Address to Alumni from the Non Canonical Phystech Website

Here is what Frederick Forsyth (A very factual writer on:-- How to Assassinate General De Gaulle - The Day of the Jackal; How to Take Over an African Country - The Dogs of War; How to Assassinate the Chief of KGB - Devil's Alternative; How to Make an A-Bomb - The Fourth Protocol; How to Overthrow Saddam Hussein - The Fist of God; How to Take Power in Russia - Icon) writes in his book "Icon" (page 170):
"...
At eighteen he went to Moscow to seek entry into the most prestigious technical establishment of higher education in the USSR, the Physics/Technological Institute. To his surprise he was accepted. Despite his humble circumstances, the father's fame, the mother's dedication, maybe the genes, and certainly his personal efforts had tripped the balance. Behind its modest name, the institute was the forge of the most sophisticated designers of nuclear weapons.
..."

Phystech - The Exclusive Soviet Nuclear Arms and Rocket Scientist Forge

This essay is currently in the draft status.
Constructive comments are welcome

Peter Kapitsa, was forcefully detained by Stalin in Russia from his work at Rutherford's laboratory when Kapitsa being the British citizen visited Moscow in 1934. On requests of the British Government Stalin cinically replied, "Send me Rutherford and then we will send Kapitsa back to England." Yet, Stalin in a way respected Kapitsa the scientist and the latter was able to persuade the dictator in the necessity to create an exclusive educational institution that would produce the scientific elite for the country. Despite their mutual strong dislike, Peter Kapitsa was among the very few who could directly speak with Stalin. By that time dozens of thousands of intellectuals had emigrated or had been expelled from the country. Zworykin the inventor of Television, Sikorsky the aircraft designer, Gamow the physicist were among them. Many thousands of others had been liquidated by the Communist regime in the NKVD cellars and concentration camps or set up in the research prisons established in 1938.

Zworykin

Sikorsky

Gamow when did you last see the Schroedinger equation?

Having chopped off enough heads the rulers yet realized the necessity to have scientific elite that would serve their military purpose.

The Nobel Prize winner Landau was arrested but later released thanks to Kapitsa's intervention.

The famous inventor of the first electronic musical instrument now popular in the US and other countries, Theremin who had managed to escape to the US, was kidnapped by KGB from Manhattan and the Soviet Kangaroo court convicted him, based on his own confession for "sending signals from New York to Sankt-Petersburg in Russia to detonate a bomb" when a Stalin's crony, Gauleiter Kirov would approach a certain object in Russia. (The professor had some sense of humor!) Later Stalin whacked Kirov himself. Theremin spent 7 years in the same Research Prison as Solzhenitsin. Leo Theremin finally was awarded a secret Stalin Prize Class 1 for the invention of evesdropping equipment. He died in 1993 in Moscow

Kirov

Solzhenitsin

The links to Kapitsa and Landau are heavily Kommi-sanitized bios. More complete stories see in the Russian, on Landau. Here's what Landau's wife writes on his life, loves, illness, and death.

For some arcane reason since the times of Peter the Great, education and research have been divorced in Russia unlike their traditional marriage known as a university everywhere in the world. Under Kommies, the old Russian universities were turned into teachers colleges (with the exception of two or three). The numerous new technical schools of higher education gave narrow vocational training producing the foremen for militarized industries.

These technical schools were sponsored by industrial enterprises and prepared specialists for work for these enterprises -- such were the faculty, such were the graduates. With a little of exagerration, there might exist an Institute for High Depth Boring that will prepare engineers in different specialties like "#1296: Boring 12 inch holes in hard clay", "#1298: Boring 12 inch holes in soft clay", etc. Such educational institutes exist even now, only they are called Universities for High Depth Boring.

But the rulers needed to have the scientific elite brains to continue on the path of increasing the military power. The two or three first grade universities that still provided for top quality education were not sufficient.

Additionally, the work in different enterprises was covered with the shroud of secrecy, even in the same Boring Expedition, the knowledge of Specialty #1296 may be quite different and classified from the need to know in Specialty #1298 of our example.

The faculty even in those best universities did not know what were the latest developments in "differing fields of boring" and the graduating specialists were at least 5 years behind the cutting edge technological innovations.

Andrei Sakharov in 1943

The secret “Installation” where nuke bombs were designed. The town’s historical name was Sarov; it was a famous religious center in Russia then renamed to Arzamas-16, sometimes nicknamed “Los Arzamas” after its American. prototype, Los Alamos, NM. In 1947 Sarov was removed from all geographical maps and became one of the many closed unmentionable towns. Arzamas-16 was not a Phystech department but many graduates worked there.

Academic Degrees and Ranks in USSR

There was no such degree as Bachelor. Only graduate degrees existed in the USSR, thus Engineer is the same as Master of Science or Engineer in the US for an average Soviet and American higher education insitution.

The MS degree awarded in Phystech is without doubt superior to an average American MS and is even somewhat superior to the American PhD from outside of the top tier of engineering and science schools.

The Ph.D. in the USSR was approved on the national level and required substantially more work and recognition than in the US, so that a Soviet PhD would be equal to at least a US PhD in the Assistant or Associate Professor rank. A Soviet PhD will get the rank of Major if he was in the military.

There was a degree of D.Sc. in the Soviet Union that would be a very close equivalent to a Full Professor in the US. If in the military, this degree will bring the rank of Colonel.

The next academic rank in the USSR was the Associate Academician that does not have a clear equivalent in the US. It may be close to a Full Professor, member of respected societies like NAS, AAS or IOM.

The supreme academic rank in the USSR was the Academician whose rarity, prestige and standing might be equated to the level of a Nobel Price winner's prestige in the Outer World since the Soviets could not actually participate in international nominations, their top scientific achievements being classified military secrets. Very few Academicians were ever arrested by KGB -- Stalin did not dare to imprison Kapitsa, and Brezhnev would only exile Sakharov. Yet, a few Academicians have been executed...

Now this has changed, nobody is executed in New Russia anymore but in place of the one and only National Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Higher Education, there are many Mickey Mouse academic societies assigning Mickey Mouse degrees. Yet the prestige of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Phystech still stands up.

Like elsewhere in the world what matters now is not what is the degree name but where this degree has been earned.

The idea of Phystech was to reinvent the wheel and reintroduce the concept of University in Russia so there will be the heart of University -- a college of fundamental undergraduate education, and the body of graduate education with extended members reaching far into the best existing research centers. The faculty would be not the full time members of this University but they will be working part-time in the education remaining full-time in their research centers. The graduate-level students will be immedicately involved in the real life research starting from their second year in college.

Peter Kapitsa understood that it required a very careful preselection and selection of students who would be taught fundamental sciences of Mathematics and Physics and then sent out to finish their education in graduate and post-graduate departments in the so called base institutions. These base institutions would be the cutting edge of the modern science and technology.

Thus, in Phystech, the bonds of education and research would be even tighter than a regular marriage known as a university.

Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT or Phystech) was intended in 1938 to be created as the elite Superior School of Physics and Technology similar to l'Ecole Superior Politechnique founded by Emperor Napoleon in Paris.

The creation was delayed because General Petrov who had been designated to work on organization of Phystech was sent to Germany to purchase from the Reichsmarschal Goering samples of all German aircraft in 1940-41 (which was successfully done and the Soviets, before WWII started, knew everything about the current status and the future of the Nazi aviation). The cover of General Petrov as a scientist was blown up while he was still on the mission when his name and photo were published among the first 16 Red Army generals in the party newspaper Pravda (the rank of general did not exist before that time in the Red Army). General Petrov successfully returned to Moscow a few weeks before the beginning of the war between the former Axis allies -- Germany and USSR.

At that time, the immediate plans to conquer Europe required the creation of very simple mass weapons like light tanks, gliders, simplified bombers, etc. , and these plans were soon outsmarted by Hitler himself attacking in the East. It was not the time to create the super-scientist forge. Phystech would have been never realized, had Stalin's plans for the World Revolution (the Second World War -- his way) succeeded.

Phystech came into existence only in 1946 when the Cold War started, exactly 5 days after Winston Churchill's Fulton Speach, to assist in the achievement of superiority over the Free World in the weapons area: from biological weapons to atomic warheads, missiles and spaceships.

This goal and the concept of Phystech made it outstanding from all other educational establishments both in the USSR and elsewhere in the world.

• Because of this goal, the Founding Fathers and the alumni have never emphasized their links to Phystech in their public presentations.
• Because of this goal, the Phystech faculty and alumni have not been awarded that many Nobel Prizes. They simply could not step out in the open. Many top Soviet Prizes were, naturally, awarded to the researchers affiliated with Phystech but together with the supreme government decorations (orders and medals) they were frequently awarded "without the right of public display" as was the practice in the military-industrial complex.

Peter Kapitsa blandly refused to lead and participate in the Atomic Bomb development and Stalin did not dare to liquidate him.

The suave butcher, Hero of Soviet Union "Larry" Beria, the Godfather of the Soviet Nuke Project. Condemned and executed as a British spy in 1953. The sentence recently confirmed by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation

Stalin did not trust Peter Kapitsa to allow him to complete the creation of the independent Western style university and to head it - The Superior School of Physics and Technology and Phystech was originally created as a division in the Moscow State University. The official leader of Phystech was appointed Christianovich, one of its initial proponents, not Kapitsa.

Moscow State University was (and is) the Harvard of Russia. It is the elite of higher education and has been committed to research much more than any other university. The establishing of a super-elite division created in Moscow State serious tensions and opposition.

It was much more difficult to be accepted to the Phystech division than to the Schools of Physics or Mathematics in Moscow State. Phystech had two levels of entrance examination plus an interview for all applicants whereas the rest of Moscow State accepted the best high school graduates without examinations. It made Phystech more challenging and attractive for the talented youths. Many current students from Physics and Mathematics requested to be transferred to Phystech as well. There was a much higher ratio of faculty to students in the Phystech division, a regular Full Professor was considered to be a junior faculty there. The students were exempt from military training, political indoctrination was practically zero, the stipend the students were getting for their living expenses was almost as high as the regular junior faculty salary.

Moscow State could not tolerate this for a longer time.

Additionally to the refusal to lead the Atomic Bomb Project Kapitsa ignored the invitation and did not attend Stalin's 70th Anniversary Meeting. This was too much for the Father of All Sciences as Stalin was known to the grateful people of Russia, and Kapitsa was fired from all his positions and the Phystech division in Moscow State was shut down.

Then General Petrov approached Stalin and succeeded in persuading him to reinstitute Phystech as an independant organization, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. General Petrov was appointed the first President of Phystech.

General Petrov as a foot soldier participated in the Bolshevik power takeover in October 1917 in Sankt-Petersburg (Petrograd). His father was the last member of the original Lenin's party not liquidated by Stalin. Later Ivan Petrov became a flier and was a highly reputed test pilot.

Phystech was hidden in a restricted suburb of Moscow, Dolgoprudny, and was designed like a spider web - a distributed university with a college teaching the fundamental sciences at the core spreading the graduate education and specialization threads to the most important research institutions outside the campus. Thus, after the separation, Moscow State, acknowledgedly the best university in Russia, turned out to become a branch of Phystech as many of its faculty and institutes became the faculty and base departments of Phystech. The same happened to all the research centers of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and the military research centers hidden in Moscow and Moscow Province as numbered P.O.B. enterprises.

Something analogous to MIPT was created in the US in the same 1946 and named the Associated Universities, Inc.  The AUI combined the educational and research resources of the US North Eastern Great Nine: Columbia University, Cornell University, Harvard University, The Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, University of Rochester, Yale University.

The AUI's primary goals were to coordinate inter-university research using the faculty of the best American schools, to cooperatively run super-expensive nuclear accelerators and astronomic centers, which was impossible for each individual university. While AUI operated in the open, MIPT was much less known and dedicated more to the education for military applications using the faculty and equipment of a hundred of the best Soviet research centers. Perhaps the AUI actually was the model for Phystech.

The first President (rector) of Phystech General Petrov was influential enough to define the position of Phystech vis-à-vis the government. The Chairman of Military Education in MIPT was appointed the famous General Belyakov, who was the navigator in the first non-stop Arctic flight Moscow--Vancouver in 1937 with the most famous Russian pilot Chkalov. (In Chkalov's honor a few streets are named in America and later he was allegedly assassinated by Stalin because the beautiful wife [1], [2] of the KGB Chief Yezhov preferred Chkalov to Stalin. It was a very complicated story involving the famous writer/womanizer Isaak Babel - arrested [3] and shot - also a lover of the wife of the "Iron Dwarf" Yezhov. ).

Normal people in the Soviet Union have always disliked the military. For a young man to be drafted into the military service meant (and means) to be turned into a worthless slave with a possibility to be thrown into unjust war abroad or against his own people. The Military Reserve education in Soviet universities was a kind of protection for students against the senseless waste of time and life.

To spare Phystech students and graduates from the hardships of regular military service, thanks to influential people like the Generals Petrov and Belyakov, the graduates were commissioned not like ordinary platoon or battery commanders but a special military qualification No. 5xxx was created for them that read "rocket scientist in strategic missile forces". This definitely spared the Phystech graduates from becoming gun fodder for the Red Army.

Although the word best has been absolutely devalued by commercial use in the modern English language, and the reader may be offended with it's use, we dare say, without hyperbole, that Phystech has become the best technical university in the world in the time of the Cold War. In a way it combined the educational capacity of the 9 North Western American universities under one strongly centralized and coordinated roof. After the Cold War, the importance of MIPT plummeted as the constellation of the base institutions disintegrated.

MIPT's situation was quite controversial. The Phystech alumni are both proud and ashamed of the Alma Mater since it served both the forces of Evil and the forces of Good. This is why the Phystech graduate, famous Yuri Orlov called it "the Pact of Scientists with Satan"

Phystech used to produce the best researchers in the Evil Empire who unwittingly, wittingly or unwillingly helped it fight in the Extended World War II. Just think of some of the hot battlefields: Berlin, Korea, Malaysia, Budapest, Viet-Nam, Cuba, Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, Nicaragua, Palestine, Afghanistan, Kuwait, ... and recall the Erfurt Triangle aimed at the heart of Europe. Many of the weapons used, and their support infrastructure, were forged by the Phystech faculty and alumni.

Interestingly enough, it was very difficult to find a place for the Phystech Campus even though very influential people supported its creation. In searching the place for campus, Phystech came in conflict with Bwana Kosygin himself, and finally was allocated a place in Dolgoprudny, the place where previously was located the Dirigible Construction Center created for General Umberto Nobile who had fallen in disfavor with the Duce of Italian People, Benito Mussolini after the Dirigible Italia disaster (remember the 1971 movie The Red Tent with Sean Connery and Claudia Cardinale?). General Nobile worked in Dolgoprudny from 1932 through 1936.

General Petrov was fired from his job as the Phystech President after the case of the Cafeteria Boycott in 1961:

The Phystech Cafeteria was (and is) notoriously repulsive. The quality of food was puke-like, the cashiers cheated, all staff together stole the food supplies. The students protested many times but after replacing the management everything usually turned back to worse. One day the students assembled a radio transmitter (a crime in the USSR), tuned it in the voice frequency of the Central Government Television and at the prime of the prime time broadcasted the appeal to boycott the MIPT Cafeteria. Immediately after that the transmitter was broken to pieces and the pieces were dispersed amongst many rooms of the dormitory. In a few minutes the KGB came and searched the dorms finding nothing.

It was a political crime unheard of. Yet it ended up relatively without much harm. General Petrov and the local Party boss were replaced, nobody was arrested, a few students were kicked out from Phystech and allowed to be transferred to other technical schools in Moscow.

Will there ever be such a map of Phystech?

As noted above, all the leading academic and military research centers in Moscow were given the status of the Phystech System base departments and provided for graduate and post-graduate education in the real-life research environment. There are 104 institutions nominated MIPT base departments. Branch divisions spread to the Urals, Vladivostok (Far East), and Kiev (Ukraine). It is impossible to obtain such diversity and excellence of education within the walls of any traditional university.

Look at the names of the first faculty divisions (schools) of Phystech:

• Radio Engineering (radar, aircraft, missile, naval control systems)
• Radiation Physics (atomic, nuclear, particles physics)
• Aeromechanics (aircraft, missile)
• Physical Chemistry (nuclear fuel, biological warfare)

Later, the number of schools increased to nine to include

• Physical and Quantum Electronics
• Aerophysics and Outer Space Research
• Physico-chemical Biology
• Energetics
• Management and Applied Mathematics.

Each of these schools had a dozen of departments in the institutions of the Academy of Sciences (having real names and frequently being fronts of secret military enterprises), in the institutions of the military-industrial complex (unmentionable, indicated with P.O.B. numbers or code names).

Because of the unusually high requirements in the knowledge of Elementary Mathematics and General Physics for those coming to Phystech, a wide network of Phystech Outreach Courses was deployed in all provinces of the Soviet Union. Talent scouting expeditions were permanently on the road spotting talented youths. The Phystech Outreach Courses were staffed with grad and post-grad students and taught physics and mathematics on the level that would help the candidates pass the entrance examinations. Specific in this preselection was that the students should not simply possess mechanical memory based knowledge of facts and methods of problem solving but should be very flexible and able to find solutions in unordinary situations. Some of these requirement the reader may review at the Phystech Outreach Courses web site written in a good English.

Not many of the American high school graduates having the SAT score higher than 1550 would be able to solve the problems presented there and pass the Phystech entrance examinations.

The faculty selection was crucial in the Phystech System. Regular lectures were given only by the leaders in corresponding disciplines. These were the authors of fundamental monographs and major course books in their fields. Seminars normally were conducted by full professors and rarely assistant professors. Things like teaching assistants conducting seminars were unheard of.

Currently, after the crash in the Cold War and the mass exodus of specialists, the Phystech faculty comprise

Full Professors ~450
Associate Professors ~400
Assistant Professors ~100

Here is a description of a Curriculum in Phystech.

The listing of the Phystech Schools as they stand today see in the LINKS

Conclusive Remarks

In the US, the top tier (including some of the Ivy League level) embraces the most reputable colleges and universities numbered something like a dozen. This level includes Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Stanford, to name just several. Then there are numerous first rate colleges and universities, then follows a countable set of second rate schools, and finally, almost uncountable set of fifth(?) rate community colleges and bogus universities.

What could we see in the Soviet Union? I dare mention only two universities definitely of the same level as the top tier in the US. These were the Moscow State and the Sankt-Petersburg State. They employed the same kind of faculty as the Ivy League and had numerous research institutes within themselves. Apart from the excellent education, these universities were a similar kind of socialite forges like the Ivy League. It was of the highest social prestige to graduate from Moscow State and everybody of any influence tried to make their kids admitted to Moscow State. It was shiny, it was clear, it was respected to be in Moscow State. Next, there were many first rate technical schools, primarily in Moscow, and a few in some of the about 100 provincial capitals. I may mention here the Moscow Institute of Aviation, the Bauman Higher Technical School, the Institute of Fine Chemical Technology, etc. Then, I am afraid, there was a gap after which the fifth rate provincial colleges processed the student into the nuts and bolts for the military industry.

Phystech stood outside of this ranking. The Soviet people of importance, the nomenklatura, never desired to send their children to Phystech. The learning in Phystech was too tough for such people. This is why the Phystech students are in 90% immigrants to Moscow from Russia and other Soviet States. They are not afraid of the hardships in learning. In my personal experience three of my dorms roommates went off the rockers. All girls in my class, but maybe a dozen, flunked.

What the students of Phystech had to get through, you can see in the sample curriculum. This curriculum, standard for all Phystech students in the first four years, contained the subjects that were taken by the most advanced students of Moscow State University majoring in each of the cutting edge Mathematics, General Physics, and Theoretical Physics.

The professors belonged to the Academy of Sciences institutes and to that same Moscow State University. I am repeating myself but we never heard of teaching assistants.

The significant difference from an American educational system was total absence of choice of the curriculum subjects. The sequence of classes was very carefully didactically balanced and built for a student a crystal logical path into the high mountains of knowledge.

Yet the question is could all the students climb these heights? Of course not. The result was numerous nervous breakdowns, on one hand, and a slow decrease in the severity of the curriculum leading to a lower quality of education -- with decades, on the other.

It is possible to state that an ordinary Phystech student of the BS level (4th year) obtained up to six different majors while in the top tier science and engineering schools, both in Russia and the US a best student would get the maximum of three majors.

Going through these hardships created a very special feeling of camaraderie among Phystech alumni..

Then, starting from the fourth year all research centers around Moscow would take Phystechs for graduate studies called "specialization". These military research, development and manufacturing centers were the Evil Empire's equivalents of America's General Dynamics, IBM, Intel, etc. as there was a recognized parity in armaments during the Cold War.

Concluding, once again we state that in the Free World there was only one integrated entity, AUI, the Associated Universities, that may be compared to the Phystech System, -- you should put together a hundred of American institutions like MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Pennsylvania, Rochester, General Dynamics, IBM, Intel, etc. Such a kludge seems irrational, this would not be practical and feasible in a system ruled by the laws of Economics, as the history of AUI showed, but it was feasible in the Land of Soviets where they never counted the resources, they had enough gold, oil, and human brains and muscle to achieve any single outstanding goal. (Which finally led to the demise of that system...)

There are more than 80 members of the Russian Academy of Sciences who are Phystech faculty or alumni, with our classmate Serge Korovin joining this distinguished congregation in May 2000.

A few of the last Russian Cosmonauts are Phystech alumni. The alumni are present in governments -- in Russia, our classmate Kirpichnikov as the Science Minister and Baturin before putting on the space suit (now kicked out by Eltsyn even without the deserved regular Cosmonaut reward), -- in Israel, Sharansky as the Minister of Internal Affairs and the Vice Prime Minister (after 10 years of Soviet concentration camps). They are active in academia and industries in many countries of the world. Even the current (now former) "President" of the x-Soviet Union, the multi-billionaire Professor Boris Berezovsky has a certain relation to Phystech (having been a faculty and being now an owner of a Phystech base department).

Read Yuli Dubov's Большая пайка , The Big Meal for the Hungry: From the Temple of Science to Russian Business, Gangsterism, Cozy Coffins, Jail, Excile. Mario Puzo's The Godfather is a chidren's horror tale like Hans and Gretel compared to The Big Meal for the Hungry.

A wise guy once said, Phystech was a rose in the dumpster of Soviet life. Yet the other wise guy had said that everything changes.

The Four Phystech Presidents:
N. Karlov, Gen. I. Petrov, O. Belotserkovski,
S. Christianovich

the pictures below are in no special order, they are simply those the author has gotten hold of. If a reader has any other, please send them to be included here.

Y. Khariton	Y. Seldovich
M. Lavrentiev	A. Prokhorov
V. Ginzburg	S. Lebedev
B. Rauchenbach	S. Kapitsa
M. Eiserman	N. Moyseev
S. Nikolski	L.Kudryavtsev
G. Landsberg	V. Smilga
V. Lidsky	Y. Orlov
B. Solonouts	M. Tulaykov
Y. Baturin	B. Saltykov
M. Kirpichnikov	S. Korovin
L. Khachian	A. Kaleri
A. Philipenko	A. Serebrov
General A. Belyakov	Cadet N. Sharansky

What will happen to that rose next?

As the anthem of Phystech promises, "we will disperse, when the time comes, in all the world, from Dolgoprudny", we have dispersed.

Well, this essay has been about the institution. Now what about ourselves, the alumni?
There is a well known American expression:
You don't need to be a rocket scientist.
Well, we are ...  Is it good or bad?