"We must remember that before the appearance of Peter Kapitsa, we were the first and only laboratory in the USSR ..."

Abstract

Lev Vasilievich Shubnikov was born in 1901 in St. Petersburg. His father, Vasily Vasilievich, worked as an accountant, and his mother, Lyubov Sergeyevna, ran a household. In 1911, Lev Shubnikov was enrolled in one of the best St. Petersburg secondary schools - the Maria Andreevna Lentovskaya gymnasium. He studied diligently, as evidenced by the archival documents of the gymnasium. In the report card for graduation, grade 8, in the column “physics” it says “there is a great interest in the subject”. In 1918, Shubnikov entered the Petrograd University at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics (specialty “Physics”). But he was the only recruiting physics student of this year, and he had to listen to lectures first with those who were a year older, then - a younger course. An illustration of the student life of those years is the memoirs of his classmate Olga Nikolaevna Trapeznikova, doctor of physical and mathematical sciences: “In 1919 I entered the physical department of Petrograd University. I met Lev Vasilievich at the university ... Life was difficult. After the lectures, Lev Vasilievich compiled a list of those present, the lecturer signed, and we all were given a thin piece of bread with jam - we called it tea allowance ... In 1919, the Optical Institute already existed, and D.S. Rozhdestvensky arranged for all senior students ... laboratory assistants. Separate building GOI [State Optical Institute. - Note A.T.] then did not yet have and was housed at the University's Physics Institute. All laboratory assistants received the so-called rations, and this supported them very much. Teachers received the same ration. ” The following historical facts deserve mention: the First World War, revolution, civil war and intervention gave rise to devastation, famine, cold in the country. The following extracts from government documents of that time allow you to clearly describe the then realities.