ABSTRACT
But I have digressed, thinking that this story is also interesting, though now such stories come as no surprise. So, being considered politically unreliable, I was not sent to the 'Ob'ekt'. I was only too glad, because after Tamm and Sakharov had left, I had little classified work and could do something for my private satisfaction. It is not that I neglected my duties but calculations and mathematical physics are not my cup of tea, and it was these things that we had to do then (as I have already written, in our Moscow group this was successfully done mainly by S Z Belen'kii and E S Fradkin). That is why I was happy when, in 1950, research in the field of controlled thermonuclear fusion began on the initiative of A D Sakharov and I E Tamm. At the first stage, it was certainly a physical problem. I, too, went in for it and did something. Then this work was considered so important and secret that about the year 1952 (or at the end of 1951) I was removed from it. It might have been for this reason that after this work was declassified (owing to IV Kurchatov, who made, in 1956, in England, his well-known report on the thermonuclear problem), I published, in 1962, some old reports of mine (1962 Trudy FIAN [Works of the P N Lebedev Physical Institute]lB 55-104.1h
After being removed from the work on thermonuclear fusion, I did not do anything classified work at all, as far as I remember, and nobody demanded anything of me. Unfortunately, in 1955, I was sent to Yu B Khariton as a member of a commission of experts headed by I E Tamm. But since at that time I was not at all interested in all that, I do not remember anything of what was shown to us. After that I did absolutely nothing secret but my work was still recorded as 'classified' until1987-a further 32 years (and maybe I still am 'classified'?) . In this connection I was repeatedly refused permission to go abroad, which was explained by 'the objections of the Ministry of Medium Machinery Construction'. As I have already said, this ordeal continued up to 1987, though I wrote letters to Brezhnev, Zimyanin, and Ryabov, to say nothing of letters to the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
