Foreword

This is a continuation of the story about me and the life which was around me. In the previous part I said that after graduation from the Moscow Power Institute, I was assigned to work in the Section Water Problems of the Academy of Sciences. The Academy had hundreds of institutions (institutes) across the Soviet Union (including Siberia, Far East and all former Republics) and other units and employed tens of thousands of employees including scientific researchers. I was one of them.  The Academy of Sciences and its institutes were led by Academy’s members: full members (Academicians) and corresponding members (a first stage of membership). So, I continue my memoirs.

In Moscow there is the very famous Gagarin Square, where the monument to the first man who had flown in-to space. Once this square was called Kaluzhskaya Zastava, which in English means Outpost. Before Khrushchev’s time it was the southwestern border of Moscow. Today this area can be called the center of Academic Sciences in Moscow. The several Academic Institutes are located in area of  Gagarin Square. At least the windows of three of the offices of Nobel Prize winners:  Kapitsa, Landau and Semenov overlook Gagarin Square, and another eight Nobel Prize Winners: Cherenkov, Tamm, Frank, Basov, Prokhorov, Abrikosov, Ginzburg and Sakharov worked or closely related with the Institute of

Physical Problems of the Academy of Sciences which was also not far from Gagarin Square.  And one more Nobel laureate Academician Kantorovich worked alongside in the Institute for System Studies. I would like to note that among the Russian Nobel Laureates in science were also Academicians Ivan Pavlov and Iliya Mechnikov, and also immigrants from Russia: Vasiliy Leontyev, Novoselov and Geim. There were eighteen Nobel Prize Winners total. By the way, reading their biographies I discovered that five from them were Jews and three persons have Jewish mother's. I found this fact amusing.

In the seventies, it was decided to erect on Gagarin Square the new building of the Presidium of the Academy of Science of the USSR. The complex Presidium buildings were constructed over 20 years and was erected on the eve of the collapse of the Soviet Union.  The building is a huge three-story podium on which there are two interconnected 22-story office buildings the top which are crowned with a golden structure resembling metal girders, (pic 1). According to Soviet propaganda the monumental building was supposed immediately to evoke a sense of pride in Soviet science. The strange huge golden structure on the roof of building was called “the golden brains” as a symbol of the wisdom of the Soviet scientists, pic 2. Undoubtedly, there are many persons with golden brains, I just named some of them.  However, for me, this golden construction rather resembles a “golden cage,” in which the Soviet Academy was located and, unfortunately, remains to this day.  The charter of the Academy of Science of the USSR in 1935 declared: “The Academy of Science is directly subordinate to the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR to which it reports on its activities”. (The Council of People's Commissars was the same as the Council of Ministers). The very beginning of its creation in 1925, the Academy of Science of the USSR was under close scrutiny and management of the Soviet Government, namely Communist Party. When after  Perestroika the secret documents of the Politburo of the Communist Party were opened, it turned out that  before ‘91 the Politburo had adopted about 40 decisions on the Academy and its members. Dozens of secret notes were considered in the Central Committee, for example, on 12/8/31 the Politburo considered the issue: “about the commission for the leadership of elections in the All-Union Academy of Science”.  The Politburo unequivocally points to the need to consider and select candidates for election to the Academy of Science. Or, another example, the resolution of the Politburo “About the termination of the publication in foreign languages of three Academic journals, of July 15, 47”. This resolution said that the publication of journals in foreign languages was nothing but servitude to foreign countries, and diminishes the dignity of the Soviet Union. It was just at the beginning of the struggle against cosmopolitanism and the iron curtain. At that time Academicians could go abroad or participate in international scientific meetings only by decision the Central Party Committee. I have already described that time in previous parts of my memories. The Soviet Communist Party exercised the tight ideological control over the activities of the Academy and its members. The dissidence or the disagreement with the line of the Party was cruelly punished. As a result, members of the Soviet Academy did not escape political repressions. It was documented now, that before Stalin’s death more than one hundred members of the Academy were arrested and 43 of them were shot or died in prisons during investigations. And this all happened with the knowledge of Stalin and the members of his Politburo. You remember the so-called  “firing lists”. These were the lists of arrested persons with a predetermined measure of punishment, which was usually firing squad. The most significant people of the country, including the scientists, were on these lists. After signing of the lists by Stalin and other members of the Politburo, the sentences were carried out within 24 hours. My uncle, professor I. M. Velikanov was on one of these lists and was shot on 12/08/38. I already wrote about this.

Together with leadership and hard repression against the dissent in the Academy, the Soviet authorities tried in every possible way to lure members of the Academy to their side. In the ‘50s, an Academician received 5000 rubles per a month (on top of the official salary) only for being a member of Academy, whereas my mom who was a TB doctor with thirty years of experience  received only 1300 rubles per month. The members of the Academy had not only permanent cash rewards, they had great privileges similar, to those that the high-ranking party, government and military leaders had. Perhaps the biggest privilege was in getting an apartment without waiting in line and without regard to existing standards.  I would like to remind you that all urban housing belonged to the Soviet state; the citizens received housing for free, and paid only a very small some for utilities. The Soviet Propaganda announced that it was one of the main achievements of socialism. However, in real life for ordinary people the Housing Problem was not so bright. The statistics show that by the end of the Stalin era, there was no more than 5.1 square meters (50 square foot) per person in Moscow. The vast majority of urban residents lived in so-called “communal flats,” where each family occupied one room and there were only one kitchen, and, more often one bathroom shared by all tenants. (Pic 3 and 4).  I have a good example. For seven years I lived in the communal flat at 15 Nikitsky Blvd #7 in Moscow, where there were nine rooms, one  kitchen, one  bathroom  and one small toilet without a washbasin. The eight families lived in this communal flat including its former owner, lawyer Boris Ivanovich Abrikosov. Apparently, he was a good lawyer, insofar as before the Revolution he had the opportunity to purchase a luxury apartment in the center of Moscow which was turned into a Soviet communal flat after the Revolution. By the way, Boris Ivanovich was the uncle of Russian-American Academician Nobel Prize winner Alexei Abrikosov, who recently died in America.

At that time millions of Soviet families lived in such conditions, and did not even dream of a small non-shared apartment. As had already been said, this did not apply to the Soviet elite, including Academicians. In 1939 the huge 10-story apartment building for Academicians was constructed at the Big Kaluga Avenue 13, now the Leninsky Prospect. The house had 146 apartments, the average size of which was over 100 square meters. There were a fashion studio and a shoe shop for Academicians on the ground floor of this building. In fact, very respected persons settled in this building, but I think that they had too many privileges. Subsequently, this building was given the unwritten name of “a widow’s house”, because when an Academician died or moved away, the whole apartment remained for his former wife and family, and no one additionally instilled in this apartment, what was provided by the Soviet housing legislation.

The holiday villages, dachas, were another privilege of the Academicians. In Stalin's time near Moscow there was built the holiday village Mozzinka where seventy Academicians received each a state dacha for free.  One of these dachas belonged to the highly respected and prominent scientist Academician Christianovich. Once I had opportunity to visit him there. At that time I had worked for more than 25 years in the Academy of Science, and I was quite critical of the bureaucratic system that existed in the Academy.  My conversation with Christianovich was very interesting for me. However, when I said to him that the members of the Academy of other countries did not receive money from the state, and that the National Academy of America existed only through contributions by its members, Academician Christianovich interrupted me. He said that Comrade Stalin gave the academicians 5,000 rubles that allowed them to have the freedom to express themselves. I did not object to his argument, although remembering that in ‘73 the forty Soviet academicians, including three Nobel Prize winners Basov, Prokhorov and Charitonov, on the instruction of the Central Committee of the Communist Party wrote a shameful denunciation of Academician Sakharov. To his credit, Christianovich did not sign this letter. I believe that neither an Academician Khrstianovich nor other Academicians knew the truth of Stalin's attitude to the Academy of Sciences. Only after the discovery in the archives of the Politburo we learn how Stalin directed the Academy of Science and, what he said about the Academy. When in '46 Molotov was, with permission of Stalin, elected an honorary member of the Academy of Science and openly expressed deep gratitude to the President of the Academy Vavilov for the honor rendered to him, Stalin sent him an encrypted telegram in which he said: “...I did not think that you can be deeply moved in connection with secondary matter as such as the election of member of the Academy of Science… I was amazed by your telegram to Vavilov about your election as an honorary member of the Academy”. And Stalin continued: “What does it mean the signature: “Your Molotov?”. Frightened by this telegram, Molotov immediately replied to Stalin: “I see that I did something stupid”.

I think that the above examples confirm my opinion, that the Soviet Academy was in “a golden cage”.

...Well, anyway, I served in the Academy and now I will tell you of my life there.

Section of Water Problems

As I said earlier, after graduation I got a referral to work at the Section on Scientific Development of Water Management Problems of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. This is the official name of my first job. This Section was located on the first floor of a large apartment building at the Great Kaluga Street, now Leninsky Prospect, just opposite the old palace, at which the Presidium of the Academy was located than. Judging by the entry in my “Work-book”, I entered the Section of Water Problems on December 21st of 54. This incomprehensible word Work-book was a very important personal document for all working citizens of the Soviet Union from a laborer to an Academic. It was a gray color brochure slightly larger than a passport which was held at the enterprise, where the owner of this Work-book worked at that time. The Decree of the Soviet Government was written down: “ The Work-book have to contain: full name of the owner of this book, his age, education, profession and information about his work, about the transition from one enterprise to another and about the reasons for this transition”.  The people who did not have the Work-book or who have not worked for more than four months were referred to as parasites or spongers and were criminally liable, in accordance with existing legislation. The most outstanding of the operation of this legislation was a hearing of a case against the future Nobel Laureate of the young poet and interpreter Joseph Brodsky. The judge accused Brodsky directly that he did not work more than five months at the plant, where he worked as a lathe operator, the all his work as a poet was not recorded in the Work-book. As a result, in March ‘64 the court sentenced Joseph Brodsky to five years of forced labor in a remote area in the North. He was arrested and escorted to the village of Norinskaya in the north of Arkhangelsk region of the Soviet Union. Even here, and even more so after returning from his exile, Brodsky continued to write poems, to do translations, and was engaged in other literary work. But he could not publish his works. In the very beginning of the Soviet government there was the most severe censorship. At the government there was a Main Department for Affairs of Literature and Publishing Houses with a short and awesome name “Glavlit” without permission you could not publish a single line.  The authorities considered the poems of Brodsky as anti-Soviet, and therefore did not allow them be published. However, his poems began to be published abroad and the handwritten copies of them began to spread in the Soviet Union. As a result the authorities began to threaten him with further persecutions and gave him an ultimatum to leave the country. The authorities deprived him of his citizenship and on June 4’72 Joseph Brodsky emigrated to America and managed to take with him four volumes of his manuscripts. He almost immediately took the post of guest poet at Michigan University. Later he moved to New York and continued to lecture in various American and British Universities. In America, Brodsky begins to write essays and poetry in English. He becomes widely known in the world as the Russian-American poet, translator, playwright and essayist. In 1987, Joseph Brodsky was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Poet Laureate of the Library of Congress of the United States of America. He died in the prime of s life  in Brooklyn on January 28 of’96. He was 55 years old.

Of course, I understand that the absence of record of any work in Brodsky’s Work-book was not the main reason but only the excuse for bringing the young poet to trial. The main reason for his trial was his free-thinking in which expressed in his verse, which contradicted the Soviet ideology. This, in the end, led to deprivation of his citizenship and his exhibitions abroad. l just wanted to show in this vivid example what role the Work-book would play in the Soviet time.