for the “elite” were, quite naturally, located in the building where the management and the administration sat. Those for the “people” elsewhere. Those who hear the word “elite”, would imagine Heavenly Gardens with flowers, toilet paper, deodorants and regular cleaning, i.e. with the attributes of an ordinary American rest-room, are certainly mistaken. A Dutch or even German housewife may faint while approaching an “elite establishment”. In


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this context it just means that the broken lavatory pans are, from time to time, replaced by new ones, that once a week the floor is washed. As for the people’s toilet, everyone who has visited a lavatory at a railway station in Central Asia, jumping from stone to stone to reach the lavatory pan, knows everything about them. The “elite” toilets knew their good times. When the Ioffe was visited by the President of South Korea (later convicted of bribery), blue urinals and blue lavatory pans were installed there. On the eve of its 80th anniversary, when the Ioffe Institute was getting ready to meet distinguished guests and half a year before the jubilee, Turkish builders were invited to decorate the “elite” toilet with gold and bronze. After which the toilet was locked for half a year and the ribbon was cut with the last stroke of the clock. The people’s toilet did not know any better times and, in the long run, even Russians used to everything began to grumble about it. First, as usual, they began to send petitions to the authorities. The latter answered, as usual, “As soon as… then immediately…” One daredevil, after three years of platonic promises, gave a howl by the Institute e-mail, “Now when?!!” The adequate answer was received immediately “Upon receiving from the Academy of Sciences the Special Financial Support for just THIS goal”. Then even the most slow-witted began to see things clearly, and recovering from their ridiculous dreams, turned to the New Testament: “Everyone for himself… The heads of the “rich” laboratories began repairing the toilets at their own expenses and locked them from others. (The employees of their laboratories were given the keys, after they had signed for them, or else were given the code to the lock installed there.) It was natural that other people, trying to realize their inalienable rights, began breaking the locks and defecating in the privatized lavatories with a special frenzy. To make a long story short, the emerging history of toilets at the Ioffe reproduced a microcosm of new social relations en masse. It would be, though, unjust to lay all blame on the new times. In the building next to the Ioffe, the Scientific Research Institute


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of Direct Current, in the year 1970 or so, long before “perestroyka” and at the height of the period of the so called “ripe stagnation” the following true story took place. A revered guest from Great Britain, a Minister of Her Majesty, was expected. It was necessary to come to an agreement about a lot of important problems and the meeting was to last for several hours. Then the question arose, would the revered guest like…? Most probably he would… . It goes without saying that the lavatory on the floor where the Director’s office was repaired by the first class a month prior to the meeting and locked. However, what was to be done on the day of the visit? God only knew when the minister would need it. Should the lavatory be opened in the morning it might, by the sacramental moment, become defecated to such an extent that no touch-up repair would help. And should it be kept locked, to unlock it in the presence of the revered guest, what would the noble Britain think about? But there is no such problem which Russian genius cannot cope with. From early in morning, the Leading Engineer was placed there with strict orders not to let ANYONE in and watch the door to the Director’s office. As soon as that door opened, he was to rush to the lavatory pan pretending he just dropped in, as if it weren’t out of the ordinary. The leading engineer fully justified the trust. From 10 a.m. till half past one when the door opened again not a single mouse has passed by the guard. He steadily rejected all entreaties of those passing by, including even his closest friends, to let them in. At last the door flung open and the Minister, together with the Director and accompanied by the Principal Scientists and the translator, moved towards the staircase. Their way went past the toilet. The crucial hour had come! The leading engineer darted to the snow-white virgin urinal and began to play conscientiously the role ascribed to him. Two and a half hours of expectation and his natural excitement did their job: he acted in the most natural way… But oh! The steps were retreating, they went past the door to the stair-case. He did not even deign to, beast!!


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That part of the story was told to me by a man who directly participated in the event. I fully believe the veracity of his words. The second part of the story was told by the same person, though he did not witness it himself. The Minister, accompanied by management, went to the training ground where he examined the emergency switch for 1500 kV, a construction 30 meters high, which according to the rules of technical safety was at a distance of 500 meters from the road. That way the revered guest and his escort went by foot across the field. After the switch had been examined, the Minister addressed those escorting him (there were only men there) and said, “Gentlemen!” Then he unzipped his trousers and “broke the law” upon the frame. The gentlemen shared in the act quite enthusiastically. “Sometimes something happens and people say, “See, this is new!” But it had been already of old time, which was before us”. (Ecclesiastics 1.10)

Checks on the Roads Sometimes it seems to me that Karl Bergman had come to Russia from Stockholm to expose my mystification. Half a year before his arrival, in December of 1989, I visited the Swedish Royal Institute of Microelectronics and as I am able to understand it now, I “embarrassed the spirit of the Vikings”. First, the Swedes invited me for one day and I stayed for a whole week. The Stockholm/Leningrad flight was weekly, on Friday. It left Leningrad early in the morning, and at 4 p.m. or so flew back. From the point of view of the Swedes it seemed quite logical. I arrive in the morning, and they took me from the airport to the Institute. I made my presentation, they paid my fare, paid me a lecture fee ($200 which at that time according to the prices of the black market was equal to my salary of 5 months)… and they saw me off to the airport.


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But my own attitude was also understandable. In those days, it took me a month of hard work to prepare a 90-minute presentation in English. I had NEVER before been abroad and like 99% of ordinary Soviet people was sure I would never again be there. To come to Stockholm for just one day?! To pass through the city, to take the trouble to make that report and fly back?!!! You won’t have it!!! I wanted to wander about the city, to visit museums, to see the life which I had read so much about and which I had never seen and never would again see. Gallium-arsenide thyristors? Devil takes them; together with the Swedes! As for the money, with God’s Will I’d earn it in summer, during my vacation. I sent a fax stating I was ready to make two presentations instead of one, but I would not come for just one day. With a polite surprise the Vikings agreed. Secondly, I arrived there wearing a janitor’s fur-coat and a fur hat. In Leningrad as well as in Stockholm the temperature was minus 10 degrees C and was expected to be much lower. Wasn’t it logical? The engineer who met me was very well brought up, but he could not quite conceal his astonishment. I understood him better three days later when it became clear to me that in a city with a million people only two of them were wearing fur — myself and quite a crazy English woman who wore a long fox coat down to her ankles. Meeting me she looked at me with an obvious approval and even (it seemed to me) with some kind of desire, which made my inferiority complex run unusually high. Thirdly, when asked what kind of equipment I would like to have: an overhead, a cassette slider, a video-camera or a player? etc. I answered with modest dignity, “a blackboard and chalk”. I was given a blackboard and chalk. After a seminar which lasted two hours and after dinner I was taken to a large hall where there was a blackboard on which they write with markers. Answering one of the questions, I uncapped the marker and wrote the wanted equation. The Swedes began whispering… About three days later, when we began to play tricks on each other and to tell anecdotes, one of the Swedes asked me why I had mystified them, demanding


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a blackboard and chalk. “We saw that you could write very well with a marker as well!” — ??? — “Do you know, you SOB, that we have searched the whole Institute from cellar to attic trying to find a blackboard for you. There was none. So we had to search for it all over the town!” Fourth, it became clear that I had no driving license, that I could not drive a car, and that I did without a car in Leningrad. Fifth, sixth… Apparently my Sweden colleagues had an impression that just the other day I got out of a den, put on a fur-coat and flew to Stockholm to tell them about the most high-voltage galliumarsenide devices in the world and about the effects which we observed by means of those devices. No partial questioning in Stockholm helped them to break me up and Karl came to Leningrad to expose us. On the very first day it became clear that he did know something about Leningrad and about the Ioffe. He NEVER visited the institute lavatories and made no attempts to do so. At 10 a.m., we used to meet him at the Metro and at 5 p.m., we would take him to that very station for him to go to the hotel. And not a single time… It goes without saying that we tried to encourage him by example. We would begin talking on that topic. We asked him point blank, because we were sorry for the man. All was in vain. The man remained polite but adamant. On the third day we gave him the honorary name of BUB (Big Urinary Bladder) which should not be confused with BUP — the British United Press. And we left him alone. Whatever we showed to Karl, he would adopt a partial attitude to it and would check it up most thoroughly. We told him that the wafer was 300 micrometers thick and measured it before his eyes. Karl would get out a special case from his bag, from that case he would get a small box, from the box — a packet and from that packet — a plate. And he made a control measuring, using our setup. We measured some capacitance before his eyes. From another box he would take a device whose capacitance had apparently been


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measured in Sweden, and he checked it up by our device. We showed him that the voltage was 600 V, he would produce a portable Ampere-Voltmeter from his bag and the voltage was measured by a Swedish device. Some days later Karl thawed. He gave a seminar (in Russian) and began to study the technological equipment where that very gallium arsenide had been grown. I watched a similar process at their Institute. The “cleaningroom” of 100 class, i.e. it is such a room where there are not more than 100 specks of dust per one cubic meter of air. (For the sake of comparison it should be noted that in the forest there are 10,000 such specks of dust per cubic meter. In the air in town, there are 1,000,000 specks of dust per cubic meter. At the Ioffe, where in 1989, the floor was washed once a month there must have been about 5,000,000 specks of dust per cubic meter.) There is a chamber before the cleaning room where all the visitors were to change, to put on nylon overalls, a cap, a mask, slippers, etc… I did my best to prepare Karl for what he was to see. I told him that the setups were home-made, that the connection points were home-made, just like a schoolboy from Eton who wrote a composition “About a Poor Man”. “His butler was poor, his gardener was poor, both his drivers were also poor…” I understood, however, that it was beyond me to mollify the shock he was to experience. So I faint-heartedly passed him over to a young technician who had never been abroad and had no complexes whatsoever. I can judge about how shocked Karl was only by the fact that on returning he asked to take him to the toilet and when he came back he made no comments. He washed his hands, sat down to table and for the next half an hour was writing something in his notebook. Then he addressed me, “Mike, can I take a picture of your technological setup?” I am ashamed to admit it, but all that stuff which had been instilled into my mind since my childhood rose inside me for a moment... Scenes of photo-correspondents, darting about with their cameras near the kitchen midden…


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The vision glimpsed and disappeared, leaving a bitter sickening taste in my mouth. “Karl, the setup is not mine, but of course I can ask for the technologist’s permission. But tell me please, why do you want to photograph all that trash?” “I’ll return to Stockholm and I’ll invite all the laboratories. I’ll show the snaps to the guys. I’ll say, “See by means of what people in St. Petersburg produce diodes whose blocking voltage is 600 Volts. You have the best modern setup in the world at your disposal, which was bought for a million and a half dollars. Why is its voltage only 150?” “Well, I see. I’ll speak to Yura…” Karl kept silent for some time. “Mike, can you explain to me why using the setup which in the West they would be ashamed even to throw away as garbage, you manage to obtain such results?” “I cannot give you an exact answer, I’m afraid, no one can. But if you like, I may just suggest a few ideas”. “Do, please!” “Firstly, the technologist who is working at it assembled it himself, every last screw. And while the process is going on he senses it with his skin. Just like a mother does not need to measure the temperature of her child to learn if he is ill, the technologist needn’t look at the devices, he just KNOWS what is going on inside. Secondly, it is difficult to conduct the process, and he will think over the previous results for a week or a month before he comes to a decision what he is to do next. Third, our Institute is a place where you can get a benevolent answer to practically any question in solid state. And, finally, every young guy you have been speaking to has been to a SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL. “What do you mean?” “He has been working at the Ioffe since his third year in college. He has been speaking to clever and benevolent people for 5 years. And for 5 years he has been taught NOT TO DO FOOLISH THINGS and THINK what he is doing”.


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“Shall I come to work here for a year?” “Do you have a family?” “Yes, I do”. “Who provides for your family?” “Me, certainly”. “Then don’t come!”


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RUSSIAN ABROAD Mr. Ulyanov in Finland The junior researcher S, a Jew from Baku, a sanguine person and an ardent optimist was invited to the Finnish University in the town of Turku to work there for two months. S reacted to it with great responsibility; he bought a reference book “Cities — sworn brothers of Leningrad” and learned by heart the chapter about the town of Turku. Besides scientific curiosity he was partly guided also by the instinct of self-preservation. It was as far back as the times when the virtue of any person invited was checked by the special “Ideological Commission of the Party Committee”. The chairman of that commission, a severe communist and unbending patriot (who later on emigrated to Israel), was known for his strictness and desire to delve into every detail. Studying the reference book, S learned, in particular that Leningrad has presented Turku with a statue of Lenin, and that “the statue was erected by the thankful citizens at the central square of the city”. Having safely passed the examination of the Ideological Commission of the District Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and of another, still more serious institution — the KGB — S arrived in Turku and got down to work. When he felt at home, he only then started sightseeing. One evening he happened to come to the central square of the city and did not see there the acclaimed statue of Lenin. S was surprised. On the next day he came to the square in the day-time and did find the present of his motherland. The statue was bashfully hidden somewhere on the side in the bushes. The work in Turku went on quite well, but the life of S was somehow overshadowed by gloomy restraint of his host, the Finnish professor. “I have always thought, S said to me later, “that I can make even a mummy speak, word after word, well — you know me!” (I did indeed know him.)

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“And that time, it was in vain! I tried to tell him anecdotes, stories, did my best. Nothing helped! At the farewell party, when I had drunk a lot, I said to that Kukhtonnen, “Professor Kukhtonnen! We sent you a statue of Lenin as a present. And you keep that statue in the bushes, out of the way. It is no good, is it?” And what do you think?? That professor answered me without a smile: “But Mr. S, as far as I know, Mr. Ulyanov* visited Finland illegally”.

Population of Rumania In those days when they examined the people’s virtue, a friend of mine received an invitation to an International Conference which was, for some reason, to be held in Rumania. Being a sensible man and besides being Jewish, he had never before tempted Providence and had never applied to the authorities for the permission to go abroad anywhere. But that time he was seduced by the Devil. First, Rumania. What kind of a country is Rumania? In fact it is our province. Secondly, he was proposed to make an invited presentation of the work for which he had been recently given a prestigious scientific award. To make a long story short, he applied… Deep in thought, I walked to the library passing by the management office. Suddenly someone grasped my shoulder without ceremony. My friend, who was usually calm, asked me in a heated whisper and without letting go of my shoulder, “Tell me please! Are there any other people in Rumania besides Chaushesku?” “Well, I think so. It seems to me there is Manesku”. “What is he?”

* Ulyanov is Lenin’s real family name.


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“The devil only knows. It seems to me he is Chairman of the Council of Ministers…” My friend shook my hand passionately, “Thank you! You have rescued me! I am to answer at the Ideological Commission now…” An hour later, I dropped in to ask him how things went. My friend was alone in the room, his face as red as a lobster. He smoked, monotonously letting off a stream of monstrous oaths, the like of which I had not heard since my time in the navy on the Baltic Fleet. “You don’t have to tell me anything. The result is written on your face.” “The result…………………!!! What………………result? It has nothing to do with it………….!! The result was …………… clear to me beforehand. I wish you could have seen the procedure!!! “Why, did they make French love to you? — …………………!!!! I came into the office. The chairman in a tender voice said, “Take a seat, please”. He opened my file and informed all the scum*, “Our respected N.N. has been invited to make a plenary talk of his work at quite a prestigious International Conference. It’s a great honor for our Institute so let us be very kind to him and not ask any difficult questions”. He kept silent for some moments … and asked, “Will you tell us how much oil was extracted by the Rumanian Democratic Republic last year?” I, naturally, got up from my chair and said that I had not prepared well enough, and I am sorry for the time I had taken from the Commission. And I walked to the door. Then that swine* the chairman said, “No, no, N.N. Why should you lose heart?! Sit down, please. We will find a more simple question for you”. And here, I cannot forgive myself. I ought to have left them and put an end to it. But no! I returned like an idiot and sat down. “Now, we’ll ask N.N. quite a simple little question. Will you name, please, all the members of the Politburo of the Rumanian Labor party!” * In original version it is much stronger.


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Without saying................. a bad word, I got up again and silently move to the door. Then, you won’t believe it, but one of the women literally hangs herself on my shoulder and howls, “Tell us, please, who headed the work of the party in 1941?” “Rumania!……………………..!!! Shit! Never again will I ………..! But human beings are weak, and the devil is strong. A year later my friend visited Poland.

I am Not a Boy for Them How to protect a town from plague is common knowledge. An innocent maid wearing a wreath of wild flowers must go round its walls three times. Nevertheless, plague mowed down medieval towns. There is a letter addressed to the Pope written by a French bishop. The bishop complained that in the diocese entrusted to him he was unable to find an innocent girl older than 11. Bishop asked whether he could consider such a child as really innocent… Such difficulties arose even in those cases when the requirements of Virtue were formulated unambiguously. It goes without saying that when the system of checking Virtue was multi-staged (the Party Organizer of the Laboratory, the Party Committee of the Institute, the well known Special Department of the Institute, the Ideological Commission of the Institute, the District Committee of the Communistic Party, the KGB) and when the requirements of Virtue were vague and inspired, God knows by whom, the difficulties increased many times. As a result, the greater part of scientists proved to be in the category of those not allowed to leave the country. In some branches of science the number of scientists allowed to go abroad could be counted on the fingers of one hand. One of the researchers of Institute P happily combined a good scientific qualification with the exceptionally good data of his questionnaire: he was Russian, he was a Party member, was born in the very Russian town of Ryazan. He was the son of a worker and


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a peasant woman. He was the trade-organizer of the laboratory. Before he entered the Institute he had been working for 3 years as a turner. He had two young children… So it was clear that whenever there was an opportunity to send anyone abroad, he was chosen. As a result a demon of arrogance gripped him. Once he was offered to go to a conference in Australia. (As far as I remember it was to Adelaide). “I’ve been to Australia three times. And I’ve been to Adelaide, too. I won’t go there. There is no progress in my research because of these trips”, P would capriciously put on airs. The man persuading him would be willing to send him to the devil, or still better, to write a note disqualifying him from ever being sent abroad again. He would have been glad to go to Adelaide himself or to send there one of HIS own colleagues. As for HIS own colleagues, there were no problems with them, but these bloody scientists!!! There were none who combined both qualities: to be a qualified specialist and to be allowed to go abroad. Reluctantly, the man went on persuading P. “You are to fly via Africa. There is a two-day stop there”. “I see, there is a stop, in Tangier, isn’t there? I’ve seen enough of it. Can’t bear to see it again”. Gritting his teeth, the man who was persuading him went on, “And you will return via New Zealand! You have not been there, have you? And there is a stop there too”. “New Zealand? This is interesting! Is there really to be a stop there?” “Have I ever deceived you?” “OK, then it’s settled, I’ll go there”. On the way “there” everything was OK. And the presentation went smoothly… A day before the departure the members of the delegation were gathered and were told that the route back had been changed. Some misunderstanding about the pay for the flight via New Zealand…” So, comrades, we are to return via Africa”.


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And then P exploded, “Tell them in Moscow that I am not a boy to return via Africa!”

Analginum and the Attendant Commodities In many families they still keep ration cards from 1991: for sugar, for oil, for vodka, for sausage… In Autumn of 1991, there was hardly any medicine at all in the drug stores. At any rate, a friend of mine who received an invitation to give a lecture in Norway in November of that year was given, by his wife, a strict order to bring analginum* for their daughter (the girl having an allergy to aspirin* ) and validolum* for his mother-in-law. Besides, he cherished a dream of his own.... This is what he told me on his arrival. “I don’t place too much hope on my English even among my semiconductor colleagues. So I took from my mother-in-law’s stores plates with the names “Analginum” and “Validolum” printed in big Latin letters. What could be better? In Oslo, I was at a drug store. A young girl sat behind the counter. I begin by saying that I do not speak Norwegian, that I am from Russia and that I want to buy “Analginum” and “Validolum”. She answered me in good English that she did not understand. Then, proud of my prudence, I produce the card “Analginum” and push it under her nose. The girl took the card, turned it in her hands, blushed and went somewhere. She returned in a minute with a reference book as thick as my chest. She perused it, in my presence. “We don’t have this medicine. It is not even mentioned in the reference book. What is it for?” I told her it is for headaches. And very joyfully, willing to help, she informed me that I should take Bayer aspirin. There were people behind me. It was hot in the drug store. I was dressed very warm. I was not at all enjoying this. And I felt streams of sweat running down my spine. * Very popular medicine in Russia.


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I still controlled myself and told the girl that I didn’t want Bayer aspirin, and hold out the card “Validolum”. Again everything was repeated in the same order. And she asked me again “What is it for?” I said “For ones heart”. And she answers in a very strict tone that first, such a medicine does not exist, it is not even mentioned in the reference book, and, secondly, all the drugs of that type are sold only by doctor’s prescription. I was dripping with sweat. I took my cards “Analginum” and “Validolum” and asked to give me 20 preservatives. I pronounced “preservatives” which I looked up in the Russian-English dictionary. I was holding my tongue back as best as I could. I maliciously wished I had not taken a specimen with me. And what do you think? That bitch asked me: “What is it for?” I nearly burst out: “Against children! For men!!!” She stared at me fixedly for some time, thinking it over (my knees trembling, darkness before my eyes). Suddenly with frank joy, loudly in her clear and girlish voice, “The gentleman wants a condom! Of course, we’ve got them. A big choice!!!” She came out of her booth and took me to the stand, all the customers, mostly women, staring. She came up to the stand, pointed at it with her hand, evidently taking me for an idiot, and, thank God, left. At that stand there were one hundred different types of condoms: German, French, British, of different color, with rings and mustaches. I was standing there, my legs shaking, and I imagined what awaited me in St. Petersburg if I came back without analginum or validolum but with condoms, especially those with mustaches… “Well”, I asked with interest, “Did you buy them?” “Yes, I did. I chose the cheapest and bought them….”

The Gate In early 90s, the birds that had left their nests at the Ioffe and had flown away to foreign countries began returning for a week or two to their native land. As a rule, they would just peep into the native


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nest, looking with a mixture of squeamishness and compassion, would utter something disapprovingly and would fly away to those distant lands which had become their new home. However, the spirit of Russian science was alive in almost each of them; all of them, or almost all of them, felt it their duty to give a talk about their work at a seminar. Sometimes it happened that the speaker had, to some extent, forgotten the Russian terms. Sometimes it appeared that he had changed his subject-matter and knew his terms only in English. Some of them felt embarrassed, other laughed together with the audience at the necessity for translation into their native tongue… One of the birds was reporting on a new device, which, in the speaker’s opinion, was to eclipse all other devices and at last bring happiness to worn out humanity. A detail which is, in English, called a “gate” constituted an important element of that device. The Russian equivalents of that word are, depending on the context, either “zatvor ”, or “vykhod ”, or else “vorota” etc… In this case it was to be translated as “zatvor ”. When for the first time the speaker stumbled at that word and asked, “What’s the Russian for it?” the chairman of the seminar prompted the word. A minute later the scene was repeated. The speaker snapped his fingers and at once several voices from the first row readily helped him. A minute later its repetition made the audience laugh and disorderly prompts were heard from everywhere. At last, just a few seconds later, the speaker stumbled again at the same term. Then, from somewhere in the middle of the hall, a thick bass articulated, distinctly and unhurriedly, “zatvor, you, bum”. And a miracle occurred. The speaker went on reporting quite smoothly without any more difficulties whatsoever. The magic word now flying off quite easily from his lips. In tandem with this, he suddenly remembered all other Russian terms quite distinctly. And concentrating their attention on the principle of the device operation, the listeners were able to appreciate the elegance and beauty of the idea.


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The Texas Marquees At about this time a friend of mine told me the trail the following story. “I’m running from building “A” to the main building, and I’m running very fast. It’s 15 F. and I’m wearing a very light jacket, quite flimsy. At the entrance a guy is standing wearing a beautiful sheep-skin coat. His face seems familiar to me, but while running I can’t recall who he is. Of course I shout to him “Hi, how are you doing?” and run on without stopping. But nothing of the sort. The guy stops me, greets me and asks me with peculiar intonation, “Well, think it over yourself, how can I be doing?” And that tone of his is not pitiful, like ours, but just the opposite, halfmocking, half-protective. And so self-satisfied, that out of malice I immediately recognized him, and remembered everything about him. The way he left for the USA, and where he was working. And his papers in the Physical Review. And how rumors had it that not everything was OK with his wife. All those things flashed before my eyes and my malice did not decrease, on the contrary, it gripped me altogether. And feeling that I couldn’t help it, and suffering from my own meanness, I said to him, “Why, Robert, how can I know how things are with you. Though, maybe Congress has adopted a law which abolishes the cancer of rectum in the USA. Or which forbids the physicists’ daughters form injecting drugs. Or which obliges their wives to be faithful as long as they live. We fail here to keep an eye on all the decrees of your Congress!” And mouthing all that muck, my anger, naturally vanished and I felt only shame. Robert looked at me, his mouth open; naturally, he did not expect anything of the kind from me. To tell the truth, neither did I. Then we said to each other simultaneously, “Excuse me for goodness’ sake! I don’t


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know what has come over me”, and he, “Excuse me for goodness’ sake. I said foolish things. I am sorry”. Then we had a very friendly talk. And speaking to him I remembered my first journey abroad in 1989, to the USA, to Texas. In those days they could not help marveling at us. All the old emigrants vying against one another invited me to visit them. Once I was invited to supper by a former Leningrad guy who left in 1972. I think he was a very gifted mechanic and an excellent organizer. Two years after his arrival he organized a firm and soon after became rich. In 1989, he had about 200 employees working at his research laboratory and at the plant. We were having dinner in the drawing room. His wife and daughter were at the table together with us. And then the two of us went to his study, decorated with some peculiar wood. I savored a wine-glass of brandy, while he “knocked back” in the best Russian tradition, became tipsy, and began complaining that his wife was shit, that she slept around with all his friends, and even with a plumber who had come to repair the pipes when he was not in. His daughter is ashamed of his “Russian accent” and he didn’t know any of her friends. She was tender to him only when she needs money. “Though”, he smiled bitterly, “she often needs money…. I get up at half past six and go running. Then I go to my office. At seven I return. We have dinner and then I go to my studio “to work.” i.e. I drink until I am quite drunk. Still worse is it if we go out. If we call on Americans, I don’t understand half the conversation. And if I do understand, that makes me sick: taxes, car, weather. If we call on those from Russia, they vie in persuading each other how clever they were to have left Russia, and what fortitude they had displayed to make their way. And year after year it’s the same…”


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In the car when he was taking me home I reminded him of the last lines of Pushkin’s famous poem “Aleco” with an adaptation to the local conditions: There’s no peace among you either, Oh you, Texas’s obese sons. Between your spacious marquees An agonizing dream still comes. And your nomadic way of life Is not a rescue from misfortune. The fatal passions — all around, And no one can escape his fortune We embraced, Robert and I, and I ran on, it was awfully freezing.”


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LITTLE SECRETS OF THEORETICIANS Admonition to the Experimentalist A venerable theoretician exhorts a young experimentalist, the son of his old friend: “Suppose you obtain a result and you don’t know how to use it. You certainly ask the advice of clever people, and they send you to a “theoretician”. As you can guess, for whatever reason, the chance to meet a clever, competent and gifted theoretician who might get interested in your problem is not bigger than of coming across an industrious, quiet, sober plumber who will repair your pipe at the time convenient for you and will not charge you too much. Therefore, first, be alert! Secondly, when you speak about your experiment, look into the adversary’s eyes. If his gaze is clear, and he is not averting his eyes, asking questions which you are able to answer: “To what accuracy was the temperature maintained?” Or, “What is the spectral resolution of the spectrophotometer?” in a word, something sensible, the prognosis is favorable. If he adds that now he is too busy but that in two weeks or so he will find time to think about it this is wonderful. And if two weeks later he calls you up himself and suggests a meeting then wash his feet, anoint him with fragrances and make him take a seat of honor in your home. If, when you telling him about your work, he does not look into your eyes and think about something else, things are bad. But… not hopeless. A couple of days later try it again. But…if no sooner you open your month, than he, without seeing the graph to its end, yells, “But that’s something like superconductivity”. Or, in general, yells something, then finish your sentence, thank him for his help with your work and run away from him as fast as you can, as if from plague. Do not attend his seminars, do not read his publications, and if when meeting you in the corridor, he asks you how things are with that interesting work

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which you have spoken to him about, then tell him that nothing has come of it.

Admonition to the Theorist A young theoretician complained to a venerable theoretician that experimentalists had overcome him. “You see, all of them are very nice people. They do interesting work, and their results are quite impressive. But, I can’t do everything at once. I don’t want to do hackwork, and every problem takes time and needs special reading…” “Yes, it’s not simple. But it can be helped. Next time, when someone comes up to you, listen to him without interrupting and without asking any questions. Don’t interrupt him even if he is mumbling an entire hour. After which you say, “You know it’s very interesting, but I don’t understand anything about it”. “Thank you, I’ve tried that! But I have a dozen publications in this field, and the experimentalist citing them, refers to them and says to me. You have many publications, devoted to it!” “That’s right! And then you answer: Yes, but all of them are wrong”.

The Optimal Conditions for the Work Speaking at a banquet in honoring one of the largest American companies, whose anniversary was being celebrated, the head of that gigantic concern’s research laboratories said that despite having worked in his office for a quarter of a century he still cannot say what work conditions are optimal for theoreticians. “I am of the impression”, he said, “that if we hire two groups of theoreticians of approximately the same qualification, place one of them in a wet cellar with artificial lightning and give other group members a spacious room with air conditioning and the best calculating machines (this was before the computers were in general use), to supply everyone of the second group with a trained servant


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and a car, to let them have, without restriction, any books they like etc…, it is absolutely impossible to forecast which of the groups will have better results…” Indeed, one of the biggest and most efficient theoretical groups of the Ioffe occupied a tiny room until 1972. It contained a desk with a telephone, a couple of chairs and a school blackboard. On the so called “office days” (Monday and Thursday) there was not room to hang a hat. All hell was let loose, everyone would speak at once. It was out of the question to work under such conditions. One of the most respected researchers of the group pinned a note up on the wall, written in calligraphic handwriting, addressing his colleagues with this rhetorical question : “What the hell am I doing here?” It helped, but not for long. On those ill-fated days these theoreticians would walk the corridors in small groups, crowd the places where they could smoke, and occupied the sofas near the library, lying there in unthinkable attitudes, and fought in the library for the latest journals. The sight of those theoretic “couples” walking the corridors, quite estranged, made the charwomen frantic. That was easily justified because some of them would absent-mindedly ash on the carpets, while others, having written a formula on a piece of paper, would crumple it and after looking in vain for an urn, would throw it down on the floor, or still worse, behind a sofa. Should it be considered a coincidence that it was during those very years that the works which made up the “gold reserves” of the theoretical department were published? One of the charwomen, in a fit of righteous anger, cast in bronze an everlasting image, “They walk around and around, leaving shit behind them. And now, have a look, a portrait of some nit is hanging on the board. A prize-winner he is!”

True Pride The grad-student is chosen, as a rule, as carefully as a wife, and then, according to a wonderful Russian tradition unknown in the


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Wild West, is cherished like a beloved child. The grad-student, not as a rule but still often enough, becomes attached to his Teacher with all his heart, often flourishing into a life-long friendship. If this pastoral image seems too sweet, without conflict or respectful enough Freud, I cannot do anything about it. I can only say that more than once I have observed at the Ioffe this wonderful manifestation of the miracle of human communication. However,… anything can happen. Not every marriage is based on love. And love is not always mutual. Grad-students can sometimes be enlisted of the request of an old friend, a boss, or some special circumstances… A highly respected theoretician, a brilliant scientist, a wonderful teacher, an erudite and clever person had one of grad-student who was an absolute idiot, i.e. not a man who simply does not understand or know anything, but a complete fool. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear after all. Besides that grad-student, let’s call him D, was wore a beautiful suit tailor made and carried his meager mental capacity in a beautiful case, which naturally only aggravated the common irritation. Like any idiot, D noticed nothing, was sure everything was OK, and that in due time his Teacher would certainly fulfill his duty. That is to say, would write for him articles and later on a dissertation. His Teacher tried to give him a problem, then another, a simpler one, then the simplest; but arguing with him it was like talking to a brick wall. Meanwhile the time of attestation was implacably approaching. It was imperative to present any kind of paper, if not yet published, then to at least submit it for publication. At last, reluctantly, the Teacher said, “Look here, D, B and myself (B was the name of another grad-student, a gifted and erudite person) have written an article in which we predict some new interesting instability in interstellar plasma. I think there must be an equivalent in semiconductors. Take our work and copy it using the matching semiconductor symbols. Give it the necessary form and bring it to me”.


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D disappeared for a whole month. On returning, he opened his splendid case and produced a pile of sheets, clamped with a sterling pin. He handed it to his Teacher with an air of a modest but selfassured man. The Teacher began to read it and… grew numb. “Dear me! How can you? What have you done?! Didn’t you think at all?!” The sum of those incoherent reproaches could not any way express the depth of emotions which gripped the reserved, middleaged Teacher who had seen enough in his lifetime; D had industriously changed all the designations and all the “astrophysical” words for the semiconductor ones. But… he did not change the numerical values, leaving them as they were. The result looked like delirium, which might be read either as a novel of horrors or a comic book rubric which teases “You can’t compose it on purpose”. While the Teacher was muttering his reproaches, his hand pressed to his heart, the grad-student’s face grew petrified. He grasped, practically snapping his neatly typed sheets, and clamped them with his striking pin, opened his case, to put the paper inside, and carefully locked his case and ground his teeth. “I will never again investigate anything!” he uttered the historic phrase. And left.


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SHORT SKETCHES ON SOCIAL LIFE Late 60s Since the beginning of spring the Brownian motion in the scientific centers of the USA becomes much more intensive! The participants of the motion demanded the increase of entropy and a homogeneous distribution according to the degrees of freedom. Oh, yes! Summer is expected to be hot! The readers of newspaper “For the Soviet Physics” in penned letters to the Editorial Board, more than once, drew the attention of the Board to the inadmissibility of the situation when the thermonuclear synthesis still remains uncontrolled. The Editorial Board was glad to inform readers that the situation was changed radically due to the appearance of the Department of CONTROLLING OF THERMONUCLEAR SYNTHESIS which consisted of the manager, his deputies, a full time secretary and a driver. The ancient dream of humanity has come true! (From the Newspaper “For the Soviet Physics”)

Early 70s Vodka in the context of a strictly scientific approach One of the Ioffe’s theoreticians, when he was young was an absolute abstinent, i.e. he did not drink anything stronger than juice. Even beer never passed his lips. (Later the situation changed.) Once when his colleagues began a discussion on the question about having a drink and a snack, Saul (that was the name of the man) said with emphasis, “I cannot understand how people drink such an abomination as Vodka! I admit, though, that tastes differ.

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But since people do like it, why can’t scientists create some liquid which possesses the same taste but would not at least cause intoxication!”

The Lenin Komsomol Prize In spring of 1972 on the notice-board appeared an announcement inviting “young researchers” (under 33) to submit works for the Prize of the Lenin Communist Union of Young People (Komsomol), even those not necessarily being a Komsomol member. Two weeks later in the place of that announcement appeared another. The latter stated that only three days were left until the dead-line, yet not a single paper had been submitted to the Council of the Institute. That very evening a friend of mine called and suggested, quite insistently, that we apply. Some discussion took place. I appealed to the wisdom of the Old Testament, repeating, “Blessed is he who does not go to the council of the impious”. My friend pointed out the wisdom of the New Testament, “Knock and the door will open…” In the long run he won, for it was not much trouble for us. Just to collect some papers, which would not take more than one day. The next day, however, we faced a barrier whose height it is hard to realize nowadays. It was necessary to have three copies of each publication we had. No Xeroxes were available in those days, and the only domestic mimeograph was the famous “Era”. A slow, clumsy machine smelling of acetone was located behind an iron door. To pass inside one had to produce a special pass, signed by the proper authority. It took anywhere from 5 days to a month to make the copies. Having obtained the wanted form we timidly penetrated the iron door and appeared before the Chief. Standing before him we mumbled that it was very urgent (“it’s always urgent for everyone” he replied), that the Prize of the Lenin Komsomol (“all the applications are urgent here”), etc… After tormenting us for some time


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he was obviously beginning to thaw. And then my friend made a mistake which was nearly fatal. To answer his next, rather weak, objection “I don’t have employees enough, the girls are ill now”, my friend offered quite innocently, “We may do everything ourselves, during the dinner-brake or after the work hours”. The Chief ’s face became distorted with malice. He blushed, tumors swelling on his cheek-bones. Without raising his eyes at us so as not to lose control of himself, he uttered, measuring each word, “Do you think I may trust you with the process of obtaining the hidden electrostatic reproduction?!” We kept silent, humiliated and miserable. There was heavy silence… which ended quite unexpectedly when the Chief pronounced in a matter-of fact tone, “Come tomorrow”. I recalled that scene ten years later, in 1982 or so, when a researcher who returned from the USA shared his impressions with us, “They have a Xerox on every floor. It is always switched on, and every employee comes up and makes a copy of whatever he-or-she likes”. The speaker was transported with delight. “I wish we had the same!” he exclaimed. And a voice from the hall retorted, ”With an official from the security department at each machine.” A decade later the dream came true… A famous Russian writer of the 30s wrote in his diary, “They thought in the 19th century that the main thing was to invent radio. That would guarantee the happiness of humanity. Well, the radio is here, but happiness is not…” Returning to the prize, I will say that at the very end of our efforts there appeared not a barrier, but rather a hitch. All papers, approved of and signed, were placed according to the instructions into three files and brought to the Department of the Scientific Secretary. The files were purchased at the stationary next to the Ioffe for 5 kopeks each. The secretary of the Scientific Secretary, an experienced and benevolent woman, did not approve of the files. “Look what nice files C has bought for his work”, she said. I started explaining that it was not the files but the content of the


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work that was important… But my dashing co-author was already rushing to the door, drawing me behind him. In the same shop we bought three red files 15 kopeks each, exactly like those of C… and the papers went to Moscow. In autumn not finding my name among the winners, I decided that was the end of it. However, when a month later I was about to go to Moscow, my energetic friend began persuading me to call at the Central Committee of Komsomol and to take our precious files with the reprints of our work. They may prove useful, he repeated with unquenchable optimism. “Who will keep them there?” I argued. My friend showed me the fine print on the announcement where it was written that all authors participating in the competition may, within a year, get their papers back. The address of the Central Committee of Komsomol and the telephone number were given. Thinking that it might be the first and almost certainly the last opportunity to get to the Dragon’s den, I agreed. At the indicated number a woman’s voice asked tenderly what time suited me to visit them, and informed me that I was to bring my passport and that a pass would await me on the ground floor. A flinty young man who looked like a sportsman examined my passport very attentively, then fixed his eyes on me, then again examined my passport, then fixed his eyes on me for a very long time. Only then he inserted a paper into my passport and handed it to me. “The 7th floor, room 722, and do not forget to have your pass registered”, he counseled me. I obediently took the elevator, got off on the 3rd floor and making up my mind not to leave until I had satisfied my rightful curiosity, started wandering about the building. There were high ceilings and parquet floors, the walls seemed to be freshly plastered. No other traces of vulgar luxury were visible. The doors leading from the corridor to the offices were coated by cheap veneer of a typical “school” color. Some doors were open. The rooms contained tables very similar to school desks. Young men sitting at tables or on them were shouting something into telephones.


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“I asked you whether the echelon with fighters has passed by or not yet?! “Where on earth is your instructor?! I can’t get through to him for three days running!” It entailed all that might resemble a poor performance about komsomol life staged by some provincial theater. The similarity was intensified by the fact that no one was walking along the corridor. Everybody was flying, the gait swift and bobbing, the glance piercing and energetic. The sentences were jerky. The gestures abrupt. Fifteen minutes later my curiosity was quite satisfied, the only thing left was to visit the toilet. Legends were composed about rest-rooms of the Central Committee. They were to be imagined as a fairy land flowing with milk and honey. The visionaries assured us that in every stall was a roll of toilet paper and nearby on the shelf there were reserve rolls of different colors. To make one understand what kind of emotions such stories might cause, I’ll remind you that in 1972 a young and coquettish woman who was lucky enough to get toilet paper might have asked a shop-assistant to thread the rolls together. Then she would wear them round her neck like a necklace, walking proudly along the streets, causing burning lust in men and enjoying the envious hisses of less successful women. The toilets were quite clean. In some cabins there really were rolls, while in others there were just lonely white cardboard cylinders. The hand towel might be cleaner. In a word, I reached the conclusion that no special surprises were awaiting me there. How wrong I was! A man with an athletic figure energetically flung the door open and rushed in. He shut the door with the same energy, glanced around and… drooped, as a balloon was pierced with an awl before my eyes. His face grew gray and wrinkled, his knees bent. He stooped and shuffled to the urinal. Approaching it, with his left hand he leaned against the wall while with his right hand he was abruptly, by jerks, undoing the zip. All this time he was moaning and groaning. Then he somehow zipped his trousers, looking down like an old man, still groaning and moaning without stopping.


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Shuffling, he made toward the door. I was stupefied. I stared at him feeling ready to support the falling body and to call for help. The man took hold of the door handle and moaned for the last time. Then another miracle happened. His back straightened up. His shoulders squared. His cheeks were of high color. He flung the door open and swiftly rushed away… I looked out. The man was resiliently flying along the corridor to meet another Adonis. “He did speak at the rally. He came himself and he spoke!” — he shouted victoriously… “A hellish place”, I concluded and without loitering any longer went up to the 7th floor. After knocking and receiving an invitation to come in, I found himself in a very large room full of metallic shelves. There were hundreds of files on those shelves, placed cover to cover. And what kind of files! Each of them (no less than $100 each) might decorate the Baltic exhibition of leather work. A young man sitting at the window took my pass and, having looked up a register, suggested that I should find my files myself. Our red Cinderellas, 15 kopeks a piece, were seen from afar, and made an impression like paupers at a diplomatic reception. I pretended, however, to be examining the covers very attentively and walked along the shelves. I drew out at random one of the files. On the morocco of a noble mouse-gray color there were letters printed in pure gold: “Our knowledge — to you, dear Komsomol!” Below, a Komsomol emblem was embroidered with gold threads of two different shades of color, God knows by what kind technique. Still lower in silver thread was given the name of some Moscow Institute. And only then, the names of the authors. And at long last the title of the work: “On the role of the mustard oils at the rupture of some plants”. I felt sick. I took my orphans, signed in the register and left. On coming back to St. Petersburg I vividly described what I had seen to my friend. “I told you 5 or 15 kopecks would make no difference”. I concluded my story.


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“Oh, the man was right in getting your measure”, my friend parried, “You cannot be trusted the process of obtaining the hidden electrostatic reproduction”.

Late 70s The experience of social-political defloration To be awarded a prestigious scientific prize it is advisable to do work which will be cited and referred to, which is said to have created the basis of a new scientific field, etc… But in fact those are not the main things. Cynics without any trouble will point out to you dozens of firstrate works not given any award, and dozens of quite ordinary works, forgotten shortly after their appearance and still awarded prestigious scientific prizes. The main thing to have in your collective body is a person who knows the Moscow “kitchen” which bakes those pies very well, who knows the back door of that kitchen and is familiar with all the cooks. It must be a man who is ready to write an immense number of papers, to spend time, energy, and nerves to court God knows whom, to intrigue, counter-intrigue and counter-counter-intrigue. Once upon a time, the position of planets favorable, the work done well, the wanted man found, and the work was in full swing. The mover of the company to receive the prize could not only enter the kitchen from the back door, but he was himself one of the cooks. That means he was not only a skillful tactician but also a subtle strategist. While under his guidance they prepared at the Ioffe various routine papers, presentations, characteristics, warrants etc. — he himself took, in Moscow, all the necessary steps, demanding a deep knowledge of life, of secret springs and of undercurrents. The most essential visits had already been made. Influential people had been involved, rare stamps had been presented. Rumors defaming the rivals had been started… Then what?


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All the enormous and complicated machine of the intrigue was quite unexpectedly brought to a standstill. The Communistic Party Committee of the Ioffe refused to vouch for the reference on the young theoretician S. That was an obvious and annoying foolishness. Who even considers those references? Who doesn’t know that it is the man-in question himself who writes them, after which those Invested Persons sign them without reading? But… Well, I never… They won’t sign it! And even the insistent requests of the influential mover do not help. But why? As everyone knows, every reference must contain some sacramental phrase like “Takes an active part in social work…” or such, according to the circumstances. It is very good if disclosing the image one can write, “He (or she) is a member of the Party Committee”. It is not bad if one can write “A member of the Trade Union Committee”. Even a member of the voluntary people’s patrol will do. There are many different formulations. In the most desperate situations one can say “Delivers certain messages…” In the case under consideration, however, neither of the formulations was suitable. The candidate for the prize was absolutely innocent. He did not play any games. He never executed any commissions or never delivered any messages. We can’t say that his colleagues who applied for that very prize were overly zealous in performing their social duties. But… it was possible to write at least something about them. While this participant was defiantly innocent. His chastity was so dazzling that it caused a natural irritation not only of the inveterate tarts, but also of anyone who was among the Retinue to the Board. As a result, he received a snub. It should be mentioned that the man himself, was ostracized, but did not take it to heart. He quite justly believed that, as like money, it did not offer much; his honor did not depend on prize either. As for his scientific reputation, it had nothing to do with any prizes. But nevertheless he felt awkward. Some of his colleagues


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were eager to get that prize. And he was not used to letting down his friends. One evening I dropped by his untidy, smokes room. I found him in the company of the experimentalist, L who was said to be a man of the world known by everybody at the Ioffe. The friends were drinking and complaining to each other about life. After the story about the Party Committee had been told and the due number of curses had been uttered, L said, “Look here, one of these days the Secretary of the Party Committee will be leaving. Get his deputy to sign it. I know him. He is a normal man, he won’t put a spoke in your wheel over such trifles. After all, the Ioffe is interested in you getting this prize no less than your group is…” S gave a gloomy smile, “Clever as you are, you are not so clever as the mover. The latter had already spoken to the deputy and explored the ground. He won’t sign it!” “Would you like me to go to him?” “It will be a waste of time. I appreciate your approaches, though sometimes they irritate me immensely. Don’t get offended, but you can’t compete with the mover. You can’t suggest anything he had not been thinking over before, can you?” A week later, S was waving the signed reference before my nose. I went to L to listen to his explanations. And I heard the following story: “I have known the deputy for 15 years. So I asked him directly what that nonsense meant. And just fancy! He answered me quite sincerely. “I understand”, he said, “S is a brilliant theoretician, etc. But tell me, please. Why on earth must I spend half my time on social work, while he doesn’t raise a finger to do anything of the sort, and moreover, whenever he has a chance he speaks about ANY kind of social work with emphasized aversion. Well, that’s up to him. But I won’t sign his reference where it is written that he takes an active part in social work!!”


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“Yes, I see”, I said, “But you must confess that your post obliges you to make still worse compromises. Do you want me to tell you why this simple trivial situation makes you feel such big emotions?” “I’ve explained it to you, haven’t I?!” “No, old man, that is just the face of it. What happens in fact is that when you look at S, you and the secretary experience the same feeling that any man does when he looks at a virgin. On one hand, her innocence causes lofty feelings and a desire to kneel down before her. On other hand, there is a persistent desire to deprive her of her innocence, perhaps even in a perverted form. You feel the same towards S: at heart you admire his social innocence, on the other hand you are eager to disgrace him immediately. Do you agree?” “Well, how did he react to it?” “He burst out laughing and told me to bring his reference for him to sign it… Provided I warrant that S will perform some social duties”. “And…?” “He agreed to be responsible for the civil defense”. “So they deflorated him!” “Oh yes, they did”.

Academic and Reactor At the very end of the 70s a representative delegation, headed by an Academic, veteran of the Ioffe, came to one of the Soviet nuclear stations. The delegation comprised representatives of the Ministry of Nuclear Energy, of the Academy of Sciences and God knows of what other Ministries and Departments. All in all, 20 people. The man on duty gave orders to remove the lid from one of the reactor’s wells and the members of the delegation got an opportunity to approach it and to peep inside. The Cherenkov radiation of marvelous beauty was blazing there.


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“Well, don’t get too fascinated by it”, the man on duty warned them “don’t stand there too long!” “Why not?” somebody asked There were only men in the delegation, and the man on duty answered bluntly, “You’ll find out WHY when you lie down with your wife at night”. The men moved backwards. “That’s not for me,” the Academic retorted. He came up to the well and again admired with great interest the wizard radiation.

Late 80s A tank and a bug A wave of perestroyka overwhelmed the Ioffe. In vain did the aged people repeat David’s second psalm: “Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?” The eyes of the young people were shining. And the eyes of the young theoretician, L , were shining defiantly. He had just finished his grad-student course. He did it brilliantly and became an indispensable man at the department, headed by Academic A, a very influential person. The Academic wanted L to work at his department, but he could not manage to arrange it at once. The thing is that L was Jewish. Though perhaps every fourth employee at the Institute was Jewish, it would take pains to hire another branded person. By that time perestroyka had shaken many pillars, but this one was steady. Whenever any chief wanted to hire a Jew, it was necessary to apply to the District (perhaps to the City or even State) Party Committee, which was far from easy, demanded long and exhausting efforts, etc. Meanwhile A found a job for L at one of the Leningrad Universities. L spent 1 percent of his time at that University, 10 percent — at the Theoretical Department of the Ioffe, while the rest of the time he devoted to various democratic meetings which


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he attended very zealously. Such distribution of time did not delight A. Quite by chance I witnessed the following scene. A man of A’s retinue addressed L with the following words, “Look here, A asked me to tell you that if you go on like this, there will be difficulties with your future job in the Ioffe”. L thought for a moment, and shook his head. Then he uttered a phrase which became historic: “Oh, you can’t crush a bug with a tank”. In August of 1991, he was on patrol on the barricade at the Leningrad Council. In 1994, he protested against the war in Chechnya. Later it became clear to him that he would not be able to feed his three children and he left the country. First, he went to Germany. Then to the USA.

Physical Society at the IOFFE Institute Now when 15 years have passed since the beginning of perestroyka, it is difficult to recall, and on recalling it is hard to believe, how high the spirit of Russian science has risen, how enthusiastic people became as a rule composed and reserved One of the manifestations of that general rise was the establishment at the Ioffe Institute of a mysterious structure, called “Dialogue”. “Dialogue” conducted interrogations of the people with various social opinions, and the results were promulgated on the stands quite freely. Another manifestation was the formation of the Physical Society. As far as I know, this society still safely exists which proves that it has found for itself a proper ecological niche. At the time of its formation, however, the reasons for its creation seemed unconvincing. The constituent manifesto said something about perfection of morality, about the example to youth and about some other rather vague subjects. It was apparently the latter circumstances that caused the appearance of a satirical article which was hung by an anonymous author beside the manifesto of Society. The text of that article, diligently copied by me many years ago, seems to me to be of interest even now.


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The news about the formation of the Physical Society at our Institute made a great impression on me. Judging by talks with my colleagues, I was not alone. I have been waiting two weeks for the “Dialogue” to ask me what I thought it, but they did not. Then I fancied what might have happened if they did. “The Dialogue”: Do you know that a Physical Society has been created at our Institute? What do you think about this initiative? I: Yes, I do. It’s always hard to say what can be expected of a new-born. It seems to me, however, that the parents have every reason to be worried about the fate of the baby. D: What makes you think so? I: First of all, the old age of the parents alarms me. It is wellknown that if the parents are older than 45, the peril of serious genetic affection of the foetus is greatly increased. According to my estimation, the average age of the Father-Founders is on the right side of 50. To my mind, a clever man of that age must think of his soul, getting ready to meet He who sent him to this world. All attempts to moralize and, especially, to admonish youth most often display trouble-making. Besides, a man of that age is vulnerable from the point of “Maupassant’s paradoxes”. D: What do you mean? I: Maupassant wrote that “most severe moral principles are most often propagated by old tarts whose age and illness make them unable to sin”. Besides, I am worried about the difference in the reputations of those who founded the Order. Among them there are people of flawless moral and scientific reputation. On the other hand, the names of some of the Father-Founders are mentioned whenever one speaks of boorishness or servile psychology’ which, alas, did not escape the Ioffe. D: What do you mean? I: I mean the disrespectful tone the chiefs use when addressing their subordinates. Who does not know a mean habit of some chiefs of labs not to answer the greetings of their subordinates, or to give just a hardly discernable nod? That manner luckily


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coincides with a cheerful expression of the face and low bows towards the Director. Which of you did not admire a picturesque contrast between the manner of speaking through set teeth when addressing their subordinates, raising their eye brows and fastidiously drumming their fingers on the table, and a brilliant articulation when speaking to the Director? What ethical norms are these boors going to establish? Besides, among the Father-Founders there are some so called “sharks”, i.e. the scientific bosses who have established in their departments such an order that the subordinates cannot but include their bosses into the list of co-authors of any publication so desired. Irrespective of the fact as to whether or not he had anything to do with it. In some laboratories it became so normal that it does not strike anyone that it may be otherwise. What kind of ethics can be established by such thieves and corrupters of good morals? D: You advance very serious accusations. Will you name concrete people? I: No, I will not. First, I am afraid. These adherents of scientific ethics hounded people to death for much more inoffensive utterances. Secondly, such accusations, even though strictly proved, if they were advanced by one person, are always of a subjective nuance. Then, compelling to sexual life is a thing which happens not very seldom, but it is very seldom prosecuted. It is very difficult to be proved, and ways of compelling are quite various, especially in the intellectual circles. I think that Dialogue alone will not cope with it. On the other hand, in our case this form of assault concerns hundreds of people. So for the professional sociologist it will not be very difficult to prove the existence of the “right of the first night” and to give the names of the “sharks”. Of course, applying to the professionals may require means. But should Dialogue call on people for voluntary donation to conduct this kind of social investigation, I am sure that both the sum collected and the number of donors will show very clearly how pressing this subject is for the Institute.


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D: I:

D: I:

D: I:

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If the results of the qualified and independent inspection are published and the names of the “sharks” are given, the Physical Society will make in important contribution to the solution of the noble task of improving the morals. Have you exhausted your claims to the Society? I think I have. Though, there is just another small remark. I address the item of the regulations which states that only a person who has made an appreciable contribution to science may become a member of the society. This demand which speaks of modesty and good taste of the Father-Founders, is very funny. Whose contribution to science should be considered appreciable? Those of A. Einstein? Of B. Ivanov? I think it is not even snobbery, but other pure nonsense, which again returns me to the idea that the true struggle for scientific ethics for a man advanced in years consists in his fight against his inferior memory and his growing self-satisfaction. Can we conclude, on account of your remarks, that you are against the formation of the Physical Society? By no means. Any voluntary society, not pursuing any misanthropic ideas, has a right to exist. Pediatrics nowadays does miracles. Especially for those who can afford them. I hope the child will recover. Who knows? Perhaps we have reached the time when children are not responsible for their parents.. Thank you for a very interesting interview. Thank you for your attention.

Late 90s The last order For room 000 Cossacks! Rumors have it that one of these days the Cossack chieftain of the special electric squadron V.I.P. will be 70!


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Happy birthday to you, Our dear brother and Comrade-inarms! In this connection I ORDER: Section 1. To allow the V.I.P. to keep on coming to his office and to work for the good of Our Motherland. Section 2. To award V.I.P. a big Orthodox Diamond Cross, changing the diamonds for the adequate amount of the chewing gam “Stimorol”. Section 3. To honor the V.I.P. in the capacity of an Honorary Citizen of the region entrusted to Us, informing him of the secret code of the hygienic institutions on the adjoining territories*. The Security Department of the Ioffe is to provide an accelerated legalization of the proper documents. Section 4. On account of Sections 2 and 3 of the present Order, to promote the V.I.P. as a candidate to the Society of Nobility of the Ioffe Institute according to the quota of non-Russians. Section 5. In view of the regulation of financing, which is being conducted now and the revision of the salaries of the management from 11.30.1992, considering all fines and arrears, the V.I.P. is to pay to the fund of the Ioffe Institute a sum of 837 rubles 04 kopecks, which is to be done by 01.09.98. Section 6. Taking an opportunity we remind all the Cossacks that (a) according to the behests of St. Cyrill and Mephody, while writing equations it is necessary to use only the CYRRILIC letters. As an exception, GREEK letters are also admitted as symbols of a spiritually related people. (b) The wrong formulas are not subject to taxes.

Long live Cossacks! Chief of the room (Signature) August 20, 1998 * See the section: Foreigners at the FTI, the article “Digression: The “Smell” of

Science”.


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CONCLUSION Many years ago, a friend of mine along with his four-year-old daughter visited me. We let the girl sit on a carpet, gave her a lot of toys, color pencils, paper, put a small table with dolls before her… and with a clear conscience sat down to talk things over, speaking of life and science. The girl was (then) obedient and quiet. She was fiddling about with her dolls and a teddy-bear, was singing quietly to them. Then she was painting and then she put the dolls to bed. Then all the three of us had tea after which the guests left. I began to tidy the room and on the carpet I found a sheet of paper on which it was written in printed letters:

I phoned her father and asked him whether he often read to his daughter about the breaking up of the First Russia Constituent Assembly (1918). The father swore that he never! The girl’s mother, grandmother and grandfather were questioned zealously, but they denied everything. I have saved that sheet of paper and look at it the way Valtazar must have looked at the fiery letters on the wall “Mene, Tekel, Uparsin”: “You have been weighed and found very light ” That was the truth that came out of mouth of a baby (a gradstudent now) a quarter of century ago. The hall is closed.

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Irrespective of the fact whether the members of the Council come in time or not, whether they finish in due time or not, the door is closed. We resist as hard as we can. We hold the doors with our hands, knees and shoulders. We write proposals, get grants, go abroad to earn money. But the doors slowly close. The equipment wears out. The strongest of us leave. Those who remain lose heart… The doors are closing. Are they ever to open again? I believe they did not in the time of our generation. Let us hope they will open for the next generation: “Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new? It had been already of old time, which was before us”. (Ecclesiastics 1.10)

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