ADDENDUM: AFTER MINTZ

Several episodes and photos from my archive (for nothing should go to waste).

The chief of the Accelerators Department, Boris Pavlovich Murin, was appointed the next director after Mintz. Here is his photo from the last banquet attended by Mintz.
Murin’s appointment was unexpected I think for most people at RTI. As for me, I remember with gratitude how in his last days as director in 1977, Murin authorized turning my lab into a department. This not only allowed me more independence – something I’d been striving for – but also spared me the depressing conflicts with the head of the department my lab worked under. This boss was not a bad man, but we were fundamentally different. Coexistence in the same lair would not have led to any good.
The whole process of preparing public opinion and the order to make the lab into an independent department, which was kept secret from my immediate boss, was a rather nerve-wrecking and thrilling adventure with a far from certain outcome. First of all, just attempting to create two antenna departments inside the Institute would raise objections. We had to devise arguments for the restructuring the department that couldn’t be reduced to mere bad blood between colleagues. And such convincing arguments were found, although I don’t remember now what they were.
Second, it was necessary to secure the approval of not just the administration, but of the Institute’s Party leadership as well. And keep in mind that I was not in the Party, while my boss was in the Party committee. He could have simply blocked the impending order, had he known about it. A big thank you to Gena Sein, the department’s Party secretary, who signed the order without hesitation. His signature made the difference; after that Talakin, the RTI Party secretary promptly signed too.
And now Gena is working at VympelCom.
I’d collected all the necessary, and even more of unnecessary signatures; there were so many that my eyes hurt when I looked at them; then got an appointment with Murin, and had him sign the fateful (for me) order about an hour before my now former boss found out about it. He tried blocking it, but it was too late.
Had this conversion of my lab into a department fallen through, had I not had this hour, what would my destiny have been? Would I have remained at RTI, would VympelCom have been created? Who knows...
Incidentally, many years later, only 10 – 15 minutes passed between a VympelCom representative receiving a very important license, and the banning of this license by a New Big Bureaucrat (who was – goes without saying – from St. Petersburg). If not for these 10 – 15 minutes, there wouldn’t have been any VymapelCom – at least, as we know it now. We may find out some day from Valery Frontov, or from me – but not in these pages.
So, there you go. There is a right time for everything.

In these photographs you see the RTI Director after Murin, Victor Sloka. This is the skiing camp Chimbulak, over the Medeo skating rink, in the early 80’s. We had split from the construction site ¹ 8 of the Balkhash testing ground, where the Don-2N station was being built, for what is now called “a weekend.”
Now that I have mentioned the testing ground, I suddenly remembered how several years before these events, when the test version of the RRS was only in the first stages of construction, construction site ¹ 8 was adorned by a multiple-hole soldiers’ outhouse with an appeal inscribed over the entrance door: “Warrior, transfer your pass to your fatigue shirt.” Too bad we couldn’t take pictures.
I can’t resist showing you one more photo: this is already Cheget, where in 1998 we were celebrating an avalanche of awards, and celebrating well. Victor Ivantsev (the one on the extreme left, in red) had become a Hero of Socialist Labor that year, Victor Sloka (in the middle) received the State Prize, Valentin Losev (holding a camera) got the Lenin Prize. On Sloka’s left is his right hand, Victor Struchev. On the extreme right is Felix Aizin who, along with Struchev, wasn’t honored with an award. Instead he is now at VympelCom.

Ivantsov and Losev got their awards for creating the RLS Darial – the very Gabolin RLS that the media has been so preoccupied with in the last few years. Ivantsov was its chief designer, and Losev was his deputy and developer of the transmission system.