Ферзи и пешки

В незаконченной автобиографии великий физик Георгий Гамов (лучший физик-теоретик советской школы по мнению Льва Ландау) рассказывал о нескольких попытках выбраться из СССР.

Первая идея была перейти границу под Мурманском. План оказался ненадежным - нужно было найти проводника, а местные проводники, как выяснилось, выдавали перебежчиков советским пограничникам. Вторая попытка была переплыть Черное море на байдарке в Турцию. План почти удался, но шторм на море прибил байдарку обратно к берегу. В конце концов в 1933 он добился разрешения поехать на конференцию в Брюссель. Советские власти не хотели выпускать его туда вместе с женой.

Гамов не увлекался шахматами, но смог по-шахматистски переиграть советское руководство. Он добился аудиенции у Молотова, и когда Молотов спросил, зачем ему тащить с собой жену, объяснил, что он мечтает сделать ей подарок и показать Париж. Молотов дал разрешение, но даже после этого волокита тянулась долгое время. Гамов категорически отказывался забирать свой паспорт с выездной визой, если такой же не дадут жене, и и сумел в итоге настоять на своем, чтобы больше никогда не вернуться.



His posthumously published autobiography, My World Line, contains vivid accounts of some of his attempts to escape from the Soviet Union. In what he describes as the "Crimean campaign" of 1932, he and his new wife, Lyubov Vokhminzeva, nicknamed "Rho," tried to cross the Black Sea to Turkey. Gamow had put the distance at about 170 miles. The voyage was to be made in a small kayak equipped only with paddles and provided with little more than eggs, chocolate, strawberries, and two bottles of good brandy.
"The first day was a complete success..." he writes. "I'll never forget the sight of a porpoise seen through a wave illuminated by the sun sinking below the horizon." In less than 36 hours, however, the weather turned: "The force of the wind pressing against my chest was moving the boat backward, stem first."
The intrepid but exhausted pair had to return to shore. After a couple of days in a hospital, Gamow managed to persuade Soviet authorities that the unexpectedly inclement conditions had supervened to spoil the boat's sea trials!
On their return to Leningrad from a later and equally unsuccessful attempt to escape, Gamow and Rho were more than a little surprised to find that the government had appointed him to represent the Soviet Union at the upcoming Solvay theoretical physics conference to be held in Brussels in October 1933. George resolved to take advantage of this opportunity to leave the Soviet Union for good. He used his acquaintance with Soviet science minister Nikolai Bukharin to get an interview with Stalin's right-hand man, the dour and hard-headed Vyacheslav Molotov, in which he secured the latter's approval to allow Rho to accompany him to Brussels.
After the conference, Gamow accepted an invitation to lecture at the University of Michigan Summer School in Theoretical Physics. During that summer of 1934, GW President Cloyd Heck Marvin and Merle Tuve (director of the accelerator laboratory at the Carnegie Institution of Washington) invited Gamow to come to Washington. He would conduct research at Carnegie and join the University's physics department.
Gamow advanced three conditions. First, he wanted to invite a colleague of his choice to join the GW faculty to work with him. The man he had in mind, Edward Teller, then at Birkbeck College in London, was appointed to the GW physics department a year later. Second, he asked for Marvin and Tuve's support in organizing a conference on theoretical physics to be held annually in Washington under the joint auspices of the University and the Carnegie Institution. Third, he requested that his initial appointment at GW be described as visiting professor. (Since his Soviet passport allowed him to remain legally outside the Soviet Union for only a year, he wanted to give the impression that he might not be contemplating defection.)
Five years later, Gamow became a naturalized U.S. citizen.
https://physics.columbian.gwu.edu/getting-bang-out-gamow

На следующий год после невозвращения Гамова сталинские власти захлопнули в мышеловку Петра Капицу, приеховшего в СССР навестить родителей, и не выпустили его обратно в Англию. Среди многих других физика становилась невыздной профессией.

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