All nuclear stories begin similarly, but each ends in its own way. First, the scientist writes a letter to the authorities. Then some senior executive official, perhaps someone close to the real center of power or perhaps power itself, warms to the idea. He studies the numbers, actions, costs and available potentials, and then in the forum of the closest state leaders, he launches the idea of building a nuclear plant that will solve all the problems with the missing megawatts, thinking, of course, about the other, military purpose of the undertaking.
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This starts a chain reaction that takes place quite parallel to the existing structures - outside the universities and state institutions, new institutions are established with separate budgets, special measures and special commissions that manage the enterprise instead of administrative or parliamentary committees. The scientist is invited to assemble a "scientific arsenal". A secret location is chosen, usually near water - a convenient, remote spot that someone has noticed while hunting - a fence is erected, huts for the physicists, equipment and a library arrive.
Locals from nearby villages can't help but notice military and cargo trucks transporting strange loads on local roads at night, groups of scientists walking along the shore waving their hands enthusiastically, or dosimeters sprouting up in the surrounding fields. The locals talk with fear about the experiments "over there", they go around the barbed wire and run away when they see the guards, some write letters of protest that no one publishes, others shake their heads, others sell their property and leave, and some enterprising local opens a bar not far from the new institute. If he is witty, he will name her "Hiroshima". Because everyone, of course, knows what the purpose of the secret plant is.
Vinca is an example of an ambitious nuclear undertaking in a small country. Similar programs were launched in many countries after World War II, with more or less foreign support and with more or less success. Vinča originated in socialist Yugoslavia, in the largest state of the South Slavs in the Balkans, which existed during the 20th century and then disappeared in the flames of civil wars. History wanted Vinča, as a paradigm of the country that raised it, to share its fate - to be born, to develop rapidly, to grow so that it would be recognized worldwide and then to begin to fall apart.
YUGOSLAV ENTERPRISE
The confluence of circumstances meant that Yugoslavia would be one of the few European countries that during the Cold War did not essentially belong to either of the two major nuclear blocs, neither the eastern, Soviet, nor the western NATO bloc, which made the nuclear program in Vinča indigenous in many respects. , one can say - Yugoslav.
In other publications, I published and, it seems to me, proved in detail the thesis that "physics in Serbia originated as a Yugoslav product". Along with the acquisition of modern statehood, Serbia as a principality, and then as a kingdom, in the 19th century invested significantly in the development of social sciences and humanities, while, despite the success of Serbian scientists in emigration, physics and related disciplines were almost undeveloped until the Second World War . With the birth of the SFRY, the Yugoslav socialist community, of which Serbia was a part for half a century, however, there was an explosive development of these sciences, and the center of that process was, inevitably, Vinča.
Although it almost died out after Chernobyl, as we will see in the following chapters, during the 20th century domestic nuclear physics was the mother from which the currents of practically all today's successful fields of research in physics, and one could argue in the natural sciences in general, branched off. , which dominate the scientific sector in Serbia and the Balkans in the 21st century. But Vinca itself, divided, shaken by affairs and neglected, is a pale shadow of the once world-famous nuclear institute, one of the symbols of the power of the former SFRY.
Today Vinča can upset few people - recently, with one of its anniversaries, the Institute for Nuclear Sciences "Vinča" made headlines due to a "leak" from one of its two decommissioned reactors. However, the news went unconvincingly and lasted barely a few days, just long enough for Vinci to spoil the birthday celebration, only to be quickly forgotten. The dramatic warning that something is "leaking" from the reactor in Vinci is as fresh as the news that socialist Yugoslavia is falling apart.
photo: photo documentation inn winchBETWEEN EAST AND WEST: Construction of a nuclear institute in secret, Vinča, 1948.
Vinča was created by a decision in the very heart of Yugoslavia's post-war power. It was the decision of the leader of socialist Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito, that in the winter of 1947/8, in the village of Vinča, on the Danube, near Belgrade. founded the Institute for Nuclear Research. This institution was founded as a federal, all-Yugoslav institution for atomic nucleus research.
"For the purpose of scientific and research work in the field of physics, the Institute of Physics was established under the Presidency of the Federal Government as an independent institution with headquarters in Belgrade", reads the news carried by the daily newspaper "Politika" in the Saturday edition of January 24, 1948. The news did not attract a lot of attention, which was intended, but today it testifies to the special position this newly established institution had in Yugoslavia at the time. This also meant that he had a special, very unique budget.
Namely, the public notice is preceded by the Decree of the five-member Government of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, dated January 10 of the same year, which was signed by the Prime Minister of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Marshal of Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito. The regulation stipulates that it is he who determines the director, special regulations of work and organization, as well as that the new Institute has "a special estimate of income and expenses that is part of the income and expenses of the Presidency of the Government of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia".
In the first two years, the new institution was called the Institute of Physics, then from 1950 the beautiful name Institute for the Examination of the Structure of Matter, and from 1953 it received the party name Institute for Nuclear Sciences "Boris Kidrich". With the social changes of the nineties, starting in 1992, the name of the institute was changed to the Institute of Nuclear Sciences "Vinča".
In the years after its establishment, the institute will be managed by SKNE, the Federal Commission for Nuclear Energy, which took care of finances, plans and the expansion of the support network - connection with the economy and the military, evening training and radiological protection of civilians, strengthening physics at the university, launching special courses nuclear technology, and even the establishment of the Mathematical Gymnasium and other schools for the training of talents. The president of SKNE was one of the five most influential politicians of Yugoslavia, the head of the secret service and at that time a personal friend and closest associate of Josip Broz, Aleksandar Ranković, and her fate, along with him and Tito, will be constantly dealt with by the highest party leaders of Yugoslavia.
photo: monograph "50 years of the Vinca Institute"THE "SECRET" NUCLEAR FACILITY WHICH HAS BEEN VISITED BY THE MOST WORLD STATESMEN FROM BOTH THE WEST AND THE EAST: Afghan Shah Mohamad Zahir with Josip Broz (i); Indonesian President Sukarno (ii); Indian leaders Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru (iii); Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser (iv); Ethiopian Emperor Haile Salasius (v); King Olaf V of Norway (vi)
Some authors believe that Vinca was created because Yugoslavia developed nuclear weapons on two occasions - the first time, from 1948 to the beginning of the sixties and then, the second time, from 1974 to the mid-eighties. The available documents, interviews and memoirs indeed indicate the increased activity of Vince in these periods. Yugoslavia also had a uranium mine in Kalna on Stara Planina, but never, however, opened any fuel processing facility, nor did it seriously violate anti-nuclear agreements with the IAEA.
Vinca was, in fact, large and carefully built - an illusion. When one takes into account the pioneering level of knowledge in domestic physics of that time, as well as the external circumstances, it is likely that the Yugoslav leadership at first fantasized about the bomb, but nevertheless waited for a better moment for its construction, trying to prepare the ground in Vinča until the time came. and without regretting the means, he improved domestic science (in which, in the long run, he really succeeded).
Meanwhile, in very difficult moments for the Yugoslav community, Vinča suddenly and without a bomb began to bear fruit. In the terrified world of the Cold War, the illusion of a possible Yugoslav bomb for Tito and his young associates began to serve well as a nuclear part of the role in negotiations both with the great powers and with friends from the non-aligned world. Thus, over time, Vinča became a "secret nuclear project" that the Yugoslav army kept on "dead watch", and which at the same time was visited by the largest number of foreign statesmen and military commanders from all over the world.
photo: sanuFOUNDER OF THE INSTITUTE: Academician Pavle Savić (1909-1994)
The key scientific figure in the nuclear enterprise of socialist Yugoslavia is the physicist and chemist Pavle Savić (1909-1994), one of the most important scientists of the Yugoslav era and essentially the founder of Vinča. As one of the best students of the Faculty of Philosophy before the war, Pavle Savić was sent to Paris to study radiation chemistry. In 1938, he joined the Radium Institute in Paris, where he worked directly with Irene Joliot Curie.
Here he studied the radioactive products that arise when uranium is bombarded with neutrons, which, as we saw in the story of Otto Hahn, on the eve of the "Manhattan" project, will lead to the discovery of fission. A communist since his student days, in addition to research, Savić was also active in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia before the war. With the beginning of the war, Savić returned to Belgrade, and then joined the partisans, where he spent part of the war in the Supreme Headquarters. As a personal friend of Tito's, Savić maintains the stick radios and follows the path of the People's Liberation Army. During the war, he loses all contact with scientists, completely unaware of further dramatic developments in nuclear physics.
"Can something be made of your physics for military purposes?" other communists in the headquarters asked him, to which he casually replied that his experiments were of such a nature that they could not be used for any weapon. However, after liberation, Pavle Savić realizes with great surprise that it was his research in Paris that in the meantime led to the detonation of the most terrible weapon ever made - the bomb dropped in Hiroshima (which he will be interested in for the rest of his life and will visit this Japanese city). . In the meantime, Josip Broz sends him to Moscow, where he collaborates with one of the greatest Soviet physicists, Piotr Kapica.
In the recorded account of the founding of Vinča, Pavle Savić himself says: "In 1946, Tito was coming to Moscow, when we met. Tito came to the Institute, and Kapica asked him for a photo with his signature (he later went to internment with that photo). While Tito was visiting the Institute, he said to me: 'Come to the country to build our institute'. On that occasion, a decision was made about it". The following year, Savić really returned to Belgrade and already in the summer of 1947, at first completely alone and without an official decision on the foundation, he began the construction of buildings on the banks of the Danube.
"When determining the location in the village of Vinča, care was taken that it should not be in the immediate vicinity of the city, because from the very beginning it was foreseen to work there with higher levels of radioactivity", notes Slobodan Nakićenović, who will succeed Pavle as director from 1949. Savić. "During the Institute's 13 years of operation, it can be said that the choice of location is justified, except for certain difficulties related to traffic in the winter."
The first group of researchers gathers in Vinci. Enthusiasm inside the compound guarded by the Yugoslav People's Army is enormous. Scientists work, live and sleep here in newly built facilities. Milorad Mlađenović develops physics, and Pavlo Savić is assisted in procuring literature from abroad by Aleksandar Milojević, a member of the Military Mission in Germany and the latter university professor of physics (he will later found the new Republican Institute of Physics in Belgrade in 1961 as a university institution where all fields of study will be studied of physics except nuclear, which will become the leading scientific institution in Serbia in the 21st century).
However, along with Pavle Savić, the Dutch physicist Robert Wallen, who came to Vinča in August 1948, played a key role in this early phase of Vinča's development.
photo: monograph "50 years of the Vinca Institute"NEW YUGOSLAV SCIENCE: The gigantic 15 MeV Cockroft-Walton accelerator V1,5 and a delegation with Tito visiting Vinci
The Radium Institute was founded in Paris in 1909, which in the years before the war would be a globally important research center, but also a place where numerous leftists among scientists gathered and were educated. This institution, through Pavle Savić, represented a model for the creation of the Yugoslav Institute.
After Marie Curie received the Nobel Prize with her husband Pierre Curie and Henri Bacheler in 1903, the University of Paris and the Pasteur Institute created a new institution that simultaneously studies radioactivity and its application in medicine. In 1970, this institution merged with the Curie Foundation to develop into a prestigious center for cancer treatment. The model of comparative development of medicine and physical research of this institution will be reflected in the organization and structure of the Vinča Institute, where medical and biological research led by Dušan Kanazir began as early as 1949.
Until then in Belgrade, physics was in its infancy before the Second World War. The first real physical research was initiated by University professor Dragoljub Jovanović, who had just started his scientific career at the Radium Institute. His research, which is also carried out by his colleagues who teach both at the Department of Physics of the Faculty of Philosophy and at the Faculty of Medicine, is in the field of radioactivity. That's why Jovanović and his talented student, Pavle Savić, refer him to the Radium Institute. In Paris, he will be involved in world research trends, but at the same time he will also maintain ties with the French leftists.
Thus, Savić's associate from the Netherlands, Robert Wallen, will come from this Institute from Paris to Vinča. He is the physicist who will design the first laboratories, choose the instrumentation, start the first measurements and set the first research tasks. After staying in Yugoslavia and starting Vinča, Valen will return to the Radium Institute in the mid-1950s. The Institute in Vinča that Savić and Valen started was actually conceived as a Radium Institute, but in the end it will be even ten times bigger than what its founders planned.
In the next issue: Alchemy of the bomb - Between Stalin and radiation
