The Most Russian Person

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 aboutYoung citiesWhich 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.

And tomorrow was war…

I’m giving word to the character of the book – Ivan Nikiforovich MEDYANIK.

“Well, it was in the global calendar sense. World War II was for the whole country. And my war started with the Finnish where I got after several changes in peaceful life. And here they are.

I worked as a garage mechanic at the Pyatigorsk regional executive committee. The executive committee was transferred to Stavropol but they did not part with me and I got an apartment there. The branch office of the Stavropol Tank School conducted classes for the officer school, where I studied at the distribution of the regional draft board and where I received the officer's rank.

Then I graduated with honors from Zhytomyr Tank School and was recommended to the Moscow Tank Academy.

I did not get to the academy because was recommended to serve in the NKVD. I graduated from law school and at the same time from Rostov road technical college.”

I cannot hold it, “Well, how many professions do you have, how many specialties, Ivan Nikiforovich?!”

“A lot, Volodya. And all my life something was added. Here, for example, being a beekeeper – a hobby or profession?”

“I think both. As well as a hunter, a fisherman.”

“That's it! So one can add a lot of things.”

Ivan Nikiforovich thinks for a minute. Then he continues the story, “So the war began for me from December 1939. I’m not the only one to remember it. There were terrible frosts at that time, snow piled above the head, the roads were not visible, a complete white veil! And we, with our BT-7 and BT-8 tanks, turned out to be helpless before the Finns, who very well knew their secret forest paths and roads covered with snowstorms. But against those frosts both people and equipment were powerless.

I do not want to stir up the wound that has long since healed!

It is only on paper that war fits in a few lines. And in fact any of the days of that short war, not even war, but as they called the Soviet-Finnish border dispute, is still experienced personally. And how humiliatingly Finns fooled us with their ski training. They ran like white devils, these famous “cuckoos”, but in fact snipers, elusive, accustomed to their swamps, forests, frost, skis.

What did we seem to them with our clumsy tanks, which even had no heating? Inside in the morning we were covered with frost. We spent half a day to start the engine. We used a blowtorch to heat up the fire bar…

And not to freeze we heated the salt in a tin and filled felt boots with it. Well, in short, it was necessary to finish this “forest tale” and as soon as possible.

A special, selective, mobile detachment of skishooters was sent. And our “skiers” were at their best – a defensive barrier defeated, and the Finnish campaign ended in April in 1940.

Ahead was a year of restless, anxious, but still peaceful life. Stavropol met me with windy spring. As friends were joking, this city is not in the seven, but seventy-seven winds. And nevertheless, it was my own house, it was my family, five-year-old Zhenka walked on the earth, in the evenings we gathered for dinner in the cozy dining room. A soft light poured from under the lampshade. Lyubov Alekseevna tried to keep the mark of a good housewife, a caring wife and mother.

June of 1941! How memorable it is to the present- day old men who have lived to the third millennium!

Light breeze blew on that day, poplar fluff flew, a crazy sweet smell of acacia teased enamored hearts. Life rang in all bells, youth – bright and happy time was spreading its wings, ready for peaceful labor, accomplishments, studies, love.

And no one could have imagined that this bright world and this silence, and this peace with fragrant acacias and poplar fluff would explode unexpectedly with the stern voice of Levitan, who announced Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union.

The strings of this ringing joy broke off on June 22, the date that without a pity cut life to pieces before and after the war…

You know, Volodya, my friend, I have already told everything Alexander Mosintsev, the author of the book “Without Guarantees of the Century”. Why should I tell the same thing again?”

“And still, Ivan Nikiforovich, what's wrong with that? Someone will read the book by Mosintsev, someone mine. And even more people will know about you. In fact, your fate is also the history of the country. I write in my own way. You will agree that repetitions can happen, the facts of your life before the war, during or post-war no one will cancel, change or alter. Do you agree with this?”

“Well, ok, let's do it? Just in general. There are so many books, poems, plays have been written about the war, so much research has been done, so many good and bad films have been shot that we will not repeat,” Ivan Nikiforovich told me. “I can only say about the memorable facts in my life which happened during the war time.

The beginning of the war coincided with my appointment as the head of the autotechnical department in the Stavropol Territory, and it turned out that it was equal to the auto-regiment, and I, so to say, the commander of the regiment of the special autobattalion with three dozen cars. I got this appointment by direct order of Mikhail Andreevich Suslov. He then and almost all of the war was the first secretary of the Stavropol regional party committee, and the whole partisan war in the region was led by him.

We were transferred to the barracks. And we began to live by the laws of war. From the very beginning of the war the Germans began to send paratroops to the Caucasus Mountains, and our units took the fight, catching paratroopers.

December 1941. The Germans were overthrown from Moscow.

But in the rear of the enemy on the territory of Ukraine and Belarus occupied by the Germans General Dovator's cavalry corps fought giving the invaders a lot of trouble.

The corps was formed in the Stavropol region. So, Dovatortsy were fellow countrymen.

From the very beginning of the war to be in the rear of the enemy advancing to the east and not only happen to be, but also to fight was real heroism.

February 1942… Dovatortsy unioned with the operating units of the Red Army. The corps came out having preserved the banner and was not disbanded.

After the death of Dovator, General Pliev took his place as commander. Several wounded Dovatortsy came home to Stavropol. They told about what they experienced: hunger, cold, lack of fodder for horses, lack of weapons, ammunition, medicines. Fellow countrymen required urgent help.

The whole of the Stavropol region responded to the proposal of the regional Committee of State Defense and the Bureau of the Regional Committee of the All Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) to render all possible assistance to Dovatortsy. They collected twelve Pullman cars. Whole train! He was given a “green” light as a special train number 21.

The delegation of ten people for the delivery of aid to the capital was headed by the secretary of the regional committee of the party Vladimir Vasilyevich Vorontsov. And I was fully responsible for the entire train, for its movement, for the safety of the cargo.

So many thrilling moments come to mind! These were terrible bombings, each of which could turn out to be tragic, as, for example, in Lipetsk. We were taken to the second track. This was a violation of the charter for the movement of special trains, which, by Stalin's order, should have always be taken only on the first track and provided with a “green” traffic light.

But what was then going on at the stations!.. The railway stations were overcrowded with people who, in a panic, were moving from the advancing Germans literally in opposite directions… Getting into any train was, as they say, “a fight”. Shell burst, blood, crying children, women screams. And in this inconceivable confusion the almost mad station master, where we were taken to the second track, was trying to preserve at least some order… He was almost torn to pieces by mad with fear passengers, military commanders, chiefs of sanitary trains who had to rescue people came directly in time of bombing.

And when our people burned trains standing on the tracks so that the Germans would not get them?

Everyone had good reasons. Because there was a legitimate reason – the war. And so. My assistant did not get reception of the Lipetsk station chief. He was simply not allowed to him. I had to take control. Later, it sometimes seemed to me that the top priority of our special train was just as important, as any human grief. And a woman, for example, saving orphans from the occupied regions, also needed a special train.

But such thoughts, I repeat, were later. But at that time I made so much effort, so much artistic invention unexpectedly taken from somewhere, that I was amazed for myself. I even overstated my military rank to a lieutenant colonel. Well, in case of non-compliance, I even threatened to use weapons. The train was urgently sent and immediately after its departure German planes raided the station. Bombs fell on the track where our special train stood a few minutes before… So if it were not for my vigour,” Ivan Nikiforovich waved his hand, as if chasing away memories.