Who wanted to rush the king-bomb?

On the duty of ministry in the history of science, I signed on the news of Yandex regarding Andrei Sakharov, the main hero for me three times. On August 27, I received three news titles about the declassified film “Testing Tsar-Bomb”. This is the name of the most powerful thermonuclear charge in history (half a hundred million tons of TNT), blown up in the sky of the Arctic on October 30, 1961 - on the penultimate day of the XXII Congress of the CPSU (and on the first day of the congress, Khrushchev announced the upcoming explosion).

The headlines, as usual, are cool:

• “The Americans appreciated the film declassified in the Russian Federation about“ Tsar-bomb ””;
• “In South America, the“ Tsar-bombs ”nuclear explosion were attention to the declassified nuclear explosion of the nuclear explosion;
• “Soviet“ Ivan ”: Russia declassified the explosion of the most powerful nuclear bomb in history.”

In North America, it turns out, both the film now and the explosion half a century ago made a strong impression, and in the South - they pointed out the absurdity of the weapons race of the superpower. All three notes say that the development of a new product was led by Academician Sakharov, and in one there is an important detail: “ The political scientist and son of the former first secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Nikita Khrushchev, < ... > I am sure that the gun was not needed - and Khrushchev knew this . ” He agreed to conduct these tests only at the insistence of the scientist Andrei Sakharov ”[ 1 ].

I did not believe that Sergei Khrushchev could say this (since I read his book about his father), but, having rummaged on the network, he discovered that in November 2019 he spoke even cooler: supposedly his father “ agreed to conduct these trials [ “ Tsar-bombs ” ] only at the insistence of Sakharov, who really wanted to tear her ” [ 2 ]. Has he forgot that his father in his famous memories testified the exact opposite?

Before giving a quote, I will share the impression of the declassified film of 1961 (it can be found on the YouTube channel of Rosatom: [ 3 ]). A fortie -shirt video includes a half -hour film in the Soviet genre “News of the Day” with an epic voice of an invisible dictator to the accompaniment of classical music and ten minutes of silent personnel that were not included in the film. In my opinion, the film is even more meaningless than the king-bomb. There were simply no military goals for such a powerful bomb, which the developers understood in both the USSR and the USA perfectly. And the film did not report anything new (and it is completely incomprehensible why it was secret). You won’t surprise anyone with a spectacle of nuclear mushroom, but to watch how bombs are loaded and unloaded and how the military with a smart look twist the handles of devices, even more boring.

The question is much more interesting: who and why wanted to rush the king-bomb?

1961. Khrushchev - at the zenith of his career - became the main character of the film “Our Nikita Sergeyevich” [ 4 ]. For the third year, silence reigned at nuclear training grounds. The moratorium broke the USSR. This is what Khrushchev told about this ten years later, already a pensioner:

“Our military and scientists who worked in this [nuclear. - G. G. ] The defense areas also provided their pressure, they said that it was necessary to move forward and that it was necessary to test new created structures of atomic and hydrogen bombs, and this was legal. And we announced that such a number will be tested of new designs.

I remember that literally in a day or in a short time [before testing. - G. G. ] Academician Sakharov contacted me by phone. I was familiar with him, he made a very deep impression on me, and he made such an impression not only on me, but on everyone. It was, as they say, a moral crystal among scientists who gave such an idea, and a hydrogen bomb was developed on his idea. He turned to me, as the chairman of the Council of Ministers, with a request to be not tested and in any case did not experience a hydrogen bomb ... < ... > he apparently believed that he had the right to dispose of in the future, how to do this bomb, and therefore he asked me not to do this test, persuaded me ... Well, they were led by the universal good, very good [motives]. Indeed, it was a scientist who was devoted to the science and good ideas of the world and the prosperity of the world between people, preserving all possible conditions for a better life of people in order not only not to destroy, but also not to infect the atmosphere, not to poison people and not kill them gradually.

“ Comrade Sakharov, what can I tell you, I, by my political and state regulations, have no right to abandon the tests now. This is my desire and the desire of the party and Soviet leadership - to refuse tests, and we specifically expressed this in specific proposals and turned to our probable opponents, who accumulated this weapon, but they did not listen to us, you know, you know, as a scientist, you know. That they conduct tests, they themselves announce this, and we have [methods] with which we can follow these trials . " He continued to insist not to conduct a test.

I wanted to be honest before Sakharov, and I told him: “ Comrade Sakharov, with all my sympathy for your understanding and your request, I am a person who is responsible for the state of the defense of our country, and I have no right to refuse tests, this would be a crime before our state, before our people. It means to doom our country that it will be weaker than the United States and < ... > US allies who pursue a policy directed against our state against our Soviet people, so we will continue the explosions . "

Well, of course, I did not convince him with his arguments, and he, of course, did not convince me with his arguments. This is the law; We discussed Sakharov’s request in the government and decided that we could not agree with his request and should conduct tests, and we tested, blew up a hydrogen bomb. She brought us to a completely new step in armament ... "

In this oral story, Khrushchev combined two attempts by Sakharov to prevent the test - close in time, but undertaken in completely different circumstances. In 1961, Sakharov tried to prevent the resumption of Soviet trials and, thereby, the collapse of a three -year moratorium. And a year later, nuclear trials were already in full swing, and Sakharov tried to prevent a test of one of two - very similar - nuclear charges "without any loss for the country's defense." It was on this occasion that he called Khrushchev, whose opinion regarding the “defense capacity of the country” relied on the point of view of other scientific and military bombers, on their narrowly professional thinking and official ambition.

For Sakharov, both of his failed attempts were very important, and he spoke about them in detail in his memories. I will retell briefly, sending the reader to the book [ 5 ].

Khrushchev informed about the decision to stop nuclear moratorium on a nuclear mine at a specially convened meeting in the Kremlin in July 1961. The reason he called the significant lag of the USSR from the United States by the number of tests. The ratio at that time, indeed, was 83: 194, but it did not change since the beginning of the moratorium.

After Khrushchev’s speech, leading scientists briefly reported on the main areas of work. Sakharov spoke about the theoretical developments of his department, including, in his expression, “exotic”, “science fiction”, in particular about the use of nuclear explosions for the movement of spacecraft (other such project was probably the control of the movement of asteroids through nuclear explosions of ultra-high power, which Sakharov wrote in the article “The Science of the Future. The forecast of the prospect of development of the future development science "). However, his main thought was that the work is "in such a phase, when the renewal of tests would give little ." Since there was no reaction to this statement, he, sitting in place, wrote a note to Khrushchev, developing his argument and ending with the phrase: “Do you think that the resumption of testing will cause difficult to correct the negotiations on the termination of the tests, the whole case of disarmament and ensuring peace around the world?”

Khrushchev responded to the note a little later, at dinner arranged for the meeting participants. According to Sakharov’s memoirs, the head of state was heated, criticized that Sakharov was not going into his business, not understanding anything in politics. And after being, he added : “Sakharov, apparently, has many illusions. When I go to negotiations with the capitalists next time, I will take him with me. Let him look at them with his own eyes and at the world, maybe then he will understand something. ”

A few weeks later, during the report of scientists to the government to prepare for tests, Khrushchev asked Sakharov whether he had been his mistake, but he heard: “My point of view remained the same. I work, carry out the order. "

How to understand this? What is he ready to fulfill any order of the party and government? Or that he does not know the refuting arguments, but admits that Khrushchev has them and simply cannot be presented to him? Indeed, he really never participated in negotiations with the capitalists and did not know what arguments for those weight.

Then Sakharov trusted the head of the country. First of all, due to the role of Khrushchev in the exposure of the crimes of Stalinism, in the liberation of the survivors from the camps and in the general “thaw”. Let me remind you that 1961 is the year of the XXII Party Congress, at which they decided to endure the mummy of Stalin from the mausoleum. It was a year when Solzhenitsyn left his literary underground, and Khrushchev himself allowed to publish it “one day of Ivan Denisovich”. Even Anna Akhmatova called herself "Khrushchevka."

However, with the obvious mutual sympathy of Khrushchev and Sakharov, not only a whole generation shared them.

In 1956, after the XX Congress, Sakharov asked his beloved teacher I.E. Tamma, whether he liked Khrushchev: “I added that I am to the highest degree, because he is so different from Stalin. Igor Evgenievich, without a shadow of a smile, answered my ardor: yes, he likes Khrushchev and, of course, he is not Stalin, but it was better if he differed even more from Stalin. ”

Sakharov wrote not without Self -Irony in the Gorky link, reflecting on his own ideological evolution. He inherited idealistic-socialist feelings primarily from Tamm, who became a socialist before the revolution, when he was a member of the Party of Menshevik-Internationalists. But from Tamm, he also learned about the terrible realities of the Stalinist "socialism" of the 1930s. Sakharov was not a Komsomol member, and when in 1949 he received an invitation from General of the KGB to join the party, he answered this way:

“I said that I will do everything in my power, for the success of our work, just as I am trying to do this now, remaining non -partisan. I can’t join the party, since some of her actions in the past seem wrong and I don’t know if I will have new doubts in the future. [General] asked what seems wrong to me. I answered - the arrests of innocent, dispossession. " (It is unlikely that this general had heard such refusals, but Sakharov was already the author of a fundamentally new idea, which became the basis for the design of the world's first thermonuclear bomb.)

Particularly strong doubts in Soviet socialism arose among Sakharov in 1967 under the influence of his professional participation in the world history of strategic balance and, above all, in the dramatic history of the missile defense [ 6 ]. And his famous “Reflections on progress, peaceful coexistence and intellectual freedom” of 1968 became for him the first stage in the revision of his picture of the world and the history of his native country [ 7 ]. It took five years to complete the review. Realizing the illusoryness of his previous ideas, he came to the conclusion that the Soviet “socialism” on the degree of monopolism of the political, economic, informational authority far surpassed the “monopolistic capitalism”, which was frightened by the Soviet workers. And he likened his own country to the " giant concentration camp."

Khrushchev did not live before and died convinced that Marx and Lenin scientifically proved where world history will inevitably lead humanity. It is all the more amazing that Sakharov is “ a moral crystal among scientists ”.

I note that this expression, along with a quote from the memoirs of Khrushchev, I took from the book “Nikita Khrushchev. MEMORIES. Selected excerpts ”(compiler of V. Chalidze; Chalidze Publications, New York, 1982) [ 8 ].

When the publication “Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was published in 2016. Memories. Time. People. Power ”, I decided to check the quote and found that there were no clumsy but living words there. Instead of them: “ It sparkled with a precious stone among all scientists ”, the epithet “ moral ” was not needed, and the surrounding text is mercilessly edited in a party-bureaucratic direction. In the preface to the first edition (1999), Sergei Khrushchev calls the publication of Chalidze “ Pirates ”, but indicates that it is based on the decoding of audio recordings on tape tape stored in the University of Colombian. Therefore, I am ready to call the entertained version of the memoirs of N. S. Khrushchev. And I am offended by Nikita Sergeyevich, to whom I admit, I feel very warm feelings, completely without sharing his picture of the world.

Against the background of such falsification, it would seem that the lies spread, distributed by the media, but, I suspect, it is the mass that makes the lie socially more dangerous.

Gennady Gorelik

↑

From the "Memories" of Andrei Sakharov

After the performance of Khrushchev, they should have been with brief messages, for 10-15 minutes, no more, leading employees to speak and report on the main areas of work. I performed in the middle of this “parade-alle”, very fluently said about the work on the development of weapons and said that, in my opinion, we are in such a phase, when the resumption of trials would give us little in a fundamental attitude. This phrase was seen, but did not cause any reaction from any side. Then I began to talk about such exotic works of my department as the possibility of using nuclear explosions for the movement of spacecraft (an analogue of the American project “Orion”, in which, as I learned from the above book by F. Dyson, he was busy just at that time), and several other projects of the same “scientific and fiction” genre.

Sitting in its place, I asked a neighbor (they turned out to be E. Zababakhin) several leaves from a notebook, since I had no paper with me. I wrote (unfortunately, without leaving myself a draft) a note by N. S. Khrushchev and handed it over to the rows. In the note, as far as I can restore its content from memory in 20 years, I wrote:

“Comrade N. S. Khrushchev. I am convinced that the resumption of testing is now inappropriate in terms of comparative strengthening of the USSR and the USA. Now, after our companions, they can take advantage of the tests so that their products would meet higher requirements. They used to underestimate us, and we proceeded from the real situation.

(The following was followed by a phrase that I must omit to considerations of secrecy.)

Do you think that the resumption of tests will cause difficult to correct the negotiations on the termination of tests, the whole case of disarmament and ensuring peace around the world? ”

I put a signature - A. Sakharov.

Nikita Sergeyevich read the note, glanced at me and, folding along and across, put it in the upper outer pocket of the costume. When the performances ended, Khrushchev stood up and said a few words of gratitude to “all speakers”, and then added:

- Now we can all rest, and after an hour I invite on behalf of the Presidium of the Central Committee of our dear guests to dine with us in the next room, while they are preparing what we need.

An hour later, we all entered the hall, where a large ceremonial table was set 60 - with wine, mineral water, salads and caviar (greenish, that is, very fresh). Members of the Presidium entered the hall last after the scientists sat down in the places indicated by them. Khrushchev, without sitting down, waited for everyone to calm down, and picked up a glass of wine in his hands, as if about to utter a toast. But he immediately set a glass and began to talk about my note - at first calmly, but then more and more excited; His face blushed, and at times he turned almost to a scream. His speech continued at least half an hour. I will try to reproduce her here from memory, but, of course, after 20 years, great inaccuracies are possible.

“ I received a note from Academician Sakharov, here it is. (Shows.) Sakharov writes that we do not need trials. But here I have a certificate - how many tests we made and how many Americans. Can Sakharov prove to us that, having fewer trials, we got more valuable information than the Americans? What are they stupid than us? I do not know and I can not know all kinds of technical subtleties. But the number of tests is the most important thing, no technique is possible without testing. Isn't it? "

(Khrushchev did not read my note completely, so my argument was not clear to the audience.)

“ But Sakharov goes on. From technology, he goes to politics. Then he does not climb into his business. You can be a good scientist and do not understand anything in political affairs. After all, politics is like in this old joke. Two Jews go on the train. One of them asks the other: “Tell me: Where are you going?” - “I'm going to Zhytomyr.” “Here is a cunning,” the first Jew thinks, “I know that he is really going to Zhytomyr, but he says so that I think that he is going to Zhreminka.” Так что предоставьте нам, волей-неволей специалистам в этом деле, делать политику, а вы делайте и испытывайте свои бомбы, тут мы вам мешать не будем и даже поможем. Мы должны вести политику с позиции силы. Мы не говорим этого вслух — но это так! Другой политики не может быть, другого языка наши противники не понимают. Вот мы помогли избранию Кеннеди. Можно сказать, это мы его избрали в прошлом году. Мы встречаемся с Кеннеди в Вене. Эта встреча могла бы быть поворотной точкой. Но что говорит Кеннеди? „Не ставьте передо мной слишком больших требований, не ставьте меня в уязвимое положение. Если я пойду на слишком большие уступки — меня свалят!“ Хорош мальчик! Приехал на встречу, а сделать ничего не может. На какого черта он нам такой нужен? Что с ним разговаривать, тратить время? Сахаров, не пытайтесь диктовать нам, политикам, что нам делать, как себя держать. Я был бы последний слюнтяй, а не Председатель Совета Министров, если бы слушался таких, как Сахаров! "

На самой резкой ноте Хрущёв оборвал себя, сказав:

« Может, на сегодня хватит. Давайте же выпьем за наши будущие успехи. Я бы выпил и за ваше, дорогие товарищи, здоровье. Жаль только, врачи мне ничего, кроме боржома, не разрешают ».

Все выпили; я, правда, уклонился от этого. Никто не смотрел в мою сторону. Во время речи Хрущёва все сидели неподвижно и молча. Кто — потупив лицо, кто — с каменным выражением. Микоян наклонил свое лицо низко над тарелкой с салатом, пряча скользящую усмешку, иссиня-черная шевелюра его почти касалась стола. Немного погодя, чуть поостыв, Хрущёв добавил:

« У Сахарова, видно, много иллюзий. Когда я следующий раз поеду на переговоры с капиталистами, я захвачу его с собой. Пусть своими глазами посмотрит на них и на мир, может он тогда поймет кое-что ».

Этого своего обещания Хрущёв не выполнил.