Arzamas 16 : The Memoirs of a Nuclear Scientist in the Soviet Era

This book first appeared in Russia in 1994, and it covers a lifetime of experience in the research which led to the Russian nuclear bomb. It describes growing up in the early Soviet era, and it depicts the vicissitudes of life for a scientist under Stalin and his successors, the problems they had in carring out their research an in obtaining and improvising suitable equiptment: it paints a gallery of portraits of distinguished colleagues, and it gives a brief but fasinating account of the personal and political difficulties suffered by such as Abdrei Sakjharov and of the admittedly limited support which colleagues were able to offer.