Korets, Moses Abramovich

Born in the family of a watchmaker, spent his childhood in Sevastopol and in Simferopol . At 16, he goes to study in Moscow, where he works as a bookbinder, confectioner, and loader. In 1927 he entered the Moscow Industrial and Pedagogical Institute named after K. Liebknecht , in 1929 he transferred to the Physics and Mechanics Department of the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute . There Korets listens to lectures by physics teachers such as L.D. Landau and M.P. Bronstein . Being on the 4th year ( 1932 ), M. A. Korets headed the Department of Physics at Komvuz im. Stalin, who was housed in the former Tauride Palace . After graduating from the Polytechnic Institute, he worked as deputy dean of the Faculty of Physics and Mechanics of the Ural Industrial Institute named after S. M. Kirov in the city of Sverdlovsk .

March 13, 1935, at the invitation of L.D. Landau, he arrived in Kharkov , where he took the post of engineer of the theoretical department of the Ukrainian Institute of Physics and Technology (UFTI) and, concurrently, Landau's assistant at Kharkov University (KSUE). During this period, Korets, according to Landau, “managed to prove himself as a capable young theoretical physicist” ^[1] .

Landau sets broad tasks for the development of physics in the Soviet Union, from teaching in schools to creating a world center for the study of theoretical physics in Kharkov. Korets becomes his "closest employee and assistant" ^[2] . In the summer of 1935, Landau and Korets go to schools in the Kharkov region with a check on the level of education. Together they write an article entitled “The Bourgeoisie and Modern Physics” ^[3] , and take it to the chief editor of Izvestia , Bukharin . The article was published on November 23, 1935 .

In the UFTI itself, Landau’s position is met with resistance in the person of the director of the UFITI Davidovich and Pyatigorsky , a student of Landau ^[4] . As a result of this struggle, on November 14, 1935, Korets was expelled from the UIPTI with the wording “for concealing social origin” ^[5] , and on November 28, 1935 he was arrested by the NKVD in the Kharkiv region on charges of campaigning for disrupting defense orders (the so-called “ case ” UFTI "). On December 31, 1935, L. D. Landau sent a letter to the head of the NKVD of Ukraine V. A. Balitsky in defense of Korets. By a court decision of February 26, 1936, he was sentenced to 1.5 years in prison. Apparently, as a result of appeals by UFTI employees to the Central Committee and the NKTP by a decision of the special board of the Supreme Court of the Ukrainian SSR on April 7, 1936, the sentence was canceled and the case was returned for a new trial. Korets was released. On May 13, 1936, a special commission of the Kharkiv Regional Court sent a case for further investigation; on July 25, 1936, a decision by Of the 4th branch of the SPO HOU NKVD, case No. 7771 was dismissed due to a lack of prosecution materials.

In February 1937, Korets, following Landau, moved to Moscow. He worked at the Department of Physics of the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute named after Bubnov and in the popular science magazine "Youth Technology".

In April 1938 , Korets, together with Landau, wrote a leaflet calling for the overthrow of the Stalinist regime. Korets passes it to Pavel Kogan , who, on behalf of a group of IFLI students, took over the distribution of leaflets by mail before the May Day holidays. On April 27, 1938, Korets, Landau, and Rumer , a Landau employee at the Moscow Institute of Physical Problems , were arrested. During the investigation, Korets "was in Lefortovo prison , was beaten" ^[6] . The indictment in the Korets case contains a charge of espionage, but by a court decision of November 25, 1939 this charge was dropped. Korets was sentenced to ten years of forced labor under Article 58 paragraphs 10 and 11 of the Criminal Code (“Propaganda or agitation containing a call to overthrow, undermine or weaken the Soviet power”) ^[7] . He served his sentence in Pechorlag , near the village of Mezhog . In 1942 he was sentenced to another 10 years. Among the charges were Korets’s statements in early 1941 about a possible German attack on the Soviet Union. In the indictment, these words were regarded as doubts about the strength of the Soviet system.

Korets was amnestied on March 18, 1952 , having served 14 years in an ITL , and until 1958 was in exile, worked as a senior power engineer at the Intaugol plant.

In 1956, Landau appealed to the Central Military Prosecutor's Office with a letter in defense of Korets ^[8] . Despite this, in the 1938 case , Korets’s rehabilitation was denied; rehabilitation took place only posthumously in 1990 .

In 1958, Korets was rehabilitated in the 1942 case. He returned to Moscow, worked in the journal "Nature", wrote books under the pseudonym Karev. Friendly relations of Koreans with Landau continued until the death of the latter in 1968 .

In December 1973 he applied for departure to Israel with the family of his daughter Natasha, but they were refused because of the secrecy of the work of his son-in-law, physicist Yuri Golfand .

History of its writing

By the beginning of 1938, Landau and Korets

^[9]

Pavel Kogan told Korets about the existence of a group of students from the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History , ready for action. Korets, together with Landau, compiled the text of the leaflet, which it was decided to propagate on a hectograph and send it to the addresses from the directory "All Moscow". On April 23, Kogan took the text of the leaflet from Korets for its reproduction and distribution. On April 27, Korets, Landau, and Rumer were arrested.

Reasons for Arrest

The investigation materials contain extracts from the testimonies of physicists of the UFTI Shubnikov and Rosenkevich , who were shot in 1937 in Kharkov on charges of espionage in favor of Nazi Germany ^{[10] [11]} . In these testimonies, they “acknowledge” their participation in the counter-revolutionary Trotskyist organization, which included Landau and Korets ^[12] .

In addition, in the materials of the investigation there is an undercover report dated April 19, 1938 :

^[13]

There was a denunciation of March 5 , containing statements by Landau and Rumer, which condemned the leadership of the country ^[14] .

According to Korets, Kogan was a provocateur in this story and acted on the instructions of the NKVD ^[15] . Only this can explain why he was not arrested, and the handwritten copy of the leaflet was in the hands of the investigation. Proponents of Kogan's innocence suggest that there is an informant among his entourage. Confirmation of this is the presence in the hands of the NKVD of the testimonies of Kharkov physicists, "sufficient" for the arrest of Landau and Korets ^[16] .

Proceedings

On April 28, 1938, the day after the arrest of Landau, P.L. Kapitsa sent a letter to Stalin in which he requested that “the Landau case be“ treated very carefully ” ^[17] . Apparently, the letter took effect, since the Landau investigation took place in the Inner Prison in Lubyanka and without the use of physical impact. In the internal materials of the investigation it is written that Landau “was not interrogated for a month and a half,” then he was subjected to interrogation for many hours, during the interrogations “they waved but did not beat” ^[18] , but Landau did not answer the investigators' questions until August 3 . Korets and Rumer were detained during the investigation at Lefortovo prison and were beaten.

In the testimony of Korets on August 30, he takes the main blame on himself:

In interrogations after May 22, the Korets case is associated with yet another branch of the UFTI case in addition to the charges of Shubnikov and Rosenkevich, namely, the case of Fomin and the Austrian physicist Weisberg, who were convicted of espionage in favor of German intelligence ^[20] .

Rumer confesses his guilt the day after his arrest: “I fully admit my membership in the counter-revolutionary group of physicists”, listing all any noticeable physicists of the country ^[21] . His case is considered separately from the Landau and Korets case, during interrogation on July 16, Rumer pleads recruited “for scientific espionage in favor of German intelligence,” and in August 1938 he was sent to Tupolevskaya Sharashka , where new aircraft were developed. The 1940 sentence read “10 years in prison” ^[22] .

On January 14, 1939, Korets and Landau were indicted, according to which

Korets was accused of

Landau was accused of

On April 6, 1939, Kapitsa wrote a letter to Molotov asking him to “expedite the Landau case” or at least “use Landau’s head for scientific work” ^[23] . A day later, on April 8, a new interrogation of Landau by the head of the investigative unit of the NKVD Kobulov took place . Based on the results of this interrogation, Kobulov drew up a certificate stating that "Landau refused all his testimony as fictitious." On April 26, Kapitsa was invited to the NKVD to meet with the deputies of Beria , Kobulov and Merkulov , where he bailed Landau. On April 28, the NKVD decided:

^[24]

Landau and Korets were separated, and on November 25, Korets was convicted by the court on all charges, although Korets refuses part of the testimony of the investigation - about espionage and recruitment to a counter-revolutionary organization.

After a cassation appeal, Korets was charged with espionage, but the sentence is

remained valid.

• Landau, Lev Davidovich
• Obreimov, Ivan Vasilievich
• Leipunsky, Alexander Ilyich
• Landau and Lifshitz Theoretical Physics Course # History
• UVTI case

• Site dedicated to the memory of Moses Korets: letters, poems, memories of him
• UFTI BUSINESS
• Documents of the case of 1938.
• Unsuccessful attempt to review the case in 1956
• 1990 Rehabilitation
• Excerpts from the book of Genadiy Gorelik “Soviet life of Lev Landau” [3]
• Memoirs of Ella Ryndina, Landau's niece
• Around Landau - materials on the personal site of Genadiy Gorelik
• Korets M., Ponizovsky Z., “Why is the Moon not made of cast iron?” “Quantum” 1972, No. 4