Читать книгу The Most Russian Person - Vladimir Shatakishvili - Страница 8

Here is, for example, another case: when another star academician, Nikolay Antonovich Dollezhal, came to the Laboratory No. 2 (later it became Kurchatov Atomic Center) at the invitation of Igor Vasilyevich and the academician said right off the bat, “You are an expert in chemical engineering, so let's work together! We need a reactor to produce plutonium.” Ivan Nikiforovich smiled slyly, “I will not lie, I did not hear the conversation, and could not hear it. But read in the interview. Truely, many-many years later. Looks very much like Kurchatov. Well, and that Dollezhal was also a man of incredible mind and immediately understood what it was for and noticed that his scientific interests “do not coincide with atomic science…”

Kurchatov said, “You used to work at the molecular level – now work at the nuclear!” Igor Vasilyevich was witty, everyone knew that. And that he loved jokes, they also knew, but all the same, they swallowed the bait.

And now I remembered the galoshes. So here he gave people a lot to laugh at. All took galoshes at the entrance to the laboratory. And all the galoshes were with the same flannel crimson lining, they so shined, so shined! Well, so, as not to confuse this “mellow shine”, the initials of the host were attached to galoshes. So our Beard changed the initials of the chiefs of quite high rank. Laughter lasted for an hour when they tried to shove their shoes in their own… I almost said “sleigh”. Although it was really that way.

Here one more… All of us there, at “Mayak”, knew about the top secrecy in the “Kurchatov establishment” at Lubyanka: you couldn’t take out even a piece of paper – everything was accountable. If you have taken a sheet, wrote it up – hand it over on receipt. It was impossible to break the security. And Igor Vasilyevich took it, yes he acted outrageously: he burnt the paper in an ashtray and then laughed, “And it smelled of broken security in the room for a long time…”

Let's stop for a while. Let us give Ivan Nikiforovich the opportunity to get over the excitement of unwittingly reviving memories.