Chronicles of Alma Mater in April and Other Phystech Stories

by Arturas Vaitaitis

As a result of a natural process of clutter accumulation in my brain, my stories are losing colors and detail and some of them disappeared altogether. The only way to preserve some of those silly, yet dear memories is to put them in writing.

Hence I’ll start with few big words: Back in the old country, the proud name of Phystech had stood for the Excellency in physics and math. It shaped the minds of several generations of Russian scientists. In simple words, our school kicked ass. This Excellency, as all good things in life, did not come for free. It was not the difficult exams or the rats in our dorm showers or god-awful food in the campus cafeteria. We had very few representatives of the womankind. They say that a sum of looks and smarts form a constant. In my class among 90 boys we had only one but very smart girl.

Nonetheless, difficulties of everyday life went unnoticed, because at that moment in our life there was only one thing that mattered the most, to pass those excruciatingly difficult exams, everything else was rubbish. Lack of warmth and care from the better, more tender half had been substituted with an abundance of booze and practical jokes. Two things combined together made an explosive combination. Later I realized that Phystech was one big, huge, fraternity house. Not by coincidence, most popular holiday at Phystech was April fool's day, celebrated with overdose on vodka and a barrage of pranks and hoaxes.
The time is then, and the story goes like this:

No tracks

1. Probably the most destructive prank orchestrated annually on the 1st of April was painting of the railroad tracks not far from campus with an ordinary paint of dark color. This seemingly innocent act had rather devastating consequences on the local train service on that date. Painted tracks no longer could reflect the light from a beam of a front car. In the evening, from the train engineer’s point of view, it looked like tracks would suddenly disappear into a thin air. To heighten the effect, a long metal crowbar has been used to short-circuit the rail tracks safety system. It would switch the semaphore signal from green to red. As a result, the night of April the 1st local trains spent a hefty half hour waiting for the resolution.

I thought of this ‘legend’ as of an amusing anecdote, until, unintentionally, I witnessed this operation live. (It also involved setting up tracks on fire and police coming to investigate). My sympathies go to all passengers on the train that unwillingly fell victims of this joke.

 

2. Pool painting was more innocent and more popular joke on April fools day.
   Every year on April 1^st pools around the campus were painted in bright radioactive colors. It brightened the grim atmosphere of midterms and kept rumors alive about some weird and dangerous experiments with radiation and acid rain (or something like that) were conducted in the campus labs. It was also the last resort for the Aprils fool-day joke for someone who could not come up with something more imaginative, like ripping some letters off the railroad station signs and making them really obscene. (For instance, the name of the commute train station right next to our school translated from Russian sounded like “Long-lake” station. Changing one letter in the name turned it into a “Long-breasted” station.) Or painting your neighbors windows and changing their clocks by 3 hours back so that they would not tell the night and the morning apart and oversleep well into the afternoon. Once we played a mildly entertaining trick with my neighbor. He was a really tall guy. We asked his help to setup a false trap aimed at someone else. The unsuspecting helper got on top of a chair holding a bucket with a broomstick while we went away as if to get some additional contraptions for the trap. He stayed there until realizing that he was the victim of the trap. In some especially mean versions of this joke the bucket would be filled with cold water.

Deflowering

3. There were many fake ads and flyers appearing here and there around the campus just before April fool's day. Yet lots of people, particularly freshmen took them seriously, and some more naïve individuals swallowed the most outrages baits. The most typical joke of that sort was in the form of the note from dean. The message stated:
   "Students who did not undergo deflowering must urgently appear in the Dean's office. ASAP. "
   
   As most Phystech freshmen have never seen a girl, they surely did not know the meaning of the word defloration. Obediently and promptly they would show up at the Dean's office. In the end, it all depended on the Dean’s sense of humor (or it’s absence). You can only imagine the eyes of the secretary when she heard the reason for their appointment with the Dean. I guess they were as wide as the eyes of two girls picked for the occasion by our seniors, who were in charge of annual summer-labor camp that we called ‘karats’. (‘Potatoes’ in translation from Russian. It’s worth to mention that back in that time, in the old country all students were required, in the spirit of Chairman Mao’s cultural revolution, to help our “comrades” in the farmland to collect annual harvest of potatoes and beets). Then, your humble servant barged in on the two girls with the mentioned above note-request for defloration. But this is completely different story.
   
4. I have seen with my own eyes a local train named after one of our
   most cruel professors. Those times, the trains used to have the names of WWII war heroes written across the train cars. But this time quite different kinds of heroes were graffitied in bright colors on the side of the commuter trains. Those were the kind of names that you could have seen engraved on the tops of sturdy lecture hall desks and restroom walls. Inscriptions were too graphic to quote here. To pull this trick off a group of volunteers had to wake up really early and make a trip to the train depot with spray paint cans. All in all, the train is a much better place for commemoration than the wall of the toilet.
   
   Wet dream
   
5. Talking about vicious professors, there was this, particularly Evil One, whose name had been honored with paint in the previous story. His name was Goga Barachinsky. He was ancient to survive Stalin, the world war, and many years of teaching at Phystech. This tough life made him more sour than a lemon, especially towards us, the students. One of the anecdotes that I heard quite often involved a girl who was unfortunate enough to get Goga as her grader. A calculus question that she had was about the definition for divergent sequence. Her answer was that " It's when every member in the sequence is bigger than the previous one". Gogas reply was as sullen as it was expected. He gave her "In your wet dream" and the worst grade.

Not all of his grades were the worst, some of them were just bad and he never gave excellent grades. I witnessed in our first year at the school, how my classmate after preparing answers to his questions for oral exams well before the time approached. The system in Phystech was such that if you prepare for your exam questions before everybody else does, you have a privilege of choosing the professor (to give you the final grade) instead of being assigned to one. My friend was unfortunate to pick Goga because of his innocuous appearance and friendly-alligator smile, even after another professor whispered in disbelief “Are you sure?” In the end, he got B-. As Goga explained in the end of exam: “You, of course understand, that I gave you an extra grade for your audaciousness”.

Actually, I had the fortune to face Goga twice. And both times got an A. I graphically remember the last time. I answered all the allotted questions and then Goga with his alligator’s smile told me: “Give me the definition of separable space!” Meantime, Functional Analysis had been my favorite subject and I recited him the exact Kolmogorov’s definition, something like “if there exists a countable, dense everywhere set …” Goga would not understand it immediately, his eyes bulged touching the glasses, he started chewing his tong then having translated Kolmogorov’s words, he muttered: “Ah, you mean there is a basis!” And he let me go with an A. (Editor)


6. One of the most shocking stories repeated over and over again in lecture halls and dormitories involved a rather unusual academic artifact, an axe. I have to warn you that this story, unlike the above anecdotes, is more shocking and gruesome than humorous. I heard about it on my first Physics lecture, and even before I found out that students at the prestigious School of General and Applied Physics are called 'axes'. The story goes about this very bright guy from this 'Axe' department. The ‘Axe’ department required a lot from its students in terms of grades and studies. The strain and pressure of staying perfect was too much for many kids as some literally flipped out, some ended up in mental care, some committed suicide. Right across the railroad tracks (see story #1) there was a grove of birch trees favored by unfortunate students as the place to say their goodbyes to the cruel world. Eventually the faculty had to cut those damn woods down. Getting back to the story, this guy, a member of that elite intellectual fraternity and well renowned for his scholarly achievements went nuts. It's not clear why he decided to kill another kid. Perhaps he thought that he was falling in love with the girl another class and he could not stand any competition. Or he was just very ill in the head. Judging by the way that he prepared this execution, it was the latter. He waited until his victim would go to a restroom and would be in the most uncomfortable position, then he hacked the poor lad's head 5 times, dropped the axe and went back to his room and into the History of Phystech. He was arrested and put in asylum. From that day forth, despite the degree of creepiness of the infamous incident, the whole School of General and Applied Physics became known as Axes. It was a pretty offending nickname, not as much as the School of Aero-Space whose name was FAKI (FUCK-YE, phonetically). To get back to 1^st of April theme, on this day these two schools would have screaming matches from the top of the dormitory roof, Axes versus Fuck-yis. Conveniently enough, their dorms were next to each other. Heavy artillery had been used in the form of megawatt speakers with power amplifiers but as far as I remember it was usually a tie.
   
7. The eminence and dark influence of the “Axe” affected numerous generations of phystechs and created many copycat nut cases (psychotechs). I myself once had a duel with my fellow neighbor. Axe in my hands, bedpost in his. The bedpost was our weapon of choice in gang wars against local hoodlums from the town. The duel came to an abrupt stop only after the axe flew off its wooden handle and out of my hands almost hitting my friend and got stuck in the wall. Then we got right back to our math homework.

The tale, however, is about this Lithuanian guy, my fellow countryman, with a nickname Gitis. I’ve heard this story many times while I was in Phystech and later in the US, from the friends of both sides involved in this incident. In the end I have averaged the variances, sometimes very different accounts of the story to create more or less accurate description. He was not exactly a crazy psycho, well not when he was sober. More frequently than not, though he was drunk off his ass, just like that time when this happened. There were frequent discotheques in those days, phystechs dancing with each other and around couple of local girls. Obviously mating tension ran high and disputes over dance order and rights got everybody steamed up, and Gitis went crazy. A fight broke out but several guys, apparently all roommates, quickly subdued him. They tied him up, left him under the stairs to cool off and sober up, and then went back to their room to prepare the homework for English. A friend of Gitis happened to find him tied up and earnestly but erroneously released him prematurely from his bonds. Gitis at this junction was completely out of his mind with rage. English studies were in full swing when they got interrupted with the loud thuds on the door. It was Gitis armed with an axe, the Steven King style, trying to hack his way through the door and into the room of his violators and captors. Here is why this story should be a demo of problem solving techniques under extreme pressure. In a few seconds they had organized a rescue plan. One guy pulled a heavy table toward the door. Behind that door there was another guy waiting for the signal to pull it open. The third one was preparing to grab the axe from Gitis as soon as he appears inside. Meanwhile, Gitis made significant progress with the axe through the door. In the end, their plan worked perfectly, hail Phystech problem solving skills! Those guys should definitely put this in their resume. Gitis was disarmed, beaten mercilessly and subdued yet again. It was a true happy end, since the next morning Gitis could not remember a thing about what happened.

Profilak – School Rehab


8. In the middle of the campus there was a temporary respite from harsh schooling, called Profilak. For some reason Profilak was the most popular target for nailing entrance doors from the outside on Aprils fools day even though it was not a bad place. Every student had a chance to spend one month a year away from his roommates and an old dorm room, to change surroundings. All you had to do was to complain to the campus resident doctor about your physical or mental health. Then a month later you were there, eating better food cooked in a separate kitchen, watching free cable TV, which by the way yours truly helped to install all over the campus. And yet I have never stayed over in Profilak. Now this cable is the base for the broadband network on campus, but yet again it’s a different story. This shuffle was confusing at times as one had to adjust to living in a new location. To no surprise some mistakes happened once in a while. Once upon a time a girl walked through the wrong door leading into a room filled with guys. Everybody was already lying in their beds ready to fall asleep. They became wide awake as soon as a girl started taking her clothes off while talking to them as if she talked to her girlfriends. Guys tried their best to keep quite and not to scare her away. Everyone thought of one question, whose bed she is going to choose. They could hold their concentration up until the moment she said, "Girls, I would give anything for a good lay" at which moment the room broke into roaring laughter sending semi-naked girl out and away.

Cultural women

9. It is not entirely true that there was a total lack of women at Phystech. Five miles from us there was the Institute of Culture, a generic school that harbored vague specialties and lots of pretty girls. It was an exact opposite of Phystech, with very few guys and absence of technical disciplines. Trips to this school with a few bottles of Champagne would yield unforgettable results, even though you would have to knock at dozens of doors to finally find a friendly room to share this bottle. Girls from this school would also make trips to our neck of the woods. There were four who would pay us a visit pretty regularly. They would usually come unannounced, and we would have to scramble and run for groceries, vodka and candies for them. Next morning we would be cleaning a total mess left in our room after their visit and waiting for them to come again. They were smart enough and had enough life experience to manipulate us without sleeping with any of us, at least for a while, until one of them had a lightning fast crash and broke up with one of my friends. Then it all ended abruptly, but before they were gone we used them to play couple of dirty tricks on our friends. One time we had a neighbor visiting in our room. He had brought a gigantic bottle of Ukrainian moonshine and now he was lying passed out on my bed after drinking for a couple of hours. We could not move him, for a moving object he was a bit on the heavy side. We asked one of the girls to go to his room and ask his friend who was also extremely drunk from the same bottle and yet still miraculously on his feet. She told him that she is bored and she would wait for him in our “empty” room on the closest bed ‘ready for entertainment’. We waited outside when this friend stumbled in, and five minutes later both guys run off, sober and shaken and stirred. None of them would tell what happened there.

Here is the legend told frequently around the campus about two classmates who were close friends and neighbors living in a luxury double suite (majority of dorm rooms were quads). It was the time of overcrowded dorms and unannounced daily room checkups by student council, Gulag style. If your room was found in unsatisfactory condition three times in a row then you were out of the dorm. Any of these -- empty bottles of vodka, dirty floor and litter, would constitute a violation. Usually these two guys were very diligent in keeping their room in order, but one night they had picked up two local girls and invited them home. The girls never even planned to come. Our friends however prepared well for the date. They had bought vodka and champagne, and in anticipation, moved their beds together. When it was finally clear that no female would show up for the evening, they in their sorrow, drunk all the booze they prepared for seduction, eventually falling asleep on juxtaposed beds. They left the door unlocked however, still hoping for the best. They had no idea that in the morning the student council would have their regular check up. To make matters worse the Dean accompanied the councilmen and he walked in the unlocked door first. What he saw were two guys lying on what looked like a king size bed. He walked out without saying anything and carefully closed the door behind. Their room was marked in excellent condition. Only much later he tried asking about these guys only to hear that they were on their best behavior, good grades, very close friends who do everything together. He never asked about them again.

After the third year our life notably improved. Majority of exams were left behind and living conditions got a lot better since a lot of us moved to a different dormitory in the south of Moscow, Zuzino. The situation with women also improved dramatically. Right next to our new apartment-style building was a teachers’ college dorm with lots of single and more mature women. At the same time the number of stories and the audacity of April tricks decreased significantly. We were doing different things now. Some of us were involved in making money during the turbulent years of Perestroika, the time of initial acquisition of capital in Russia, some in doing research and writing scientific papers. Others perished in alcohol rehabs or mental asylums. Some others got married and quit the school. Most of us were involved in scientific research at the base institution labs. There were very few stubborn ones who did not want to enter the real life. This story is about one of them. He lived in Zuzino for a long time without graduating or doing anything in particular. Instead, he befriended many women from the neighboring dorms who would cook for him and offer him their love. In return he would play them a little guitar, chat about philosophy, life, and being macho. The story that I heard was about him and a couple of girls and why he was avoiding them at all costs. At first, he was their frequent guest. One night they were having fun at their place when everybody got hungry, girls decided to get some food while he stayed in the room. By mistake or an unlucky twist of fate, he got locked up inside. This type of a particular room could only be unlocked from outside with a key that he did not have. To make matters worse, there was no bathroom either. The shopping took surprising long. All of a sudden he got a natural urge. Not a small one, but really big urge. Man as he was, he decided to go nonetheless right there. The plan was to do it as fast as possible to avoid associated smell and to get rid of any traces by wrapping them in old newspapers and quickly throwing it all out the window. This plan almost worked, except in all the hurry his aim was a little off. He missed and all this mess was now on the window. At this point there was nothing he could do or explain, so he just wrote those girls off. When the girls returned to the room, before seeing the mess, they saw our friend with his guitar taking off and running away like a pro sprinter. The girls never saw him again.

My Favorite Phystech Parable

10. “A beekeeper Valabuev prior to arduous engaging in beekeeping has planted a tree of life, written the gospel and given birth to the god-son. Then, he abandoned it all and plunged into beekeeping. All is Vanity except for bees, used to say the beekeeper Valabuev. Bees are also Vanity, there are just lots of them!”

P.S. Some of the stories might sound like the legends and anecdotes. Most probably they are. Nonetheless those are the tales that I have actually heard, and some of them I have seen with my own eyes. In either case, this is not by any means the pinnacle of journalism. It’s my recollection of those tales. So if you see anything that you heard differently please let me know and I would gladly correct it.