In the Universal Library

Archival excursion: documents, testimonies, events

On 16 January, in the Library that bears the name of the first JINR Director D.I.Blokhintsev, there was a warm atmosphere of interest and cooperation. The evening dedicated to the 118th anniversary of the birth of D.I.Blokhintsev was jointly organized by the Library, the Museum of History of Science and Technology and the JINR Historical Archive.

The hall was crowded - the old-timers of Dubna, young scientists and everyone who is interested in the history of the Institute came. The meeting was opened by Head of the Historical Archive Elena Malaya. Recalling the majority of Blokhintsev - a scientist, an organizer of science and an artist, she focused on his rich written heritage, carefully preserved by the family. In the manuscripts of Dmitry Ivanovich, the first of which relate to his childhood, there are diaries, drawings, travel notebooks, albums, letters, director's workbooks, calculations, handwritten essays, others. Their investigation and decoding that requires great focus and time, has been carried out for years by the staff of the Museum of History of Science and Technology. Alexander Rastorguev, the author of the book "Renaissance Man" and the inspirer of the publication of the two-volume diary of Dmitry Ivanovich Blokhintsev that deciphered thousands of pages of records was also in the hall.

This time, each of the meeting participants could temporarily feel like an archival researcher. A page from a travel notebook appeared on the screen that Dmitry Ivanovich had kept in autumn, 1959, during a working trip to China that was then at the peak of the Great Leap Forward policy. After a brief historical commentary, the hall proceeded to decipher, expanding the transcript of the notebook into several paragraphs. However, other pages are still awaiting their interested decryptors. The Historical Archive, the Museum and the Library are scheduling new immersions in the handwritten heritage of JINR physicists.

The main event of the evening was the report of Igor Dmitrievich Blokhintsev. The youngest son of the first director and today, a museum employee that understands his archive, warmly talked about his father's becoming and his youthful hobbies - from Captain Nemo to Aelita and presented unique materials from the family archive: children's drawings of complex mechanisms, submarines and turbines; the first serious 200-page work, "Rocket" marking the transition of young Blokhintsev from abstracts to research. And the correspondence of seventeen-year-old Blokhintsev with Tsiolkovsky, during which the pioneer of cosmic thought, it seems, did not realize that his correspondent is a teenager, is part of a great cosmic story.

Timed the archival excursion to his father's birthday, Igor Dmitrievich brought to the screen the pages of a comic family album that his mother, Serafima Iosifovna Drabkina (family nickname - Shifra or Shi) had prepared for Dmitry Ivanovich's fiftieth birthday. Composed of photographs and well-arranged magazine clippings, the album was signed, funny and kind. This amazing artifact allowed to laugh in one evening and again to be imbued with the enormity of tasks that Blokhintsev had met - from the launch of the first nuclear power plant in Obninsk to being director of the international institute in Dubna.

After the official part, the participants did not disperse for a long time. Igor Dmitrievich answered questions and in the hall, there were conversations about the history of Dubna. Director of the JINR Museum of History of Science and Technology Anastasia Zlotnikova spoke about the upcoming events dedicated to the history of the Institute and the book novelties that open the anniversary year. Anastasia Pishchugina, the organizer of events in the library, invited everyone to follow the news and to visit more often the Universal Library.

The evening was really soulful. Behind the lines of documents and photographs, the participants were able to see a living, enthusiastic, multifaceted person - Dmitry Ivanovich Blokhintsev.

(Own info.)