This article by Bulychev appeared in the January 2001 issue of Khimia i Zhizn' [Chemistry and
Life], a (1970s level) Scientific American type magazine, which publishes SF in every issue.
Bulychev has been a frequent contributor.
-JHC
The magazine "Chemistry and Life - 21-st Century," not only customarily publishes tributes of its authors and friends, but it finds those who desire to compose the tribute.
When I was informed that I had survived enough years to warrant the full treatment quite
naturally I was utterly preening with satisfaction, but then I realized that there was absolutely no
way that I could trust anyone besides myself to sing my praises, in as much as no one could do it
so sweetly and convincingly as I myself.
The magazine's editorial board took a sigh and caved in to my terms.
Then I sat down at the typewriter, sat and sat and went back to other things, again returned to the keyboard.... Catastrophe! It turns out that not only am I not a chemist, but I have forgotten everything I once knew about the subject.
I write science fiction stories for the magazine, but, despite the frequent requests of the editors, I have never inserted anything scientific into them.
What is to be done? Refuse, deny their requests, and find myself without a panegyric? I am, after all, a person in my middle years. In past years they had to consider you almost over the hill before one warranted such treatment...
Oh well, if I do not myself have the glory of being named Chemist I have certainly lived my entire life surrounded by them; how could I have come through untouched.
So, I propose that I shall observe my own life as a life at the fringes of Chemistry and Chemists. I shall further strengthen this thesis with photographs.
I shall assay, and you shall judge, that I am an ordinary man, or that I was really able to get very solidly attached to Chemistry.
We shall begin with the period prior to my birth.
Igor Mojeiko's mother, Masha Bulycheva, in her Voroshilov Academy uniform.
My mother was one of the many children left orphaned by the Civil War; she was a worker in Armand Hammer's factory, went to the Automobile Institute and from there was sent by a Komsomol draft to the Voroshilov Military-Chemical Academy in Leningrad.
My mother was named Maria Mikhailovna Bulycheva, and she received a citation for 'the regulation preparation and good execution of the festive march on 9.2.34 in honor of the XVII Party Congress.' By my mother's account all of her professors were shot shortly thereafter, but, having completed her education in the women's division of the academy and having become a military engineer Third Class, mama was sent off to become the commandant of the Shlissel'burg Fortress. No more and no less! In truth at that time there were no prisoners in the fortress, but there was an ammunition depot, something my mother's specialty had prepared her for.
My mother served two months as a Commandant, after which her belly began to bulge too
noticeably and she went out on maternity leave in order to give birth to me. However, as you can
see, I had achieved my first contact with Chemistry.
Yakov Bokinik, chemist, Bulychev's stepfather
After a number of years, during which Mama worked at VIEM (The All-Union Institute of
Experimental Medicine), she divorced Papa, the jurist Mojeiko, for how could a true Chemist be
satisfied with a mere lawyer, and went and married Uncle Yasha, Yakov Isaakovitch Bokinik,
Doctor of Chemical Sciences, who, unless I am mistaken, at that time was developing our soviet
streptocide. Later, he departed for the Karpov Institute of Physical Chemistry where he worked
together with his friend Uncle Valya Kargin [V. A. Kargin (1907-1969) founded Soviet polymer
chemistry, winner of numerous prizes -JHC], who I certainly never suspected at the time would
become an Academician. Back then Uncle Valya had no children and would play with me and my
blocks, as though that were completely natural for future Academy of Sciences members.
Obviously, he suspected that many years later I would have to write a self-panegyric.
Valya Kargin and the young Igor Mojeiko at play.
The war started. My foster father went into the militia. He served through the whole war and died 4 May, 1945, in Courland, at that time chief of the Army's Chemical Warfare service.
Before the War mama had given birth to a daughter, my younger sister Natasha. During the war we hit rock bottom and starved, then we were evacuated to Chistopol', where mama, as someone with a higher miliary education, was named head of the local parachute troops school. But that is a story all on its own.
It was when we returned from evacuation to Moscow, that was in the middle of 1942,
Uncle Valya helped us. He would drop by evenings after working at the Institute and I remember
this picture: the oil lamp was lit, even more light was falling through the half opened door of the
small iron stove into the room. Uncle Valya had taken off his coat; he was sitting on the chair in
the middle of the room. And from out of one of the darkened corners crawled a mouse. The
mouse sat and waited until Uncle Valya gave it a crumb. How that animal had guessed he was an
Academician by his steps is completely beyond me.
Natasha Bokinik, Bulychev's sister
I certainly did not go into Chemistry, but my sister Natasha became one. She finished the chemical processing school, then got her MA; she fell seriously ill, but fought the illness like no one else I have ever seen; she skied, played tennis, and worked to her last day - she had a lab in Chernogolovsk. She raised her daughter - the daughter became a physicist. Natasha's husband, Volodya Gribov, the mountain climber, was also a well known chemist with his PhD., and so forth.
And that's all about the family
Although I cannot not fail to mention that after graduating from college I worked for two years as an assistant manager on the construction of a chemical-technical institute in Rangoon. But you say....
Naturally the sweetest and wisest chemists I met later were after I became involved with Chemistry and Life, but prior to that I did have one real position which allowed me to taste the society of the most important scientists of our times. The fact was, being by education a translator, I worked on a number of occasions (while still a graduate student) as a simultaneous translator at the Pugwash Peace Conferences for scientists.
I'll end with two short stories from those times.
At the end of the 1960s our really great scientists were going abroad, but one among them
was not sent abroad, a social outcast - Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa. They did not send him. That
was all. Someone did not like him.
Kapitsa and Englehart, the 'second raters.'
Finally in the Fall of 1968 they sent him to the Pugwash Conference in Ronneboe, in Sweden. Of course there were far more important Soviet figures, starting with Academician Millionshchikov and so on up to members of the Central Committee so Kapitsa, along with the likes of Vladimir Aleksandrovich Engel'gardt, was kept in the second row. By the way, he didn't try to sneak his way into the front row, although certain important KGB officials who were supervising our collective were constantly on guard for any dirty trick Kapitsa might try. I remember how the whispers ran through their ranks when Kapitsa, at some meeting, suddenly stood up and addressed an American colleague, speaking about the war in Vietnam.
"You are very impractical people. Burning the Vietnamese forest with napalm, you are doing precisely what the mountain tribes do in slash and burn agriculture to increase their yield."
"Tighten his leash!" The Chekists grumbled in whispers.
Then, after the conference, we all flew to Stockholm. The Academic and Political leadership filed down the steps, the whisper spreading among them that the Ambassador of the Soviet Union would be coming to greet them and himself convey the most high and mighty to the hotel. We, the staff, they had locked into the plane, but the second rate scientists - the Englegardts and Kapitsas - were freezing off to one side. Suddenly a file of limos came onto the field, the royal standard fluttering to the fore.
Our bureaucrats, proudly sniffing the air, proceeded en mass toward the cars. But then there was some confusion. Three or four gentlemen came from the cars toward the airplane, and the one in the lead asked:
"Could we see Professor Pyotr Kapitsa? His highness the King of Sweden has sent this car to convey him to the royal residence."
A very embarrassing situation: they had already pushed Pyotr Leonidich into the back row.
The second short tale also happened at a Pugwash conference, but later, in Sochi, to where a number of the scientists had brought their wives.
The foreign academic ladies decided on a trip to Lake Ritsu. Among these academic women from the western world were many who, it must be said, spoke Russian either because their families came from Odessa or through education. Among the later belonged the wife of the French Premiere Jules Mok, who was also a participant in the Pugwash movement.
So here we have the ladies strolling the shore of the lake, taking in the scenery, and tottering to meet them comes a famous Soviet Poet. On catching sight of him Madame Mok exclaimed:
"Oh, I teach Russian literature in the Sorbonne- I know who he is...."
An agitation swept through the women and they asked the translator to introduce them to the Poet.
The Poet, alas, did not quite understand the situation. Evidently, he was in a hangdog mood and the last thing he wanted was to talk to foreign tourists. Therefore, he declared to the translator: "F**k these birds!"
A deep silence, broken only by the gnashing of gears which signaled the loss of moral authority.
In the deep silence the petite Madame Rabinovich, wife of the President of the American Academy of Sciences, herself born in Russia, a tiny old lady, firmly advanced on the Poet, rose on tiptoes, slapped him soundly across the chops, and enunciated in clear Russian:
"Gentlemen - behave otherwise." Afterwards the satisfied group of women proceeded to the busses.
And that's all.
I continue to exist in a world of chemists, get printed in Chemistry and Life, and even get to go to children's Chemistry Fairs sometimes.
And I follow the admonition of the first woman Cosmonaut. When I was working in Burma as a correspondent a delegation of cosmonauts came to Rangoon and I got to know them. At the farewells I received a photo of cosmonaut Tereshkova with the wish and signature: "To Igor Mozheiko with the best of wishes that your wife will force you to cut off that funny beard. What a man leaves behind are memories of his actions, not his appearance."
My appearance, that's something I've never gotten around to fixing.
Yours truly, hanging on
