Traditions of “Physical Art” in the Russian Physics Community,

1950s to 1990s.

Yu.V. Gaponov

(RRC “Kurchatov Institute”, Moscow, Russia)

Report at the Niels Bohr Archive Symposium

“‘Copenhagen’ and beyond: Drama meets history of science”

Abstract: The Physical Art tradition was invented at Moscow State University (MSU) in the 1950s and has existed in different forms within the Russian physics community for more than forty years up to the present. At different times it has comprised the following main forms: (1) Annual jocular Physical Day performances (beginning with Archimedes's Birthday at MSU), which were held at some universities and scientific centres from the early 1960s. The renowned physicists Lev Landau and Niels Bohr took part in the first performances of 1960-61. (2) The amateur comedy theatre Archimedes, which performed several comic operas as well as Bertolt Brecht's Life of Galileo. Its most popular production, the opera Archimedes, was performed more than 250 times and celebrated its 40th anniversary in May 2000. (3) The physical poetry school, the work of which was published officially only from the end of the 1990s. Although described more accurately as the reaction of the young generation of scientists to social and political events than as popularisation of science, the Physical Art tradition did draw the attention of the Russian public to the quantum and atomic revolution in physics and reflected the very high authority of physicists (as well as natural scientists in general) in the postwar period.

The 1950s and 1960s were the golden age of the utmost prosperity in Physics. The atomic revolution having opened for the scientists a new world of quanta led soon to the nuclear fission discovery and to the first steps in techniques to dominate the atomic energy. The realization of national atomic programs which first took place in USA and then in Russia (USSR) and Great Britain had attracted the whole world’s attention and placed Physics and the natural sciences in general in a top position. Being concerned with matters of physics became then exclusive and prestigious and physicists as individuals attracted the society’s attention. They became heroes of literature, theater, movies, press. This process was observed in many advanced countries. It was also typical for the former USSR of those times, although owing to special social circumstances it had acquired some particular forms. One such form was the creation of “Physical Art” traditions first of all at Physics Department of Moscow State University (MSU PhysFac, see i) below) and then widely within the physics community. Its history is the object of the current report.

The birth of these traditions is commonly associated with the appearance at MSU PhysFac in 1960 of a Student Humor Festival called “Birthday of Archimedes” (later “Physics Day”) along with a comic buffoonery opera “Archimedes” (authors – physicists and poets V. Kaner, V. Milyaev). However, MSU physicists consider the “Physical Art” traditions to have started earlier. Here are some remarkable milestones:

In 1932 the well known “Faust” jocular opera and in 1935 the special issue of the “Jocular Physics” journal were written by some eminent physicists in connection with the 50^th birthday of Niels Bohr. Also in the 1930s, in the Leningrad Phys.-Tech. Ioffe Institute some jocular celebrations were performed with participation of young physicists and puppets produced by I. Kikoin and the professional puppet producer Demini.

In 1949-55 a young physicist, Gertzen Kopylov (1924-76), created a very timely polemical underground poem, “Eugeny Stromynkin”. In 1947 another student (now Professor), B. Bolotovsky, wrote the Anthem of MSU Physicists, ‘Dubinushka’ (in Russian the word has a double pun meaning: bludgeot and blockhead. It is also the title of a famous and popular Russian folk song). In 1955 the first “physical opera” with the same title was written (V. Balashov, B. Kurjanov, V. Ivanov et al.). Its contents is very simple: it shows the usual life of a first course student, who passed through a “social conflict” with his group of friends but then found his right way. It is obvious that this “conflict” is a jocular one. However, it is imagined by the student as his private tragedy. This short skit-opera included a lot of jokes, music, song and dance.

However, there were also additional social causes for its appearance, connected with the “student revolution” events in MSU PhysFac in the fall of 1953, just after Stalin’s death. The “revolution” had led to a very deep transformation of the MSU PhysFac, which changed its leadership cardinally and created a very open and enthusiastic atmosphere among the students. The birth of the “Physical Art” traditions became a direct consequence of these events. (For details of the 1953 events see the report of Yu. Gaponov, S. Kovaleva, A. Kessenikh in the Proceedings of HISAP’99 International Historical Symposium on world history of atomic projects – HISAP’99, Laxenburg, Austria).

In accordance with an official “Archimedes” studio legend, ‘Dubinushka’ was staged by graduate physicists on January 3rd, 1955 during the farewell party immediately following their final State Examination and approved by academician Lev Landau. The opera was rewritten and for the first time staged at the MSU Culture House (with young physicist S. Soluyan as director of scenography) when the International Youth Festival was held in Moscow in 1957. Thus, the creation of “Dubinushka” became considered as the origin of the “Physical Art” traditions, which are still alive today. The first physical opera had a tremendous success within the physics community. It was shown to physicists of Obninsk (the first Russian atomic power station) and Dubna (International Joint Institute for Nuclear Research). It was played on the stage of the Council of Ministers Club (a Moscow theater) and was cited in the famous theater producer Okhlopkov’s version of Pogodin’s drama, “A Little Student Girl”, dated 1958.

This success lent wings to young physicists and “Dubinushka” was soon followed by a new opera, “Gray Stone” – a musical-dramatic composition in 4 acts with a Prologue and an Epilogue, which was staged in 1958 (A. Kessenikh, Yu. Gaponov, V. Ivanov, S. Soluyan). It represented PhysFac students’ life of those times, including the following scenes: in a dean’s secretariate, in a students’ hostel, at laboratory exercises, on a voluntary militia brigade duty. The characters of the opera were the dean’s lady-officers, students, professors, laboratory assistants – and even characterized students grades from 5 to 1. The opera reflected a tragedy of a fifth-course student, Boris Pugovkin, a student trade union leader and social activist, who was prepared to sacrifice his private life for the sake of an ill-conceived social duty. The refrain sung by the choir of first-year students in the Prologue and Epilogue sounds ironically:

“Are we really ever going to become like Him?!…”

The rise of the physicists’ creative activity in the 1950s coincided with the period of wide-spread discussion of “Physicists-Lyrics” in Russia. This period also overlapped with the formation of the first Students’ Building Brigades, which is not a mere coincidence. These brigades initiated the mass student works in 1958–61 on newly reclaimed virgin lands. Even in this case, the MSU physicists became the founders of this new tradition, which remained alive several decades later. As we understand now, these initiatives were really a distant echo of the atomic revolution in Physics and of a student revolution at MSU PhysFac in 1953 (see our report at HISAP’99 – Laxenburg, Austria – historical Symposium on world history of atomic projects).

The peak of the Khrushchev era was the heroic period of the so-called “men-of-the-sixties”. At the height of the creative inspirations, both traditions –the opera and the brigades – helped each other and gave birth to the heroic physical skit-opera “Archimedes” and to a festival as a tribute to him. The Festival of Humor at the MSU PhysFac was instituted by a special non-standard decree of the 1959 Komsomol, see ii), annual conference: “To institute an annual Physicists’ Festival of Humor – ‘Physics Day’”. The birthday of Archimedes is now considered as the “Birthday of Physics”. Archimedes was born 7th of May, 287 BC”.

The idea to place Archimedes as a chief of a pantheon of Physics Heroes and Gods saw the light in May 1959 in Room B-835 of the MSU students’ hostel (M. Artemenko, N. Kabaeva, N. Nikonova, Yu. Gaponov). The steps of a wide PhysFac entrance stairway were chosen as a scene of the activities and it was really an ideal stage for a classical Greek drama! The physical creative activity reaches its culmination: a multi-mass festival with thousands of participants and with the third physical opera “Archimedes” is born.

The opera “Archimedes” is the apex of the physicists’ creative musical activity of those times. In a heroic form it conceives and expresses all that the students of the 1960s had lived with. It includes a glorious history and reality, students building brigades, ancient gods as destroyers and physics heroes as creative constructors, the flight of the spirit and an anticipation of forthcoming tragedy. This self-made amateur opera was incredibly popular and unsurpassed. Within a period of 40 years it was staged more than 250 times in various physics universities and R&D Russian institutes. The tours of “Archimedes” extended from Krakov, Prague and Riga to the Sakhalin Island and from Novosibirsk to Simpheropol (Krimia) and Kiev. As it is said in the author’s introductory speech, which is usually read from the stage before the spectators: “Having rejected any false modesty, which is alien to us, we proclaim that the numerous performances and the tremendous success of this opera in all the strata of the national and foreign intellectual physics communities have proved that the humor, the incessant good temper and simply the charm of the opera could never be destroyed by any performance. And we are sure that today’s staging will confirm this point once again.”

However, there was yet another hypostasis that Archimedes turned in at MSU PhysDep. It was the annual festival, “Birthday of Archimedes”, celebrated in May which during the peak years (1963-64) lasted for several days. It normally began at 1 p.m. with a call by trumpeters to general assembly and went on in a form of a comic student play on the steps in front of the entrance of the PhysFac In this play student representatives of each course, dressed in fantastic costumes, presented annual reports on principal events in their life of the year before. Their reports were accepted by the eighteenth century Russian physicist Mikhail Lomonosov, and the following arrival of Archimedes was normally accompanied by various pyrotechnic fires. The funny addresses were alternated with verses, songs, dances and ever-green student scenes depicting exams, thunderstorm professors and cunning students. Many real heroes of those times were among the honored guests welcomed by the festival organizers: Academician Lev Landau (1960-61), the great Niels Bohr (1961), cosmonaut German Titov (1963 – the era of space flights was beginning). The creation of this festival constituted the beginning of the MSU liberal traditions which, in the 1960s, instantly spread out to other universities in the USSR. The “Physics Days” appeared soon in Leningrad (St. Petersburg), Tbilisi, Baku, Kiev, Riga, Novosibirsk, Simpheropol, Sverdlovsk (Ekaterinburg), Dnepropetrovsk and many other university towns.

The festivals of the early 1960s were really large scale with regard to the variety of activities and the number of actors (304 persons in 1964!). They attracted thousands of spectators, became topics for TV and movies (e.g., “Sweethearts need carnations”, a film by Nitochkin). Guests from many universities (Tbilisi, Leningrad, Baku, Gorki etc.) attended the festivals. The performance on the steps was followed by carnivals, sports competitions between teams of students and professors, and, of course, by the evening concerts in the MSU Culture House with opera performances, PhysFac’s bard songs or guests’ presentations. A student bard song competition took place for the first time at the 1961 Physics Day. The traditions of physicists were described by L. Arkhipova in her book “In search for thyself”. The festivals were organized by a special Headquarters just like the virgin land building brigades. The first staffs were headed by A. Schirokov (1960), Yu. Gaponov (1961), Yu. Pirogov (1962), R. Gainullin (1963), L. Pogorelova (1964). However, in 1965, for the first time, PhysFac party leaders and administration attempted to stop the Festival of Archimedes.

The era of Khrushchev’s thaw was about to end and new political times were coming. However, PhysFac students did manage to resume the festival in 1966 after a thunderstorm at the current komsomol conference just after the appearance in the popular “Komsomolskaya Pravda” newspaper of an article by journalist E. Losoto, “Birthday of Archimedes”. Subsequently, the festival was still alive for three years, whereupon it was finally cancelled by the leaders of the MSU PhysDep. But its glory remained and the traditions of student humor festivals had already begun to migrate between the universities and institutes of the USSR. In MSU there appeared traditional “Chemist Day” and “Mathematician Day” (the former is alive, the latter did not live long). The Physics Day re-appeared at MSU PhysFac as “The Day of Absolute Zero” in 1978-79, when on the entrance steps a nice funny fairy tale, “On Yemelya and how he discovered a non-purely-physical forces”, written by a group of authors, was staged by Yu. Nechipurenko. This Day had survived for several years, gradually fading. Finally it was revived as the traditional “Physics Day” in the early 1990s.

But traditions of physical humor always continued to live. They created and dominated new genres of ‘Phys. Art’, being familiar with frameworks of little forms. In 1961, in the Lipetsk building brigade, the so-called “Agitbrigade” (primitive theater brigade, see iii) was created with O. Zubkova as its first director. In 1963 there was instituted a permanent theater-studio, “Archimedes” (instead of temporary opera groups), which still exists today. The PhysFac soon established its own poetic school, which organized an annual autumn poetic competition, “The rooks have flown away”, see iv), which later gradually grew into the first MSU student song competition in 1965 (it exists now as bard song competitions in many regions of Russia). The most well-known physical poets of this school were as follows: A. Kesennikh, S. Krylov, V. Milyaev, V. Kaner, G. Ivanov, S. Semenov, V. Gertzik, S. Smirnov, A. Debabov. Many of them started out in the Physics Department agitbrigades and travelled a lot across the USSR: Kazakhstan, Altai, Kol’sky Peninsula, Naryan-Mar, Northern Urals, Salekhard etc. It is this PhysFac agitbrigade that Sergei Nikitin, physicist and now famous Russian bard singer and composer, came from. The physical humor already began to move across the whole country: in the mid-1960s a very popular book under the title “Physicists’ Joke” was published in Obninsk.

The opera traditions were also in progress. A ballet troupe appeared in the studio. Following the intentions of “Dubinushka”, a new ballet under the same title was staged where comic dances performed by soloists S. Kovaleva and A. Prokhorov were interchanged with the jocular authors’ comments. Some outstanding vocalists are also found among the physicists. Ljubov’ Bogdanova has later graduated from the Gnesinski Institute, see v), and has sung in the famous Bolshoi Theater. In the 1990s she sang in Germany, Italy and Poland. Victor Dubinchuk, who has an extraordinary sweet tenor, also took part in our operas. He too was invited to the Bolshoi studio, but nevertheless preferred to remain a physicist. The opera choir was under the direction of top professionals from the Gnesinsky Institute (O. Khristich, O. Lebedikhina, G. Kol’tsova). The opera team had a stable cast of 50–70 persons in spite of the natural fluidity of the student contingent. Finally, in the mid-1960s we were inspired to create the next physical opera as a farewell with MSU PhysFac. Its first title was “Quo vadis?”; the official title is “Fly, pigeons, fly ...” (1967-68, G. Ivanov, S. Semenov, Yu.Gaponov, A. Kesennikh), see vi).

The end of the 1960s was marked by dramatic changes. The political situation in the USSR was changing. The PhysFac’s party leaders began to feel the burden of students’ free-thinking. The traditions of the Physics Day were fading and the studio’s headquarters had already begun to feel the cold winds blowing from the administration and local party committee. We began to think about leaving MSU for good, the last opera being a summary of student days as consisting of graduation and the state distributing students for work, see vii). In 1968 the new opera was staged at the PhysFac for the first and last time. The same summer the opera building brigade was off for a concert tour to the Sakhalin Island. In 1969 A. Kharlamov, the commander of the studio’s HQ, was summoned to the party committee of the Faculty and was ordered to close the studio “Archimedes”. The studio moved to the Kurchatov Institute. A year before – on the request of the famous physicist, acad. I.K. Kikoin – it had staged there a comic performance dedicated to Kurchatov Institute’s 25th Anniversary. It was presented in a form of “Anti-scientific meeting of the Institute Scientific Council”, where the speeches of “medieval” scientists as an alternative to real Academicians and Leaders of the Institute was performed by the young physicists–studio actors. The last days at PhysFac were described later by A. Kharlamov, A. Prokhorov and S. Semenov in the farewell physical opera “Schizel” (1972). That was the opera about ourselves: how the Opera lived, what were Its spiritual values and how It became alien to the native PhysFac which gave birth to It.

So, in 1969 the “Archimedes” studio settled at the Culture House of the Kurchatov IAE, see viii), (KI). A new alloy of two traditions – student and scientific – which earlier stood far from each other, gave a powerful impulse to a new rise of physical creative activity. The traditions of scientific physical humor were known long before. Thus, there were the funny books “Jocular Physics” published in Denmark at N. Bohr’s birthdays (1925, 35, 45), comic performances at A. Ioffe’s Leningrad Institute of Technical Physics (1930s), legendary jokes by I. Kurchatov and A. Migdal. In the USA the jokes of R. Feynman were very popular (“Surely, You’re joking, Mr. Feynman!” book). A sense of humor is immanent for a real, deep scientist. According to N. Bohr’s principles it is complementary to the intensity of his scientific creative activity. It particularly flourished in the USSR in the 1960s, when physicists were almost epical, just like national heroes. Before “Archimedes” the two physical skit-operas, as an obvious influence of PhysFac graduates, had already been written in KI (“OPIada”, 1958, B. Trubnikov, V. Shafranov; “OPTKiada”, in the early 1960s, E. Buryak and Co.). The title of the former is taken from the abbreviation for the KI Department of Plasma Research. It is a heroic poem about the first assault on the peaceful thermonuclear problems. The latter was a private domestic drama of a young physicist of acad. I. Kikoin’s Department. When in 1968 a comic performance dedicated to the Institute’s 25th Anniversary was staged, its second act was a puppet show with puppets of academicians A. Alexandrov, I. Kikoin, A. Migdal and others (under the direction of the same professional producer Demeni who had directed the Leningrad puppet theater in 1930s). The most vigorous supporter of the “Physical Art” traditions in KI and its principal advocate became the academician I.K. Kikoin himself.

Having settled in the Kurchatov Club, the studio “Archimedes” (which was soon proudly and jokingly named the “Bolshoi Physical Theater for Opera and Ballet”, see ix)) first of all restored the Physics Day tradition. In 1972, in the Palace of Grand Duke Konstantin (just nearby the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg), we, together with Leningraders (Yu. Magarshak and his team), organized the first ‘All-Leningrad Physics Day’. In the same year “Archimedes” orginized the first KI Physics Day. It started on May 13^th, 1972, at the entrance of the KI Culture House, with a ceremonial laying of a memorial stele devoted to the future “Kurchatov Institute Physics Day” (“KI Physics Day”). A warm May rain showered the leading USSR physicists who stood grasping their umbrellas, listening to funny addresses to the Institute of Atomic Energy. I. Kikoin was among those. Then, in the KI Culture House, when acad. E. Velikhov – surrounded by three beautiful Misses Physics (who won these titles in the Leningrad Day) – accepted congratulations from physicists and guests, Kikoin appeared on the stage with a baby in his hands and sang him a lullaby. So the tradition of physical humor had revived and acquired some new features at the Kurchatov Institute.

Beginning in 1973, the KI Physics Day received its final shape. Traditionally, it began with brass-band music and the run-out of an equipage with the KI Directorate as passengers; the whole presidium was placed in a cart towed by an old horse named “Atomokhod”. Then on the square in front of the Culture House a parade of KI Department Directors took place. It was a carnival where every physics department headed by its real Director, by using an electric trolley exposed its fantasy and humor as well as its exotic costumes, slogans and comments. Having made the round of honor they reported to the Presidium on their achievements the previous year. The parade was followed by a series of scientific-sports Alexandrov’s Games with the objective of winning a prize of KI Director acad. A.P. Alexandrov (who shortly afterwards became the President of the USSR Academy of Sciences). When the parade and sport scientific Games ended, the “Anti-Scientific Meeting of the KI Scientific Council” began. It included the real Directorate and leading scientists whose real hobby was fun and a good joke. One of the very first Physics Days became famous from the verses of A.P. Alexandrov containing rather coarse improvisations addressed to all the Department Directors. The Department of Plasma Research was permanently led by Acad. B. Kadomtzev and once represented by a funny joke of B. Trubnikov who suggested at once a verse to remember the “pi” number with a precision to one hundred decimal places. Kikoin’s Department presented anti-scientific reports with the demonstration of experiments and participation of genuine sheep or donkeys borrowed from the well-known Moscow Durov’s Zoo Corner, see x). The KI branch in Troitsk once demonstrated a huge fire-breathing dragon spitting plasma and suffering from problems associated with spring love. One of the anti-scientific Councils was dedicated to an ever-green topic about extraterrestrials, and a cycle of funny songs about UFOs was performed as a scientific report. In 1978 the KI elected Misses Physics for each of the Departments: Miss of Plasma, Solid State Miss, Biomiss, Miss Reactor etc. It is necessary to underline that the jokes of reporters and the Council were always timely and very critical. The TV shooting the movies about the Physics Day in 1979 did not dare to transmit it to its audience. If they had, it would have been too unusual in the former USSR where the situation was getting gloomy. But physicists kept on joking!

Judging retrospectively, we can say that the Kurchatov Institute festivals of 1977-84 were the culmination of the “Physics Day” tradition. It had grown up and become more serious and deep. In comparison with students’ jokes spinning about exams, students and professors, the scientific humor was more profound, more informative, more ingenuous. Physicists in their fun and humor expressed their attitude to the external social world.

The theater-studio “Archimedes” continued its life together with the Physics Day. Some new forms were being developed. In 1973 a new variety performance show with dances, music, lights and 8 soloists was staged. This was “Physical Review, Volume I” (A. Prokhorov, Yu. Gaponov; ballet-master: G. Abramov) which survived a dozen performances. A bit later there appeared “Monologues about Physics” (1974; A. Prokhorov, S. Semenov) which is still on the stage. These are monologues about science spoken by people from the arts who themselves are very far from science but somehow still concerned with it. In 1975 the studio was getting involved in a classical drama by taking part in a staging of “Life of Galileo” (B. Brecht; with A. Chapleevsky, the professional producer of scenography, then Art Director of KI Culture House). The role of Galileo was played by V. Klimenko, who was a physicist-theoretician of supernatural temperament and a talented self-made actor. In 1973 a new genre of physical humor was born. A. Kharlamov, the commander of the opera’s HQ, when leaving the PhysFac issued Volume I of the “General History of Archimedes” – a type-writer collection of physical humor – and offered it to the studio before his departure to Sakhalin for permanent work as a geophysicist. Towards the end of the 1970s six such volumes had already been issued: more than 1500 pages total, typed then, of course, with a typewriter. We began to understand the wide scale and universality of physical humor and, more than that, of the “Physical Art”. The links of “Archimedes” with the world of physicists and the whole physics community were getting broader and tighter: we gathered those who were close to us in spirit. Thus the Studio began to convert into the Physical Club.

First of all, there were the PhysFac graduates. The KI Culture House hosted the meeting of three poets-physicists (A. Kesennikh, V. Kaner, V. Milyaev) with Acad. Rem Khokhlov, who was MSU rector then. We commemorated G. Kopylov, the precursor of “Physical Art” who died in 1976, and typed his “Eugeny Stromynkin” for the first time in an “academic” version (1978, A. Prokhorov) that was a “canonical” text with different underground versions and notes. We invited to the Physics Days the humor teams from the Moscow MEPhI, PhysTech, see xi), humanitarian universities, and organized a “Week of Physical Art” celebration at PhysTech in 1982; staged our operas in some cities with students and scholars as artists. At the beginning of 1980 more than 500 “graduates” of all years of the studio “Archimedes” gathered at KI Culture House (already not only physicists!) to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of Physical Art. The “Archimedes” Studio HQ presented its review report of the last 25 years of activity, and the report was assessed as satisfactory by voting. Physical Art was gaining universal recognition and began to occupy its honorable place in the Russian scientific community.

The following two events of the early 1980s had a particular significance for us: The KI Humor Festival dedicated to the 80th birthday of KI Director acad. A.P. Alexandrov (1983) (AP) and the Centenary of Niels Bohr (1985). The AP anniversary was celebrated by the whole Institute in an extremely warm atmosphere. All the KI Departments did their best to demonstrate on the stage their inventiveness and wittiness. The best tricks of the old Physics Days had been recollected and re-staged. There was a lot of games and side-shows for guests. They were followed by the stage performance, “Sagas, legends and jokes about AP”. The biophysicists were first with their “Fairy Tales on His Birth”, which was followed by legends and songs: on AP’s scientific works (with reviews of the articles from the 1930s), on war-ship demagnetization, the legend of TOCAMAC etc. The studio had a distinguished place in the performance: we built up the whole scenario and participated ourselves – our Bolshoi Theater soloist L. Bogdanova sang with her incredible voice with great success. AP was touched, and the studio’s principal director was invited to attend his home party where we offered AP the first written history of Physical Art as a gift. That was our humorous report of 25 years of activity.

When organizing the Centenary of N. Bohr in Russia we encountered for the first time real practitioners of history. It happened when the Institute for History of Natural Science and Technology (now IHST RAN) was the base for organizing the N. Bohr Centenary Session in Puschino near Moscow. Then our studio recalled N. Bohr’s visit to the USSR in May 1961 when he blessed the “Archimedes’ Birthday” and our opera with a long life. We kept on seeing dozens of people who remembered those days and collected one by one a lot of family and official snapshots. Finally we prepared an unusual scientific report, “Niels Bohr’s visit of 1961 to the USSR in photos”, in which the events of his unforgettable visit had been reconstructed along with the cordial atmosphere around the legendary Bohr who passed away forever the following year. The day when this report had been presented became also the day when the studio performed the “Archimedes” opera to historians of physics to commemorate this great person and the times when the physicists had the full right to be proud that by having created the bomb they preserved peace. This conference in Puschino was the first planned half of the Russian part of N. Bohr’s centenary. The second part, with participation of A. Bohr and some western scientists, was planned for December 1985. We were occupied with making our reports and an album of photos for the Niels Bohr Archive. Bohr’s family knew about us and planned to meet with the studio “Archimedes”. When I made a scientific visit to the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen in 1981, I was invited to visit Margrethe Bohr. With great sympathy she recalled the meeting of Niels with MSU students as well as our festival on the PhysFac’s steps and the opera performance in MSU. She was 92 then, but she still remembered details of our performance – L. Landau with Niels Bohr on the steps and the “Greek” choir from “Archimedes” with singers wrapped into white bed-sheets instead of ancient tunics. But, owing to some unknown reasons (still unknown to us!) the international meeting had been cancelled. Thus Bohr’s family was not to get a chance to see us either.

In 1986 Chernobyl burst into our life. From heroes the physicists began to turn into social outcasts. The time of social shifts had come. The new epoch has broken a lot of illusions, beloved physics is now far from the top positions that they occupied before. However, even under these new and very hard conditions the “Physical Art” tradition is still going on, coming out from the underground and, miraculously, beginning to be published. Kronid Lyubarsky, a dissident, published in Germany in Russian Gertsen Kopylov’s collection, “Four-dimensional poem and other non one-dimensional works” (1990), where “Eugeny Stromynkin” was first published in its “Archimedes”-like type-written version, with the publisher changing our comments. In 1993, under the aegis of the Russian Physics Society, we published “Physicists’ Joke”, second edition, with some inserted new jokes of physicists from the 1950s. In 1994 Lyudmila Ivanova (actress of the famous O. Efremov’s “Sovremennik” – “Contemporary” – theater) published a collection of verses of some poets-physicists, “The time is coming...”. V. Kaner (1940-1999), one of the “Archimedes” authors, published his books “Schiziki phutyat” (1994) (book title of “Physicists jokes” is transformed to humor and mad sense, see xii)) and “100 verses” (1995). Finally, the Journal of the Institute of History of Natural Science and Technology (VIET, No.2, 1998) published for the first time (with many comments) the Russian version of “Eugeny Stromynkin”, and simultaneously G. Kopylov’s previously unknown “Four-Dimensional Poem” appeared (1999). In the last years some books of physicists-poets, namely G. Ivanov (1940-2000), A. Kessenikh, V. Gertzeg, have been also published.

Thus, after many years of an underground, folk existence, the “Physical Art” tradition of the Russian physicists have become a reality and have come out as a social phenomenon to be investigated by historians of science. Here I would like to remember Niels Bohr’s words from his speech just after performance of the opera “Archimedes”:

“If you, young physicists, can joke about our scientific subjects

with such humor and enthusiasm,

I am now absolutely confident in the future

of Physics...”

I would like to thank V. Zakharov – physicist and permanent piano accompanist of the “Archimedes” studio – for help in translating the text into English.

Main producer of the Physical “Archimedes” Theater and Club,

Professor, Doctor of phys.-math. sciences,

Yu.V.Gaponov.

i)                PhysFac – literally: Physics Faculty (abbr.).

ii)              Komsomol – Union of Communist Youth – the mass youth organization in the Soviet Union.

iii)            Agitbrigada = agitational brigade.The term goes back to early twenties when artistic non-professional groups were created in many Soviet government institutions to propagate in artistic forms the ideas and achievements of the new Soviet era.

iv)             The title implies a comic ostensible contradiction with a famous picture “The rooks have flown in” by A. Savrasov.

v)               Prestigious Moscow Institute for musical and vocal education

vi)             Same as the title of a pretentious Soviet song about the international peaceful aspirations of the USSR. The song had often been put on radio and TV but never taken seriously by listeners.

vii)           Distribution (rus: raspredelenie). In the Soviet era working vacancies at any institution were reserved for young graduates. Thus, each of them was assigned to a working place where he was obliged to work at least for two years before he could change to another place. Sometimes the choice and proposed wages were not very attractive (particularly for non-Moscovites who had no right to settle in Moscow without getting married to a Moscovite).

viii)         Then IAE – Institute for Atomic Energy

ix)             Bolshoi (rus.)= Grand. Compare with the famous Bolshoi theater for opera and ballet in Moscow

x)               Animals theater in Moscow

xi)             MEPhI – Moscow State Engineering Physics Institute; PhysTech – Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology

xii)           The title comes from an exchange of initial letters of the title “Fiziki shutyat”(“Physicists’ Joke”). However, the meaning of the title becomes something like “Schizophrenics are playing the fool”.