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Preface 7 Introduction. How I came to write this book 12 From Tsarist Russia to the Tsardom of Soviet Physics 21 Chapter 1. Pyotr Lebedev, The Pressure of Light and the Pressure of Circumstances 21 Light Exerts Pressure 22 Predictions and Mispredictions 27 Circumstances 28 Practical Life 31 Legacy of Lebedev and Korolenko 35 Chapter 2. The Emergence of Soviet Physics and the Birth of FIAN 44 The Sakharovs in Soviet Russia of 1921 44 The Russian Intelligentsia and Soviet Rule 53 The Emergence of Soviet Physics 57 Two of Lebedev's Heirs in Moscow: Pyotr Lazarev and Arkady Timiryazev 60 The Father and Stepfather Founders of FIAN in Leningrad: Georgi Gamow and Sergei Vavilov 67 Chapter 3. Leonid Mandelshtam. The Teacher and the School 75 The ElectroTrust Consultant at Moscow University 75 Tamm's Path to Science 79 Mandelshtam's School of Physics and Life 85 The Roof and Walls of the Scientific School 93 Chapter 4. The Year 1937 106 A Feast in the Time of the Plague? 108 Moscow, FIAN, The Year 1937 113 Chaos and the Logic of the Plague 121 Andrei Sakharov on the Threshold of Adulthood 126 Intra-Atomic, Nuclear and Thermonuclear 137 Chapter 5. The Moral Underpinnings of the Soviet Atomic Project 137 Ioffe's Pragmatic Philosophy 138 Vernadsky's Noospheric Philosophy 141 Mandelshtam's Old-Fashioned Morality 147 A Special Division of Physics 151 Chapter 6. Andrei Sakharov, Tamm's Graduate Student 157 From a Cartridge Factory into Theoretical Physics 157 A Little Bit of Nuclear Physics 162 Igor Tamm, unemployed fundamental theorist 165 Transitions of the 0 --> 0 type 171 Chapter 7. Director of FIAN, President of the Academy of Sciences 176 The Choice of Vavilov 176 What the President of the Academy of Sciences Could Do 181 What the President of the Academy of Sciences Could Not Do 185 What Sakharov, the Graduate Student, Didn't Notice 187 Chapter 8. Nuclear Physics Under Beria's Command 190 Kapitsa's Mutiny 192 Kurchatov, "The Great Diplomat" 197 Klaus Fuchs and Others 203 Chapter 9. Russian Physics at the Height of Cosmopolitanism 205 Cosmopolitanism in Life and Science 206 The Jewish Question in the History of Russian Physics 210 University Physics vs. Academy Physics 216 The Bio-Physics of the Aborted All-Union Meeting 221 Chapter 10. The Hydrogen Bomb at FIAN 227 A- and H-, or Nuclear and Thermonuclear 227 Special Energy at FIAN 232 "Extremely witty and visually graphic." The First and Second Ideas 240 The President of the Academy of Sciences and the Rust Engineer 253 In the Nuclear Archipelago 260 Chapter 11. The Installation 261 The Installation of "Trial Communism" 261 Soviet Problems of Special Mathematics 271 Valid Grounds for Dismissal 272 "I really don't like all this" 277 Going Thermonuclear 282 Chapter 12 The Heroic Period of Work at the Installation 287 1953. Sloyka aka RDS-6s aka "Joe-4" 290 Starting to Get Some Results 293 The First H-Bomb or Just a Boosted A-Bomb? 295 A Sphere's Limitations and a Limitless Cylinder 298 "The Third Idea": Atomic Compression and Inward Flash 300 How Physics Can Outsmart Geometry 302 The Third Idea 306 Heroes of Russia and Heroes of Socialist Labor 312 Physics and Espionage 315 Fathers and Grandfathers of the Super-device 320 "Andrei Sakharov -- he's something else, something special..." 326 Chapter 13 Theoretical Physicists in Soviet Practice 329 Tamm, Landau and "The Cause" 330 Nuclear Arms for Peaceful Aims 339 Secret Science and Life at the Installation 346 Tamm and Sakharov 355 Chapter 14. The Biophysics of Social Responsibility 363 Andrei Sakharov vs. Edward Teller 366 The Clean Bomb: Defending Freedom and Democracy 367 Moral and Political Conclusions from Numbers 372 Lazy and Not Curious 379 Every Family Has Its Black Sheep 381 Moratorium Declared, Violated, and Revoked 383 The Tsar Bomb 393 The Most Terrible Lesson 400 The 1963 Moscow Ban on Testing 402 Non-Election to the Academy of Sciences 405 Chapter 15. From Military Physics to Peaceful Cosmology 408 Inventor or Theorist? 408 Physics of the Universe 414 On the road from the Atomic problem to the problems of the Universe 421 "I believed once again in my powers as a theoretical physicist" 425 The Symmetry of the asymmetrical Universe 429 Matter and Anti-Matter 432 The Asymmetry of the Microworld 437 "one of the most profound and bold" 441 The Elasticity of Vacuum 446 Theorist and Inventor 450 Chapter 16. World Peace and World Science 452 Physicists Fortify, Marshals Guide? 453 On the Dangers of Defense 458 Letter to the Central Committee 460 The Failed Dialogue in Literaturnaya Gazeta 465 On Honesty 468 At Pushkin Monument on Constitution Day 469 Chapter 17. Reflections of Intellectual Freedom in 1968 476 "Moving away from the brink means overcoming our divisions" 477 The invention of the social theorist 482 A Very Nondogmatic Marxist 484 Physics and Politics of the Nuclear Age 486 Micro- and Mega-Scales of Social Life 490 "He Looked Perfectly Happy" 492 An Academician's Hooliganism 496 Peace and War in 1968 498 A Humanitarian Physicist 503 Reflections of a Soviet Physicist in The New York Times 504 Chapter 18. Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn. The Physics and Geometry of Russian History 510 Through the Eyes of Solzhenitsyn 511 Through the Eyes of Sakharov 514 Always Alone 520 The Physics and Geometry of Russian History 529 The history of physics with mathematics 530 The Basic Theorem of Scientific Anti-Socialism 533 On Freedom to Choose the Geometry of Residence 540 Chapter 19. Return to FIAN, Twenty Years Later 543 The Hard Winter of 1969 545 From MedMash to FIAN 549 "The group may be small, but it's harmful" 553 Opening a Closed World 557 Chapter 20. Andrei and Lusya 562 Beautiful, serious, and energetic 563 "She did the most valuable editorial work for me" 569 "Humanization" 572 Chapter 21. Freedom of Thought and Responsibility of Action 578 A Miracle in the Swarms of the Venal Scientific Intelligentsia? 578 Private and Common 585 Non-eliteness 586 Individualism 590 Fate in History 598 Intuition and Logic, Reason and Conscience 599 Parallels Between Perpendiculars, or Andrei Sakharov in Defense of Edward Teller 603 An Impractical Politician? 607 The Meaning of Life and the Meaning of History 615 CHRONOLOGY 623 Footnotes 639 Footnotes to Part I 639 Footnotes to Part II 654 Footnotes to Part III. 677 Footnotes to Part VI. 715
Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication: Sakharov, Andreæi, 1921-Physicists Soviet Union Biography, Dissenters Soviet Union Biography, Human rights workers Russia (Federation) Biography, Soviet Union Politics and government 1953-1985