Shapiro, Rafael Borisovich

Rafael Shapiro was born on January 13, 1926 in Moscow into a Jewish family. In 1930, his father, Boris Shapiro, was convicted of the “Shakhty case” and exiled to Kazakhstan, and then to Siberia. Mother and 5-year-old Rafik followed him. After the release of his father in 1936, the family moved to Baku with his father's relatives.

On November 9, 1943, while studying in the 10th grade, together with Heinrich Altshuller (a long-term co-author and one of the founders of TRIZ) and Igor Talyansky with the support of D. D. Kabanov, head of the BRiZ (Bureau for Rationalization and Invention) of the Caspian Flotilla, he applied for his the first invention “Respiratory apparatus with a chemical cartridge” ^{[3] [4]} (A.S. 6756 USSR. Cl. 61a 29/01. Respiratory apparatus with a chemical cartridge / G. S. Altshuller, R. B. Shapiro, I. V. Talyansky (USSR) .- N 5305/324480; Application. 09.11.43. Published. 21.08.47.), Which was classified. The copyright certificate for it was received only in 1947.

Later, R. Shapiro, in collaboration with G. Altshuller, filed several dozen applications for inventions, according to which even before 1950 at least five copyright certificates were received ^[5] . The most significant of them is a gas thermal protection suit (author's certificate No. 111144), the creation of which was fascinatingly described later in the popular science article “In a suit through a fire” (On individual means of thermal protection) / G. Altshuller, R. Shapiro // Knowledge is power. - 1965, No. 12. - S. 20 - 22.)

After the end of World War II, he entered the Azerbaijan Industrial ("oil") institute to study. At the same time, he met his future wife Nora.

At the beginning of 1950, when Shapiro was in his fifth year at the Faculty of Petroleum and Mechanics, he, along with G. Altshuller, was arrested by the NKVD on the denunciation of one of his friends. In conversations with students in the 80s, Altshuller repeatedly mentioned that under the influence of R. Shapiro and with his participation in 1948, a letter was written to I.V. Stalin sharply criticizing the situation with inventions in the USSR:

“Shapiro had an idea to write a letter to Stalin. I must say, for him this is a characteristic reaction in general. When he was imbued with the consciousness of the greatness of something, he wanted to quickly introduce and get the result .... Shapiro was a terrific optimist. ” ( ^[6] .

However, during the life of R. Shapiro and G. Altshuller, this event did not receive any documentary evidence. Shapiro himself never mentioned him anywhere. Altshuller described the reasons and details of the arrest in a contradictory and each time somewhat different way, citing more and more adventure and dubious details that gradually gave the story truly legendary forms ^[7] and served as the basis for creating a heroic image of one of the founders of TRIZ in the West ^[8] .

The actual, albeit no less tragic circumstances of the arrest of two friends finally became clear only 50 years later, after the death of Shapiro, from the memoirs of I. Lisnyanskaya ^[9] . A fatal role in their life was played by a joke inadvertently made in the circle of friends about Altshuller’s idea about the possible use of mercaptan for civil defense purposes:

“ ... they knew about the baleen“ muzzle ”and about the powder invented by Genka with the help of Rafka. ... And you never know what the three student friends did not discuss with the three of them, how many forbidden jokes and plans were built between them! The authorities only learned about the “face” and the powder that could stink the parade. ...

And after the death of Stalin, Lyuskin Altshuller and Rafka Shapiro, who were given 25 years of strict regime each, were released and rehabilitated, and it turned out that my poor Kopeikis had nothing to do with it. Issued just Edelson. Who will understand them, who have become snitches from hasty cowardice? Edelson made only one denunciation, and all about the book passage, which is on the corner of our street. And only then they found out about the stinky powder from him. And Kopeikis and I indicated as witnesses. And before, I suppose, what kind of passages addressed to the authorities from Genka and Rafka did not listen, but without us. And with us, he put it in his pants, in a hurry, as if Kopeikis and I were the first to bang. "

R. Shapiro went through the Lubyanka, Butyrka prison, Lefortovo and in 1951 he was convicted under Art. 58-1, 58-10 and 58-11 of the Criminal Code for ten years of camps with the right of correspondence (according to G. Altshuller, for twenty-five years of strict regime). By a strange coincidence, the verdict was announced on the day of the 25th anniversary of Shapiro, January 13, 1951. After that, he repeated the same path as in childhood - Kazakhstan, Siberia. ^[10] ). The trials that fell to his lot, the experience of camp life and the possibility of continuing creative activity in prison conditions, Rafael Shapiro described in his unfinished autobiographical book ^[11] , published in Israel by his widow Nora Shapiro edited by Vladimir Portnov in 1994.

After the death of Stalin in 1953, Shapiro was rehabilitated, and in 1954 released from prison and restored to study at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. After graduation and graduation, he worked as an engineer in Baku, was a regular contributor to the newspaper “Baku Worker”, published in many central newspapers and magazines, and carried out literary translations into Russian of the works of Azerbaijani writers.

In 1980, Rafael Shapiro with his family, wife and son went to Israel. The adoption of the final decision on emigration from the USSR was greatly influenced by Leo Kopelev and his wife Raisa, with whom the Shapiro couple had many years of friendship.

In 1985-91 Shapiro worked closely with Kronid Lubarsky , Boris Khazanov and other participants in the human rights movement in the USSR . In those same years, he was the leading political scientist for the magazine Country and World (Munich), for whom he wrote editorials ^[12] under the pseudonym Bakhtamov (this is the maiden name of his mother Rafael Shapiro) and working articles under his own name. All these years, Shapiro lived, according to his wife, in an airplane, flying almost monthly between Jerusalem and Munich.

Shapiro's autobiographical notes “Time to Talk ...” ^[13] were published in 1987 in the journal Grani .

In the last years of his life in 1991-93. was a leading commentator on the radio station REKA (Israel).

The release of R. Shapiro and G. Altshuller in 1954 occurred at the same time (October 23), as well as the arrest in 1950. After returning from prison and rehabilitation, Shapiro continued to work intensively with G. Altshuller to create an inventive methodology, the ideas of which they jointly developed in the late 1940s. In fact, Shapiro was a TRIZ strategist, setting her the main lines of development.

Heinrich Altshuller spoke about the role of Shapiro in creating TRIZ:

“ Shapiro very quickly, by the way, appreciated our prospect. Kabanov appreciated the technical side, Shapiro appreciated the flowing side. Shapiro belongs to a powerful comparison. He said this: “Marx deduced the laws of the development of society, Darwin deduced the laws of the development of living organisms, and we will derive a theory that will give the world the laws of the development of technical systems.” ... That is, he first appreciated this thing, it is very important. The scale understood it. ” ^[fourteen]

In 1956, R. Shapiro, together with G. Altshuller, published an article “On the Psychology of Inventive Creativity”, which laid the foundation for the development of the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving ( TRIZ ). The main concepts of TRIZ were described for the first time in the article: Technical contradiction, “Algorithm for Solving Inventive Problems” (ARIZ), stated the existence of objective dialectic patterns of technological development (G. Altshuller, R. B. Shapiro, “On the Psychology of Inventive Creativity” ^{[ 15]} , Questions of Psychology, No. 6, 1956. - S. 37-49).

In the late 1950s, Shapiro received his second higher education in absentia at the Law Faculty of Azerbaijan University. During his studies, he took an active part in discussing the draft “Regulations on inventions, discoveries and rational proposals” on the pages of the magazine “Soviet State and Law” ([Shapiro R. B., Altshuller G. S. About some issues of Soviet inventive law. // Soviet state and law, 1958, No. 2, pp. 35-44])

In 1959, in the publication “The Expulsion of the Six-Wing Seraphim”, R. Shapiro and G. Altshuller described the first extended version of the “Algorithm for Solving Inventive Problems”, ARIZ-59, and announced the beginning of work on the “scientific methodology of inventive creativity”, the training of which at the seminars was started as early as 1957. (Altshuller G., Shapiro R. The expulsion of the six-winged seraphim ^[16] , Inventor and rationalizer. - 1959. - No. 10.)

In his book The Expulsion of the Six-Wing Seraphim, published in 1961, Shapiro not only managed to create mass-produced TRIZ ads for the first time (circulation of the first edition: 115,000 copies), but also made Altshuller’s name famous among technical youth, devoting one of the stories personally to him and "Methodology of invention". Bakhtamov R. The expulsion of the six-winged seraphim, - M .: Detgiz, 1961. - 127 p. The third story. The price of victory. ^[17] - S. 40 - 45. Circulation: 115,000 copies. Drawings by G. Bedarev] Rafael Shapiro (Bakhtamov) deeply felt the applied significance of philosophy, and technology was far from the only field for him in which the word "law" took on paramount importance. After receiving a legal education, he transferred the techniques, patterns and “lines of development” developed over the years of joint work on the “methodology of invention” to the field of legal relations. The result of many years of research work was the book “The Law is the Law”, during the creation of which some principles of TRIZ were used ^[18] .

In recent years, the significance of the works of R. Shapiro and G. Altshuller is increasingly recognized in Western Europe, their articles and books are translated into various languages ​​and cited ^[19] , ^[20] . Materials covering the history of the creation of TRIZ and its individual tools are published in central technical publications ^[21] .

• Theory of Inventive Problem Solving
• Altshuller, Heinrich Saulovich

• Altshuller G.S., Shapiro R. B. On the psychology of inventive creativity // Psychology Issues. - 1956. - No. 6.