New Year's Eve stories

From an experiment to series, or How Mikhail Lukichev
writes books about academicians

In my work bookcase, album books dedicated to the outstanding Dubna scientists V. G. Kadyshevsky, I. M. Frank, D. V. Shirkov, M. G. Meshcheryakov that have been published in Rybinsk publishing house "RMP" hold an honorable place. Shortly before the New Year holidays, during the visit of Director of this publishing house Mikhail Aleksandrovich Lukichev to Dubna to work on the next book, our conversation took place in the editorial office.

How did you come to these books? Or did they come to you?

- This particular story of my life happened quite unexpectedly. I have never set myself any specific goal that I would have a series of books. But once, in 2007, I was asked to write a book about Arkhip Mikhailovich Lyulka. An academician, the designer of engines for aircraft Su, Il and a very famous Head of the Moscow design bureau for aircraft engine technology. And I was given the opportunity to work on this book the way I wanted to. I was not told that I should put some material here, or I should post some photographs here ... I was simply told that it should be a good book. And I put all my capabilities, experience, knowledge into it...

- A little more about that, please...

- I defended my Ph.D. thesis in psychology at that time and it was a kind of experiment: I decided to create a psychological portrait of a person. In this book, each photograph had to have a special meaning. The photo sequence was selected in such a way that the reader gets the impression that he is watching a movie and not just sorting through a set of texts and photographs. I realized it only later, but when I was doing all this, I did not understand it yet. And when in the end, everything worked out and the people whom I wrote this book with started calling me, the centenary of Arkhip Mikhailovich was being celebrated and books were given to people that were leafing through the books with tears in their eyes.

A year and a half or two years passed after that, during that time another book was published - about the chief designer of aircraft engines Pavel Vasilyevich Solovyov.

- Why aircraft engines again?

- It's because my first technical education was an aircraft engine mechanic. That is, I know how an engine is designed, what a gas turbine is and how it all operates. One should write about what knows well. I received this education in Rybinsk, in an aviation city. Then I entered the Faculty of Journalism at Moscow State University and this was already my second education.

- Misha, I studied with your compatriots at the Faculty of Journalism earlier, in the 1970s. They were excellent... Andrey Koryakov, unfortunately, is no longer with us, Valera Lebedev, Zhenya Trusov... Even then I realized how rich in talent little Rybinsk was.

- I knew Andrey well enough, I started working with him for the same newspaper, "Verkhnevolzhskaya Pravda", I came in 1986 and worked as a correspondent for four years. At that time, I moved from the daytime department of the Faculty of Journalism to the correspondence department. I think, it turned out very well: my technical education was united with the one in the humanities and then I had a certain psychological practice and all this together came together, let's say, in the published books...

- That is, the time of carrying out experiment developed into mass production, didn't it? This reminds me of our (and already your) Joint Institute in Dubna: at first, they designed very serious machines for new experiments and today, the Scientific Council states: it's time to gather harvest.

- I agree with your analogy. Moreover, by about 2009, I realized that I needed to make a series, it was in demand, it aroused the interest of people whom these editions were primarily addressed to... What is the point of this? All of these books have stories. A plot, action and development are definitely needed. And you should enjoy what you're doing. It often happened that up to the moment when I started working on a book, I knew nothing about my characters. But I had three or four months to do all the work.

It would seem strange. Some authors spend years studying the biography of their hero and only then sit down to write a book. But here a man starts from scratch and ... There's a very interesting effect. When you start to get to know a person, about some events from his life, especially interesting, unexpected for you, you want to show it to the reader. And those feelings that you transfer to the book will definitely take the fancy of your audience, as well. If the book contains the joy and amazement of meeting the hero, the whole palette of emotions one feels at the same time will definitely pass on to the reader. After all, it's impossible to write a book about a person, like about a plant. It should be warm! Information disappears quickly, but feelings stay forever. If you have created an image of your hero, an image of the time in which he lives and works, it stays with the reader for a long time.

The heroes of these books are ambitious, interesting people that have achieved a lot in their lives, and the events that happen to them and around them, everything that shapes them, all this ultimately affects the results of their work. First, time shapes a person and then there a moment comes when he starts influencing time and the environment around him, changing the way people think - this is just manifestation of the standard of the individual.

- Please illustrate what you have said...

- Why something happens to a person, I wonder every time. As a rule, no one directly tells me about it. More often than not, I have to find out for myself. I wrote a book about Mikhail Mil, a designer and inventor of a whole line of helicopters. This book has a spread or two about the Korean War. It seems, where is Mil and where is the Korean War? And the point was that such a famous designer as Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky, a Russian and American aircraft designer, scientist, inventor, inventor of almost all American helicopters, worked simultaneously with Mil. The war in Korea started and our military instructors began to notice that troops appeared somewhere in the highlands, carried out military operations and just as suddenly disappeared. Well, the landing troops were airdropped, but how could they be taken back? And then everyone remembered helicopters and Mil was just designing Mi-1 and for two years they didn't know at all what to do with this equipment. Where would they place it? Either in agriculture, or in industry ... And when our military is interested in some kind of equipment, the necessary funds are immediately found ... The military realized that the helicopter turned out to be a good thing and Mil finished this machine just in six months, the Mi-1 series was launched immediately and they even managed to take part in the Korean campaign a little...

And the second point was in this book, also very interesting. Khrushchev visited the United States. It was the first visit of Head of the Soviet Union. Negotiations with Eisenhower were held at the White House. And President invited the Soviet Leader to his country residence at Camp David and offered ... to fly in a helicopter. The Soviet delegation was in disarray (Protocol was violated! What about security?) yet, somehow they were persuaded and the flight took place. They landed right in front of the palace. Khrushchev liked the flight. He called Moscow: "When I return, I want a helicopter at the airfield and I will fly straight to the Kremlin on it!" There was a commotion: where can we find such a helicopter to transport Head of the state on it? And he went straight to Mile that had the Mi-4 ready by that time. The time for cabin finishing and pre-flight preparations was only a few days, but they managed to do it in time. Khrushchev landed at Vnukovo, boarded the helicopter and flew to the Kremlin.

What happened then? The helicopter became a passenger aircraft. In the vast territories of the country, especially impassable ones, it actually played the role of a bus, they made Mi-6 and Mi-8 passenger aircrafts... In order to show this in the book, I had to process and unite all this information in my mind and these events that influenced on Mil's life on what he had invented ... And in all these books, some major political, economic events were projected onto fate and influenced the life of the main character.

- Misha, you gave a whole lecture ... I somehow didn't count on it, but we haven't reached the heroes of the "Dubna series" yet and as Herzen said in Lenin's article in his memory, "we came close to dialectical materialism and stopped before historical one".

-I can even say more than that. Everything that I do today is no longer psychology, it is philosophy... When you have published about 130 biographical books, this is already more than any experiments.

- I think, it is appropriate to quote here your announcement to the prospectus of the RMP (Real Modern Pictures) publishing house headed by you since 1993: "During this period of time, the nature of the publishing house has undergone changes that is directly related to changes in our understanding of the relationship between book and society, publisher and reader, about the economics of the book business.

One thing has remained constant for the publishing house and for me personally: high-quality and interesting books are to be edited. If in the process of working on the publication you get satisfaction from what you have done, if you see that you have managed to convey this feeling to the reader that opens your book, then you have achieved your goal ... The ellipsis at the end of this phrase only means that it is not advisable to stop there.

- And how did you start writing about the scientists of Dubna?

- At some point, I think, since my eleventh year, I have started to write books about scientists. First, Mstislav Vsevolodovich Keldysh, then Sergey Ivanovich Vavilov. We published the first book together with the Institute of Applied Mathematics and the second one - with FIAN. At least, they told about all the FIAN Nobel laureates. A book dedicated to Basov's 100th anniversary has just come out, just these days his jubilee is celebrated. About Prokhorov, Skobeltsyn, Ginzburg, Sakharov, we did the same. There are books published both in Russian and in English, since FIAN cooperates a lot with foreign organizations.

The book about Ilya Mikhailovich Frank was the first to open the way to cooperation with the Joint Institute. Working with FIAN, I could not but pay special attention to JINR, since you have so many intersections. And the same Tamm has been here many times, there are photographs with many scientists, including with his student Kadyshevsky. The books about Shirkov and Kadyshevsky were probably a kind of catalyst for us to have a book about M.G.Meshcheryakov published and there was a proposal to publish a book about B.M.Pontecorvo. Boris Starchenko and his group in the Scientific Information Division of the Institute proposed to publish a book for the 65th anniversary of JINR and we helped them with pleasure.

- And as I understand it, you succeeded to work well with him, didn't you?

- Boris played a very important role in my relationship with the Institute. While writing the first books about your scientists, I acquired a lot of useful information from him, a lot of practical advice, the help was just tremendous and even currently, no matter what book I write concerning the scientists of Dubna, we keep cooperating with each other, for a person that has worked here for so many years, is absolutely in the subject and I am very grateful to him.

- Whatever you do is a happy find for Dubna, for your approach turned out to be so timely and the urgent need for high-quality publications that preserve the memory of outstanding scientists is so strong that we can only hope for further cooperation. For young people that get more and more numerous in number at the Institute, this is a precious asset.

- This is just a very important point - to preserve the memory of this time, of the people - the bearers of this knowledge, these traditions. Meeting these wonderful people makes me envy myself. When I was writing a book about Kadyshevsky, his daughter Tatyana introduced me to her husband Alexey Rybnikov. And I remembered how I was shocked by his rock opera Juno and Avos in Leningrad at the end of the 1980s. Could I have imagined then that someday I would meet the person who had composed it and moreover, at the presentation of the book about this outstanding scientist at the Laboratory of Theoretical Physics, Rybnikov and I would take a picture in the Kadyshevsky's memorial study...

Interviewed by Evgeny MOLCHANOV