MOSCOW, September 28 The strategically correct decision of the Soviet leadership and the advanced part of the scientific community to start an atomic project, taken at the height of the Great Patriotic War, and to this day guarantees the existence of Russia as an independent power, said the President of the National Research Center «Kurchatov Institute» Mikhail Kovalchuk.
On Thursday, Russia celebrates Nuclear Industry Worker Day. On this day in 1942, the USSR State Defense Committee issued an order “On the organization of work on uranium.” The document ordered the resumption of work in the Soviet Union to study the possibility of using atomic energy.
September 4, 08:00
“You and I are alive today and are one of the few sovereign states only because during a difficult war, the country’s leadership and part of the scientific community made the right strategic decisions that reformatted the world and made us the greatest superpower. And we are one today, despite everything attempts to destroy us,” Kovalchuk emphasized, speaking in Moscow at the opening of an exhibition dedicated to the “founding fathers” of the nuclear industry, the legendary scientists Academician Igor Kurchatov and Anatoly Alexandrov. Under their leadership, in the 1920-1930s, work on the physics of the atomic nucleus was carried out in the USSR, the results of which laid the foundations for the future success of the Soviet atomic project, Kovalchuk noted.
Kurchatov, being the scientific director of the USSR atomic project, also oriented Soviet intelligence towards obtaining specific materials about the American nuclear program. As a result, the time frame for creating the first Soviet atomic bomb was significantly reduced, Kovalchuk added.
Kurchatov and Aleksandrov were not competitors, but comrades-in-arms and associates, and after Kurchatov’s death it was Aleksandrov who headed the Institute of Atomic Energy, preserving the work of his colleague and friend, Kovalchuk noted. “Kurchatov and Aleksandrov demonstrated the harmonization of relations between the elites. We must remember this and be guided by this example,” the scientist emphasized.
The exhibition, organized under the auspices of the Kurchatov Institute, is taking place at the State Central Museum of Contemporary History of Russia. The exhibition, which occupies several large halls, presents photographs, documents and objects, as well as multimedia materials highlighting the main milestones of the Soviet atomic project — from the creation of the atomic bomb to the foundations of peaceful nuclear energy, and different periods of work of Kurchatov and Alexandrov.
Kovalchuk spoke in detail about the exhibition to the guests of honor, among whom were the Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation, Chairman of the Russian Historical Society Sergei Naryshkin, the Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation Valery Falkov, and the head of the Russian Academy of Sciences Gennady Krasnikov.
This year marks 80 years since the creation of the Kurchatov Institute and 120 years since the birth of Kurchatov and Alexandrov.
The history of the national research center «Kurchatov Institute» began on April 12, 1943, when an order was signed to create, under the leadership of Igor Kurchatov, Laboratory No. 2 of the USSR Academy of Sciences (later — the Laboratory of Measuring Instruments of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the Russian Scientific Center «Kurchatov Institute»).
The Kurchatov Institute played a key role in ensuring the country's security and the development of the most important strategic areas, including the development and creation of domestic nuclear weapons, nuclear submarine and surface fleets, and nuclear energy. In the current century, as reported, the Kurchatov Institute participated in the creation of new types of Russian strategic weapons.
Initially organized to create nuclear weapons, the Kurchatov Institute became the founder of many unique peaceful technologies and scientific directions; its employees solved pressing problems of fundamental physics. In 2010, the Kurchatov Institute received the status of a national research center. Today the Kurchatov Institute is one of the leading scientific centers in the world, an interdisciplinary Russian national laboratory.
National Research Center «Kurchatov Institute» is the lead scientific organization of the federal scientific and technical program for the development of synchrotron and neutron research and the federal scientific and technical program for the development of genetic technologies. The Kurchatov Institute carries out scientific management of the comprehensive program «Development of technology, technology and scientific research in the field of use of atomic energy in the Russian Federation».