Účast Československa na zřízení Spojeného ústavu jaderných výzkumů (Dubna, Rusko) a zastoupení v jeho prvním ředitelství

Abstract

Within a wider context of establishment of international collaboration in nuclear physics and peaceful exploitation of nuclear energy in the 1950s, this article outlines Czechoslovak participation in the creation of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Energy in Dubna (Russia). This institute was intended to serve as a parallel to the European Laboratory for Nuclear research (CERN) for countries of the Eastern Bloc. Based on archival sources, we include a ‘memory record’ describing how Czechoslovakia was in January 1956 invited to participate in establishing the institute. We outline the composition and contributions of the Czechoslovak delegation at a meeting of eleven founding states in Moscow in March 1956 and investigate the circumstances of election of Vaclav Votruba (1909–1990), a Czechoslovak theoretical physicist, to the post of secretary to Director of the Dubna Institute and his subsequent activities in this function in 1955–1959. The article also describes a visit of the institute by a Czechoslovak governmental and Communist Party delegation headed by President Antonin Zapotocký in January 1957 and subsequent pardon, which the President granted to the Czechoslovak physicist Milos Lokajicek (1923–2019), who was in 1954 sentenced to seven years in prison for participation in a Catholic association called ‘The Family’.