Soviet Atomic bomb project was started in the beginning of 1946. Stalin ordered that this highest secret project was under authority of KGB, personally L. Beria, the head of KGB. He must organize and direct the project to the successful test and production of nuclear weapons. Academic Igor Kurchatov was responsible for the scientific management of the project. He oversaw the whole complex of new technological tasks, involved in the project, it was his talent of bringing together hundreds of the best scientists and engineers from multiple industries, ranging from geology and mining (search and development of uranium extraction from the raw ore), handling, transportation and processing radioactive substances, design and development of new technological facilities for uranium enrichment, creation nuclear reactors for plutonium production. All these were enormous tasks, especially in the country devastated by four years of the most horrible war, only human loss accounted in 27 million (according to official data). And yet just after three and a half years from the start USSR could successfully test it’s first nuclear bomb. That achievement was possible in the first place due to the clever scientific staff selection procedure, established by Kurchatov and his first deputy and friend Yuli Khariton, outstanding scientist and respected member of the Soviet scientific community.
Kurchatov made demand to Beria that all his nominated for the project scientists must be brought to his command. Beria agreed and Kurchatov and Khariton used well that opportunity to free many of talented scientists, who were kept in Gulag prison camps. Later Beria was very suspicious why there were unproportionally too many Jewish scientists, working on the top-secret project, he tried to extract the most “dangerous” free speaking ones, like brilliant head of shock wave laboratory L. Altschuler, but every time Khariton and Kurchatov managed to keep them in project.
Late summer of 1946 was the life changing time for Sasha and Nadia with their three year son Vlad. Sasha continued his work as a high explosive test researcher at the military organization, know only by its postal address Moscow Post Office box number. He was summoned to the meeting with Y. Khariton, absolutely uninformed about the reason. Khariton was very kind to 25-year old young guy, made him comfortable enough to speak about Sasha’s previous work and very soon he showed his pleasure of finding right person to lead the first laboratory for design and test high-explosive charges in the new research center far from Moscow. That was all Khariton told Sasha about his new job, just added that Sasha and family must be ready to be transported by plane in a couple days. Nadia of course was surprised by such a strange offer, but seeing the excitement of Sasha, decided to support him. It turned out that Sasha was in the group of first five people, selected by Khariton for the work on the project, and his laboratory was to be the first acting group in the Arzamas-16 Research Center.
So they jumped into the new life, believing in their young ability to overcome the difficulties and hardship of secluded life, believing in their talent and hard worker nature, which they already tested during the wartime. The place of birth of the first Soviet Atomic bomb was chosen in the remote area with low local population, about 300 miles to the East from Moscow. There were a couple of villages, which were attached to the well-known XVII century monastery of Sarov, the famous holy man Serafim lived there in the 19-th century, tsar's family made a visit there in the beginning of 20-th century. Bolsheviks destroyed the monastery in 1920-s and set there corrective facility for homeless children, that was converted to the labor camp for convicted military personnel during the WWII. Interesting that Sarov youth labor facility was closely showed in the first Soviet sound movie “Voucher to Life” about the great effect in raising poor children in Soviet society, complete propaganda, but the movie had a large popularity due to the new sound effects.
Under Beria order the name of that provincial town was erased from all maps and nobody allowed to mention about Sarov whatsoever. That’s why it has several names: originally it was just postal address – Moscow, Center 300 following by street number (so all transferred employees still had their Moscow residence privileges), then for a longest period it was known as Arzamas-16, and finally in 1990-s it returned to the first name of Sarov following its public declassification. New Russian government sent considerable funds to restore the old monastery as well.
But in 1946 there was just a deep wilderness with a lot of forest around, bad ground roads, starving villages. In one month KGB erected a barber wired fence around the town roughly 100 km (60 miles) long, cleared the ground and installed necessary airport equipment to conduct uninterrupted communication with Moscow. Then a food supply chain was organized, following by the construction of the houses for employees’ families and building the special facilities for design, production and test of the devices.
Here is a piece of Lev Altshuler, famous scientist in shock waves study, memoir about their arrival to the secret “object” -
– “At the destination we saw the temples and farmsteads of the Sarov Monastery, the forest, Finnish houses interspersed in the forest, a small mechanical plant and the characteristic satellites of the era - "zones" inhabited by convicts of all regions of the country and all nationalities. Local folklore included stories about countless crowds of pilgrims, whom the monks fed for free, about the visit of the tsar Nicholas II to the monastery in 1903, and in our time - about the uprising of 1946 under the leadership of a military pilot of a large group of prisoners who had gone into the forests.
The striking reality was the columns of convicts passing through the village in the morning for work and in the evening to the zones. And again, by association, I quoted a classic - the famous poem by Lermontov about the "country of slaves, the country of masters." "You don't love Russia," I heard the condemning voice of my companion and did not find anything to answer. After all, the question "What is it to love Russia?", as well as the Gospel "What is truth?" - there are no answers. Or at least they're ambiguous.
In the early years, many were oppressively isolated from the outside world, since leaving the facility for personal and even official purposes was very difficult. In gloomy reflection, the local poet wrote a ballad that began with the words:
From Moscow to Sarov there is a flight on airplane.
Who got here, will not come back.
The secrecy regime was also depressing. It was not just a regime, but a way of life that determined the manner of behavior, the way of thinking of people, their state of mind. And the punishment of the offender was threatened with serious prosecution.” -
Arzamas-16 was a weird place to live and work, but Sasha was extremely excited to have an opportunity to advance his career. Nadia also was hired to the group of famous physicist Lev Altschuler, who experimented with strong shock waves in solids, modeling the effect of explosive initiator on the nuclear substances. His son later in his memories described the life in the secret town from the little boy perspective. Sasha and Nadia resided first three years in one of the village house and then moved to the newly constructed house in so-called Finnish district, where several dozens adopted for the quick installation blocked houses were assembled. They had two bedrooms, bathroom (no hot water though), spacious family room and kitchen with water supply, wood flamed stove (the source of hot water and food), six thousand square foot backyard with a shed. Toilet was outside, in the corner of the lot.
Nadia with little Garik, 1948, Sarov
With the birth of the second son Garik Nadia called her mom Lena to come for help, but with move to the bigger house Mitri and Maria came over, replacing Lena. Mitri recently became officially disabled and retired following the accident at his work – explosion of the trophy Japanese metal barrel, which he was ordered to cut with his welder gadget (nobody checked the remnants of explosive carbides inside). He damaged his lower face and nose, his hands had permanently tremors, and he became fatigued very quickly. They both were happy to move out from their small shared apartment in Moscow and take care of housekeeping and look after kids.
Garik was born in April of 1948, some three weeks later than planned, he was big, over 10 lbs to be exact. Cute and slim Nadia had complications after Garik birth, her hip bones shifted and got three months before she could walk normally, that’s why she cried out for help to her mother and Lena rushed over to rescue. Sasha being a “broad-bone” man himself was very happy to meet his younger son so much resembling him. Garik's big brother Vlad was five at that time, but the wartime hardship determined his appearance: he was smaller than average child of his age, so not heavy to be lifted, which was beneficial for his little mom, who adored Vlad. Somehow it turned out that Vlad was mom’s son and Garik was dad's favorite.
Sasha with little Garik, Sarov, 1948 Nadia with her kids, Sarov, 1948
Sarov's life was changing extremely fast, and it seemed obvious for its new residents that many public services were arranged in former monastery buildings. For example, a maternity ward of temporary hospital was set in former paddocks of the monastery, the fact, which later was used in many jokes about “holy birth” of Garik. Grocery store “Gastronom”, like the famous one in Moscow, was arranged on the first floor of monastery administration building, the second floor was converted to the clinic. The big tower at the monastery entrance was transformed to the local TV station in 1956 with the antenna on the top. The beautiful cathedral of the monastery was repaired and reconfigured to the theater.
In 1947 – 1949 Soviet Atomic Weapons Center had seen constant flow of coming scientists, engineers, designers and qualified workers. Everything needed to be in working condition in shortest time: from scientific ideas through prototype tests, mechanical design, full size production and developing never imagined procedures for handling, transportation, monitoring and actual demonstration. Literally hundreds of people of various professions were brought together. Big role in organization of the complex group of people was played by Y. Khariton, who from the very beginning established mandatory education classes for newcomers, luckily he had a great teachers at his disposal, like Y. Zeldovich, D. Frank-Kamenetski, E. Zababakhin. Many years later Garik found his father scripts of Zeldovich lectures on the Nature and behavior of the Strong Shock Waves and High Temperature Phenomena long before it became a famous desk-top textbook all around the world.
A lot of memoirs were published since the disclosure of secret Soviet “atomic” towns by people, who considered themselves as veterans of creation of nuclear power for the USSR. Most of them just rewrites already known facts. From my point of view the most detailed and truthful description of that period was done by Victor Zhuchikhin, young recruit to the test team, who worked on diagnostic equipment and was the last person, who touched the first Soviet atomic bomb before the “experiment”. The most impressive part of his book was the one, where he wrote about the procedure of connecting the 32 igniters around the first atomic bomb together with Colonel Georgy Lominsky.
One of the first Soviet atomic bombs, made in Sarov Vlad and Gary, 1950
Here we will continue to follow the extraordinary life of ordinary people, such as Sasha and Nadia. Their children were under the care of Maria and Mitri during the day, when they both worked at the labs of the Research Center. They had only one day off the work, Sunday. So, not much time left for the home and kids, though they tried to spend their free time with boys. In 1950 Vlad went to school and took classes in violin, it turned out he had a very good music ear and made a quick progress there, to the great delight of the happy mother, who already saw him as a musician. Gary grew as a healthy kid, but he liked to do things slow, even when he eat, Nadia had to ask him to chew. She tried to make him learn some simple verses, but Gary didn’t show interest or ability to remember them by hart. Instead, Gary liked to play at backyard with his grandpa Mitri, who also was silent most of the time, always busy with some necessary for household errands. Eventually, they became a good friends, just respecting each other relaxed way in their personal life.
Gary was born in the secret town, that wasn’t shown in the maps or mentioned in any publications. Every summer since he was four Gary spent at the Moscow dacha of grandparents Fedor and Lena. Sitting by the window of the plane to Moscow he tried to see from the height the guarded city border with barbed wire fence and soldiers like in his hometown. He was told to not talk to strangers, if asked about parents he must say his father was engineer. At the same time life in Arzamas-16 was itself unique combination of unusual things. On one side there was quiet and slow village like surrounding in Finn village, dusty roads, river, forest, friendly neighbors. On the other, there were many construction sites not far from the Finn village, where curious kids were always attracted. It was quite natural for them to see every day trucks with prison convicts and armed guards delivering them to the work place, which of course had barbed wire fence already in place. There is a good description of the child reaction to such everyday events in the memoir of Lev Altschuler's son. Sarov was a place with a big labor camp, part of Gulag system, where war convicts were kept, most of them were soldiers and officers, sentenced for a long terms, nobody expected them to live up to the freedom. That was actually a mistake, KGB regretted later, when one of the former officers organized a riot and escaped with the dozen well trained and armed soldiers. Whole town was put on emergency regime, Gary saw armed patrols with dogs on the street, his mother locked both her sons inside the house. In a couple of days emergency was removed, most likely all fugitives were killed in attempt to cross the fenced border of the town. Soon after KGB replaced long-term military prisoners with less dangerous civil convicts, and in 1955 there was construction army division brought to the fast growing town.
In August 1949 the first Soviet atomic bomb was successfully tested in remote Kazakh steppe. All the creators of the bomb, especially scientists like Khariton, Zeldovich, Sakharov, were generously rewarded by Stalin. Sasha, by that time at his 28 he was called by his full name, also received Order of Labor Glory – the second by importance order, plus there was a special Government Decree, giving him and all other team members money rewards and the rights to free travel for vacation anywhere inside the USSR, free admission of their children to any Soviet University, and some others, like right to buy personal car. All those privileges were cancelled by Khrushchev in 1956.
Gary was a boy, that doesn’t make a lot of trouble to his parents, Sasha and Nadia. They felt quite easy with him, trusting to grandparents, Mitri and Maria, most of the day care. Nadia liked to teach him read and count, but was a little disappointed how slow was Gary in learning even simple things in a big contrast to his older brother Vlad, who could easily remember lessons, showed a very good results in his violin lessons. In summer of 1952 Nadia took Vlad to Moscow conveniently joining one of frequent Sasha’s business trips. After a couple of weeks with her parents Fedor and Lena she left Vlad and returned to Sarov, back to her work. But she must to change her plan, because from the first moment at home she found Gary severely sick and Maria in a great panic. Just in the morning she gave to Gary a sausage for breakfast and then he became sick, not a good present for returning mother. Emergency ambulance was called and four year boy was diagnosed with dysentery. What an upset it was for Nadia! It looked like Gary was given to her to experience all the child raising troubles, which she somehow managed to escape with Vlad. Anyway, even after Gary recovered Nadia couldn’t forget that incident, she was disappointed recognizing that time of relaxation was not there yet and she still must always be with her child.
By 1953 Sasha became a very respected at the work, his lab was one of the most advanced in the country in the field of special high-explosive charges for nuclear weapons. His group consisted of mostly young engineers and technicians, very devoted to him, handling the charges, delivering them to the test site in a few kilometers from the city, conducting the experiments, designing special recording equipment. One of them, Alexander Dubovik became famous leader of high-speed photography, but even 25 years later he used to say that all the principal parts of modern optical recorders were invented in the lab of A.D. as they called their boss (Sasha was too informal). In 1953 Sasha presented his work on gas-dynamic device development and received his Ph.D and the position of senior research associate.
In 1953 was marked with several events in the life of Sasha (A.D. now) and Nadia family. A massive construction of the City was on the way and new multi-family buildings with all modern amenities were finally available. So, Nadia (I believe she made a major decision) quit her job at the Altschuler’s laboratory, moved the family to the two bedroom condo in a three story building in the new city district, which effectively let her get rid of the parents-in-law. She couldn’t complained about old people, she was genuinely grateful for their presence and doing all housekeeping work, but she was tired of them, she wanted to be a mistress of the house. Another important event of 1953 was the death of Stalin and following arrests and quick executions of his close associates, most powerful of them was Lavrenty Beria, head of KGB (then NKVD) and the chief of the Soviet Atomic Weapons project. Gary remembered how his father took off the picture from the wall in kid’s bedroom showing Stalin with a charming little girl on his hands (many years later it was disclosed that the girl’s mother died in the one of the Beria labor camps).
For Gary life changed with their move from mostly country to city environment, no more sleepy streets and grandparents around. Instead, there were big multi-family buildings surrounding the common area, where dozens of children from the families of quite different income gathered together every day and played endless war games. Gary could see how poor were some of them, usually those kids spoke gang language, had self-made knives “finkas”, often started fights with each other. Gary was taller and stronger than his age and that gave him advantage among the kids, kind of respect.
There was an empty undeveloped space on the side of their community, where kids liked to play, especially near the long high ground man-made hill called “Val”, left from the ancient time when Tatar tribe lived there, like in XV-XVI century. Eventually Val was leveled and old cemetery dug out and moved away, giving a space to the construction of modern movie theater with wide screen. Of course, all those events couldn’t pass the attention of local kids. They watched the construction site progress, often making contacts with convicted workers bringing them bread and water and giving it through the barber wired fence, their armed guards usually turned away pretending they didn’t see kids and themselves asking them to bring them some water. Of course, Gary kept all new findings to himself when at home. Yes, at home life was good, even excellent.
Gary learned so much about life in those hard to find conditions, but there were happy days too, especially when father was around. Sundays were the best, his father became a devoted tennis player, even though he continued play soccer and hockey for the local team, being one of the best players. Tennis courts were built at the park near a new community of cottages for the major scientific and management staff, Khariton, Zeldovich, Altschuler, Zababakhin, Sakharov and others lived there. It was about a mile away from Sasha’s home, so he used to put Gary on the improvised seat in front of the bicycle and drove him to the tennis court. While grown-ups played tennis Gary enjoyed to be a ball boy or just wandered through the forest converted to park. After the game tennis players stopped at the club house, oh yes there was full size bar and snacks available in lavishly furnished house. Wonderful memories of life illusion embedded in the middle of ascetic life. In their memoirs all those great scientists, residents of elite cottage community (called ITR for engineer-technology associates) never mentioned about that place, probably, for the unconscious intention to cover the luxuries, which were available to them. It was true that not many of them used the facility.
In Crimea, 1954
The great memory was a summer 1954 journey to the Crimea, Gary could see for the first time a beautiful sea, traveled on board of the large cruisers (trophy from the Great War, originally called Adolf Hitler and Great Germany, renamed to Pobeda – Victory and Rossia). They rented two small rooms from the old couple house near the beach in Yalta, ate in restaurants, walk on embankment with delicious fruits and cookies, so much fan!
By the time for Gary to go to school, in 1955, he was quite a common kid for local street raised children, he can talk in convict rough language or give a strong answer to any fight offence, but never used it first. At first elementary school was not very exciting to him, he got good enough grades, but not excellent, there were too many lessons just to teach students all those meticulous procedures and behavior, just sitting 45 minutes at the desk was boring.
Beginning from 1953 through 1964 Gary and Vlad spent summer vacations at their granddad Fedor’s dacha in 50 km from the Moscow, accompanied by their cousin Dima, son of the Nadia's brother Novomir (which stands for NewWorld – invention of young Fedor, together with his older daughter name it reads as Hope for New World – romantic communist idea). Novomir was also in military and from 1954 to 1957 was assigned to the Soviet troops in Germany, which generally considered as luck, though it was definitely pushed with the help of General Fedor, who was at that time served as chief of technical army contingent department in Army Headquarters. Gary used to ask Dima a lot of questions about life in foreign country, but Dima couldn’t describe the details since they rarely left the military village, just those trips to shops with his mom. Dima instead was much excited with the procedure on the USSR border, where they changed the wheel carriages below the train transitioning from wider rails to European narrow. He also described a barber wired fences and plowed road between the two rows of fence determined to stop the foreign diversants from infiltration to the Soviet Union, but for Gary it was unimpressive story, nothing different from his hometown borderline.
Sarov 1957, Gary with AD on demonstration dedicated to 40 years of Great Communist Revolution
Autumn of 1956 brought a lot of worries for Gary’s mother and father, because their little son became seriously ill. After almost two months of severe respiratory system infection with high fever it made heart complication, called rheumacordithis or heart defect. Doctors insisted on hospitalization due to impossibly to continue cure at home. Gary spent almost a whole month in hospital, half of the time in near unconscious condition, he experienced high fever and debilitating headaches. Eventually, doctors started aggressive penicillin injections and that helped. Hospital allowed only one visit of relatives per week and Gary couldn’t wait for the next Sunday to see his parents again. They put a lot of clothes on him and put him on slay, they brought with them, then his father pulled the slay with Gary to nearby park. In January of 1957 Gary was back to home, but extremely week, plus he was forbidden to do any exercises or walk more than to the bathroom. Nadia, his mom put a lot of effort to bring her son to full recovery, she used to put Gary on her back to bring him to the yard from the third floor, where their apartment was, and did it again up the stairs, when it was time to go home. His friends from the yard all jumped to opportunity to help him, they often took the slay with Gary and give him a drive to the place, where he could watch their games. Such meetings with his friends were the best cure for Gary, though he felt miserable when his mother took him to the grocery shop, she left him sitting on the slay near the store entrance and all the shoppers gave him a curious look, some were definitely annoyed that big fellow made her slim mother pull him with her hands full of groceries.
Gary missed whole second semester at school, but he was allowed to catch up with studying at home, that actually turned out positively on his grades. Every day his classmates brought him homework and collect ones from the previous day. That schedule was much more acceptable for Gary, plus now he could spent time, which otherwise would be boring. The third semester Gary graduated with excellence for the first time. Third year in school for Gary was much more interesting, they started to teach literature, geography, no more boring calligraphy with ink pens.