YOU WERE A CHILD DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR, BUT HOW DID YOU PERSONALLY, AND HOW DID YOUR FAMILY FAIR DURING THE WAR?

Our family lived in a city, Kazan, on Volga River, and Nazis were never able to come to this place. But several times in the beginning of the war we had a kind of air alarms. So somehow, indirectly we felt that the front was not very far from us. And of course, a lot of warnings were given to all of us. Needless to say, that every family had relatives... lost relatives taken to the army. And the same happened to our family also. And some of my uncles did not come back after the war.

HOW DID YOU ENTER CONSCIOUSLY THE NUCLEAR AGE? WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST CONSCIOUS NOTION?

Oh, I was still a young schoolboy in 1945. But already I was in the first or second year in physics, in elementary physics in school. And it was of course a great surprise to all of us, to schoolboys to learn about atomic bomb explosions. And since that time I became interested and I was reading books and I was trying to understand what's going on. And the decision to became a physicist was becoming stronger and stronger and stronger during the next few years. And in early 1950, I applied to the University of Moscow.

TELL ME HOW YOU HEARD ABOUT HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI?

It was written in newspapers. The announcement of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was published in our newspapers. It was just a few weeks after the war with Nazis was finished, and it was of course known very well in our country.

WHAT WAS YOUR FEELING ABOUT IT THEN?

I was very surprised, and of course a feeling that someone has a much more dangerous, tremendous bomb. It was some kind of feeling that we again felt little bit unsecure.

DID YOU FEEL THIS KIND OF FEELING PERSONALLY OR ARE YOU REFLECTING ON ATMOSPHERE ABOUT IT?

Well, I remember my personal feeling was that kind, of the kind that also the Second World War was over, but this new kind of scientific discovery could be influencing the development in the near future.

EVENTUALLY YOU HAD BECOME A COLLEAGUE OF KURCHATOV. CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT KURCHATOV AS A SCIENTIST?

When I met Kurchatov for the first time it was in 1956. He was a director of Atomic Energy Institute, named after his death the Kurchatov Institute. I was invited to join a group of people who were trying to develop controlled fusion program, famous names like Artsimovich, Lentovich, and others. And I met Kurchatov several times at seminars. My first impression was that he was little bit far personally, as a scientist, from details of controlled fusion. But his interest to that field of science and technology was enormous. Probably after I spent one or two years in the institute, somehow he heard of my first papers on plasma instabilities. And he was very much concerned if this new phenomena -- plasma instability's very completely new at that time -- could prevent the building of controlled fusion, his certainly... his beloved child for that period. And he invited me for a very long and serious conversation. He was interviewing on what type of instabilities would be dangerous. What could be the ways to avoid instability. To keep hot plasma out of contact with the... walls of the container of the reactor. And I remember he was writing everything which he heard from me. Imagine such a big man, famous, talking to a young scientist. And with such a great attention. So about one year later he again invited me and he asked almost similar questions. And he always was checking my previous answer a year ago. It was a kind of interesting cross-examination. I had a feeling that he tried during the last years of his life, he tried to make a very strong leap forward of these a... controlled fusion reactor. These peaceful uses of atomic energy.

COULD YOU TELL ME MORE ABOUT HIM AS A SCIENTIST? NOT NECESSARILY PERSONALLY, BUT GENERALIZE ABOUT HIM AS A SCIENTIST AND AS A LEADER OF THE COMMUNITY OF SCIENTISTS.

Oh... I can refer to what I heard from my teachers, from Maximovich, and others who knew Kurchatov since young age. He was one of the pupil's of academician Ioffe in Leningrad in the late '20s, early '30s. Ioffe was able to collect an extremely bright group of young people. And Kurchatov was one of the members of this group. And his first papers... his first works were about dielectrics and mainly solid state physics. And then in the mid-'30s he became very much interested in nuclear energy. He was one of originators of very first ion accelerator... atomic accelerator in Ioffe Institute in Leningrad. And somehow his name was associated with one of the first Russian discoveries in the field of atomic nuclear physics. Discovery of nuclear isomerie. Nuclear isomer is a notion a little bit similar to atomic isotope but a little bit more complicated. With this he entered into the late '30s. Also I remember that he was extremely well disciplined, a well organized man. And probably these features of his character, his personal qualities, very extremely important man he was appointed as scientific leader of applied nuclear program in the early '40s.

LET'S COME BACK TO THE... THE SCIENTIFIC ATMOSPHERE RELATING TO THE DISCOVERY OF FISSION IN EUROPE. TO WHAT EXTENT WERE SOVIET SCIENTISTS PARTICIPANTS IN THIS POOL OF INTERNATIONAL SCIENCE?

My impression is that there was a large European family of physicists. Family organized by Niels Bohr, Max Born and Rezhefort. And some of my teachers in physics spent quite of a time working with Niels Bohr. For example Lev Landau who was the brightest theoretical physicist in our country, and founder essentially, founder of theoretical physics here. He was working with Niels Bohr during several years during a few years of my life in Siberia in scientific city Novosibirsk. I had a very close friend of mine, Professor Yuriy Rumer. And Rumer was an older man. He... he also spent several years working in Gottingen with Max Born. So, many European physicists they were coming also to Soviet Union on lot of seminars. And the flavor of these seminars in physics still I had the chance to sense.

SO WHEN THE CUT IN THE FLOW OF INFORMATION OCCURRED IN 1939 OR SO -- ONE HAD THE SENSE, ON THE AMERICAN SIDE AT ONE TIME THAT THERE WAS A GROUP OF SCIENTISTS THAT FELT VERY STRONGLY THAT THE SHARING OF INFORMATION WAS VERY IMPORTANT... TRIED VERY HARD TO IMPLEMENT IT. THE QUESTION IS, WHEN THE SOVIET EFFORTS STARTED WAS THERE A SIMILAR GROUP HERE, OR BY THAT TIME WAS IT TOO POLITICIZED?

I think in the beginning... at the beginning of Second World War our country was deeply involved in defense. Nazis were attacking and I don't think that during first one or two years idea to spend efforts to organize such a huge program could occur. But in 1943, I think already people started to think of it and Kurchatov, of course, based on his personal knowledge of Ioffe physical family was already inviting his old friends to join his program.

WAS THERE A REAL FEAR AT THAT TIME THAT A NUCLEAR WEAPON COULD BE DEVELOPED BY NAZI GERMANY, BY OTHERS, OR WAS THAT STILL FAIRLY REMOVED?

Probably among narrow circle of physicists this idea would be entertained, but not among... The idea that Nazis would create atomic bomb probably could be entertained within the narrow circle of specialists. Not among general public at that time of course.

DO HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT WERE THE INSTRUCTIONS THAT KURCHATOV GOT? WHAT WERE HIS MARCHING ORDERS?

My impression, my guess would be that he was asked to organize and to create the counterpart to American atomic power. In principle, I think the first step was to set up the first chain reaction, to prove that chain reaction in fission material could be organized and could be controlled. And so the very first nuclear reactor was built, I think, in 1946 in his institute. And on the basis of this knowledge, the second step would be to materialize it in the defensive... in the warhead.

HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THE AMERICAN FAILURE TO PREDICT, OR TO FORECAST, HOW FAST THE SOVIET UNION WOULD BE ABLE TO DUPLICATE THE AMERICAN EFFORT?

I don't think that American experts could consider our top physicists or scientists as not sufficiently qualified to make necessary works on nuclear energy. Probably the main reason why American experts did not predict such quick development of a nuclear program in our country was based on the fact that economic status was really very poor. Country sacrificed all of its resources in the war with Nazis. And we have lost many people. 20 million of people, of lives that were lost during the war. And everything was based on the bare necessity. And I understand it would be very difficult to predict that a country could organize such a quick team of dedicated resources to build this complete infrastructure.

HOW DID YOU FIRST FEEL WHEN YOU HEARD ABOUT THE FIRST SOVIET SCHOOL?

I think it was a general feeling in this country that it was a... is a great relief. The time lag between first American nuclear test in early '45, and official announcement of the first Russian test in '49, was a quite a long. And I think many times, especially the Cold War was already at the beginning. The feeling was quite a kind of discomfort in this country.

CAN YOU SAY IT AGAIN?

When we first heard of American nuclear test it was early '45. Up to the moment when the first announcement came about our own Soviet nuclear... successful nuclear testing in '49 -- during these four years the general feeling among the public in this country, also among, I think, scientists, was a kind of, you know, a kind of great concern that someone who was of course was a... alive during the war is having the weapon for which we do not have our own match. And a Cold War already was in the beginning. So you can understand the great relief with which we learned about our own nuclear test.

ALONG THE SAME LINE, THERE IS AT LEAST ONE TREND IN AMERICAN POLICY, AND I SUSPECT A SIMILAR TREND IN SOVIET POLICY... SOME THINKING AMONG POLITICAL PEOPLE THAT THERE IS A TECHNOLOGICAL OR A SCIENTIFIC FIX TO THE PREDICAMENT OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS. HOW WOULD YOU DEAL WITH IT? OR IS THERE A FIX?

Somehow everything was reversible. Society was moving ahead very fast. Technology was developing and I think it was very difficult to avoid such technological innovation as first atomic bomb, and then thermonuclear bomb. I think the most important is what is going to happen next. We are I think, wise enough to see that technology taken alone cannot bring security. Somehow we have to change our psychology, way of thinking.

... ONE EXPLANATION THAT PEOPLE IN THE STATES OFFERED FOR SOVIET SUCCESS THE OLD THEORY OF ATOMIC SPIES. WHAT CAN YOU SAY ABOUT THAT?

I was not in the program at that time, so it would be very difficult for me to give assessment... a competent assessment. But on the fact of my knowledge of many personalities of that time who were very critical in the program, I think even if there was some kind of influx of information or data from outside, I think that crucial element was that we really had a fantastic team of people here.

TO THE EXTENT THAT YOU KNOW, THE DECISION TO MOVE FROM FISSION TO FUSION, TO GO THERMONUCLEAR, WHAT MOTIVATED IT AND HOW WAS IT ACHIEVED?

My interpretation is that a lot of discussion, a lot of popular science publications, a lot of rumors were incoming from America about possibility of having a next step to... of having a thermonuclear bomb. So... I mentioned it, our scientists and engineers were working under very strong press of that rumor and this potential possibility.

AT THE TIME THERE WAS ALSO A FAIRLY SUBSTANTIAL SET OF ARGUMENTS, DISCUSSIONS IN THE STATES. DO YOU KNOW WHETHER SIMILAR DISCUSSIONS WERE TAKING PLACE HERE?

The information about the discussions, and the story around Oppenheimer, this was declassified much later, so in the late '40s it was unknown. And we've always felt ourselves in the position of infer... of being inferior. Inferior in the potential confrontation. So I don't think we could have at that time... we had such doubts.

PROFESSOR SAGDEEV, CAN YOU VERY BRIEFLY TELL ME ABOUT YOUR CURRENT SCIENTIFIC WORK?

Oh, after my kind of scientific work is very different from what I was doing during first years of my scientific career. In fact I was with controlled fusion program and plasma physics during six years in Kurchatov Institute. And then almost 10 years in Novosibirsk where I had my own small group in plasma physics. And then in the early '70s, I returned back to Moscow and was invited by then President of Academy of Science, Academician Keldysh, as a director of Space Research Institute. He argued in a simple way. He said, "After all the most popular species in space is plasma so it wouldn't be difficult for you," he told me. So this is how I have joined the Space Research Institute, and of course I have now much less time to work with plasmas.

ONE MORE, CAN YOU SAY ANYTHING ABOUT RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN STALIN AND KURCHATOV?

Concerning relationship of Kurchatov with government of that time... Of course there are very many rumors, and I don't think I can give something interesting on personal relationships. But it was long remembered that Kurchatov had direct access to the government in case when he needed to solve problems: financial, manpower, building. And so, I think it was very essential for these very first years.

I'D LIKE TO ASK ONE CURRENT QUESTION... YOU ARE GOING TO ACCEPT, IT SAYS THAT YOU'RE GOING TO ACCEPT THE ON-THE-SPOT INSPECTION OF THE NUCLEAR... TESTING. IS IT TRUE?

During quieter years it was considered one of the main obstacles in order to reach comprehensive nuclear test ban is on-site inspection. And beginning from late '85 and in the early '86, I think we had several clarification on high level from our government. Especially Gorbachev was talking on that subject several times. And right now I think there are no problems for on-site inspection. So equipment which would sense underground explosive... explosions could be brought if there would be such an agreement on comprehensive test ban. Could be brought to our country. And I don't think that it would be technical difficulty in deciding to which places this equipment could be brought and installed.