Lev Sergeevich Termen. Lev Theremin – the forgotten “man of the future”

Lev Theremin are considered one of the Soviet avant-garde artists and pioneers of electronics, they say that he either worked as a spy or died in exile, and his instrument is called such a strange invention that allegedly even he Theremin I couldn't play on it. These are just rumors - but the reality is no less interesting. The creator of the theremin was a witness to all eras of the 20th century, was familiar with celebrities from the most different countries, and at the same time he lived as if he did not notice the political storms of his century.
Lev Theremin born on August 15 (28), 1896 in St. Petersburg into a noble Orthodox family with French Huguenot roots (in French the family surname was written as Theremin). His father is the famous lawyer Sergei Emilievich Termen, his mother is Evgenia Antonovna. Leo was the first-born in the family. His parents contributed to the development of Lev’s abilities: he took cello lessons, a physics laboratory was equipped in the apartment, and then a home observatory. Lev was sent to study at the St. Petersburg First Men's Gymnasium. Already in the third grade, Lev became interested in physics, and in the fourth grade he demonstrated “Tesla-type resonance.” Lev graduated from high school with a silver medal in 1914.
In 1920 Lev Theremin starts working for the professor A. F. Ioffe at the newly created Physico-Technical Institute in Petrograd. Once a young scientist noticed that the movement of his hands near the capacitor plates (the gap between them was filled with gas) produced strange, wonderful sounds.

Theremin I tried to put together a melody - classes at the conservatory helped - and the device began to sing. Theremin I fitted my headphones and enjoyed the music emerging from the air and the movement of my hands. At the institute they joked: “Theremin plays the voltmeter.” This is how the world's first non-contact musical instrument was created.

Ioffe seems to give him fantastic theme For thesis: “electrical foresight.” But Ioffe believes that his brilliant graduate student will cope with any task. AND Theremin did not disappoint the teacher: he created and demonstrated working prototypes of a device for “wireless” image transmission over a distance. To put it simply, in 1926 Theremin invented television!
Several years before the first experiments Zvorykina in America he built a real electronic TV.

The TV had a screen no less than 150x150 centimeters (this was at a time when they experimented with matchbox screens), and a resolution of 100 lines. And it worked! In 1927, representatives of the military elite of the Soviets - Voroshilov, Tukhachevsky, Budyonny- watched with delight Stalin walking through the Kremlin courtyard. You could even make out a mustache and a pipe. This demonstration, as it turned out, was fatal for the invention: it was classified in the hope of using it to protect borders. Needless to say, it was never implemented, and the primacy Theremin in this case it has been proven only in our time.
In 1927 Lev Sergeevich sent to Frankfurt am Main, to the International Exhibition - to glorify with the help theremin Soviet science and culture. After the exhibition Theremin triumphantly traveled all over Germany, performing at the famous London Albert Hall and at the Paris Grand Opera. The press of all countries was filled with rave reviews. Albert Einstein wrote: “Sound freely extracted from space is a completely new phenomenon.”

Theremin's cello. The inventor plays

Theremin lived in New York for a decade. He buys a Cadillac and is accepted into the elite US Millionaires Club, although he never became a millionaire. The company he created to produce contactless security alarm systems is thriving. General Electric and RCA have acquired a license to manufacture theremin and they produced about a thousand of them. In 1930 Theremin invents the electronic cello and his first drum kit - "rhythmicon". He rents a six-story house for 99 years, where he opens a music studio, instrumental workshops and laboratories, and teaches musicians to play his miracle instrument.

Rhythmikon - the first rhythm machine, that is, a device for creating periodic drum fragments

Lev Theremin organized the companies Teletouch and Theremin Studio and rented a six-story building for a music and dance studio in New York for 99 years. This made it possible to create trade missions of the USSR in the United States, under whose “roof” Soviet intelligence officers could work.

In 1931-1938 Theremin was a director of Teletouch Inc. At the same time, he developed alarm systems for the Sing Sing and Alcatraz prisons.

Soon Lev Theremin became a very popular person in New York. Been to his studio George Gershwin, Maurice Ravel, Jascha Heifetz, Yehudi Menuhin, Charlie Chaplin, Albert Einstein. His circle of acquaintances included financial tycoon John Rockefeller, future US President Dwight Eisenhower

In 1938 Theremin recalled to Moscow. He secretly left the USA, registering in the name of the owner of the Teletouch company Bob Zinman power of attorney to dispose of his property and manage patent and financial affairs. Theremin I wanted to take my wife with me to the USSR Lavinia, but he was told that she would arrive later. When they came for him, Lavinia She happened to be at home, and she got the impression that her husband was taken away by force.
In Leningrad Theremin unsuccessfully tried to get a job, then moved to Moscow, but did not find a job there either.
In March 1939 he was arrested. There are two versions of what charge was brought against him. According to one of them, he was accused of involvement in a fascist organization, according to another - of preparing a murder Kirov. He was forced to incriminate himself that a group of astronomers from the Pulkovo Observatory was preparing to place a landmine in a Foucault pendulum, and Theremin was supposed to send a radio signal from the USA and detonate a landmine as soon as it approached the pendulum Kirov. A special meeting of the NKVD of the USSR sentenced Theremin to eight years in the camps, and he was sent to a camp for Kolyma.
First time Theremin served time in Magadan, working as a foreman of a construction team. But he was recalled to the Central Design Bureau, where he was destined to work with Sergei Korolev, who on April 21, 1939 ended up in Kolyma, where from August 3 he was at the Maldyak gold mine of the Western Mining Directorate and was employed in the so-called general works.
Aircraft designer Andrei Tupolev, who was imprisoned in those years and worked for the benefit of the country in the closed NKVD design bureau - TsKB-29 ("Tupolev's sharaga"), saw Lev Sergeevich cutting out a model of an airplane from plywood, and gave him an assistant - the same Korolev. It was a very interesting meeting between the two outstanding personalities.
Numerous innovation proposals Theremin attracted the attention of the camp administration to him, and already in 1940 he was transferred to the Tupolev design bureau TsKB-29 (to the so-called “Tupolev sharaga”), where he worked for about eight years. Here his assistant was Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, later a famous designer of space technology. One of the activities Theremin And Queen was the development of radio-controlled unmanned aerial vehicles - prototypes of modern cruise missiles.

One of the developments Theremin- listening system "Buran", which uses a reflected infrared beam to read the vibrations of glass in the windows of the listening room. This is the invention Theremin It was observed Stalin Prize first degree in 1947. But due to the fact that the laureate was a prisoner at the time of presentation for the prize and the secretive nature of his work, the award was not publicly announced anywhere.

Soviet endovibrator inside a copy of the Great Seal of the United States, National Museum cryptography at the US National Security Agency

Another development - endovibrator "Zlatoust", a listening device without batteries and electronics based on high-frequency resonance, which worked in the office of American ambassadors undetected for eight years. The listening device was mounted in a wooden panel made of valuable wood, depicting the Great Seal of the United States.

The panel was presented in 1945 to the US ambassador invited to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Artek pioneer camp. Averell Harriman, who hung it in his office. The design of the listening device turned out to be so successful that when examining the gift, the American intelligence services did not notice anything. The “bug” was discovered in 1952, and was later presented to the UN as evidence of the intelligence activities of the USSR, but the principle of its operation remained unsolved for several years.
To “press on a tear,” the pioneers sang the American anthem at the gala concert. The touched ambassador, looking at the gift handed to him, only managed to mutter: “Where should I keep it?” Immediately behind him, Valentin Mikhailovich Berezhkov, Stalin’s personal translator, stood up and casually said: “Hang it in your office.” The British will burst with envy.” He said and nodded towards the British Ambassador to the USSR, Sir Archibald Kerr, who was also present at the ceremony, but did not receive SUCH a gift.

Before hanging the wooden eagle at the embassy, ​​American technicians, of course, “probed” it for bugs. But they were not found, because Lev Theremin’s device was passive and did not emit anything by itself. And then the souvenir was actually hung in the ambassador’s office. Operation Confession, the goal of which was to smuggle a bug into the US Embassy building, ended in success.
In 1947 Theremin was rehabilitated, but continued to work in closed design bureaus in the NKVD system of the USSR, where he was engaged, in particular, in the development of eavesdropping systems.

In 1948, he and his wife Maria Gushchina two daughters are born - Natalia Termen And Elena Termen.

In 1991, together with his daughter, Natalya Termen, and granddaughter, Olga Termen, he visited the USA at the invitation of Stanford University and there, among other things, met with Clara Rockmore.

In March 1991, at the age of 95, he joined the CPSU. When asked why he was joining a collapsing party, Theremin answered: “I promised Lenin.”
In 1992, unknown persons destroyed a laboratory room on Lomonosovsky Prospekt (the room was allocated by the Moscow authorities at the request of V. S. Grizodubova), all his instruments were broken, part of the archives were stolen. The police did not solve the crime.
In 1992, the Theremin Center was created in Moscow, with its main goal being to support musicians and sound artists working in the field of experimental electroacoustic music. Upon request Lev Theremin remove the name, the leaders of the center did not react. Lev Theremin had nothing to do with the creation of the center named after him.

Died November 3, 1993. As the newspapers later wrote: “At ninety-seven years old Lev Theremin went to those who made up the face of the era - but behind the coffin, except for daughters with their families and several men carrying the coffin, there was no one ... "

He invented:
1. Group of electric musical instruments:
-– theremin
-– rhythmikon
-– terpsiton
2. Security alarm
3. Unique eavesdropping system “Buran”
4. The world's first television installation - far-sightedness
worked on:
-– speech recognition system
- human freezing technology
-– voice identification in forensics
- military sonar.

Lev Sergeevich Termen(1896-1993) - Russian and Soviet inventor, creator of a family of musical instruments, the most famous of which is the theremin (1920). Winner of the Stalin Prize, first degree.

Biography

Lev Theremin was born on August 15 (August 27), 1896 in St. Petersburg into a noble Orthodox family with French Huguenot roots (in French the family surname was written as Theremin). Mother - Evgenia Antonovna and father - famous lawyer Sergei Emilievich Termeny.

Carier start

Lev Termen carried out his first independent experiments in electrical engineering during his years of study at the St. Petersburg First Men's Gymnasium, from which he graduated in 1914 with a silver medal.

In 1916 he graduated from the St. Petersburg Conservatory in cello. At the same time, he studied at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Petrograd University, where, among other things, he attended lectures on physics by private assistant professor A. F. Ioffe.

From his second year at the university, in 1916, he was drafted into the army and sent for accelerated training to the Nikolaev Engineering School, and then to officer electrical engineering courses. The revolution found him a junior officer in a reserve electrical battalion serving the most powerful radio station in the empire, the Tsarskoye Selo radio station near Petrograd.

After October revolution In 1917, he continued to work at the same radio station, and was later sent to a military radio laboratory in Moscow.

Career blossoming

In 1919, Lev Theremin became the head of the laboratory of the Physico-Technical Institute in Petrograd. As a specialist in radio engineering, A.F. Ioffe invited him to work at his institute. The new employee was given the task of measuring the dielectric constant of gases at various pressures and temperatures. The first version of Theremin's measuring installation was an electrical oscillation generator based on a cathode lamp. The test gas in the cavity between the metal plates was an element of an oscillatory circuit - a capacitor, which influenced the frequency of electrical oscillations. In the process of working to increase the sensitivity of the installation, the idea arose of combining two generators, one of which oscillated at a certain constant frequency. Signals from both generators were fed to a cathode relay, at the output of which a signal with a difference frequency was generated. The relative change in the difference frequency from the parameters of the test gas was much greater. Moreover, if the difference frequency fell into the audio range, then the signal could be received by ear.

In 1920, based on an experimental measuring setup, Lev Theremin invented the Theremin electromusical instrument, which later made it widely known.

In March 1922, a demonstration of Theremin's inventions was organized in the Kremlin, which was attended by Vladimir Lenin. Theremin presented the security alarm device, the theremin, explained the principle of its operation, and Lenin tried to perform Glinka’s “Lark” on the theremin.

Being a very versatile person, Theremin invented many different automatic systems (automatic doors, automatic lighting, etc.) and security alarm systems. In parallel, since 1923, he collaborated with the State Institute of Music Science in Moscow. In 1925-1926 he invented one of the first television systems - “Darnovision”.

In 1927, Theremin received an invitation to the international music exhibition in Frankfurt am Main. Theremin's report and demonstration of his inventions were a huge success and brought him worldwide fame.

The success of his concert at a music exhibition is such that Theremin is bombarded with invitations. Dresden, Nuremberg, Hamburg, Berlin saw him off with applause and flowers. There are enthusiastic reviews from listeners of “music of the air”, “music of ethereal waves”, “music of the spheres”. The musicians note that the idea of ​​the virtuoso is not constrained by inert material, “the virtuoso touches spaces.” The incomprehensibility of where the sound is coming from is shocking. Some people call the theremin a “heavenly” instrument, others a “spherophone”. The timbre is striking, simultaneously reminiscent of both strings and wind instruments, and even some special human voice, as if “grown from distant times and spaces.”

Lev Sergeevich Theremin was born on August 28, 1896 in St. Petersburg into a Russian noble Orthodox family with German and French roots (in French the family surname was written as Theremin).

Lev Theremin carried out his first independent experiments in electrical engineering during his years of study at the St. Petersburg First Men's Gymnasium, from which he graduated with a silver medal in 1914.
Young Theremin entered the conservatory and the physics, mathematics and astronomy faculties of the university at the same time. However, his studies were hampered by the outbreak World War: he only managed to graduate from the conservatory in cello with a diploma " free artist". "In 1916, he was drafted into the army and sent for accelerated training to the Nikolaev Engineering School, and then to officer electrical courses.
Fortunately for Theremin, he was not sent to the front, and the revolution found him as a junior officer in a reserve electrical battalion serving the most powerful Tsarskoye Selo radio station in the empire near Petrograd.

After the October Revolution of 1917, he was sent to work at the Detskoselskaya radio station near Petrograd (then the most powerful radio station in Russia), and later to the military radio laboratory in Moscow. Since 1919, Termen became the head of the laboratory of the Physico-Technical Institute in Petrograd. At the beginning of the same 1919, he was arrested in connection with a White Guard conspiracy. Fortunately, the matter did not reach the revolutionary tribunal. In the spring of 1920, Lev Sergeevich was released.
One morning, the future father of Soviet physics Abram Ioffe was rushing to work at the Radiological Institute. "Abram Fedorovich!" - came from behind him. He turned and saw a long figure in a torn knitted muffler and an officer's overcoat without shoulder straps. The soldier's boots on the young man's feet were clearly in need of repair.
“Hello, I’m Lev Theremin,” the officer introduced himself. Theremin spoke about his misadventures: how he was in charge of an electrical laboratory and how at the beginning of 1919 he was arrested on charges of a white conspiracy. “Have they really released you?” - Ioffe was surprised. “I can’t believe it myself,” answered Lev Theremin. "So what now?" “Well, no one is hiring. They say the contract is not finished,” Theremin cheerfully complained. “Well, it’s easy to help this grief,” Joffe laughed. “They told me a lot about you. Do you want a laboratory?” Theremin agreed without hesitation.

Theremin receives the task of doing radio measurements of the dielectric constant of gases at variable temperatures and pressures. During testing, it turned out that the device produced a sound, the height and strength of which depended on the position of the hand between the plates of the capacitor. So in the same year, the world's first electronic musical instrument was invented, initially called etherotone (sound from the air, ether). It was soon renamed in his honor and became known as the theremin. The highlight of the instrument was that music was extracted from it without touching hands. The main part of the theremin are two high-frequency oscillatory circuits tuned to a common frequency. Electrical vibrations of sound frequencies are excited by a generator using vacuum tubes, the signal is passed through an amplifier and converted into sound by a loudspeaker. An antenna-shaped rod and arc “peek out” - they act as the oscillatory system of the device. The performer controls the operation of the Theremin by changing the position of the palms. By moving his hand near the rod, the performer adjusts the pitch of the sound. "Gesticulation" in the air near the arc allows you to increase or decrease the sound volume.
In the same 1920, at the II Congress of the All-Russian Astronomical Union, Termen was elected a member of the Association of Astronomers of the RSFSR. He made a report to the members of the union on the problems of radiophysics and photometric properties of planetary systems. Awarded several honorary certificates from the astronomical society.

Catherine Konstantinov

Since 1923, Theremin began to collaborate with the State Institute of Music Science in Moscow.

Theremin and Lenin

In 1921, Theremin demonstrated his invention at the VIII All-Russian Electrotechnical Congress. The surprise of the audience knew no bounds - no strings or keys, a timbre unlike anything else. The Pravda newspaper published an enthusiastic review, and radio concerts were held for a wide audience. In addition, during the congress the GOELRO plan was adopted, and Theremin, with his unique power tools, could become an excellent propagandist for the plan for electrification of the entire country. A few months after the congress, Termen was invited to the Kremlin.
The invention of the theremin was double character- after all, if it makes sounds from the movement of its hands, then a security alarm can work on the same principle, reacting to the approach of strangers.
A few months after the congress, Termen was invited to the Kremlin.

In addition to Lenin, there were about ten other people in the office. First, Theremin showed the high commission a security alarm. He connected the device to a large vase with a flower, and as soon as one of those present approached it, a loud bell rang. Lev Sergeevich recalled: “One of the military men said that this was wrong. Lenin asked: “Why is it wrong?” And the military man took a warm hat, put it on his head, wrapped his arm and leg in a fur coat and began to slowly crawl towards my alarm on his haunches. The signal again it worked out."
And yet the main “hero” of the audience was the theremin. Lenin liked the instrument so much that he gave the go-ahead for Theremin to tour and ordered that he be given a free train ticket “to popularize the new instrument” throughout the country. By the way, another impressive feature of Theremin’s life is connected with Lenin.
Lev Sergeevich was passionate about the idea of ​​fighting death. He studied studies of animal cells frozen in permafrost, and wondered what would happen to people if they were frozen and then thawed. When news of the leader’s death became known, Theremin sent his assistant to Gorki with a proposal to freeze Lenin’s body so that years later, when the technology had been worked out, he could be resurrected from the dead. But the assistant returned with sad news: the internal organs had already been removed and the body was prepared for embalming. With that, Theremin abandoned research on human revitalization. And decades later, his idea was embodied in America, and now dozens of those frozen after death are waiting for resurrection.

Theremin and television

He developed and manufactured four versions of a television system, including transmitting and receiving devices. The first version, a demonstration one, created at the end of 1925, was designed for 16-line image decomposition. With this installation, it was possible to “see” elements, for example, a person’s face, but it was impossible to know who exactly was being shown. In the second, also demo version, interlaced scanning of 32 lines was used.
In the spring of 1926, a third version was made, which served as the basis for Theremin’s thesis. It used interlaced scanning of 32 and 64 lines, the image was reproduced on a screen measuring 1.5x1.5 m.

From this electromechanical installation there was one step left to real electronic TV. But she didn’t make it to the army: she was too poor technical base countries. As a result, the inventor of television is considered to be the engineer Vladimir Zvorykin who emigrated from Russia, who invented the kinescope, which made mass television possible.

Abroad

Lev Theremin amazed Europeans with both his report on the theremin and his concerts classical music for the general public: “heavenly music”, “voices of angels” - the newspapers were choking with delight.
Invitations from Berlin, London, and Paris followed one after another.

In December 1927, the famous Parisian Grand Opera, having canceled the evening performance, gave Lev Theremin. In itself, such a cancellation is an exceptional case. But for the first time in the history of the theater, even the seats in the gallery were sold out a month in advance. There were so many people who wanted to listen to the concert that the administration was forced to call in additional police. The reason for this break with tradition was undoubtedly the success of Theremin's previous performances in concert halls in Germany, including the Berlin Philharmonic, and in the prim hall of London's Albert Hall.

Meanwhile, Joffe, who was in the USA at that time, received orders from several companies to produce 2000 theremins with the condition that Theremin would come to America to supervise the work.

Life in America

The world-famous violinist József Sighetti, who was sailing on the same ship, became envious of the fees that the largest businessmen in America offered Theremin for the honor of being the first to hear the theremin. But the inventor gave the first concert for the press, scientists and famous musicians. The success was impressive, and with permission Soviet authorities Theremin founded the Teletouch studio company in New York for the production of theremins.
Things went brilliantly. Theremin concerts took place in Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Boston. Thousands of Americans enthusiastically began to learn to play the theremin.
At first, income from performances allowed Theremin to live in grand style. He even rented space in a six-story building on West 54th Street in downtown New York for 99 years. In addition to personal apartments, it housed a workshop and a studio. Here Lev Sergeevich often played music with Albert Einstein: the physicist on the violin, the inventor on the theremin.

Theremin sold the license to manufacture theremins to General Electric Corporation and RCA (Radio Corporation of America), and with the permission of the Soviet authorities founded the Teletouch Corporation studio company in New York for the production of theremins.
Theremins, however, could not provide much profit: only a professional musician could play them, and then only after much practice (even Theremin was regularly accused of being shamelessly out of tune). Accordingly, only about three hundred theremins were sold in the States, and Teletouch Corporation switched to Theremin's second invention - capacitive signaling. Only for metal detectors for the famous Alcatraz prison, Termen's company received about $10 thousand. There were orders for similar devices for the equally famous Sing Sing prison and the American gold reserve storage facility in Fort Knox, as well as for the development of a security alarm for equipment on the US-Mexico border. The Coast Guard invited Theremin to develop a system for remotely detonating a group of mines using a single cable. It was this direction that allowed Teletouch Corporation to survive the Great Depression that broke out at the turn of the 1930s.

Theremin behind the theremin

In the USA, Theremin continues to invent, developing and improving his early inventions. As a development of the idea of ​​the theremin, the terpsitron appears - a device for directly converting dance into music; Experiments are underway with color music systems. Work on far vision continues: a security camera is installed in the New York home of the inventor, Theremin is successfully conducting experiments in transmitting color images over a distance. Signaling systems have also been improved. Nevertheless, according to Theremin himself, he expected that with his inventions he would gain world fame, position and money, but he failed to achieve this and, in fact, until the day of his departure to the Soviet Union he remained the owner of a handicraft workshop. In his old age, Theremin did not mind being called an American millionaire. But this is a fairy tale. In all the companies founded with his participation, he was by no means the main shareholder. The Americans bought his security systems well, but the lion's share of the profits went to Theremin's manufacturing companies and partners.

Lovely affairs

Espionage activities

The methods of forcing cooperation with intelligence were not distinguished by sophistication and wit, but they turned out to be quite effective. In the same year, the American Communist Party newspapers Daily Worker and Daily Freiheit published a letter allegedly sent from the pro-fascist American organization Friends of the New Germany to Berlin. It was an obvious phony, but Theremin wavered. He agreed to meet once a week with "people in gray hats."
Here is the text of this letter (translation from the criminal case of Lev Theremin in 1939):

On instructions from the leader of the new leadership
Heinz Spanknabel
Top secret
September 23, 1933
Berlin, Alexander Square, #8/2
To your letter of September 5

The organization of a special department cannot proceed as quickly as you wish, because the situation is more difficult than you expect. We are being watched and we must be prudent and careful. Count Sauerman is not suitable for the post offered to him because he has no experience... Count Norman returned from Berlin and brought his brother with him. Dr. Spaner asks to persistently observe the representative of General Electric, who is in Germany, because he intends to engage in espionage there. General Electric stole his invention from him and now wants to go against you. Since his brother did a lot for us in Medical Genzher, for example, he recruited two professors there, and therefore we ask you to expedite your assistance in the case of Dr. Shpaner.
Send us a young lady, interesting, very reliable. It's better if her father or brother is a stormtrooper. She should be able to speak a little English and have a good command of Russian and should replace our agents at Amtorg...
I cannot finish off Van der Lube here, and it would be better to throw him off the ship when traveling to another country. Who do you want to hang in Germany instead? I completely agree with you that it would be good to inject syphilis into the damned communists from Leipzig. Then one could say that communism comes from syphilis in the brains of some fools.
Send us a new key. We think old code can be left under the wall.
Spanknabel enters the room and conveys his best greetings to you. He wanted to hire a reliable physics student from the exchange office so that he could be assigned small tasks like this.
Theremin is very lazy and wants to have a lot of money, and at the same time he seems like a half-Jewish pig. He betrayed his country, and therefore we cannot trust him, despite all our assurances. Little Katya, as Count Sauerman calls Konstantinova, is a very stupid and imaginative girl, but she works well. Although now she cries every minute, and therefore I think it would be better to take her from here. It can be used for Russian translation.
Let us know how things are going with Hitler's book. We will be successful in distributing it. Making Americans anti-Semitic is child's play.
Please work quickly on the Shpaner case, it involves a lot of money.
Heil Hitler.
V. Haag,
Adjutant of the National Administration.

Termen later recalled his intelligence work:

For these purposes, I came up with my own tactics: in order to find out something new, secret, you need to offer something new of your own. When you show off your new invention, it's easier to learn about what they're working on. Of course, I managed to find out what was required, however, the tasks seemed simple to me: for example, there is an airplane number such and such, they say you need to find out the diameter of the muffler. Why this was needed was unclear to me. Most of the questions I was assigned were unimportant.
Once a week, two or three young men at the same time invited me to a small restaurant, we sat down at the table together, and there I had to tell them all sorts of secret things. So that I would not hide anything, I had to drink at least two glasses of vodka at once. I didn’t feel like drinking at all, and I began to figure out what to do. And I found out that if you eat about 200 grams of butter, after that the alcohol will not work. And so, when I had to go to a meeting with them, in the morning of that day I ate less than half a kilo, but still a lot of butter. At first it was very difficult to swallow, but then I got used to it.

To create a concert program, Theremin invited a group of dancers from the African American Ballet Company. Unfortunately, it was not possible to achieve harmony and accuracy from them, and the project had to be postponed. But in this troupe danced the beautiful mulatto Lavinia Williams, who captivated Lev Sergeevich not only as a ballerina, but also as a woman. Theremin decided to get married.
It could never have occurred to him that marriage with dark-skinned woman will radically change his life. But as soon as the lovers registered their marriage, the doors of many houses in New York were closed to Theremin: America did not yet know political correctness. Theremin's debts began to grow by leaps and bounds. He recalled that, despite all his efforts, he was constantly in debt from $20 thousand to $40 thousand.
He lost informants, which caused serious dissatisfaction with Soviet intelligence.

In addition scandalous marriage brought him to the attention of US immigration officials. And they asked the question: why Theremin has been living in the country for more than ten years and remains a Soviet citizen, although he could have become an American without any problems? In 1938, Theremin felt very close attention from the authorities to his person. The "gray hats" advised returning to their homeland.
Theremin hesitated for some time. He remembered the fate of his brother-in-law Konstantinov, who in 1936 succumbed to persuasion, returned to Leningrad and remained free for exactly a month. Theremin said that he had to make an important invention for his homeland, which would justify his long absence, that he had to pay off his debts. But something else became decisive. As he later admitted: “Upon my arrival abroad, I thought that with my inventions... I would gain world fame, position and money, but I failed to achieve this. In fact, until the day I left for the Soviet Union, I remained a small owner of a handicraft workshop I didn’t want to stay in this position in the future.” The last obstacle to leaving was Lavinia: he said that he could not go without her. But then he believed the promises of the security officers to deliver her to the USSR and agreed to go missing.
On September 15, 1938, having previously issued a power of attorney in the name of the co-owner of Teletouch Inc. Bob Zinman to dispose of his property, patent and financial affairs "in connection with the fact that I intend to leave New York State." Theremin disappears. Under the guise of a captain's mate, he boarded the Soviet ship "Old Bolshevik". The ship's holds were filled with Theremin laboratory instruments weighing a total of three tons.
At that time it was standard way transfer of people. In the captain's cabin there was a secret door to a closet where only a narrow bunk could fit. The captain's food was brought to his cabin, and the substantial portions were enough for two. During border and customs inspections, secret passengers were moved to more secluded places such as coal pits.
Lavinia was not brought to him on the next flight. The spouses did not see each other again.
And Termen kept the marriage certificate issued by the Russian embassy in America until the end of his days.
Lavinia Williams tirelessly sought permission to join her husband in the USSR. In 1944, she submitted a formal petition to the Soviet consulate in New York. The consulate supported her request, and intelligence had no objections. However, on the path of Theremin-Poole Grace Vilyamovna, as she was called in Soviet documents, the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs became a wall. A member of the ministry’s board, Pyotr Strunnikov, made the following decision: “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR considers it appropriate to reject Theremin Grace’s application for admission to USSR citizenship due to the fact that she is not related to the Soviet Union and cannot be useful for our country.”

Theremin did not find work in Leningrad. He began to travel to Moscow frequently, knocking on the doors of various organizations, including those that had once signed a business trip for him. The officials quickly got tired of him: without housing, with a ship at the pier, loaded with some kind of instruments. Moreover, with foreign contacts behind him that no one needs. On his next visit to Moscow, without any explanation, on March 10, 1939, NKVD officers took Theremin to Butyrka prison.

Obviously, Theremin was helped by his first prison experience. He denied everything, was not confused in his testimony and steadfastly endured the torture of insomnia, when the interrogations continued without a break for more than a day, and, surprisingly, did not give incriminating evidence against any of his acquaintances in the USSR. The investigators themselves were unable to gather anything significant on him, and as a result he was accused of involvement in a fascist organization - the letter fabricated by Soviet intelligence, quoted above, came in handy. Lev Theremin received 8 years in camps, which he had to serve in the gold mines.

From the indictment in the case of Lev Termen

The available materials exposed Termen Lev Sergeevich as a participant in a fascist organization, on the basis of which he was arrested on March 10, 1939... He did not plead guilty to involvement in a fascist organization, but was exposed by the testimony of A.P. Konstantinov and materials published in a communist American newspaper "Daily Walker".
Based on the above, Termen Lev Sergeevich, born in 1895, native of Leningrad, Russian, former nobleman, non-party member, engineer-physicist, no previous convictions, is accused of:
- in 1927, he went on a business trip abroad to Germany and, not wanting to return to the USSR, with the help of representatives of the German company Migos, received a visa to enter the USA, where he moved to live in 1928;
- while in America, Termen, to implement his inventions, organized a number of joint-stock companies with the involvement of American capitalists Morgenstern, Zinman, Asher and Zuckerman, and he himself served as vice president in them;
- during his stay in America, Theremin sold a number of his inventions to the American police and the Department of Justice;
- had close connection with the German intelligence officer Marcus, enjoyed his support in promoting his inventions.
Testimony of A.P. Konstantinov and materials published in the American communist newspaper "Dele Walker" ( so in the document.), is exposed as a participant in a fascist organization, i.e., in crimes under Art. Art. 58 clause 1a, 58 clause 4 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR.
The present case has been completed by investigative proceedings and is subject to consideration by a Special Meeting of the NKVD of the USSR.

However, according to another version, which appears in almost all articles about Theremin, including in an interview with his daughter, the inventor was convicted of allegedly planning the murder of Kirov. According to this version, Kirov (killed on December 1, 1934) was going to visit the Pulkovo Observatory. Astronomers planted a landmine in a Foucault pendulum. And Theremin, using a radio signal from the USA, was supposed to blow it up as soon as Kirov approached the pendulum. The piquancy of the situation lies not only in the exotic method of murder, but also in the fact that at that time Foucault’s pendulum was not in Pulkovo, but in the Kazan Cathedral (it housed a museum of religion and atheism, and the pendulum clearly proved the fact of the Earth’s rotation).

The USSR at that time was a closed country, no information about Theremin was received in the USA, and there he was considered dead until the end of the 60s. In encyclopedic reference books, next to his name there were dates (1896-1938).

Theremin - prisoner

The son of Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Merkulov, Rem, turned out to be a subordinate of the convicted Theremin. Here's what he said:

In 1942, I was sent to work in one of the research organizations of the NKVD, located in Sverdlovsk... It was a large research center with a good team, with the production of small series of special equipment. For example, one of the laboratories was headed by the arrested Pavel Nikolaevich Kuksenko. He and his collaborators worked on the country's first radar model - a night combat device (NCD). Prisoner specialists moved freely throughout the territory of the organization, and, if necessary, went beyond its boundaries - in this case they were accompanied by a guard. They could work - and did work - at the workplace for as long as necessary. Our organization was located in a large new building of the prison hospital, which was cleared for these purposes. Probably the only strict restriction for those arrested was contact with women. I remember that one of them, noticed in connection with a civilian employee, was immediately transferred somewhere.
My boss was Lev Sergeevich Termen - a smart, neatly dressed, middle-aged man with a tie and jacket. In a large room filled with a large amount of equipment, several radio engineering officers worked under his command. But we always went to work in civilian clothes.

We worked on creating various devices - primarily for reconnaissance purposes. Our miniature transmitters at that time were widely used. We worked for foreigners - we installed all the components of the equipment that were American, so that if the agents failed, it would be impossible to determine its affiliation by the equipment. There was an interesting episode here. The batteries often leaked. Special rubber containers were needed, but they could not be produced quickly. I suggested using condoms, Termen approved. At the pharmacy, where condoms were purchased by transfer for the NKVD, the saleswomen's eyes widened.
We made radio fuses to carry out terrorist attacks behind enemy lines. And for the first time in the USSR, and perhaps in the world, a fuse for an aircraft bomb was developed, which ensured an explosion at a height of about two meters above the surface of the earth. At the same time, the destructive power of the bomb increased significantly. This system used the theremin principle: when approaching the ground, the tone of the signal in the bomb head changed, which under certain conditions led to an explosion. Unfortunately, interesting idea did not go into production: it seemed too complicated to production managers.
Lev Sergeevich politely but persistently demanded that we carry out his instructions. He enjoyed great authority among the management, and his opinion was always listened to at meetings of the scientific and technical council. In general, he was a cheerful person, he loved to joke, and if you didn’t know that after a working day he wouldn’t go outside the fence, no one would have thought that he was a convict. I remember once, together with Theremin, we assembled a theremin in a couple of days, and he performed a concert in front of a large audience. In our laboratory, receivers almost always worked that received music broadcasts. He loved to comment on what he was listening to, explaining to us certain fragments of the symphonies. In addition, he was keenly interested in what was happening in the world. During the war, all radios were confiscated from the population, but we could listen to foreign radio stations, and I even translated for him from German.
And that's what's important. Lev Sergeevich never calculated anything, but simply, thanks to his intuition, gave out right decisions. In radio engineering practice, this is probably correct, and I almost always followed this principle in my further work.

Working for the intelligence services

The triumph of Lev Sergeevich in his new field was Operation Chrysostom. On Independence Day, July 4, 1945, the American Ambassador to Russia Averell Harriman received a wooden panel depicting an eagle as a gift from Soviet pioneers. The panel was hung in the ambassador's office, after which the American intelligence services lost peace: a mysterious information leak began. Only 7 years later did they discover a mysterious hollow metal cylinder with a membrane and a pin protruding from it inside the pioneers’ gift, after which they spent another year and a half unraveling its mystery. There were no power sources, no wires, no radio transmitters.
The secret was this: a high-frequency pulse was sent to the panel from the house opposite. The cylinder membrane, vibrating in time with the speech, reflected it back through the antenna rod, and the signal was demodulated on the receiving side.

At the end of 1946, using the same microphone, information was received that two prominent specialists in the search for listening devices were traveling to Moscow. In many divisions of the MGB, real panic began.
“Comrade Stalin,” recalled the state security veteran, “highly valued objective information - in particular, recordings of wiretapped conversations. Even before the war, some premises of foreign embassies - primarily Germany and its allies - were equipped with appropriate equipment. In the autumn of 1941, when all diplomatic missions They evacuated to Kuibyshev, the security of their buildings was handed over to us. And the idea arose to take advantage of the situation and equip all the diplomatic missions at once. The Central Committee agreed. pucks" - you can kill them, they won’t fit into your pocket. But there was plenty of time, and absolutely everything was filled with microphones. Everyone was happy.
After the return of the embassies from Kuibyshev, general microphoneization brought good results for some time. But the people who worked at the embassies were not fools. They guessed that state security had not been idle while they were evacuated. And now the auditors are coming to us.
Minister of State Security Abakumov convened a meeting. The number of “washers” was measured in hundreds, and it was impossible to get them out of the embassies in a few days, even if you died. A representative of the ministry's intelligence service, which was in charge of sabotage and other delicate operations, proposed taking the Americans out of working order for a while, as he put it, "putting them firmly on the pot." This proposal seemed to everyone the least evil.
Abakumov went to the Kremlin for permission. Dali. A group of nine people was created. We prepared a good tool and began to clear the embassies. According to the scheme, diplomats were “divorced” and went to embassies. How did they get divorced? Counterintelligence. Each embassy employee was studied thoroughly: his habits, weaknesses, hobbies... The vast majority of diplomats had a weakness, using which it was possible to force them to immediately drop everything and rush to the other end of Moscow. Gourmets were invited to dinners, vain guys were invited to meetings with celebrities, and for lovers of the fairer sex, they also selected the right person.
The first to be cleaned was the Canadian embassy in Starokonyushenny Lane. According to the surviving diagrams, they removed the plinths, collected a heavy bag of “washers,” put things in order, and went home. We had a very difficult time at the US Embassy: there were more people there than in other embassies, and there were more microphones. But we managed to cope with this too. At the same time, American specialists arrived. The doctors prepared the drugs, and the agents planted the drugs in their food. As we were promised, uninvited guests for a week and a half we left the latrines only to sleep.
We hoped to wrap up by the scheduled date. But a surprise awaited us where we least of all could have foreseen it - at the New Zealand Embassy on Samotek. Nobody was ever particularly interested in diplomats from this “sheep island”, and, as it turned out, the counterintelligence officers did not even have a scheme for “divorcing” the employees of this embassy. They began to improvise something on the fly, but no matter how hard they tried, at least one of the diplomats continued to hang around vigilantly in the embassy. Time is running, American specialists examined their embassy, ​​moved on to the rest, and we are fighting with our “shepherds”. Abakumov was furious. He gathered everyone and yelled: “What are you doing! Can’t you find beautiful women for them?! Aren’t they people?! Or don’t they like to drink?” They all loved, but strictly in turn.
Day after day, but we have no results. We decided to consult with Theremin to see if we could come up with something to prevent the Americans from finding the microphones. He thought about it and recommended sending powerful radio radiation to the embassy: it would, they say, drown out the Americans’ instruments and prevent them from finding the “washers.” I think he was still a prisoner then. They brought him with equipment, selected points around the embassy, ​​installed transmitters and antennas. But the test run of this system ended in complete failure. Theremin didn’t count a damn thing, everything was done by eye. An inventor, not a scientist, that's why he didn't get it.
I wasn’t there at that moment myself, so I’m retelling it from other people’s words. At that time, in the courtyard of the embassy, ​​a janitor was breaking ice with a crowbar. When everything was turned on, he threw the crowbar, took off his hat, began to cross himself, yelling: “Holy, holy, holy!” - and rushed to the embassy. Our people then questioned him, and he said: “The crowbar has flown!” Nonsense, of course. The “shepherds” didn’t believe him either, they decided that he had taken too much, but they became wary and began to look closely at everything that was happening around the embassy. And Theremin smiled slightly and said: “They probably went too far with the power.”
It would not have blown his head off if he had not come up with another very necessary thing at that time. And we decided to abandon Theremin’s miracles. We felt somewhat better when we learned that the New Zealanders refused to allow American specialists to join us. But we rejoiced early. They found two microphones themselves. And two days later - a meeting of four foreign ministers - the USSR, the USA, England and France - in Moscow, at the Sovetskaya Hotel. And Molotov got out. Still, the New Zealand embassy is a piece of cake. And we remained intact."
However, it seemed to me that, speaking about punishment for Theremin, the veteran was being dishonest. He was a recognized expert in electronics and, according to other sources, could even afford to joke with Beria. They say that the “Lubyansk Marshal” wanted to include Theremin among the participants in the atomic project and asked the inventor what he needed to create atomic bomb. “A personal car with a driver and one and a half tons of aluminum angle,” replied Termen. Beria laughed and left him alone."

Subsequently, Termen worked on improving the device used in Operation Chrysostom. The new listening device was called "Buran", for which in 1947 he was awarded the Stalin Prize of the first degree (they say that Stalin personally corrected the degree from second to first), and was also released - however, 8 years for which he condemned, just expired in 1947. Moreover, Theremin sat out an extra 4 months. Instead of the 100 thousand rubles due for the bonus, he was given a two-room apartment in a newly built house on Kaluzhskaya Square, fully furnished. His daughter Elena recalled that many years later, tags with inventory numbers remained on the furniture.
After his release, Theremin continued to work in the same “sharashka” as a civilian. He perfected his listening system.
"Buran" made it possible to record vibrations of window glass in rooms where people were talking from a distance of 300-500 meters and convert these vibrations into sounds.
Thus, from a great distance one could hear everything that was said behind the glass, and no additional “bugs” in the room itself, as was the case in Operation Chrysostom, were required.
"Buran" was used to listen to the American and French embassies.
Now the same idea is being implemented based on laser scanning of glass. The idea to use a laser for this belonged to Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa, and was also awarded, but not the Stalin, but the Lenin Prize.
In the same 1947, Theremin married Maria Gushchina, the most beautiful girl who worked in his organization, who was a quarter of a century younger than him. Soon twins were born - girls Elena and Natalya. From a formal point of view, Theremin became a bigamist. Lavinia Williams, who became Theremin's wife during his life in the USA, continued to be so.

As Elena recalls, Termen was a caring father - he helped do homework not only for the children, but also for the young housekeeper who was studying at evening school; He checked his progress in playing the piano, and sometimes, depending on his mood, he organized home concerts, taking turns playing the theremin with the children. Never resting on his own initiative, he loved when friends came to visit one of the family, and he willingly played music, danced and had fun.
The only stumbling block, as the daughter recalled, was certificates of employment, which had to be provided to the school. Theremin's certificate only stated that he was a KGB officer. “But you need to indicate your position,” the daughters said. “What do you do?” Theremin joked: “Junior assistant to the senior janitor.” “In general,” the daughter recalled, “if he didn’t want to say something, he didn’t say it. At the same time, he didn’t remain silent, but began to spin phrase after phrase. Once he starts, Gorbachev is easier to understand.”

Retired

According to his version, the reason was the pseudo-scientific devilry that was becoming fashionable: UFOs, levitation, extrasensory perception. He was asked to study materials about these phenomena and give his suggestions. Theremin immediately replied that this was all nonsense. Then he was asked to study information from the Western press about the transmission of thoughts at a distance and do something similar for our illegal intelligence. And he realized that it was time to retire.

But Lev Sergeevich, true to his motto “Theremin never dies!” (this is how his last name is read backwards), got a job at the Recording Institute and took on a couple more part-time jobs so that the family would not notice the loss in salary. And in 1965, when the Recording Institute was closed, Termen went to work at the Moscow Conservatory. He improved theremins and finalized other ideas.
In 1967, a student of Theremin and his ex-love, Clara Rockmore. After the rehearsal, she left the conservatory, and suddenly: a gray-haired man in a gray Soviet raincoat and a grocery bag in his hands flashed nearby. But this gait, this impeccable posture cannot be confused with anything. "Lev Sergeevich!" - she screamed, afraid that he would disappear again - this time forever. Lev Theremin stopped and turned around. Both were speechless for a while, and then vying with each other they began to tell each other the events of the last decades.
Two months after Clara's departure, Theremin received a letter from the States - from Lavinia. She wrote that everything was fine with her, that she was married, that she had two charming daughters. They also dance on terpsiton. The correspondence between Theremin and Lavinia lasted 30 years. But in 1990, Lavinia suddenly stopped writing. In 1991, Lev Sergeevich went to America and wrote a letter to his ex-wife. He made an appointment for her in the very house where they had once been happy. But in vain: Lavinia never came.
Until his death (in 1993), Lev Theremin continued to look for Lavinia - he could not come to terms with the idea that he had outlived her.
Nothing disturbed the old man’s measured life until, in the same 1967, a New York Times correspondent, preparing a report on the Moscow Conservatory, learned that the great Theremin was alive.
This sensational news in America was perceived as a resurrection from the dead: in all American encyclopedias It was stated that Theremin died in 1938. A flood of letters from his overseas friends poured into Lev Sergeevich’s name, and reporters from various newspapers and television companies tried to meet with him. The conservative authorities, frightened by such interest in the modest person of the mechanic, simply fired him. And all the equipment was thrown into the trash.
After this article appeared, he could not find a job for a year. He spent the next two years in the Central Recording Archive. Yet a glimpse was just around the corner. Once Lev Sergeevich met with his classmate at the gymnasium S. Rzhevkin, head of the department of acoustics at Moscow State University. And Termen again found himself in the laboratory, having the opportunity to experiment. But it didn't last long. In 1977, Rzhevkin died and the laboratory was immediately taken away.

When a vacancy opened at the Department of Marine Physics of Moscow State University, Theremin once again created a new laboratory.
He was a very sociable and cheerful person who never lost interest in people. In the eighties, in addition to work, he gave lectures, performed with his instruments, and played in concerts. During this time, several documentaries were made about him.

Theremin continued to work at the same pace, sometimes recalling with nostalgia the “sharashka”, where it was best to work: at least all day long, and everything is at your fingertips. Last but not least, his performance was based on the power system he developed. His portions were three times smaller than usual, and no matter how much he was persuaded at home or away, he would certainly answer: “My stomach is small and elegant.” He drew all the necessary energy from granulated sugar, eating up to a kilogram of it a day. He sprinkled the porridge with a centimeter layer of sand, ate it along with the top layer of porridge and poured a new layer of sugar. There was always a sugar bowl on his desk, from which he “recharged.”
Problems of longevity also worried him as an inventor. He came up with a system for purifying and rejuvenating the blood and went to the Central Committee. What happened on Old Square shook Theremin to the core. “They said there,” he said, “that we need to feed the population, and not prolong their life.”
In 1989, Theremin and his daughter Natalia Theremin traveled to the festival in Bourges (France). In 1991, together with his daughter Natalya and granddaughter Olga, Termen visited the United States at the invitation of Stanford University. And there he met Clara Rockmore. Clara did not agree to her for a long time - years, they say, do not make a woman beautiful.
- Hey, Klarenok, what age are we! - said 95-year-old Theremin.

Lev Theremin's last performance. 1981

In March 1991, at the age of 95, he joined the CPSU. When asked why he was joining a collapsing party, Termen replied: “I promised Lenin.”
After America, he went back to the Netherlands for the Schoenberg-Kandinsky festival, and, returning to Moscow, found his room in a communal apartment in complete destruction - broken furniture, broken equipment, trampled records. Apparently, one of the neighbors really needed his room. The daughter took Lev Sergeevich to her place. But his vitality dried up, and a few months later, on November 3, 1993, Theremin died.

LEV SERGEEVICH TERMEN (1896–1993)

Russian and Soviet inventor, creator of the original musical instrument- theremin

Lev Theremin was born on August 15 (August 28 - new style) 1896 in St. Petersburg into a noble Orthodox family with French Huguenot roots (in French the family surname was written as Theremin). His mother, Evgenia Antonovna, and his father, the famous lawyer Sergei Emilievich, spared no money on Lev’s education.

Lev Termen carried out his first independent experiments in electrical engineering during his years of study at the St. Petersburg First Men's Gymnasium, from which he graduated in 1914 with a silver medal.

In 1916 he graduated from the St. Petersburg Conservatory in cello, and at the same time studied at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St. Petersburg University. At the university, Lev Theremin had the opportunity to listen to lectures on physics by private assistant professor A. F. Ioffe.

From his second year at the university, in 1916, he was drafted into the army and sent for accelerated training to the Nikolaev Engineering School, and then to officer electrical engineering courses.

Invented:

1. Group of electric musical instruments:

Theremin

Rhythmicon

Terpsitone

2. Security alarm

3. Unique eavesdropping system “Buran”

4. The world's first television installation - far vision

Worked on:

Speech recognition system

Human freezing technology

Military sonar

Died November 3, 1993. As the newspapers later wrote: “At ninety-seven years old, Lev Theremin went to those who made up the face of the era - but behind the coffin, except for his daughters with their families and several men carrying the coffin, there was no one ...”

He was buried at the Kuntsevo cemetery in Moscow.

THE MAN WHO COULD DO ANYTHING

On the evening of November 3, my friends and I drank a glass to commemorate the soul of the inventor and musician Lev Sergeevich Termen. I have never seen this man in my life, but I have been fascinated by his magical talent since childhood, when I first heard the amazing musical instrument theremin, from which all modern electronic music originated.

In the spring of 1926, engineer Lev Termen demonstrated at the People's Commissariat of Defense the world's first television installation - far vision. He installed the camera lens on the street, placed the screen in his office, and the Red commanders Ordzhonikidze, Voroshilov, Budyonny and Tukhachevsky cried out in delight: on the screen Stalin was walking across the yard!

It took Termen only a year to solve a fantastic problem - the creation of electrical foresight. However, for him, it seemed, there were no difficulties in life at all. WITH youth he amazed those around him with his talents: he was fond of mathematics, physics, and something was always exploding in his room. At the university, Theremin studied simultaneously in the physics and astronomy faculties, while simultaneously studying cello at the St. Petersburg Conservatory.

Before the revolution, he managed to graduate from a military engineering school and even fought for the Tsar Father with the rank of second lieutenant in a radio engineering battalion.

But the Bolsheviks did not shoot him, but, on the contrary, took him into service in the electrical battalion. And a year later he was appointed head of the most powerful radio station in the country, the Tsarskoye Selo radio station.

After demobilization in 1920, he was invited to work at the Physico-Technical Institute by Professor Ioffe. Theremin receives the task of doing radio measurements of the dielectric constant of gases at variable temperatures and pressures.

And in the life of Lev Sergeevich it became the first step on the path to fame.

Although his colleagues chuckled: “Theremin plays Gluck on a voltmeter,” this did not bother the scientist at all. In 1921, he demonstrates his invention at the VIII All-Russian Electrotechnical Congress. The surprise of the audience knew no bounds - no strings or keys, a timbre unlike anything else. The Pravda newspaper published an enthusiastic review, and radio concerts were held for a wide audience. In addition, during the congress the GOELRO plan was adopted, and Theremin, with his unique power tools, could become an excellent propagandist for the plan for electrification of the entire country.

A few months after the congress, Termen was invited to the Kremlin.

Stop, whoever is coming!

In addition to Lenin, there were about ten other people in the office. First, Theremin showed the high commission a security alarm. He connected the device to a large vase with a flower, and as soon as one of those present approached it, a loud bell rang. Lev Sergeevich recalled: “One of the military says that this is wrong. Lenin asked: “Why is it wrong?” And the military man took a warm hat, put it on his head, wrapped his arm and leg in a fur coat and began to slowly crawl towards my alarm on his haunches. We got the signal again."

And yet the main “hero” of the audience was the theremin. Lenin liked the instrument so much that he gave the go-ahead for Theremin to tour and ordered that he be given a free train ticket “to popularize the new instrument” throughout the country.

By the way, another impressive feature of Theremin’s life is connected with Lenin.

Lev Sergeevich was passionate about the idea of ​​fighting death. He studied studies of animal cells frozen in permafrost, and wondered what would happen to people if they were frozen and then thawed. When news of the leader’s death became known, Theremin sent his assistant to Gorki with a proposal to freeze Lenin’s body so that years later, when the technology had been worked out, he could be resurrected from the dead. But the assistant returned with sad news: the internal organs had already been removed and the body was prepared for embalming. With that, Theremin abandoned research on human revitalization. And decades later, his idea was embodied in America, and now dozens of frozen lucky people are waiting for resurrection.

After demonstrating the television installation at the People's Commissariat for Education, Theremin showed it at the V All-Union Congress of Physicists in Moscow. The invention caused a sensation, Ogonyok and Izvestia wrote with delight: “Theremin’s name is included in the history of world science along with Popov and Edison!” It seemed that it was a stone's throw from experiment to serial production...

Theremin was offered to create a television system for border military units. But it did not reach the army: the country’s technical base was too poor.

Therefore, the developments were kept secret, and the title of pioneer in the field of television a few years later went to an emigrant from Russia, Vladimir Zvorykin.

Knocked out "Grand Opera" and others

In the summer of 1927, an international conference on physics and electronics was held in Frankfurt am Main. The young Country of Soviets needed to present itself with dignity. And Theremin with his instrument became the trump card of the Russian delegation. He amazed the Europeans with his report on the theremin and with classical music concerts for the general public: “heavenly music”, “voices of angels” - the newspapers were choked with delight.

Invitations from Berlin, London, and Paris followed one after another.

Theremin's most enchanting concert took place in Paris: the conservative Grand Opera theater for the first time in its history gave the hall to some unknown Russian for the whole evening. Such an influx of spectators (even standing tickets for boxes were sold) and such success in the theater have not been seen for 35 years...

Meanwhile, Joffe, who was in the USA at that time, received orders from several companies to produce 2000 theremins with the condition that Theremin would come to America to supervise the work. But instead of one business trip, Lev Sergeevich received two: from the People’s Commissar of Education Lunacharsky and from the Military Department.

Trump on the table!

Things went brilliantly. Theremin concerts took place in Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Boston. Thousands of Americans enthusiastically began to learn to play the theremin, and General Electric Corporation and RCA (Radio Corporation of America) bought licenses to produce it.

The “great crisis” that broke out at the turn of the 1930s ruined many rich people. But he didn’t knock Theremin down. Of course, the people had no time for music, but the inventive Russian had one more trump card - a security alarm. Teletouch Corporation quickly refocused on its production, and Theremin volume sensors were torn off with their hands.

They were even installed in the terrible US prison Sing Sing and in Fort Knox, where the American gold reserves were kept. So everything was fine with business, but there was a crisis in the music field.

Cake for a violinist with a theremin

In the enthusiastic chorus of Theremin's fans, voices of dissatisfaction began to be heard: at concerts he was shamelessly out of tune. The fact is that playing the theremin purely is incredibly difficult: the performer has no reference points (like, for example, the keys of a piano or the strings of a violin) and has to rely solely on hearing and muscle memory.

Theremin clearly lacked performing skills. A virtuoso was needed here. And then fate brought him together with a young emigrant from Russia, Clara Reisenberg. As a child, she was known as a miracle child, a violinist with a great future. But either she overplayed her hands, or because of a hungry childhood, she had to part with the violin: her muscles could not withstand the load. But the theremin was within reach, and Clara quickly learned to play it. There was also a whirlwind romance, especially since Theremin was free by that time.

He is 38 years old, she is 18. They were a luxurious couple, they loved to go to cafes and restaurants. Lev Sergeevich courted her very beautifully and loved to surprise his girlfriend with various miracles. For example, for her birthday, he gave her a cake that rotated around its axis and was decorated with a candle that lit up when approaching it.

The beautiful romance was not destined to end with a wedding. Clara chose someone else - Robert Rockmore, a lawyer and successful impresario, so her musical career was secured.

Why do walls float?

And Theremin plunged headlong into his work. Upon his arrival in America, he rented a six-story mansion on 54th Avenue for 99 years. In addition to personal apartments, it housed a workshop and a studio. Here Lev Sergeevich often played music with Albert Einstein: the physicist on the violin, the inventor on the theremin. Einstein was fascinated by the idea of ​​combining music and spatial images. And Theremin figured out how to do this: he invented the rhythmicon, a light-musical instrument. Huge transparent wheels with a geometric pattern printed on them rotated in front of a strobe light. As soon as the musician changed pitches

Sound, the frequency of strobe flashes and patterns changed - the spectacle was impressive. Well, the fantasy began when the studio walls rose and fell. Of course, not for real, but with the help of a trick of light. The spellbound visitors gasped in surprise!

Rumors about these experiments attracted many famous people to the studio. Among Theremin's guests were millionaires DuPont, Ford and Rockefeller.

However, Termen himself by the mid-30s was included in the list of twenty-five celebrities of the world. And he was even a member of the millionaires' club. Was he really a millionaire? It is not known for certain. Some say that it’s a huge amount of money for Theremin personally and Soviet Russia

brought by Teletouch Corporation. And others claim that Theremin was financed by military intelligence. Because the true purpose of his business trip to America was espionage activity.

Every two weeks Lev Sergeevich came to a small country cafe, where two young men were waiting for him. They listened to his reports and gave him new tasks. However, these tasks were not burdensome and did not particularly distract Theremin from his work. And he was already completely captivated by the most fantastic of his ideas - an instrument that gave birth to music from dance. In fact, this is a type of theremin: the sound is created not only by the hands, but also by the movements of the whole body, and the name was given to it accordingly - terpsiton - after the goddess of dance Terpsichore.

In this case, each sound corresponded to a lamp of a certain color.

Can you imagine what an extraordinary spectacle it was, because any movement of the dancer was echoed by sounds and the flickering of multi-colored lights!

To create a concert program, Theremin invited a group of dancers from the African American Ballet Company. Alas, it was not possible to achieve harmony and accuracy from them, and the project had to be postponed. But in this troupe danced the beautiful mulatto Lavinia Williams, who captivated Lev Sergeevich not only as a ballerina, but also as a woman. Theremin decided to get married.

It never occurred to him that marriage to a black woman would radically change his life. But as soon as the lovers registered their marriage, the doors of many houses in New York were closed to Theremin: America did not yet know political correctness. He lost informants, which caused serious dissatisfaction with Soviet intelligence. And in 1938, Theremin was ordered to immediately leave for Russia. Lavinia was told that she would come to her husband on the next ship.

The spouses did not see each other again. And Termen kept the marriage certificate issued by the Russian embassy in America until the end of his days.

In the Butyrka prison, the investigator told Theremin that he, as a defector, would, of course, be shot if he did not cooperate. A month later, Theremin “confessed” that, together with a group of astronomers, he was planning the murder of Kirov. His version was this: Kirov (who was already dead by that time!) was going to visit the Pulkovo Observatory. Astronomers planted a landmine in a Foucault pendulum. And Theremin, using a radio signal from the USA, was supposed to blow it up as soon as Kirov approached the pendulum. The investigator was not even embarrassed by the fact that Foucault’s pendulum is not in Pulkovo, but in the Kazan Cathedral! Lev Sergeevich was given eight years and sent to Kolyma.

But Termen spent only a year in the camp. He was appointed senior over the criminals who carried stones from the mountain and paved the road with them. Theremin mechanized the process by building a wheelbarrow with a monorail. Work is in full swing! The brigade's rations were tripled, and the papers about the unusual prisoner were sent to Moscow.

In the winter of 1940, he was transferred to Omsk, to the Tupolev aviation sharashka, where throughout the war he developed equipment for radio control of unmanned aircraft and radio beacons for naval operations. But the crowning achievement of his time in the sharashka was the invention of the Buran listening system.

Trojan horse from the pioneers

...On Independence Day, July 4, 1945, the American Ambassador to Russia Averell Harriman received a wooden panel depicting an eagle as a gift from Soviet pioneers. The panel was hung in the ambassador's office.

And then the American intelligence services lost peace: a mysterious information leak began. Only 7 years later, a mysterious cylinder with a membrane inside was discovered inside the gift. For a year and a half, engineers struggled to solve this trick. The secret turned out to be simple: an invisible ray was directed from the house opposite to the office window, and the membrane, oscillating in time with the speech, reflected it back, and it was recorded on a special device.

Then Theremin improved his Buran so much that the membrane was no longer needed - its role was played by window glass. Rumor has it that Buran is still in service with our secret services.

It seemed that the stupid and evil misunderstanding was over and now the inventor would be showered with honors. But Theremin did not receive any official titles; all his patents were covered with the stamp “owls”. secret." And Lev Sergeevich continued to work in secret KGB laboratories. Soon he found himself there new wife- a young typist Masha Gushchina, who gave birth to twin daughters.

For almost twenty years, Theremin was engaged in specific developments for the all-powerful department. At first, these were promising works - speech recognition systems, voice identification, military hydroacoustics.

But over time, priorities have changed. As Theremin recalled, “supposedly in the West they came up with devices to determine where flying saucers were, and we also had to struggle with similar devices.

I understood that this was a scam, and I couldn’t refuse - and one day I decided that it was better to retire.”

The employers did not object, considering that they could not take anything from the old man, and in 1964 Termen finally parted with the special services, under whose invisible eye he had been for almost 40 years.

Theremin doesn't die!

70 years old. It seemed like life was over. But Lev Sergeevich, true to his motto “Theremin does not die!” (this is how his last name is read backwards), gets a job in the acoustic laboratory of the Moscow State Conservatory. Nothing disturbed the old man’s measured life until, in 1968, a New York Times correspondent, preparing a report on the Moscow Conservatory, learned that the great Theremin was alive.

This sensational news in America was perceived as a resurrection from the dead: all American encyclopedias indicated that Theremin died in 1938. A flood of letters from his overseas friends poured into Lev Sergeevich’s name, and reporters from various newspapers and television companies tried to meet with him. The conservative authorities, frightened by such interest in the modest person of the mechanic, simply fired him. And all the equipment was thrown into the trash. For the last twenty-five years, Theremin has worked in the acoustics laboratory of Moscow State University. Mechanic 6th category. He slowly worked on his theremins - he restored some, improved some, and even came up with one in which the sound through a system of photocells arose from just the musician’s gaze.. Theremin seemed to catch ideas out of thin air that sometimes seemed utopian. And later it turned out that the Japanese company Yamaha was working on these ideas independently of him.

Well, Lev Sergeevich taught his niece Lida Kavina to play the theremin. By the age of twenty, she had become a virtuoso performer and toured all over Europe with concerts. In 1989, Theremin was invited to the Experimental Music Festival in France. And he, 93 years old, went!

But most of all, at the end of his life, Termen surprised those around him with his entry into the CPSU: “I promised Lenin.” Lev Sergeevich tried before, but for “terrible crimes” he was not accepted into the party. So Termen became a communist only in 1991, simultaneously with the fall of the USSR.

a swan song

...In 1951, the future American director Steve Martin saw the film “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” But it was not the aliens that shocked him, but the unearthly sound of the theremin that accompanied the action. For several years he communicated with his brother using sounds similar to those produced by a theremin. And many years later, in 1980, Steve Martin was looking for music for his film. And his search led him to Clara Rockmore, who told the director about the legendary inventor. It was then that Martin had the idea to create a story about Theremin documentary. But 11 years passed before he was able to come to Moscow, meet Theremin and invite him to America. The elderly maestro walked confusedly through the streets of New York and had difficulty recognizing the places where ten years of his life had passed. The most exciting thing was the meeting with Clara Rockmore.

Clara did not agree to her for a long time - years, they say, do not make a woman beautiful.

Hey, Clarenok, how old are we! - said 95-year-old Theremin.

After America, he went back to the Netherlands for the Schoenberg-Kandinsky festival, and, returning to Moscow, found his room in a communal apartment in complete destruction - broken furniture, broken equipment, trampled records. Apparently, one of the neighbors really needed his room. The daughter took Lev Sergeevich to her place. But his vitality dried up, and a few months later, on November 3, 1993, Theremin died.

He failed in only one thing - to become the national pride of Russia...

Svetlana BAZHENOVA.

In the early 1990s in Moscow, opposite the Cheryomushkinsky market, a 97-year-old old man lived in a tiny room in a communal apartment. One day, in the old man’s absence, someone destroyed his closet, which served him not only as a home, but also as a scientific laboratory: he broke his instruments and destroyed his notes. The old man was forced to move in with his daughter, and there he soon died. The crime remained unsolved. But it’s unlikely that anyone would be interested in destroying the laboratory, except for the neighbors in the communal apartment - who would like it when an ancient old man occupies a room, and even carries out some incomprehensible experiments?

This old man's name was Lev Theremin.

Perhaps not everyone reading these lines is familiar with this name. First, let's briefly talk about what he invented. Theremin Lev Sergeevich (1896-1993) - inventor, physicist, musician. Creator of the world's first electronic musical instrument, the theremin (1919-20), one of the first televised vision systems (1925-26), the world's first rhythm machine, Rhythmikon (1932), security alarm systems, automatic doors and lighting, the first and most advanced listening devices, etc. The principles of the theremin were also used by Theremin when creating a security system that responded to a person approaching a protected object. The Kremlin and the Hermitage, and later foreign museums, were equipped with such a system.

Lev Theremin was born on August 15, 1896 in St. Petersburg into a noble Orthodox family with French Huguenot roots; his father was a famous lawyer. In 1916 he graduated from the St. Petersburg Conservatory in cello. And in parallel - the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Petrograd University. The revolution found him a junior officer in a reserve electrical battalion serving the most powerful radio station in the empire, the Tsarskoye Selo radio station near Petrograd.

Already in 1919, the legendary professor A.I. Ioffe, with whom Lev studied at the university, invites him to head the laboratory of the Physico-Technical Institute. A year later, a young scientist, based on an electrical measuring instrument he developed, invents the famous theremin - an instrument that could be played simply by the slightest movements of the hand in the air. The musician moves his hands slightly closer or away from the instrument's antennas - the capacitance of the oscillatory circuit changes and, as a result, the frequency of the sound.

World-famous theremin virtuoso Clara Rockmore performs “The Swan” by Saint-Saëns

In those years, he invented many different automatic systems: automatic doors, automatic lighting, security alarm systems. And in 1925 he invents one of the first television systems - “far vision”.

Lev Theremin, conductor Sir Henry Wood and physicist Sir Oliver Lodge, London, 1927.

In the USA, he patented the theremin and his security alarm system. Developed alarm systems for Sing Sing and Alcatraz prisons. He organized the companies Teletouch and Theremin Studio and rented a six-story building for a music and dance studio in New York for 99 years. This made it possible to create trade missions of the USSR in the United States, under whose “roof” Soviet intelligence officers could work.

Soon Theremin became a very popular person in New York. In the mid-1930s, he was one of the world's twenty-five celebrities and a member of the millionaires' club. George Gershwin, Maurice Ravel, Jascha Heifetz, Yehudi Menuhin, Charlie Chaplin, Albert Einstein visited his studio. His circle of acquaintances included financial magnate John Rockefeller and future US President Dwight Eisenhower.

Theremin also divorced his wife Anna Konstantinova and married Lavinia Williams, a dancer of the first American black ballet. Obviously, it was this step that displeased the Soviet authorities - after all, by marrying a black woman, Theremin became persona non grata in many houses and lost a significant part of his informants.

Lavinia Williams in 1955

Then events unfold in a completely unpredictable way for Theremin. In Leningrad he tries to get a job - unsuccessfully. He moves to Moscow - and there is no work for him, a world-famous scientist. In March 1939 he was arrested.

There are two versions of what charge was brought against him. According to the first, he was accused of involvement in a fascist organization, according to the other, of preparing the murder of Kirov. He was forced to testify that a group of astronomers from the Pulkovo Observatory was preparing to place a landmine in the Foucault pendulum, and Theremin was supposed to send a radio signal from the USA and detonate the landmine as soon as Kirov approached the pendulum.

The investigator was not even embarrassed by the fact that Foucault’s pendulum was not in the Pulkovo Observatory, but in St. Isaac’s Cathedral. A special meeting of the NKVD of the USSR sentenced Theremin to eight years in the camps, and he was sent to Kolyma.

At first, Termen served his sentence in Magadan, working as a foreman of a construction team. However, his numerous rationalization proposals attracted the attention of the camp administration to him, and already in 1940 he was transferred to the Tupolev design bureau TsKB-29 (to the so-called “Tupolev sharaga”), where he worked for about eight years. His assistant here was Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, who later became famous designer space technology. One of the areas of activity of Theremin and Korolev was the development of unmanned aerial vehicles controlled by radio - prototypes of modern cruise missiles.

Another development of Theremin is the Buran eavesdropping system, which uses a reflected infrared beam to read glass vibrations in the windows of the room being tapped. It was this invention of Theremin that was awarded the Stalin Prize of the first degree in 1947. But due to the fact that the laureate was a prisoner at the time of presentation for the prize, and the secretive nature of his work, the award was not publicly announced anywhere.

Soviet endovibrator inside a replica of the Great Seal of the United States, National Museum of Cryptography at the US National Security Agency. Photo: Wikipedia

In 1947, Theremin was rehabilitated, but continued to work in closed design bureaus in the NKVD system of the USSR, where he was engaged, in particular, in the development of eavesdropping systems. Then he married for the third time, to Maria Gushchina. They had two daughters, Natalya and Elena. Natalya today is one of the world's most famous performers of theremin music.

Lev Theremin plays the theremin. 1954

After this Theremin, already very old man, not without difficulty got a job in a laboratory at the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University. Formally listed as a mechanic at the department, he held seminars in the main building of Moscow State University for those who wanted to hear about his work and study the theremin. But now his performances, which once thrilled audiences in Europe and the United States, attracted only a few oddballs.

Theremin did not lose heart, he continued to work and was generally distinguished by a rare love of life. When, in the 1970s, his second wife Lavinia, having learned that her Leon was still alive, began corresponding with him, he even asked her to marry him again. He joked about his own immortality - and as proof he suggested reading his last name backwards: “Theremin - does not die!” And the world did not forget about him. In the late 80s - early 90s, he finally got the opportunity to travel abroad, he was invited to the festival in Bourges (France) and to Stanford University.

Lev Theremin at Stanford University. 1991