About time and himself

The bookshelf of the Institute's publications has been replenished with a unique novelty - the personal diaries of the first JINR Director D. I. Blokhintsev have been published for the first time. The book was published in hardcover, its 360 pages contain not only texts, drawings, photographs, but also a huge work of many specialists in preparing for printing. The presentation of the book for the media, the directors of city museums and libraries and for veterans took place on 31 May at the Museum of the History of Science and Technology of JINR.

In an interview for our newspaper, Director of the museum Nadezhda Kavalerova spoke about how the work on the book had begun and how many difficulties had to be overcome: "This work as such was not expected to be performed by the museum, this is not entirely in our profile. We work with archives. From the point of view of archival values, Dimitry Ivanovich left a huge legacy, all of which is kept in BLTP. The personal archive was taken home by the children of Dmitry Ivanovich and a few years ago Tatyana Dmitrievna asked us to scan the diaries, as they are of historical value. For a long time, Kirill Kozubsky scanned these documents. And when the work was completed, an issue arose - what to do with them next.

I agreed with Head of the publishing department Anastasia Shabashova and for about seven months, two employees of the department typed 1600 pages of handwritten text. There were a lot of incomprehensible passages, our employee Alexander Rastorguev helped to decipher them, I.D.Blokhintsev joined the work, several times they gathered collectively, tried to make out the handwriting and context. The result was about 500 pages of text. This is a very interesting material, twenty years of the era when Dmitry Ivanovich became Director of the Institute, having had just arrived from Obninsk. He was an exceptionally popular figure in the circles of physicists of the world and was applauded for having had designed a nuclear power station. He became Director of JINR and created the spirit of internationality in the Institute, laid the foundation for its development. The diaries contain many thoughts about life, about the future of mankind.

After all the text had been typed, we turned to Directorate. We were supported by Viktor Anatolievich Matveev. To make the book in hardcover, Boris Mikhailovich Starchenko helped to find a publishing house. The Institute covered the cost of printing and we did the preparatory work. I don't even know if it's worth thanking someone separately, "thank you" can be said to each participant. We all did our best, it was one team of like-minded people. But I cannot fail to mention the editor Elena Kalinnikova. She had to work very hard. For the first time I met a person who would work with such thoroughness, dedication, with such a reverent attitude to the word."

At the presentation, T.D.Blokhintseva noted that it took her two and a half years to read the diaries. But the words "should be published" were first heard in the museum. The idea was supported by Directorate of the Institute. At the same time, Tatyana Dmitrievna praised the museum that flourished after the reconstruction and every day receives many guests.

Anastasia Shabashova spoke about the work carried out by the JINR Publishing Department. At the first stage, two employees of the department Olga Bulova and Ekaterina Dergunova were engaged in typing. D.I. was a creative person, many of the entries were accompanied by sketches, some of which were in color. Clippings from Soviet and foreign newspapers were pasted into the pages of the diaries. The makeup of the book was professionally performed by Irina Andreeva. The main work was editorial. Editor Elena Kalinnikova first checked the typed text with the scanned pages once again and managed to decipher, parse and correct a lot. Igor Dmitrievich Blokhintsev also helped her in this work.

"For us, this is an unusual, a new type of edition," said A.Shabashova, "and we had to understand how to work with such texts. There were many nuances, it was necessary to look for solutions. One of them is a large number of abbreviations. It was decided to restore the missing parts of words in square brackets. Further quotes and translations - in the texts of the diaries there are fragments in English, German, French, Latin. Somewhere we were able to translate ourselves, somewhere we turned to specialists. There were also many quotes from the Russian literature classics; everything was checked and the source was indicated. This book has a huge reference tool. The notes section already existed when the book arrived, but additional clarifications were made during the editing process. And the book ends with an index of names. We also had to work on it, because the same person in the diaries could be called differently. It was necessary to reduce all this to one denominator. The difficulty was that at the very last stage the publishing house set a condition to reduce the number of pages, the book had to be retyped and, accordingly, the page numbers in the index and in the notes were changed."

Evgeny Shabalin, the first reader of the book, who worked with D.I.Blokhintsev when designing IBR, shared his impressions of the book: "Dmitry Ivanovich opened up to me more than I thought I knew him ... It is difficult to name a topic that Dimitry Ivanovich did not think about. He thought all the time, even during work, meetings he compared, gave characteristics to the people he met. When reading, probably, on every third or fifth page there is something that touches the soul."

Speaking to the audience, Igor Dmitrievich Blokhintsev noted the amazing fact that this entire heritage had been preserved: family documents from the beginning of the last century, children's drawings, drawings - projects of stations, the calculation of an aircraft propeller. And letters, and notes to the hospital, and poems dedicated to the birth of children. A huge number of photographs, sketches of paintings. The papers went through the war, through evacuations.

"I recognized my father from scratch," Igor Dmitrievich said. "Working on the diaries gave me the opportunity to learn so much - not only about my father, but also the whole world around me, the whole 20th century. In fact, these are the diaries not only of D.I.Blokhintsev. These are the diaries of the entire century that is filled with a huge number of events.

At the evening, employees of the Institute shared their memories, the meeting continued with tea-drinking.

As N.Kavalerova said, the museum is looking forward to preserving the legacy of the first Director of JINR by creating a photo album and a gift version of the publication of an art album. In addition, the second edition of the book by A.Rastorguev and E.Shabalin "Renaissance Man", compiled on the basis of D.I.Blokhintsev's abstracts, is being prepared.

Galina MYALKOVSKAYA