Читать книгу: «The Most Russian Person», страница 4

“In one of the conversations you mentioned that there was another meeting with Shvernik.”

“Yes, there was such a meeting, unexpected and pleasant, for me, of course. During the period of eight years of work at “Mayak”, under my command worked the chief mechanic of the motor transport industry Yuriy Maksimovich Sharapov. An intelligent, competent specialist, who managed to organize the service of his unit smartly and rationally. Being his direct manager I always liked his approach to the duties, the desire to redo everything and change it for the better. On top of that, he besides fell in love with my secretary, Vera, Vera Nikolaevna, and at the very end of the forties they got married. At that time the personnel management order was received to transfer Yuriy Maksimovich to a new responsible job as the head of the motor transport department of the Pskov region. After several years a new promotion came up as the deputy minister of motor transport of the RSFSR. Having had already moved to Lermontov I often traveled on business trips mainly to the capital where I had the support and patronage of the all-powerful Efim Pavlovich Slavsky, and the acquaintance with the Sharapov family also proved useful. In any case, we often met, called each other and together spent our free time when they came to have rest in Mineralnye Vody. Once, while in Moscow, I called Yuriy Maksimovich home and received an invitation for the birthday occasion of his mother, a responsible employee of the apparatus of the Central Committee of the CPSU. An official ZIM was sent for me and I was taken to an assigned cottage somewhere in the Moscow region. I was greeted cordially, the birthday girl was still a relatively young and beautiful. A government machine drove up and three men came out, one of them was Nikolay Mikhailovich Shvernik. The festive table was rich although there were not so many guests, about fifteen people. After the next toast, Verochka took the word and introduced me to the guests, she found warm, grateful words for this and recalled the years of work under my supervision. After such attention to my personality Shvernik said the words of gratitude to all the participants of the atomic project. I thanked him in reply for appreciating my modest role and trust from the country's leadership, because he, the then chairman of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Council, signed a decree in 1951 awarding all distinguished participants of the project with orders and medals.”

And a day lasts longer than a century…(the event which predetermined the fate of man)

“Well, Ivan Nikiforovich, let's recall one more person from your list. As you classified – “with a plus sign.”

“Dollezhal! Of course, Nikolay Antonovich Dollezhal!

I have already mentioned about him as a designer of reactors for plutonium and tritium. Oh, and a wonderful grandad! Do not be surprised that I am under 95, and I am talking about him as my grandad.

He is the most famous grandad of Russia because in 1999 he was one hundred years old. I do not know if Nikolay Antonovich is still alive, God grant him health and well-being. At one hundred years old he grieved that he outlived all his relatives, all his friends, all his colleagues.”

“I’ll interrupt you, Ivan Nikiforovich, Chinghiz Aitmatov has such a story – “The Day Lasts More Than a Century.” It has another name – “Stormy Station.” Did not have to read? It is about the Kazakhstansky, then Soviet Boykonur, from which our missiles and ships went to space. A wonderful story.

So it turns out that Dollezhal’s today "… a century that lasts longer than a century?”

“It turns out that way. His century is more than a hundred years.

Now it has become fashionable to call scientists “fathers”. Who the father of nuclear bomb is, who of hydrogen is, who the father of thermonuclear weapon is.

So Dollezhal is also the “father” of the first Soviet nuclear reactor designed under his guidance.”

Word from the author

I take the liberty to interrupt the story of Ivan Nikiforovich with my own necessary additions about Nikolay Antonovich Dollezhal. From the dossier:

Twice Hero of Socialist Labor.

Winner of the Lenin Prize.

Winner of five State Prizes.

Academician, theorist and practitioner. Engineer.

Constructor.

Mechanical engineer. Rocket engineer.

In an interview, Nikolay Antonovich told an amusing story. After the explosion of the atomic bomb by the Americans in Japan, a book by Smith “Atomic Energy for Military Targets” was published. In America itself and around the world the book was not a secret. It was marked as “classified” in the Soviet Union.

Naturally, either Kurchatov, or Alikhanov, and Dollezhal, and all the scientists involved in the Soviet atomic project had read the book. More carefully they had time to read. Dollezhal did not just read, he studied the drawings. He thought about them, studied them, tried on his own ideas to the Americans. His own engineering thought worked non-stop.

“Once,” writes Yaroslav Golovanov in the article “Nikolay Dollezhal – a Man and a Reactor”, published to the centenary of a scientist, “he was twirling a matchbox in his hand, put it on a small edge and immediately a long-awaited thought seemed to burn through: “Why do we need to make the reactor channels horizontal? What prevents them from being vertical? After all, it will be much easier to operate such a reactor!”

It was then that he told Kurchatov that he was ready to design a new reactor on vertical channels.

Igor Vasilyevich understood that Dollezhal's version was bold in theory, technically sound, engineeringly competent… But the American project, although more difficult to perform, but it already worked.

“We will build both!” Kurchatov delivered his verdict. He knew what they and Dollezhal were risking: not much, not enough – LIFE… Each version of the drawing, which the scientists understood perfectly well, could become an arrest warrant!

And another interesting moment from those topsecret times.

A department at the Institute of Chemical Engineering was created specifically for… spies. Well, naturally, witty person used a joke very carefully. The department where the reactor was being born was officially called the “Hydrosector”. The neutral name was conceived as a distraction. And it turned out to actually distract the attention of spies, that is, technical intelligence in favor of foreign countries.

And then. Sketchy reactor designs were delivered quickly. An elevator shaft for the vertical channels of the reactor were prepared. Testing of individual stages took place directly on the machines of the pilot production. They say, probably, for good reason, all top-secret ideas, projects, developments, were made in super-super-super-secret areas, factories or entire cities. Such was the “invention” of the KGB, which Beria was very proud of.

At such a secret enterprise in Chelyabinsk-40, our first industrial reactor was built to produce plutonium according to the Dollezhal project.

The reactor was launched on July 19, 1948.

A year later, on August 29, 1949, an atomic bomb was tested.

With this bomb, as Kurchatov admitted to Dollezhal, we got the result a year earlier than we had expected.

There was a solution to the next regular task – to make the atom work for peaceful purposes.

It was about the construction of nuclear power plants.

Kurchatov's phrase, addressed to any employee of his Center he met in the morning, was like this, “Are there any achievements?” And no matter what the answer was, Igor Vasilyevich cheerfully suggested, “Go ahead!” He said to Dollezhalu in satisfaction, “There is progress. And what about new considerations?” Nikolay Antonovich had some thoughts.

After some time, Dollezhal, together with his assistants and, first of all, with the like-minded and talented engineer Pyotr Ivanovich Aleschenkov, created a super reactor for those times: with 128 fuel elements that ensured the power of NPPs at 5000 kilowatts!

For the creation of this reactor Dollezhal became the winner of the Lenin Prize.

As time flew, science did not stand still.

Soon the “military atomic theme” was raised again. The American submarine “Nautilus” was, as everyone understood it, created not for easy walks in the depths of the oceans.

Six months before his death, in September 1952, Stalin, realizing the significance of this step of Americans as an affirmation of US domination in the world's oceans, managed to sign the decree on the construction in the USSR of research institute No. 8 (NII-8). It soon became known as NIIET – the research institute of power engineering. Nikolay Antonovich Dollezhal was appointed its director.

In Moscow in Malaya Krasnoselskaya Street there was a small territory on which a poor and small reinforcement plant was located. This was the “inheritance” Dollezhal received for NIIET, which meant that the institute had to be started from scratch.

And again, to build a reactor of enhanced power, large dimensions and – as a result – “sew” larger than in the first atomic projects, or rather, in their incarnations, the “clothes” of radiation protection.

For the ubiquitous spies, again there was a “telling of lie”: this time the smoke curtain of secrecy was the mythical “crystallizer” for “object 627”. And under this code (as witty persons of science used to joke) there could be, say, a workshop for filling siphons with sparkling water or production of “dry ice”, but in reality…

Well, it's like a joke: one short traditional Russian word of three letters is written on the fence, but there is firewood…

Only in 1958, the first Soviet nuclear submarine “Leninsky Komsomol” went out to sea. Captain II rank Leonid Osipenko was in charge of the first sea campaign of the submarine. A new era in the history of the Navy has begun.

In a word, the reactors built by Nikolay Antonovich Dollezhal began the rapid development of power engineering in the 70s. There appear The Beloyarsk NPP, Smolensk, Kursk, Leningrad, Ingalinsk, Chernobyl ones… This word “Chernobyl” has become the synonym of the blackest tragedy experienced by the scientist. In his book “At the Source of the Man-Made World” Dollezhal asserts that there was no atomic explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. There was a thermal explosion which had to be extinguished differently than people in panic began to do.

And he is absolutely certain that no responsibility of a scientist to the highest institution will ever exceed the responsibility of a scientist to his own conscience and duty.

There is no person engaged in the atom who would not think about this simple truth.

Didn’t Academician Andrey Dmitrievich Saharov speak and write about this?

Wasn’t it because Academician Alikhanov withdrew from participating in the development of a new generation of bombs, which, as they say among physicists, “the 16th group of Zeldovich” “calculated” in Arzamas?

But, probably, for thousands of years, the meaning of the ancient dictum remains accurate and true: “PARA BELLUM!” – “If you want peace, be ready for war.”

This is where the brand of the pistol comes from – “PARABELLUM”…

Time is painting, timelessness is black

"We, Ivan Nikiforovich, live in Mineralnye Vody. Readers need to be explained how you got to the resort region?”

"This is a long story… But my life is even longer – the 95th year I walk on the earth.”

"But not for nothing. How many of your own, Medyanikovskiy autographs are left on it – and even what! City of Lermontov – one! Runway at the airport of Mineralnye Vody – two! Re-translational tower on Mashuk – three! Sanatoriums of the Ministry of Medium Machine Building in all cities of Mineralnye Vody – four! Car service stations – five!”

"Well, well, enough,” Ivan Nikiforovich interrupts me, "the list is really long. So, this is my fate, I will not say that it is the worst. In any case, I am not ashamed of my life, there is something to be proud of.”

We are sitting at the tea table in Medyanik’s house. Bees are circling above the amber honey…

"Eat, eat,” he treats me angrily. "Don’t refuse. This is special delicacy. Or Caucasian dzhigits are not fit to eat sweets? Do you know how much wealth my honey contains? All chemical elements! I’m telling you not only as a beekeeper, but also as a person, firstly, who has experienced the medical miracles of honey himself, and, secondly, as a person who was close to the most famous chemists and physicists of the country in the past.”

He laughs, so sincerely that I, enjoing his joke, try the honey. Ivan Nikiforovich is waiting for evaluation. There is nothing left but praise left: honey is really excellent.

“That's it!”

“By the way, your last name, Ivan Nikiforovich, comes from which word. From the word “honey” or from the word “copper”?”

“I do not know, Volodya. Probably closer to copper. So I say that if the tin is “tinsmith” or “zhestyanik”, well, and Medyanik is, naturally, from copper (med). It is a pity that the second letter “n” was lost when determining the surname.”

But it is true: wherever you look, everywhere on Mineralnye Vody, in Pyatigorsk, Kislovodsk, Essentuki there is a medyanikovsky trace. From everywhere, from any point of Pyatigorsk, for example, the TV tower on Mashuk is visible. And these are all autographs of Medyanik! And the question is ready to slip from my tongue. Ivan Nikiforovich foresees my maneuver and asks, “Let's not get on this tower today. I want to have a nap. Will you let me go, comrade commander in chief?”

“Do it!” I’m saying in his tone.

I give him a break. I myself mentally leafing through his “personal record file”. Photos are amazing evidence of the era. Through one eventful fate of a very dear and respected man, you can imagine an entire era.

And the life path of Ivan Medyanik began in the remote village of Rodnikovka on the Volga. The family was modest, hard-working. Vanya, Vanyatka, a little galoot, easygoing, obedient, diligent – a thirteen-year- old kid was sent for training in forge business. This was his first profession in life: a blacksmith. Then he mastered the profession of a tractor driver and during the harvest period became a driver bringing grain at night to the elevator. Yes, he even practiced in the repair of the first foreign cars in the country. Well, naturally, he became a driver. That was such an irresistible urge to the equipment.

So it went and went!.. In the late twenties, early thirties, the word Turksib thundered over the republic. The Turkestan-Siberian Railway was being built from Tashkent to Semipalatinsk. Ivan Medyanik went to distant lands. Still a boy, a boy of seventeen, but turned out to be indispensable among of builders: he tinned pans, shod horses and did pens for sheep and cows. They did not stop in one place – all the time in motion. The convoy of builders was doing hard work with no living conditions: no washing up, no cleaning or properly eating. There was no planned supply of food, Ivan organized a hunt for wild boars, gazelles, ducks – and removed the problem with the meat.

His character strengthened, tempered. People’s construction! Youth, happiness, strength, health. And – dedication. There were so many troubles, but it didn’t matter, they coped. Along the laid railroad tracks they were pulling wires on poles. It was alright when they moved on a flat terrain, in the mountains it was more difficult, but not hopeless! It was worse with the raids of basmaches who had hidden after the civil war. They attacked, committed terrible massacres, flooded the villages with blood. Anger and powerlessness got hold. But they sent army, and they put things in order and did not go anywhere – right up to the end of the construction. Bandits were neutralized.

We reached Alma-Ata, where a desert plain began. The work went quicker. But unfamiliar difficulties were unusual and dangerous – snakes, scorpions, karakurts. The Kazakhs helped. They taught to defend ourselves against these merciless beasts by national methods…

Another convoy from Semipalatinsk hurried to meet us. It was 1930. It was then that the head of the convoy, Shemyakin, received a telegram, “The American Ford arrived at the freight station in Alma-Ata. Sent at your disposal.”

The news is great. But where to get a driver? And here is the driver Vanya Medyanik! The car started, the engine roared, frightening the inhabitants and the local wildlife. The dogs choked with anger and fear, cows roared, people who had never seen cars ran away.

At the end of June 1930 a meeting of two convoys of builders took place. The construction was over. The first stage in the life of Ivan Medyanik was completed. And no one could call him a boy, a kid. He grew by as much as 27 centimeters. He went home to Rodnikovka on leave, he was barely recognized at home: he became broad-shouldered, a big boy, decently dressed, with gifts for his relatives. And even a single! And he also played concertina, sang, danced. But the main thing he was single!

Rodnikovka girls went crazy and were smartening, giving him the eye and luring the guy with tears, songs, iridescent laughter. Ivan just laughed, not arrogantly, even though he was guilty – you can't tell the heart if it is not touched by love.

And then he went at Uralmash. He also responded to the call of Uralmash workers at Turksib, agreed to work at the famous factory, which desperately needed young and strong hands. There, in the Urals, he began transporting wood to a construction site in a powerful seven-ton truck. But not long. Once he got stuck off road, was freezing all night with only a blowtorch as the heater. When he was found, he was still alive. But both legs were frostbitten. The Komsomol organization and the trade union took care of him, they got a voucher to the South.

“That's how I appeared in Pyatigorsk, Volodya…,” concluded Ivan Nikiforovich, who woke up and quietly stood behind my back. Just some kind of mysticism! “It was in May 1931. I came under the supervision of a nurse and by the end of the month felt better. Well, what are the impressions of my old photos?”

“As if I watched a documentary called “Putevka v Zhizn-2”. But I am expecting the continuation! That’s the way you remained in Pyatigorsk, having arrived for treatment?”

“Not right away. Doctors recommended me the second term of treatment. I sent an application to Uralmash with such a request. They confirmed agreement. I was treated thoroughly. Doctors were great. They advised to change the climate, “Your illness require a warm climate. Stay for two or three years, take baths, the body is young, it will cope. Decide”.

I liked Pyatigorsk very much. Greenery, mineral water, a lot of sun, and, in fact, it was the first city I saw where the hectic trams ran around, people walk sedately, smiled, had rest in public gardens, in Tsvetnik there was music, beauty and benefit. But there was no thought of any desertion from Uralmash. Not in my character to look where it is easier. Though my legs had healed, I walked with difficulty. And then my family moved from the Volga to the Stavropol Region to the agricultural community “Proletarskaya Volya”, which was led by Semyon Lutsenko, and where my father's brothers had already settled down. This led me to the final decision to ask for dismissal and send out medical recommendations.

And I plunged headlong into a wonderful peaceful life. If anyone needed help to fix the wiring, plumbing, repair the car I did it with pleasure.

But I was strongly attracted to the spaciousness, so that the wind would sort of tingling from running, from moving car, from any speed. And then the OSOAVIHIM call came up: “Young people go on airplanes!” And I went as an airport driver, I got friends among pilots, they took me on board and I even sat behind the control wheel. But I didn’t become the pilot. I already passed the exams, but the problem with the chassis took place and the instructor took the control wheel. But nevertheless the accident happened, I was thrown out of the cabin. It ended in concussion and spinal disc movement. I came to consciousness in the hospital, where I was treated for four months… The military registration and enlistment office acknowledged me as non-combatant.

I started working at a military sanatorium, they gave me a room there, I was repairing all the equipment. For working well, they put me on extra fare. The salary was decent. I started getting better.

So, the time came – I met love. Her name was Lyubochka and then she became the wife, Lyubov Alekseevna. In 1933 there was wedding, and in 1935 the son was born – Yevgeniy. And daughter – Lyalya or Lydia Ivanovna appeared only nine years later after Yevgeniy.

I did not know, and no one could know what a bitter fate was awaiting my family. Lyubov Alekseevna would tragically die. And I did not know that the Urals, the steppes of Kazakhstan, Semipalatinsk would arise more than once in my fate.”

Ivan Nikiforovich thought and smiled, “According to your age you probably don't know such a song, but at the time of my dreamy youth, it was a match.”

“Which song? Maybe I know,” I replied. And he softly sang,

 
"People dream sometimes about
Young cities
Which have no name…"
 

“I know, why do you think not? I have heard it, Ivan Nikiforovich. But as far as I remember, there were not “young” cities, but “blue ones”!

“Okay, I do not mean that. I am about those cities that did not have a name like the cities of my fate: Chelyabinsk-40, Chelyabinsk-70, Arzamas-16…”

“Moretea?”apologizing interrupted ourconversation tactful Vera Nikolaevna, the wife and faithful friend of Ivan Nikiforovich, whom he met in 1962.

I was always amazed how this woman managed to become for him such a well-cut half, replace his children’s mother and the first wife Lyubov Alekseevna who had died in the car crash. But she managed! She has been near for forty-four years. She strengthened the family so that the children of Ivan Nikiforovich, Lyalya and Yevgeniy, and her son from her first marriage Mikhail, right away when were still children, did not know the differences in their parents. There were just mom and dad.

“So what about tea?”

I thank and refuse. I say goodbye to the quiet house and beautiful people. Until next interview! And what happened then, we will talk tomorrow.