A. V. Strelkov: "He gave me a lot..."
I came to the Laboratory after having graduated from the university in 1960. And I immediately noticed that in FLNP much more significance than in other laboratories have Polish employees. Passing in those years along the corridor, one could meet with the charming lady Irena Zhukovskaya, Jerzy and Isabela Sosnowski, Krzysztof Parlinsky, Zbigniew Ogrzewalski, Andrzej and Jadwiga Holas. They were engaged in research in the field of cold and thermal neutrons at the IBR‑2 reactor, worked closely with Fedor Lvovich Shapiro, often sat in his office and behaved quite noisy. One of the most restless physicists, who was always passionate about something or dissatisfied with something, proved or denied something, was Anton Shkatula. Outwardly, he was squat, already bald, the subject of ridicule of all laboratory assistants. "Shkatula came - everything is wrong, everything should be redone!" For a short time, the Pole Pshitula worked for us, as opposed to Shkatula, he was a calm and thoughtful physicist.
The Polish group worked quite fruitfully, almost all the research on experimental physics of low‑energy neutrons was carried out by them supervised by Fedor Lvovich Shapiro and Professor Jerzy Janik, whose name now bears the alley near the main building of FLNP. They applied the inverse geometry technique, developed a wonderful facility - CDSOG, one of the first facilities on IBR‑2, got good results. Antonin Bayorek and Irek Natkanets were leaders in this matter. Irek was younger than us, he was treated a little like a boy, but he grew up into a wonderful physicist who did a lot in this field of research. As a person he was understandable, there were no problems in relations with him. Once he surprised me - he brought me fog lights for my Volga as a birthday present from France. He said, "They will suit you." I was delighted, screwed them to the car, and later, he honestly admitted that he actually drove them for himself, but they did not come to his car.
Remembering Anton Bayorek, I can say that he was a good physicist, and from the point of view of relationships, the person was amazing. In disputes, he was fair and behaved with dignity even in sharp discussions. He always reassured us in our unresolved problems. Once, when he got sick, some idea came to him, and he called me to his house. He lay, I sat next to him, and we discussed the device of a special cryostat for cooling the beryllium filter. I sat with him for two hours, and he, taking breaks from our discussion, told stories from his war childhood.
There was a very friendly couple Jerzy and Basi Savitskys, they worked in our group on the Mossbauer effect. They came here still unmarried, worked well, quite productively. Basia loved to joke, sometimes she gave out witty remarks, encouraged us. Now they would seem to be political attacks, and then they were perceived normally, nothing humiliating and evil was felt in them. When anti‑socialist events began in Poland in the 1960s, they left Dubna, but invited us to visit, they had their own home. And then we were forbidden to travel abroad, we were allowed to travel only on a business trip or as part of a delegation along the Komsomol or cultural and political lines.
Among all the Poles, I have Tadeusz Dobrovolsky in a special place. At work, I did not contact him in any way, he worked at LHEP, was engaged in high‑energy physics, but he became for me one of the best people I knew. We met him in the Dubna flying club, in which I was the chairman of the gliding section. Gliding developed in Poland as a national sport, there were glider schools, Poles won high awards in international competitions. A flying club arose in Dubna in the early 1960s, he worked for only three to four years. Tadeusz was a little older than us. When he came to our flying club, they decided to check him first. And he began to highlight such things in the sky that everyone was surprised, and then we learned about his achievements in gliding. So, our friendship arose, and we also lived in the neighborhood. Tadeusz studied in England, worked in the USA, he was a good physicist. In LHEP, he worked in the group of A. L. Lyubimov, V. A. Nikitin knew him very well and warmly recalled him. He was also an active tourist, climber, knew many languages. Tadik was sociable, but not a soul wide open and did not try to be the centre of any company.
Dobrovolsky amazed me with how many physicists from different countries he knew. Even then, I still have a very poor command of English, and he helped me with translation and, in addition to translation, expressed his opinion on the problem under discussion. We often gathered with me, with him or went to visit someone. He behaved somehow independently, freely, said that there are some political axioms that can be circumvented, you never know what they order. Our Ilya Mikhailovich Frank sometimes suffered greatly from some shouts from above. And when the Institute introduced problem-topical plans that had to be implemented, he alone resisted this to the last. Once Ilya Mikhailovich approached me and said: that's it, I can't do anything, we give up. The freedom that was in our laboratory was created by I. M. Frank. Once Tadik asked me to arrange a meeting with Ilya Mikhailovich, they met. When I later asked him about the details of the conversation, Tadik said that they talked well, but did not tell about the details.
Tadeusz came up with the original staging of the pp‑scattering experiment, and when the accelerator was launched in Fermilab, he went there, he was invited as a consultant for this experiment. They invited him for a year. He went, the family stayed here. I sent letters, postcards, there was no e-mail yet. He said that he flew in a local flying club and even paid a fine for the fact that Chicago did not fly around properly. Six months later, he arrived at a conference in Dubna. I must return to the USA, but everything does not fly away. "For some reason I am delayed departure. "Why?" I don't know. " The head of the international department V. S. Shvanev called him and asked him to show his passport in order to check some mark. The passport was taken from him and not given away. A return ticket paid for by the Americans disappeared.
Time passed, and when I somehow went skiing with him across the Dubna River, he told me that he wanted to leave. He had a second passport, an English one. He realized that the reason was the Polish Directorate that deprived him of his license to travel abroad. But he needed to continue his experiment. The family was in Dubna. It was 1972, I remember, because just at that time the road to Dubna was electrified and the Moscow-Dubna train was launched. Tadik asked to see him to Sheremetyevo. He flew to London, he still has some old ticket with an open date. We took a long time to get from Lobnya to Sheremetyevo in some groove. And just in the evening there was a flight of the English jet "Comet". We had tea from a samovar in the airport buffet. And when they approached the border control, which at that time was arranged much easier than now, he asked the border guard: "Can my friend pass and look at the plane, the Comet?" The border guard made a grimace, shivered, and the plane was not far away, it was visible. Then there were no sleeves for boarding the plane, they went to land on the field. Let me go, taking my passport as a pledge. We got on the plane, looked at the cabin. Tadik says: "Let's go to the pilots? - How to the pilots? - And what is it!" Dobrovolsky was in a decent suit and tie, looked elegant, and somehow brought me into the cab in a businesslike way. Two pilots were sitting there, he greeted them and asked something, what exactly, I did not understand. In response, the pilot poked his finger at some device, and the other smoked the pipe, in the cockpit the smoke was a rocker. We looked, went out, he, seeing me off, went down the ramp, the last time he set foot on Russian soil. "I'll be back!" And flew away.
And in Dubna it was an emergency. Veniamin Semenovich Shvanev, having learned from me that Tadik flew away, already jumped - how did he fly away?! Some echoes of this scandal from LHEP went, but they didn't touch me, I don't know why. Two weeks later, a message came that Tadik flew where necessary. His wife Hannah continued to work as a chemist in LHEP. And six months later, Slava Lushchikov and I somehow return by train to Dubna from Moscow, where we worked at the Kurchatov Institute reactor. And suddenly we see Dobrovolsky walking along the train. We ask: "Tadik, where are you from here? - How from where? From Sheremetyevo, sat down in Lobnya. My business trip is over, I'm coming back." He came to Shvanev, and he opened his mouth in surprise: how did you come here? He thought that Tadik had escaped. During this time, his wife managed to be fired from work, she and her children left for Poland. Tadik did not commit anything illegal, returned to his apartment, to his work. But the Polish side did not approve of his act, took away his English passport and he was ordered to return to Poland. In Poland, they did not forgive him for disobeying, and began to infringe on him. Before Dubna, he worked at the institute in Schwerk, from there he was fired, left without work. He hung out for eight months, began to think about how to get illegally to the West, he even wanted to cross the border by sea by boat. Tadeusz still moved to the United States, continued to work on his experiment. I have not heard of any outstanding results.
Then he was taken to the team that was going to climb Everest. But I don't know whether they were allowed to climb either for medical reasons or for age. He moved from Nepal to China, lectured at some university, worked there for a year and wanted to return to Poland. Already in the 1980s, positive changes took place in Poland for him. Suddenly a call rings at my house: "Sasha, I'm in Ulan‑Ude, I'm going to Moscow, can we meet?" I was surprised why suddenly Ulan-Ude? It turns out that he achieved a move from China to Poland by train! I met him in Moscow, came to my house, his friends and acquaintances began to come to us - Tadik arrived! They recalled how he traveled illegally with our tourists in the USSR, accidentally wandered into some military bases, but it always ended well - they drank tea with sandwiches and let go. He stayed with us for only three days, since he did not have a visa to enter the USSR, there was only a transit one. He returned safely to Poland, began to work, the new authorities began to appreciate him and sent him to work at the Ministry of Science.
He gave me a lot. There were many evenings, long discussions, we thought about many things differently, but in discussions I more often accepted his point of view. Once at our house he felt unwell, we called an ambulance. With a heart attack, he spent more than a month in our hospital, Poles came to him - doctors and friends. This was our last meeting, he went home, then we talked on the phone several times, Skype was not there yet. I once called him, his daughter Agnieszka answered and said that on 4 September, 2017 he passed away.
Olga TARANTINA