Геннадий Горелик Андрей Сахаров: наука и свобода Москва, 2010

The World of Andrei Sakharov: A Russian Physicist's Path to Freedom   by Gennady Gorelik with Antonina W. Bouis     Oxford University Press,  2005       Book Description About the Authors Contents in Detail

From the Book Jacket

Book Description       How did Andrei Sakharov, a theoretical physicist and the acknowledged father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, become a human rights activist and the first Russian to win the Nobel Peace Prize? In his later years, Sakharov noted in his diary that he was "simply a man with an unusual fate." To understand this deceptively straightforward statement by an extraordinary man, The World of Andrei Sakharov, the first authoritative study of Andrei Sakharov as a scientist as well as a public figure, relies on previously inaccessible documents, recently declassified archives, and personal accounts by Sakharov's friends and colleagues to examine the real context of Sakharov's life.     In the course of doing so, Gennady Gorelik answers a fascinating question, whether the Soviet hydrogen bomb was really fathered by Sakharov, or whether it was based on stolen American secrets. Gorelik concludes that while espionage did initiate the Soviet effort, the Russian hydrogen bomb was invented independently. Gorelik also elucidates the reasons that brought about the seemingly sudden transformation of the top-secret physicist into a public figure in 1968, when Sakharov's famous essay "Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom" was distributed in samizdat in the USSR and smuggled out to the West. Recently declassified documents show that Sakharov's metamorphosis was caused by professional concerns, particularly regarding the development of an anti-ballistic missile defense. An insider's view of how the upper echelons of the Soviet regime functioned had led Sakharov to the conclusion that the goals of peace, progress, and human rights were inextricably linked. His free thinking and free feeling were manifested in his hope that scientific thought and religious perception would find a profound synthesis in the future.

About the Authors   Gennady Gorelik is a Russian physicist by education, historian by occupation, and writer by vocation. He has written seven books and many articles on the history of science and popular science, and was awarded both a Guggenheim Fellowship and a grant from the MacArthur Founda­tion's Program on Peace and International Cooperation to write this book.   Antonina W. Bouis was called the best lit­erary translator from Russian by Publishers Weekly. She has translated over fifty books, including memoirs by Bonner, Sakharov, Plisetskaya, and Shostakovich; nonfiction by Svetlana Alexievich and Yevtushenko; and fiction by Aksyonov, Rybakov, and Dovlatov. Her own articles about the USSR and Rus­sia have appeared in Time, Life, and The Washington Post.

"There is a great deal of new material here, especially for the English-speaking reader. Sakharov wrote extensive memoirs, but Gorelik / Bouis's book adds an enormous amount by setting the context and drawing on newly classified documents and the testimony of friends and colleagues of Sakharov. ...I think it is a very impressive work." —Professor David Holloway, Stanford University

 
   
 Contents in Detail

 

Preface      vii

Introduction:  How I Came to Write This Book      xiii

Prologue:  Pyotr Lebedev: The Pressure of Light and the Pressure of Circumstances 3

Light Exerts Pressure      4

Pressure of Circumstances      7

The Russian Intelligentsia      10

PART  I:  From Tsarist Russia to the Tsardom of Soviet Physics... 17

1   The Emergence of Soviet Physics and the Birth of FIAN      19

The Sakharovs      19

The Intelligentsia and Soviet Rule      24

The Emergence of Soviet Physics      26

Lebedev’s Heirs in Moscow: Pyotr Lazarev and Arkady Timiryazev      28

The Father and Stepfather Founders of FIAN in Leningrad: Georgi Gamow and Sergei Vavilov 31

2   Leonid Mandelshtam:  The Teacher and His School      37

The Electrotechnical Consultant at Moscow University      37

Igor Tamm’s Path to Science      39

Mandelshtam’s School of Physics and Life      42

The Roof and Walls of Mandelshtam’s School      46

3    The Year 1937      54

A Feast in the Time of the Plague?      55

Boris Gessen, the “Enemy of the People”      58

Chaos and the Logic of the Plague      63

Andrei Sakharov on the Threshold of Adulthood      67

PART  II:   Intra-atomic, Nuclear, and Thermonuclear      71

4   The Moral Underpinnings of the Soviet Atomic Project      73

Ioffe’s Pragmatic Philosophy      74

Vernadsky’s Noospheric Philosophy      76

Mandelshtam’s Old-Fashioned Morality      79

Igor Kurchatov, a Special Physicist      81

5    Andrei Sakharov, Tamm’s Graduate Student      85

From a Cartridge Factory into Theoretical Physics      85

A Little Bit of Nuclear Physics      88

Igor Tamm, Unemployed Fundamental Theorist      90

Transitions of the 0 => 0 Type      93

6   Sergei Vavilov, the President of the Academy of Sciences      96

The Choice of Vavilov      96

What the President of the Academy of Sciences Could Do      98

What the President of the Academy of Sciences Could Not Do      101

What Sakharov, the Graduate Student, Didn’t Notice      102

7   Nuclear Physics under Beria’s Command      104

Kapitsa’s Mutiny      105

Kurchatov, the “Great Diplomat”      108

Klaus Fuchs and Others      111

8   Russian Physics at the Height of Cosmopolitanism      113

Cosmopolitanism in Life and Science      114

The Jewish Question in Soviet Physics      116

University Physics Versus Academy Physics      119

The Aborted All-Union Meeting      122

9   The Hydrogen Bomb at FIAN      127

A- and H-, or Nuclear and Thermonuclear      127

Special Energy at FIAN      129

“Extremely Witty”: The First and Second Ideas      135

Sergei Vavilov’s Burden      142

PART  III:  In the Nuclear Archipelago      147

10    The Installation      149

“Trial Communism”      150

Making Sloyka      153

Valid Grounds for Dismissal      155

“I Really Don’t Like All This”      158

The Thermonuclear Doughnut      161

11    The “Heroic” Work at the Installation      165

Sloyka aka RDS-6s aka “Joe-4”      167

Economics of the H-Bomb      169

How Physics Can Outsmart Geometry      172

The Third Idea      175

Espionage and Physics      179

Fathers and Grandfathers of the H-bomb      184

12   Theoretical Physicists in Soviet Practice      189

Tamm, Landau, and the “Cause”      190

“Ignorant Criticism of Modern Physics”      194

Family Life at the Installation      198

The Free Thinking of the Top-Secret Physicists      200

Tamm and Sakharov      203

13   The Physics of Social Responsibility      208

The Clean Bomb      210

“Moral and Political Conclusions from Numbers”      213

Khrushchev’s Moratorium Declared, Violated, and Revoked      219

The Tsar Bomb      224

“The Most Terrible Lesson”      228

The 1963 Moscow Ban on Testing      229

A Rejection of Lysenkoism      231

14   From Military Physics to Peaceful Cosmology      233

Inventor or Theorist?      233

The Physics of the universe      236

From the Atomic Problem to the Problems of the universe      240

Symmetries in the Asymmetrical universe      244

Matter and Antimatter in the universe      247

Sakharov’s Three Conditions for the universe      250

The Elasticity of Vacuum      256

Theorist-Inventor      258

15   World Peace and World Science      260

Physicists Fortify, Marshals Guide      260

The Letter to the Politburo on the Dangers of Defense      263

The Failed Dialogue in Literaturnaya Gazeta      268

At Pushkin Monument on Constitution Day      270

16    Reflections on Intellectual Freedom in 1968      275

“Moving Away from the Brink Means Overcoming Our Divisions”      275

The Invention of the Social Theorist      278

Physics and Politics of the Nuclear Age      281

“He Looked Perfectly Happy”      284

Sakharov’s Dismissal      287

Peace and War in 1968      288

PART  IV:  A Humanitarian Physicist      291

17   Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn:  The Physics and Geometry of Russian History.... 293

“Reflections” in the New York Times      293

Through the Eyes of Solzhenitsyn      297

Through the Eyes of Sakharov      298

“Always Alone”      302

The Views of Physicist and Mathematician      305

18   On the Other Side      312

The Hard Winter of 1969      313

From MedMash to FIAN      316

“The group may be small, but it’s harmful”      318

Opening a Closed World      320

19    Andrei and Lusya      324

Beautiful, Serious, and Energetic      324

Helpmate      328

“Humanization”      329

20   Freedom and Responsibility      334

A Miracle in the Swarms of the Venal Scientific Intelligentsia?      334

A Nonelitist Individualism      338

A Science Underpinning      341

Sudba in History      346

Parallels Between Perpendiculars: Sakharov, Oppenheimer, and Teller      348

An Impractical Politician?      351

The Meaning of Life      355

Photo-Chronology      361

Notes      369

Suggestions for Further Reading      397

INDEX      399

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