26

The position of scientific research in the country had been discussed by the Central Committee. Apparently the Party was now principally concerned with the development of physics, mathematics and chemistry. The Central Committee considered that science must move closer to industry and become more integrated with real life.

Stalin himself had attended the meeting. Apparently he had walked up and down the hall, pipe in hand, stopping now and then with a pensive look on his face – to listen either to the speaker or to his own thoughts.

There had been fierce attacks on idealism and on any tendency to underestimate Russian science and philosophy. Stalin had spoken twice. When Shcherbakov had proposed a reduction in the Academy's budget, Stalin had shaken his head and said: 'No, we're not talking about making soap. We are not going to economize on the Academy.'

And during a discussion of the danger of idealist theories and the excessive admiration of certain scientists for Western science, Stalin had nodded and said: 'Yes, but we must protect our scientists from Arakcheevs.' [45]

Having first sworn them to secrecy, the scientists present at this meeting talked about it to their friends. Within a few days, the entire scientific community in Moscow – small groups of friends and close family circles – were discussing every detail of it in hushed voices.

People whispered that Stalin had grey hair, that some of his teeth were black and decayed, that he had beautiful hands with fine fingers, that his face was pock-marked.

Any youngster who happened to be listening was warned: 'And you watch it! Keep your mouth shut or you'll be the ruin of us all.'

Everyone expected a considerable improvement in the position of scientists; Stalin's words about Arakcheev held out great hopes.

A few days later an important botanist was arrested, Chetverikov the geneticist. There were various rumours about the reason for his arrest: that he was a spy; that he had associated with Russian émigrés during his journeys abroad; that he had a German wife who had corresponded before the war with her sister in Berlin; that he had tried to instigate a famine by introducing inferior strains of wheat; that it was to do with a remark he had made about 'the finger of God'; that it was on account of a political anecdote he had told to a childhood friend.

Since the beginning of the war there had been relatively little talk of political arrests. Many people, Viktor among them, thought that they were a thing of the past. Now everyone remembered 1937: the daily roll-call of people arrested during the night; people phoning each other up with the news, 'Anna Andreevna's husband has fallen ill tonight'; people answering the phone on behalf of a neighbour who had been arrested and saying, 'He's gone on a journey, we don't know when he'll be back.' And the stories about the circumstances of these arrests: 'they came for him just as he was giving his little boy a bath'; 'they came for him at work… at the theatre… in the middle of the night'; 'the search lasted forty-eight hours, they turned everything upside down, they even took up the floorboards'; 'they hardly looked at anything at all, they just leafed through a few books for show'.

Victor remembered the names of dozens of people who had left and never returned: Academician Vavilov, Vize, Osip Mandelstam, Babel, Boris Pilnyak, Meyerhold, the bacteriologists Korshunov and Zlatogorov, Professor Pletnyov, Doctor Levin…

It wasn't important that these were famous and outstanding people; what mattered was that all those arrested-however famous or however unknown – were innocent.

Was all this going to begin again? Would one's heart sink, even after the war, when one heard footsteps or a car horn during the night?

How difficult it was to reconcile such things with the war for freedom…! Yes, they had been fools to talk so much in Kazan.

A week after Chetverikov's arrest, Chepyzhin announced that he was resigning from the Institute of Physics.

The President of the Academy had called at Chepyzhin's house; apparently Chepyzhin had been summoned by either Beria or Malenkov, but had refused to alter the Institute's research programme. In view of Chepyzhin's services to science, the authorities had been reluctant to resort to extreme measures. Pimenov, the young administrative director who was something of a liberal, was removed from his post at the same time. Shishakov was then appointed both administrative director and scientific director.

It was rumoured that, as a result of all this, Chepyzhin had had a heart attack. Viktor rang him immediately to arrange to go and see him, but the phone was answered by the housekeeper, who said that Dmitry Petrovich really had been ill during the last few days; on his doctor's advice he and Nadezhda Fyodorovna had gone to the country and would not be back for two or three weeks.

'It's like pushing a boy off a tram,' Viktor said to Lyudmila. 'And they call it defending us from Arakcheevs. What does it matter to physics whether Chepyzhin's a Marxist, a Buddhist or a Lamaist? Chepyzhin's founded his own school. Chepyzhin's a friend of Rutherford. Every street-sweeper knows Chepyzhin's equations.'

'That's putting it a bit strongly,' said Nadya.

'And you watch it,' said Viktor. 'Keep your mouth shut or you'll be the ruin of all of us.'

'I know,' said Nadya. 'Your speeches are only for domestic consumption.'

'Yes, my dear Nadya,' said Viktor meekly, 'but what can I do to change decisions taken by the Central Committee? Anyway Dmitry Petrovich himself said he wanted to resign. Even though, as we say, it was "against the wishes of the people".'

'You shouldn't get so steamed up about it,' said Lyudmila. 'Besides, you were always arguing with Dmitry Petrovich yourself.'

'There's no true friendship without discussion.'

'That's the trouble,' said Lyudmila. 'You and your discussions. You'll end up having your laboratory taken away from you.'

'That's not what worries me,' said Viktor. 'Nadya's right: my speeches are just for domestic consumption… Why don't you phone Chetverikov's wife? Or go and see her? You're a friend of hers.'

'That simply isn't done,' said Lyudmila. 'Anyway I don't know her that well. How can I help her? Why should she want to see me? Have you ever phoned anyone in that situation?'

'I think one should,' said Nadya.

Viktor frowned. It was Sokolov, not Lyudmila and Nadya, whom he really wanted to talk to about Chepyzhin's resignation. But he he stopped himself – it really wasn't something to discuss on the phone.

It was odd though. Why Shishakov? It was clear that Viktor's latest work was very important. Chepyzhin had said at the Council of Scientists that it was the most important development in Soviet theoretical physics for the last decade. And then they'd gone and put Shishakov in charge of the Institute. Was it a joke? A man who'd seen hundreds of photographs with the trajectories of electrons going off to the left, and had then been shown photographs with the same trajectories going off to the right… It was as though he'd been presented, on a silver plate, with the opportunity to discover the positron. Young Savostyanov would not have missed it. But Shishakov had just pouted and said the photographs must be defective.

What was most amazing of all was that no one was in the least surprised by this sort of thing. Somehow it all seemed quite natural. Viktor's wife and friends, even Viktor himself, all considered it the normal state of affairs. Shishakov was a suitable director, and Viktor was not.

What was it Postoev had said? 'Still, what matters is that we're both Russians.' But then it would be difficult to be more Russian than Chepyzhin.

[45] A minister under Alexander I. Here he epitomises a narrow-minded and rigid bureaucracy.