An interview with Victor Ivanenko by Mike Hally in preparation for his book Electronic Brains.

Transcript :

Interview with Victor Ivanenko.
[Interviewer: Mike Hally, preparing material for radio series, also used for book].
[Victor Ivanenko spoke in English]

Transcribed and edited by Jon Hales, volunteer at CCH.

INT: Okay, that's recording. Just to start with, just tell me your name please.

VI: Oh, my name is Viktor Ivanenko.

INT:  Fine. Right. And my questions won't be heard at all in the programme, so I'll just ask you to talk about this place.  So can you just start saying we are at Feofania and then tell me about it?

VI: Okay, I see. So now we are in Feofania and the beginning of the work of Academician Lebedev was here, in this place, in this church and in the building behind the church.
 And the Academy of Science was given this church as an experimental place, at first to the Institute of Mechanics.

INT:  So that car made a noise, can you just say again that this Academy of Science was given?

VI: The church was given to the Academy of Science, it was an empty church of course, it was not a church already, but the building was given to the Academy of Science for the experimental work.

INT:  And at the beginning, the Institute of Mechanics, it seems to me, as far as I remember, in 1946-47, and they tested here, you have to say what they tested?

INT:  Cable.

VI: Cable for mining.

INT:  Yes, for lifts in mines.

VI: And they tested these cables because they had here at least 20 meters for this test.
 And then later, Academician Lebedev got some places in this church as a laboratory for computer. It was under secret service of course, it was very secret, secretly, but it is very nice place, very nice outskirts of Kiev.

INT:  I think that fire is a bit too noisy.

VI: Too noisy, you mean this fire?

INT: Yes, maybe.

VI: Okay, we find something. We go a bit further down. 

INT: The best thing is if we just start it again, so I'm sorry if you're going to have to repeat something you said. So if you say the same thing, this is Feofania.

VI: So, from the very beginning?

INT:  Yes, please.

VI: My name is Viktor Ivanenko. In 1954, I had to come here to make some calculation using the first computer, Lebedev's computer.

INT:  MESM.

VI: MESM, yeah. And therefore, from that moment, I am connected somehow to people who constructed MESM.  And remember some historical, I would say, episodes about the team, Lebedev's team, and people.  And you see there the church, and the church was given ... the building of the church. The building of the church was given to the Academy of Science by Soviet administration for some experiments.  The first experiments, it seems to me, was made by Institute of Mechanics.  They tested here the cable for mines, for mines elevator.

INT:  Sorry, for mines elevators, yeah.

VI: For mines elevators. It was such a thick, metallic cable, and they used 20 meters of height.  And they did not think about the church at that moment.

 And I remember that we swam in this lake when I visited the centre.
 At that time, Lebedev was in Moscow, of course, but the team was leading by Professor Dashevsky, it seems to me.  And the director of the laboratory was the very famous Ukrainian mathematician in probability theory, Professor Gnedenko.

 The whole story was connected with this place till 1958.  In 1956, the new director came, and he originated the Institute of Cybernetics on the base of this computer laboratory.  And this new director was Professor Glushkov.

 But what I would like to add, the story of these years, of years of first steps of computer science in this country, it's a very touchable story and very significant.  I loved some of the people from that team.  Some of them became my warm friends and neighbours in the future, in the past.  I respect them very much.

INT: You haven't said Feofania yet, so I can just say this is Feofania.

VI: Oh, this, all this place on the outskirts of Kiev is called Feofania.  I think it's in the name or by the name of some charge leader, because the name of Fanfan.

INT:  Oh, from the name?

VI: From the name, yeah.  But anyway, [noises outside ...]

INT: I'll just wait for a moment.

VI: Didn't I tell you that one of them died a week ago?

INT:  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Had he been ill for a long time or was he very sick?

VI: Yeah, last year, cancer. [Pause]

 It means that the water was much higher and then it goes down from this lake to the lake over there.  It's underground, it's upper lake and there is lower lake.  But now it must be cleaned.

INT:  Another thing I wondered is what was Kiev like and what was Ukraine like immediately after the war? What was it like around here?

VI: You mean at that time?

INT:  Yeah, I mean, had it all been destroyed and so on?

VI: Yes, of course.  The central part of the city was destroyed. Everybody could see this from some movies and people lives in the very difficult situation and very difficult, over-crowed apartments and working places were overcrowded.

 And here the team had much better conditions to work than in the city. So it was a very good decision of the Academy of Science to put them here.  But it was Lebedev's idea and his choice.  He found this place and he was given it to implement his idea.  You know, he was a professional, he was a specialist in the electrical power science.

INT:  Oh, power generation?

VI: Yes, yes, and as I remember he met some problems that could not be solved without very strong computation.  And it moved him, it drove him to the necessity to build the computer.  It was some problems of stability of electrical power systems, stations connected in the net, power net.  And he decided to build a computer that would be able to calculate this problem, to solve this problem.

INT: Did you know him at all?

VI: No, I came as the doctoral student to the institute where he was director.  So I met him at some meeting when he came from Moscow already.  But I was a young guy and he was a very top person.  But I remember him as a very intelligent, very polite, very warm person.

INT:  Does it bring back memories standing here?

VI: Yeah, yes, I remember.  I remember when I calculated my problems here, I was helped by some programmers.  It was very complicated programming because it was all very, computer was very poor with printers, etc. No printers at that time and special cards to program.  I don't have language ['the correct word'].

INT:  Oh, the punch cards to program?

VI: Yes, the punch cards.  So I was helped by two girls, two girls programmers here.  And I remember how we swam in the lake and there was a very nice sauna over there, but Russian sauna.  When you can use water and special thing from,... how do you call that?

INT:  Old branch or twig?

VI: Branch of that tree with white...

INT: Birch.

VI: Birch, yeah.  From birch, we did such, and we do, we still do such things to beat your body.  So it was not sauna in European sense. It was, I would say, Siberian sauna.

INT:  So, good.

VI: And I was young, I was not married at that time. It was interesting. Promising time, very promising time.

INT:  What was the church like at the time?

VI: Of course, it was not ..., it's new now, but it was dirty, lousy, without crests, without, how do you call this?

INT:  Roofs or minarets?

VI: No, no, on the roofs, there is a...

INT:  Oh, without the spire, the crosses and the spires.

VI: Without crosses, yes, without crosses.  Everything was dirty and lousy from outside.

INT:  It had been abandoned for a long time?

VI: Yes, yes.  After ..., later, when the new buildings for academy, academy institutes, for Institute of Mechanics were built, this church was used as the.... There is an English word, when you, you can put inside a lot of things and you can find them a lot and you save it.

INT:  Oh, a warehouse?

VI: Warehouse, yes, it was used as a warehouse for many, many years.  But now you see it's nice.  People come here and speak to God.  And it's nice, you see the young people.
 Good.  Maybe it brings morality to the society.  Maybe, I don't know, I don't believe, but my wife believes that it can bring.  I believe, I would say I believe in the future of this society, but I don't believe that the church can be fast enough to do this.
 It's a very long, long period of time to change people.  Okay.  Fine.

INT:  I'll just record a little bit of background sound if we just stand quietly for a moment.  I'll record the background.
 [ Background noise ]
 [ Silence ]
 [End of interview recording]

Provenance :
Created by Mike Hally and donated to the LEO computers Society

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