Memoria. Lev Theremin

Scientist, designer and inventor.

The text was posted in the community at the request of Lev Termen's relatives.

We decided that the most innocuous example of the "syndrome" that occurs when in contact with the name of Lev Termen and his biography is a journalist who wrote that he met with Lev Theremen, and that Lev Sergeevich Theremen was born in Nizhny Novgorod... Unfortunately, there are many less harmless mistakes made by people who write about Lev Theremin, often claiming to be eyewitnesses and close friends of Theremin. I was very upset by the publication of Starokhamskaya ( levkonoe ) about Leo Theremin ("What the Theremin does not sing about"). Perhaps Mrs. Starokhamskaya unintentionally distorted the facts of Lev Sergeevich's life. There are inaccuracies in the article, but the beginning of the article made the most unpleasant impression. We consider it necessary to bring some clarity to the history of the last years of Lev Termen's life.

“I read a story about a 97-year-old old man who lived in Moscow in a terrible buggy communal apartment opposite the Cheryomushkinsky market. When the neighbors (who, apparently, simply did not know that the Soviet Union provided all the working people with excellent housing "at the most I can not") needed his pitiful closet, in the absence of the old man, they destroyed his property, broke things, destroyed the records. The old man was forced to move in with his daughter, but he became so ill from all this that, as expected, he soon died. To the delight of the neighbors in the communal apartment: the room was vacated. Living space. I used it, and that's enough. So what? - you ask. - It's an ordinary story. In communal apartments it still doesn’t happen, the neighbors could be an old man and, in general, tovo ... just think - how long they waited for his square meters to be freed, they themselves have grown old. And the old man, perhaps, also came in large numbers from somewhere. And then, I will answer you, that this old man was not just a grandfather, which thousands of people live in communal apartments. And it was Lev Theremin.

THE MOST LEO THERMEN!

Lev Theremin died in 1993 in poverty and obscurity, persecuted by neighbors in a communal apartment. "

It is very unpleasant to read unverified information about Leo Termen, which has spread throughout the blogosphere, and not only. Therefore, we consider it necessary to discuss the mistakes of Mrs. Starokhamskaya and provide the necessary explanations.

Much has been written about Lev Termen, but this is the first time this has happened. The first sentence of this article is striking: "I read a story about a 97-year-old man who lived in Moscow in a terrible buggy communal apartment opposite the Cheryomushkinsky market."

I immediately recall the well-known poem of Daniil Kharms, who, by the way, according to some sources, was not too lazy to acquire a theremin in the 1920s. Which is definitely very nice.

So first Daniil Kharms, we dedicate this poem to the author of the article:

There lived an old man
Small growth,
And the old man laughed
Extremely simple:
"Ha ha ha
Yes he-he-he,
Hee hee hee
Yes, byh-byh!
By-by-by
Yes, be-be-be,
Ding-ding-ding
Yes, fucking! "

Once, seeing a spider,
I was terribly frightened.
But, clutching the sides,
Laughed loudly:
"Hee hee hee
Yeah ha ha ha,
Ho ho ho
Yes gul-gul!
Gi-gi-gi
Yes ha-ha-ha,
Go Go go
Yes bull-bull! "

And seeing a dragonfly,
Terribly angry
But laughing at the grass
And so he fell:
"Gee-gee-gee
Yes gy-gy-gy,
Go Go go
Boom bang!
Oh, guys can't!
Oh guys
Ahah!"

Note that we firmly believe that you cannot offend all elderly people, regardless of whether they are famous or not. The story that happened to Leo Termen in the context of his room in communal apartment much sadder and not as trivial as the author of the article tried to show.

When Lev Sergeevich Theremin, being a very young man, invented the theremin, he first called it "Aerophone", but with light hand brisk correspondent of the newspaper "Izvestia", the instrument was named "Thereminvox", which actually survived to this day. A very touching coincidence was the appearance of the Theremin and the theremin in one of the rooms in the communal apartment of the departmental house of the Izvestia publishing house. Perhaps not everyone understands Theremin's desire to be in this room, since it was not the housing issue that bothered him at all. He intended to use the room as his laboratory. What came of this, we will find out later.

But now I would very much like to draw the attention of our readers to the fact that throughout his life Lev Theremin had his own laboratory. In childhood - in the parents' house little Lyova parents specially organized a laboratory, and in the country there was a small observatory. Later, at the Ioffe Institute, at first Termen was allocated a laboratory room at the Ioffe Institute, but then, Lev Termen recalls: “Ioffe suggested that I occupy a much larger room - the entire large drawing room, a special hall of the Electrical Engineering Faculty of the Polytechnic Institute (on the third floor) with 20 work tables and 14 large windows. It has already installed two X-ray booths, the walls of which were shielded with sheet lead, as well as two brick heating stoves with chimneys fired through the windows. "

Of course, Termen also had a laboratory during his stay in the United States, where, according to the recollections of contemporaries: “All floors in the house were littered with wires. Lots of wires, pipes, screens - and there was nothing that you could call home. "

A contemporary Fortune correspondent wrote in 1935: Teletouch is an office, factory, and laboratory in a brownstone house, and it's a crazy place. You walk through the door, and immediately the screams of a triggered alarm are heard. Touch the cabinet - and immediately another alarm goes off. Go to the mirror to fix your tie - but they start showing ads there. "

In 1938, Lev Theremin was arrested, sentenced to 8 years and exiled to Kolyma, where most likely he did not have a laboratory, but he nevertheless first improved the design of a cart for transporting stones, and then assembled a theremin and performed in amateur performances ... Soon Termen was transferred to another location and provided with a laboratory and staff.

During the years of work in the laboratory of musical acoustics at the Moscow Conservatory, Lev Termen also had a laboratory, even if it was not a separate room, but a place where he could work and receive advice qualified specialists in areas of interest to him. An important fact was also the availability of the necessary technical equipment.

In 1967, a New York Times correspondent visited Lev Termen in the recording laboratory at the Moscow Conservatory. He writes about Theremin the following: “The other day he received visitors in his laboratory -“ I have developed an electronic organ tuner ”, he can tune an organ of any scale. “Here,” he said, referring to another collection of tubes and resistors, a machine to photograph sounds. It has 70 channels. And here is my rhythmikon. "

During these years, Lev Theremin and a number of employees of the laboratory of musical acoustics repeatedly turned to the Ministry of Culture with a letter asking to allow the organization of an experimental section of electric musical instruments, but to no avail, except for the fact that Theremin was expelled from the laboratory of the acoustics department of the Moscow Conservatory.

The "opinion" about the excessive talkativeness of the laboratory employee was brought to the attention of the leadership and party organization of the Moscow Conservatory. Theremin was fired, his tools were thrown away, some of them were "accidentally" smashed with an ax "- wrote Vasily Borisov in the magazine" Around the World ".

In the future, Lev Termen managed, with the help of friends and largely thanks to Rem Khokhlov, to get a job at Moscow University, at the Faculty of Physics, as a mechanic. The title of the position did not in the least bother Theremin, since the physics department also had excellent equipment, but as Theremin did not ask, it was not possible to get a separate room for a personal laboratory.

And then, one of the "friends" advised Theremin to try to get a separate room, under the pretext of improving living conditions, and since it was already clear that no one would ever give Lev Theremin a separate laboratory, Theremin was inspired by this idea. As a result, he managed to get a tiny room in a communal apartment in a university building near Moscow State University. Lev Sergeevich lived there for a relatively short time, since his two pretty flatmates quickly persuaded him to change an apartment, and as a result of the exchange, Lev Sergeevich was provided with a larger room in a house located not far from Moscow State University, so that it would be convenient for him to go to work. This house was just the departmental house of the Izvestia publishing house.

Of course, it was a communal apartment, consisting of three rooms, in which, in addition to Lev Sergeevich, three elderly people lived. It is not known whether the sounds of the theremin interfered with them or not, but we think not, since Lev Sergeevich did not abuse music. Placing all the necessary ingredients serenely, he made theremins to order, received journalists, and sometimes stayed overnight. And he really liked it. But a little later, there were changes that Lev Sergeevich did not like too much. Since an elderly woman died, who occupied one of the rooms in the apartment and the Izvestia publishing house, guided by reasons unknown to us, gave this room to the employees of the utility department.

So, a married couple with two children entered the vacant room, and youngest child was nursing, and the husband subsequently began to abuse alcohol. This situation upset Lev Sergeevich and created a sufficient number of inconveniences, with which, it should be noted, he coped very courageously and categorically refused to complain to anyone, although even the general telephone number and questions from neighbors to people who called Lev Sergeevich directly, and not neighbors, were unpleasant ... Nevertheless, it was still his laboratory, and he invited people there.

Lev Theremin was sympathetic to his young neighbor, but of course, it was still possible to use the room, but already extremely inconvenient. Lev Theremin was even offered an apartment in Solntsevo, but Lev Theremin was categorically against it, he was interested in the living space located near his place of work - Moscow State University and not far from the apartment where he lived with his daughter Natalya.

They began to poison the "old man" much later.

In 1989, Lev Theremin and Natalia Theremin went to the Sintez-89 electric music festival, which is annually held in the French city of Bourget, where, in parallel with the authentic Theremin theremin, a new experimental model of the theremin was demonstrated.

Lev Theremin gave many interviews, the mayor of Bourget awarded him the medal of honorary citizen of the city, everything was very wonderful, only it was very sad that invitations for Lev and Natalia Theremin were sent to the Union of Composers of the USSR and Lev and Natalia Theremin made out their trip through the Union Composers. That in the future played a very sad role in their fate - every year the French sent invitations to Lev and Natalia Theremin, but for the first two years they arranged a trip, but in last moment there were reasons why Lev and Natalia Termen could not come to the festival, which served as a very unpleasant signal.

In 1990, Lev and Natalia Termen performed in Stockholm at the invitation of the Swedish Radio and Television Committee and the Electroacoustic Association of Sweden.

In 1991, two weeks after submitting an application to the Union of Composers with a request to arrange a trip for Lev and Natalia Theremin to the festival in Bourges and to Stanford University (USA), threats began to arrive against Lev Theremin and his family, with death threats due to the publication in the newspaper Top Secret, which used the title "He Eavesdropped on the Kremlin" for the headline and featured a photograph of Lev Termen taken in Sweden.

The trip to Bourges was disrupted - someone from the Ministry of Culture left with the tickets of Lev and Natalia Termen. The trip to America took place.

After arriving in Moscow, Lev Termen did not visit the room in the communal apartment for a long time, but since many important things were stored there, in the end he was forced to go there and found that his room was completely destroyed and much was lost.

Since Lev Theremin did not appear there for a long time, one could only guess when this happened. Perhaps immediately after arriving from America, perhaps during threats, but it is absolutely certain that it was not the neighbors who did it. This was done by people who knew whom they were hounding. They hounded the great.

If Lev Theremin was an "ordinary old man", then nothing would have happened. It is customary in our country to blame the Soviet government for everything. This is our old Russian tradition. But the tragedy happened during perestroika and it makes you think. Also, a tradition has developed, as soon as Theremin begins to communicate with foreigners, in Russia they begin to break his instruments. It was from the end of the 80s that strange, false articles about Leo Termen began to be published, and in the aggregate it resembled a planned event.

Information about the existence of the Theremin Center at the Moscow Conservatory turned out to be very unpleasant news for Lev Termen in the summer of 1993, and the fact that this center existed for more than a year, we believe, helped Lev Sergeevich to understand that no one was going to give him anything here.

In August 1993, a kindred exchange was carried out between Leo Termen and his granddaughter, Masha Termen and great-grandson Peter Termen. Thus, it was possible to preserve the only laboratory property of Lev Termen. For Lev Termen, this issue was very principled and his granddaughter, Masha, promised not to exchange this room, but to keep it as the only laboratory that he managed to achieve in Russia.

Arriving in Russia in 1938, Lev Theremin hoped to open an institute. In this matter, Pyotr Kapitsa turned out to be much more successful. Nevertheless, Lev Theremin considered it necessary to fix the minimum result and keep the room in a communal apartment as a memory of himself. How the Izvestia publishing house will act in this matter is still unknown.

We will be very grateful to all the fans and propagandists of the theremin and Lydia Kavina, if, as a sign of respect for the memory of Lev Theremin, they take note of the following information:

1. Lydia Kavina is not a close relative of Lev Termen. People and the media who call her a granddaughter, niece, great-niece, or great-uncle are lying.

2. In its performing and teaching activities Lydia Kavina uses an instrument similar in principle to the instrument of Lev Theremin and embodies her own concept of the performing technique and sound of the instrument.

3. Lev Theremin learned about the existence of the Theremin Center in August 1993 from a radio broadcast and wrote a statement to the Moscow Conservatory, where he expressed his opinion about what was happening and asked to clarify the situation. They explained to Lev Termen that his name is just a symbol and the center has the right to use Termen's name regardless of whether Lev Sergeevich wants it or not.

4. Lev Theremin believed that Lydia Cavina was consistently discrediting his name and the instrument that bears his name.

Theremin Center was created by A.I.Smirnov in 1992 and named after L. S. Termen - the inventor of the first world famous electronic musical instrument theremin.

A documentary was made about Lev Termen.

Used materials:

Theremin family website materials:

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

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

After the October Revolution of 1917, he was sent to work at the Detskoye Selo radio station near Petrograd (then - the most powerful radio station in Russia), later - to a military radio laboratory in the city of Moscow. Since 1919, Theremin 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 in a hurry 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 greatcoat without shoulder straps. The soldier's boots on the young man's feet clearly needed repair.
"Hello, I am Lev Theremin," the officer introduced himself. Theremin talked about his misadventures: how he was in charge of an electrical laboratory and how in early 1919 he was arrested on charges of a white conspiracy. "Is it really released?" - Ioffe was surprised. “I can't believe it myself,” Lev Theremin answered. "Now what?" - "Well, no one takes a job. They say that the contra is not finished" - Theremin complained cheerfully. "Well, this grief is easy to help," laughed Ioffe. "They told me a lot about you. Do you want a laboratory?" Theremin agreed without hesitation.

Theremin receives the task - to take up radio measurement of the dielectric constant of gases at variable temperature and pressure. During tests, it turned out that the device made 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, originally named by him eterotone (sound from the air, ether). Soon it was renamed in his honor and became known as the theremin. The highlight of the instrument was that music is extracted from it without touching the hands. The main part of the theremin is two high frequency oscillatory circuits, tuned to a common frequency. Electrical vibrations of sound frequencies are excited by a generator on electronic tubes, the signal is passed through an amplifier and converted into sound by a loudspeaker. An antenna-shaped rod and an arc "look out" - they play the role of the oscillatory system of the device. The performer controls the work of the Thereminvox by changing the position of the palms. By moving his hand near the rod, the performer adjusts the pitch. "Gesturing" 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, Theremin was elected a member of the Association of Astronomers of the RSFSR. He spoke to the members of the union with a report on the problems of radiophysics and photometric properties of planetary systems. He was awarded several certificates of honor of the Astronomical Society.

Catherine Konstantinova

In 1921, Lev Theremin married the sister of his employee, Ekaterina Konstantinova.

Since 1923, Theremin began to cooperate with the State Institute musical science in Moscow.

Theremin and Lenin

In 1921, Theremin demonstrates his invention at the VIII All-Russian Electrotechnical Congress. There was no limit to the surprise of the audience - no strings and keys, a timbre that was not like anything else. The newspaper "Pravda" published an enthusiastic review, concerts were held on the radio for wide audience... In addition, the GOELRO plan was adopted during the congress, and Theremin, with his unique power tool, could become an excellent promoter of the electrification plan for the entire country. A few months after the congress, Theremin was invited to the Kremlin.
The invention of the theremin was of a double nature - after all, if it emits sounds from the movement of the hands, then the burglar alarm can work according to the same principle, reacting to the approach of strangers.
A few months after the congress, Theremin was invited to the Kremlin.

In the office, besides Lenin, there were ten more people. First, Theremin demonstrated a security alarm to the high commission. He attached the device to a large vase with a flower, and as soon as one of those present approached her, 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 squat slowly towards my alarm. turned 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's tour and ordered him to issue him a free train ticket “to popularize the new instrument” throughout the country. By the way, another impressive touch of Theremin's life is associated with Lenin.
Lev Sergeevich was fascinated by the idea of ​​fighting death. He studied work on the study of animal cells frozen in permafrost, and pondered what would happen to people if they were frozen and then thawed. When it became known about the death of the leader, 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 would be resurrected from the dead. But the assistant returned with the sad news: the internal organs had already been removed, the body was prepared for embalming. With that, Theremin left research on the revitalization of man. And decades later, his idea was embodied in America, and now dozens of those frozen after death await resurrection.

Theremin and television

In 1924, the director of the Physicotechnical Institute, Professor AF Ioffe, suggested that LS Termen work on the development of technology for wireless "vision". The TV scriptwriter Alexander Rokhlin writes in his book “This is how far-sightedness was born” that in April 1963 Marshal Budyonny told him how in 1926 he watched “TV”. This device was the strictest secret and was intended for the border troops. Before sending him to the border, it was decided to install him in the office of the People's Commissar of Defense. The People's Commissar invited Budyonny to his place, and they began a kind of game. A technician-operator aimed a transmitting camera at a visitor passing through the courtyard of the People's Commissariat, and they tried to guess who was shown on the screen. “We were so excited,” the marshal recalled, “that at first we did not recognize even well-known people. But this was only in the first minutes, and then we almost unmistakably began to recognize who the operator was showing ”. This device was invented by Lev Theremin.

He designed and manufactured four versions of a television system that includes a transmitting and receiving device. The first version, demo, created at the end of 1925, was designed for 16-line image decomposition. On this setup, it was possible to "see" elements, for example, a person's face, but it was impossible to find out exactly who was being shown. In the second, also demo version, 32-line interlaced scanning was used.
In the spring of 1926, the third version was made, which formed the basis of Theremin's diploma work. 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 only one step to a real electronic TV. But it did not reach the army: the country's technical base was too poor. As a result, the engineer Vladimir Zvorykin, who emigrated from Russia, is considered the inventor of television, who invented the kinescope, which made mass television possible.

Abroad

In the summer of 1927, an international conference on physics and electronics was held in Frankfurt am Main. The young Land of the Soviets had to present itself with dignity. And Theremin with his instrument became the trump card of the Russian delegation.
In the Fourth Directorate of the Red Army Headquarters (intelligence), it was decided that a talented engineer could see and hear a lot in Germany. Theremin was invited to a conversation with the head of military intelligence Yan Berzin, who introduced himself to him as Peteris. Berzin explained to his interlocutor that Germany poses the greatest danger to the USSR, and raised questions to which he would like to receive answers after Termen's return.

Lev Theremin struck the Europeans both with a report on the theremin and with concerts of classical music for the general public: "heavenly music", "voices of angels" - newspapers were choking with delight.
One after another followed by invitations from Berlin, London, Paris.

In December 1927, the famous Parisian "Grand Opera", canceling 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 additional police squads. The reason for this violation of traditions was undoubtedly the success of Theremin's previous performances in concert halls Germany, including the Berlin Philharmonic, and in the prim hall of London's Albert Hall.

Meanwhile, Ioffe, who was at that time in the United States, received orders from several companies for the production of 2000 theremins on the condition that Theremin would come to America to supervise the work.

Life in america

And so a young handsome Lev Termen sails on the ocean liner "Majestic" to America.
Lev Termen did not succeed in working for Soviet intelligence in Germany.

The world famous violinist Jozsef Sighetti, who sailed on the same ship, was jealous of the fees that were offered to Theremin by the largest American merchants for the honor of being the first to hear the theremin. But the inventor gave his first concert for the press, scientists and famous musicians. The success was impressive, and with the permission of the Soviet authorities, Theremin founded the Teletouch studio company for the production of theremin in New York.
Things went brilliantly. Theremin's concerts were held in Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Boston. Thousands of Americans enthusiastically began to learn to play the theremin.
At first, income from performances allowed Termen to live in a big way. He even rented a six-story building on West 54th Street in downtown New York for 99 years. In addition to personal apartments, it houses a workshop and studio. Here Lev Sergeevich often played music with Albert Einstein: a physicist - on a violin, an inventor - on a theremin.

Theremin sold the license to make theremins to General Electric and RCA (Radio Corporation of America), and, with Soviet permission, founded the Teletouch Corporation theremin studio in New York.
Theremins, however, could not provide a large profit: only professional musician, and even then only after long exercises (even Theremin was regularly accused of being shamelessly false). Accordingly, only about three hundred theremins were sold in the States, and Teletouch Corporation switched to the second Theremin invention - capacitive signaling. For metal detectors alone for the famous Alcatraz prison, Thermen's company received about $ 10 thousand. There were orders for similar devices for the equally famous Sing Sing prison and the American gold reserve store in Fort Knox, as well as for the development of security alarms for the equipment of the American-Mexican border. The Coast Guard invited Theremin to develop a system for remote detonation of a group of mines using a single cable. It was this direction that allowed Teletouch Corporation to survive the Great Depression that erupted at the turn of the 1930s.

Theremin behind the theremin

In the United States, Theremin continues to innovate, developing and improving his early inventions. As the development of the theremin idea, terpsitron appears - a device for direct transformation of dance into music; experiments with color music systems are underway. Far-sighted work continues: a security camera is in the New York home of the inventor, Theremin is successfully experimenting with transferring a color image over a distance. Signaling systems were also improved. Nevertheless, according to Termen himself, he hoped that with his inventions he would gain world fame, position and money, but he could not achieve this and, in fact, until the day of his departure to the Soviet Union, remained the owner of a handicraft workshop. In his old age, Theremin did not mind when he was 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 was received by the manufacturers and Theremin's partners.

Amorous affairs

The young wife Termena was not allowed to take to Germany, and she got out to her husband in the United States together with her brother, who was sent abroad as a television specialist. But in New York, Lev Termen's wife Catherine was able to find work only in the suburbs and came home once a week. After six months of such a "family" life, a young man came to Termen and said that he and Katya loved each other. And then it became known that the visitor was a member of a fascist organization. And the Soviet embassy demanded that Theremin divorce his wife. Which he did.
Meanwhile, in the enthusiastic chorus of Theremin's fans, voices of dissatisfied began to be heard: at concerts he is godlessly out of tune. The fact is that purely playing the theremin is incredibly difficult: the performer has no reference points (like, for example, keys on a piano or strings on a violin) and has to rely solely on ear 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 reputed to be a miracle child, a violinist with a great future. But either she outplayed her hands, or because of a hungry childhood, she had to part with the violin: the muscles could not withstand the loads. But the theremin was handed over, and Clara quickly learned to play it. Not without 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 going to cafes and restaurants. Lev Sergeevich courted very beautifully and loved to surprise his girlfriend with various miracles. For example, for her birthday, he gave her a cake that rotated on its axis and was decorated with a candle that would light up when approaching him.
A beautiful novel was not destined to end with a wedding. Clara chose another - Robert Rockmore, a lawyer and successful impresario, so her musical career was secured.

Spy activity

In 1933, the United States established diplomatic relations with the USSR. A Soviet embassy appeared in Washington, and a consulate in New York. And the employees of the Soviet special services who settled under their roof began to show interest in the famous compatriot.

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

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

The organization of a special unit cannot go as fast as you wish, because the environment is more difficult than you think. We are being watched and we must be careful and discreet. 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 (General Electric) 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 at Medical Genzher, for example, he recruited two professors there, and therefore we ask you to expedite your help in the case of Dr. Spaner.
Send us a young lady, interesting, very reliable. Better if her father or brother are stormtroopers. She must be able to speak a little English and be fluent in Russian and must replace our agents at Amtorg ...
Van der Lube, I cannot finish here, and it is better to throw him off the boat when traveling to another country. Whom do you want to hang in Germany instead of him? I quite agree with you that it would be good to inject syphilis on the damned communists from Leipzig. Then one could say that communism comes from the syphilis of the brain of some fools.
Send us a new key. We think the old code can be left under the wall.
Spanknabel enters the room and sends you his best greetings. He wanted to hire a reliable physics student from the exchange bureau to entrust him with such small assignments.
Theremin is very lazy and wants a lot of money, and at the same time he seems to be a half-Jewish pig. He cheated on his country, and therefore we cannot trust him, despite all the 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 out of here. It can be used for Russian translation.
Let us know how things are with Hitler's book. We will be successful in distributing it. Making anti-Semites out of Americans is child's play.
Please work quickly on the Spaner case, it comes with a lot of money.
Heil Hitler.
V. Haag,
Adjutant of the National Administration.

Theremin later recalled his exploration work:

For these purposes, I came up with my own tactics: in order to learn something new, secret, you need to offer something new of your own. When you show your new invention, it is easier to know what they are 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, I did not understand. Most of the questions I was given were irrelevant.
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. In order not to hide something, I definitely had to drink, at the same time, at least two glasses of vodka. I did not feel thirsty at all, and I began to find out: how to be here. And I found out that if you eat about 200 grams of oil, after that alcohol will not work. And so, when I had to go to a meeting with them, in the morning that day I ate less than half a kilo, but still a lot of oil. At first it was very difficult to swallow, then I got used to it.

For creating 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, the project had to be postponed. But in this troupe danced the beautiful mulatto Lavinia Williams, who conquered Lev Sergeevich not only as a ballerina, but also as a woman. Theremin decided to marry.
It never occurred to him that marriage with a dark-skinned 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 in front of Theremin: America then did not know political correctness. Theremin's debts began to grow by leaps and bounds. He recalled that, despite all his efforts, he constantly owed from $ 20 thousand to $ 40 thousand.
He lost informants, which caused serious discontent among Soviet intelligence.

In addition, the scandalous marriage attracted the attention of the US Immigration Service. And there they asked the question: why Termen 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 of the authorities to his person. The Gray Hats advised to return to their homeland.
Theremin hesitated for a while. He remembered the fate of his brother-in-law Konstantinov, who in 1936 succumbed to persuasion, returned to Leningrad and was at large for exactly a month. Theremin said what he must do for his homeland important invention, which would justify his long absence, that he must pay off his debts. But something else was 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 could not achieve this. In fact, until the day of my departure to 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 Chekists to deliver her to the USSR and agreed to disappear without a trace.
September 15, 1938, after issuing 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 "due to the fact that I intend to leave New York State." Theremin disappears. Disguised as a mate, he boarded the Soviet ship "Old Bolshevik". The holds of the ship were filled with Theremin's laboratory instruments with a total weight of three tons.
At the time it was standard way transfer of people. In the captain's cabin there was a secret door to the closet, where only a narrow bunk could fit. Food was brought to the captain in the cabin, and substantial portions were enough for two. During border and customs checks, secret passengers were moved to more secluded places like 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 visit 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 the intelligence service had no objections either. However, on the way of Theremin-Pool Grace Williams, as she was called in Soviet documents, the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs became a wall. A member of the collegium of the ministry, Pyotr Strunnikov, made the following decision: "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR considers it expedient to reject the application for admission to the citizenship of the USSR Theremin Grace because 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 often to Moscow, to knock the doorsteps of various organizations, including those who had signed a business trip for him at one time. I quickly got tired of the officials: without housing, with a ship at the pier, loaded with some kind of devices. Moreover, with unnecessary foreign contacts under his belt. On his next visit to Moscow, without any explanation, on March 10, 1939, NKVD officers took Termen to Butyrka prison.

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

From the indictment in the Lev Termen case

With the available materials, Lev Sergeevich Termen was exposed as a member of a fascist organization, on the basis of which he was arrested on March 10, 1939 ... He did not plead guilty to involvement in the fascist organization, but is exposed by the testimony of A.P. Konstantinov and materials published in the communist American newspaper The Daily Walker.
Based on the above, Lev Sergeevich Termen, born in 1895, native of Leningrad, Russian, former nobleman, non-partisan, engineer-physicist, previously not convicted, is accused of the following:
- in 1927 he went on an overseas business trip to Germany and, not wishing 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;
- being 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, 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 a close relationship with the German intelligence agent Markus, enjoyed his support in promoting his inventions.
The testimony of A.P. Konstantinov and materials published in the American communist newspaper "Dele Walker" ( so in the doc.), is exposed as a member of a fascist organization, that is, in the crimes under Art. Art. 58 p. 1a, 58 p. 4 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR.
The present case has been completed by the investigation and is subject to consideration by a Special Meeting under 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 for 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 land mine in Foucault's pendulum. And Theremin was supposed to blow it up with a radio signal from the United States 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 rotation of the Earth).

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

Theremin is a prisoner

The camp period lasted for about a year. As an engineer, Theremin headed a brigade of twenty criminals ("the political did not want to do anything"). By inventing the "wooden monorail" (that is, by proposing to roll cars not on the ground, but along wooden guiding gutters), Theremin has established himself with better side in the eyes of the camp authorities: the ration was increased three times for the brigade, and Termen himself was soon - in 1940 - transferred to another place - to the Tupolev aviation "sharashka" in Moscow, which after the outbreak of the war moved to Omsk. There Termen developed equipment for radio control of unmanned aircraft, radar systems, radio beacons for naval operations. Then he was transferred to a specialized radio-technical "sharashka".

The subordinate of the convicted Termen was the son of the Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Merkulov - Rem. 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 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 colleagues worked on the country's first model of a radar - a night combat device (PNB). Specialists-prisoners freely moved around the territory of the organization, if necessary, went outside it - in this case, they were accompanied by a guard. Could work - and really did work - in the workplace as long as needed. Our organization was housed in a large new building of the prison hospital, which was vacated for this purpose. 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 big amount equipment, under his supervision several officers-radio technicians worked. But we always went to work in civilian clothes.

We worked on the creation of various devices - primarily for intelligence purposes. Our miniature transmitters for those times were widely used. We worked for foreigners - we installed all the components of the equipment American, so that if the agents failed, it would be impossible to determine its belonging by the equipment. There was an interesting episode here. Batteries leaked frequently. Special rubber containers were needed, but they could not be produced quickly. I suggested using condoms, Termen approved. In the pharmacy, where condoms for the NKVD were bought by transfer, the saleswomen looked up on their foreheads.
We made radio fuses for 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 provided an explosion at a height of about two meters above the earth's surface. At the same time, the bomb's lethality increased significantly. In this system, the theremin principle was used: when approaching the ground, the tone of the signal in the bomb head changed, which, under certain conditions, led to an explosion. Unfortunately, an interesting idea did not appear in the series: 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 leadership, 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 did not know that after a working day he would not leave the fence, no one would have thought that he was a convict. I remember that once, together with Termen, we put together a theremin in a couple of days, and he performed in front of a large audience with a concert. In our laboratory, receivers almost always worked, receiving music programs... He liked to comment on what he was listening to, explaining to us certain fragments of symphonies. In addition, he was keenly interested in what was happening in the world. During the war, all radio receivers 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 the right decisions. In radio engineering practice, this is probably correct, and I almost always followed this principle in my further work.

Work for the special services

Operation Zlatoust became the triumph of Lev Sergeevich in a new field. On Independence Day, July 4, 1945, the American ambassador to Russia, Averell Harriman, received a wooden panel depicting an eagle as a gift from the Soviet pioneers. The panel was hung in the ambassador's office, after which the American special services lost their peace: a mysterious information leak began. Only 7 years later, they found a mysterious hollow metal cylinder with a membrane and a pin sticking out of it inside the pioneers' gift, after which they solved its secret for another year and a half. There were no power supplies, no wires, no radio transmitters.
The secret was as follows: a high-frequency pulse was sent to the panel from the house opposite. The membrane of the cylinder, vibrating to the beat of the speech, reflected it back through the rod-antenna; on the receiving side, the signal was demodulated.

At the end of 1946, with the help of the same microphone, information was received that two prominent specialists in the search for listening devices were going to Moscow. In many divisions of the MGB, a real panic began.
“Comrade Stalin,” the veteran of state security recalled, “highly appreciated objective information - in particular, tapes of wiretapped conversations. Even before the war, some premises of foreign embassies - primarily Germany and its allies - were equipped with appropriate equipment. In the fall of 1941, when all diplomatic missions We were 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 diplomatic missions with microphones at once. The Central Committee agreed. All mansions were equipped with microphones - under the baseboards and at the top, near the ceiling. The technology was then on the verge of fantasy! Huge " washers "- you can kill them, they won't fit into your pocket. But there was plenty of time, and they stuffed everything with microphones. Everyone was satisfied.
After the return of the embassies from Kuibyshev, the general microfonization for some time brought good results. But the embassies were by no means fools. They guessed that the state security did not sit idle while they were evacuated. And so the auditors are coming to us.
Minister of State Security Abakumov convened a meeting. The number of "pucks" was measured in hundreds, and it is impossible to get them out of the embassies in a few days, even if you die. A spokesman for the ministry's secret service, which was in charge of sabotage and other delicate operations, suggested for a while to take the Americans out of working condition, as he put it, "to plant them tightly on a pot." This proposal seemed to everyone the least evil.
Abakumov went to the Kremlin for the sanction. Dali. A group of nine people was formed. We prepared a good tool and began to clean up the embassies. According to the scheme, diplomats were "bred" and went to the embassies. How was it "bred"? Counterintelligence. Each employee of the embassy was studied thoroughly: his habits, weaknesses, hobbies ... The overwhelming majority of diplomats had a weakness, using which one could force them to immediately drop everything and rush to the other end of Moscow. Gourmets were invited to dinner, vain guys - to meetings with celebrities, for lovers of the weaker sex, too, who needed to be selected.
The first to cleanse the Canadian embassy in Starokonyushenny lane. According to the existing schemes, they removed the plinths, collected an overwhelming bag of "washers", put things in order and went home. It was very difficult for us at the US Embassy: there were more people there than in other embassies, and microphones. But we dealt with this too. At the same time, American specialists arrived. Doctors prepared drugs, and agents planted drugs in their food. As we were promised, the intruders left the latrines for a week and a half only to sleep.
We hoped to round off by the target date. But a surprise awaited us where we least could have foreseen it - at the New Zealand Embassy on Samoteka. No one was ever particularly interested in diplomats from this "sheep island", and, as it turned out, the counterintelligence officers did not even have a "divorce" scheme for the employees of this embassy. They began to improvise something on the way, but no matter how hard they tried, at least one of the diplomats continued to hang around vigilantly in the embassy. Time passes, American specialists examined their embassy, ​​switched to the rest, and we are fighting with our "shepherds". Abakumov was furious. Gathered everyone and yelled: "What are you! You can't find beautiful babes for them ?! Are they not people ?! Or do they not like to drink?" They all loved, but strictly in turn.
Day after day, and we have no result. We decided to consult with Theremin if we could think of something so that the Americans would not find the microphones. He thought about it and recommended sending a powerful radio emission to the embassy: it, they say, will drown out the devices of the Americans and will not allow finding the "washers". I think he was still a prisoner then. They brought him with equipment, chose points around the embassy, ​​installed transmitters and antennas. But the trial run of this system ended in complete failure. Theremin, however, did not think a damn thing, everything by eye. The inventor, not the scientist, didn’t make it.
I myself was not there at that moment, so I retell it from someone else's words. In the courtyard of the embassy, ​​the janitor was breaking the ice with a crowbar. When everyone turned on, he threw the crowbar, threw off his hat, began to cross himself, yell: "Holy, holy, holy!" - and rushed to the embassy. Our people asked him later, and he said: "The scrap flew!" Nonsense, of course. The "shepherds" did not believe him either, they decided that they had taken too much on their chest, but they became wary and began to look closely at everything that was happening around the embassy. And Termen smiled a little and said: "Probably, they overdid it with power."
Wouldn't have blown his head off if he had been very different at that time. the right thing did not invent. And we decided to abandon the Theremin miracles. It became a little easier for us when we learned that the New Zealanders had refused to let American specialists in. 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. After all, the New Zealand embassy is a trifling matter. And we remained safe. "
However, it seemed to me that, speaking of the punishment for Theremin, the veteran was lying. He was a recognized expert in electronics and, according to other sources, could even afford to joke with Beria. They say that the "Lubyanka marshal" wanted to include Termen among the participants in the atomic project and asked the inventor what he needed to create an atomic bomb. "A personal car with a driver and a ton and a half of an aluminum corner," replied Theremin. Beria laughed and left him alone. "

Later Theremin was engaged in the improvement of the device used in the operation "Chrysostom". The new listening device was called "Buran", for which in 1947 he was awarded Stalin Prize first degree (they say that Stalin personally corrected the degree from the second to the first), and was also released - however, the 8 years to which he was sentenced just expired in 1947. Moreover, Theremin sat out an extra 4 months. Instead of 100 thousand rubles, which were supposed to be awarded to the prize, he was given a two-room apartment in a newly built house on Kaluzhskaya Square with full furnishings. 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" already as a civilian. He improved his listening system.
"Buran" made it possible from a distance of 300-500 meters to register vibrations of window glass in rooms in which people were talking, and to convert these vibrations into sounds.
Thus, from a great distance it was possible to 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 wiretap the American and French embassies.
Now the same idea is being implemented on the basis of laser scanning of glass. The idea to use a laser for this belongs 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 the wife of Theremin during his life in the United States, continued to be so.

As Elena recalls, Theremin was a caring father - he helped to do homework not only for children, but also for a young housekeeper who studied at an evening school; I checked my success in playing the piano, and sometimes, according to my mood, I arranged home concerts, playing alternately with the children on the theremin. Never having a rest on his own initiative, he loved when friends came to someone from his family, willingly played music, danced and had fun.
The only stumbling block, as her daughter recalled, was the certificates from the place of work, which had to be provided to the school. Theremin's certificate stated only that he was a KGB officer. "But you need to indicate the position," said the daughters. "What do you work for?" Theremin laughed it off: "The junior assistant to the senior janitor." “In general,” her daughter recalled, “if he didn’t want to say something, he didn’t say anything. At the same time, he didn’t keep silent, but began to wind up a phrase over a phrase. It’s easier to understand Gorbachev when he starts.”

Retired

In addition to glass, he studied other structural elements of buildings with the aim of using them as a kind of microphone membranes. Here everything went well for him, until a new element base appeared in electronics - transistors. Theremin could not rebuild as quickly as his superiors demanded. It was even harder for him when, under Khrushchev, a personnel leapfrog began in the KGB. With the new chiefs and supervisors of technical services, he, as he later admitted, to find mutual language could no longer.

According to his version, the reason was the becoming fashionable pseudo-scientific devilry: UFOs, levitation, extrasensory perception. He was asked to study materials about these phenomena and give his suggestions. Theremin immediately replied that it 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 it was time to retire.

But Lev Sergeevich, true to his motto "Theremin - does not die!" (this is how his surname is read, on the contrary), got a job at the Sound Recording Institute and took on a couple of part-time jobs so that the family did not notice the loss in salary. And in 1965, when the Recording Institute was closed, Theremin went to work at the Moscow Conservatory. He improved the theremins, refined other ideas.
In 1967, a student of Theremin and his former love, Clara Rockmore, arrived in the USSR with a cultural delegation. 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 next to her. But this gait, this impeccable posture cannot be confused with anything. "Lev Sergeevich!" she screamed, fearing that he would disappear again - this time forever. Lev Theremin stopped and turned around. Both were numb for a while, and then vying with each other 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 she was doing well, that she was married, that she had two charming daughters. They also dance on the 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 ex-wife letter. He made an appointment for her in the very house where they were once 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 thought that he survived her.
Nothing disturbed the measured life of the old man until, in the same 1967, the New York Times correspondent, who was 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 indicated that Theremin died in 1938. A stream of letters from his overseas friends poured into the name of Lev Sergeyevich, reporters from various newspapers and television companies tried to meet with him. The conservative bosses, frightened by such an interest in the modest person of the mechanic, simply fired him. And all the equipment was thrown into the trash.
After the appearance of this article, he could not find a job for a year. The next two years he spent in the Central Archive of Sound Recordings. Yet a glimpse was not far off. Once Lev Sergeevich met with his fellow student at the gymnasium S. Rzhevkin, head of the department of acoustics at Moscow State University. And Theremin again found himself in the laboratory, having the opportunity to experiment. But this did not last long. In 1977, Rzhevkin died and the laboratory was immediately taken away.

When a vacancy opened at the Department of Marine Physics at Moscow State University, Theremin once again created a new laboratory.
He was a very sociable and cheerful person who did not lose interest in people. In the eighties, in addition to work, he lectured, performed with his instruments, played in concerts. During this time, several documentaries were shot about him.

Theremin continued to work at the same pace, sometimes with nostalgia remembering the "sharashka" where it was best to work: at least around the clock, and everything is at hand. Last but not least, its performance was based on the power supply system developed by him. His portions were three times smaller than usual, and no matter how much he was persuaded at home or at a party, he would certainly answer: "My ventricle is small and delicate." He drew all the necessary energy from granulated sugar, eating it up to a kilogram a day. He sprinkled the porridge with a centimeter layer of sand, ate it along with top layer porridge and poured a new layer of sugar. There was always a sugar bowl on his desktop, from which he "recharged".
Longevity problems worried him as an inventor. He came up with a system for purifying and rejuvenating blood and went to the Central Committee. What happened in the Old Square shocked Theremin to the core. “They said there,” he said, “that we need to feed the population, and not extend its life.”
In 1989, Theremin together with his daughter Natalia Theremin traveled to a festival in Bourges (France). In 1991, together with his daughter Natalia and granddaughter Olga Termen, he 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 paint a woman.
- Ay, Clarenok, well, what our age! - said 95-year-old Theremin.

The last performance of Lev Termen. 1981 year

In March 1991, at the age of 95, he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. When asked why he joined the crumbling party, Theremin replied: "I promised Lenin."
After America, he went back to the Netherlands for the "Schoenberg - Kandinsky" festival, and when he returned to Moscow, he found in his room in a communal apartment complete destruction - broken furniture, broken equipment, trampled records. Apparently, one of the neighbors badly 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.

How to play a musical instrument without touching it, why marriage interfered with the career of a spy and what made Lev Termen join the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1991, tells the History of Science column.

Lev Theremin (not very original, but very accurately) was often compared with Leonardo, so wide was the range of his interests and such serious achievements in this circle he achieved. Or could have achieved. If only given.

Prolific, talented ... It is quite possible that he is simply a genius. To these characteristics one should add “underestimated”, but his whole trouble was that the inventor was just assessed, and deafeningly appreciated. Such popularity was far from welcomed in the circles for which he worked. And the "circles" successfully drowned out his popularity: at the age of 97, forgotten by everyone, he died in a tiny communal room, hunted by neighbors claiming his living space. Although during his lifetime Theremin joked that if you read his last name on the contrary, you get "not dying."

At the very beginning, such an outcome was not expected. Theremin was born in St. Petersburg, in a very "decent" family with French noble roots (in French his surname was written as Theremin). The firstborn in the family, he was treated kindly by his parents and received the best education he could get. Leo's musical abilities were developed by playing the cello, and they did not forget about the exact sciences. A physics laboratory was set up for him in the apartment, and later even a home observatory appeared. These two hypostases, music and physics, remained for Theremin the main hobbies of his entire life.

Lev Theremin

Wikimedia Commons

In 1916, he graduated from the St. Petersburg Conservatory in the cello class, while studying at the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Petrograd University. Physics was taught to him by privat-docent Abram Ioffe, the future pillar of Soviet science. True, he did not have to finish his studies: in 1916 he was taken into the army, where Theremin served as a military radio engineer. In 1919, Abram Ioffe invited him to his institute as a specialist in radio engineering. Theremin was supposed to measure the dielectric constant of gases at various pressures and temperatures. Lev Sergeevich solved this problem with the help of an oscillatory circuit in which the gas was placed between the plates of the capacitor, affecting its capacitance and, accordingly, the frequency of electrical oscillations of the circuit.

Russian and Soviet physicist Abram Ioffe

Wikimedia Commons

History is silent on how effectively our hero coped with Ioffe's task, because from this task suddenly grew the most famous of his inventions, the aerophone, which the journalists later renamed the theremin (however, in English, the invention is often called by the name of our hero - theremin; also the variants "etherophone" or "thereminophone" were used).

The new musical instrument looked like a box with an antenna. To play it, you did not need to touch it: the theremin made sounds, controlled by the musician's passes. In parallel, the same capacitor a la Ioffe led Lev Termen to another invention - an alarm system that reacted to a change in the capacitance of a capacitor in a protected room. Apparently, Termen had not yet completed this invention at that time, because later the inventor often returned to it, wanting to improve it. One way or another, today this system is one of the most used and most in demand, but no one associates it with the name of the inventor of the theremin.

Thereminvox

Hutschi / Wikimedia Commons

In March 1922, a demonstration of Theremin's inventions was staged in the Kremlin, which was attended by Lenin himself. Vladimir Ilyich even tried to personally play Glinka's “Skylark” theremin. The new musical instrument, of course, completely overshadowed the charm of the capacitive signaling system, which, we note, under different circumstances and in another country could have made the inventor a billionaire without any theremin.

Vladimir Lenin, 1920

After this demonstration, the elated Termen completely plunged into the world of inventions. Per a short time he invented everything from automatic doors and automatic lighting to burglar alarms. And in 1925-26 he invented one of the first television systems, which he called "vision".

On the one hand, this was a giant step forward, because the television systems available at that time had screens the size of Matchbox, and Theremin invented a device with a screen one and a half by one and a half meters with a resolution, however, only one hundred lines. On the other hand, it would be a giant step into a dead end, because the television that Theremin developed was living out its last years, because it was not based on electronics, but on a mechanical (stroboscopic) effect.

True, the Soviet leaders liked the Theremin far-sight very much. The image of Stalin walking through the Kremlin courtyard on a one and a half by one and a half screen shocked them so much that they immediately classified the invention. Under this seal, it, not claimed by anyone, happily disappeared.

Then the test of glory began. The news about the world's first electric musical instrument, on which the author himself plays and gives concerts of classical music, spread across the planet. Several American firms immediately applied to the USSR with an order for 2000 theremins, but with the condition that the author moved to the United States to supervise the work. In 1928, Theremin went to America, having received two assignments - from the People's Commissar of Education Lunacharsky and from foreign intelligence. That is, he became a spy.

Arriving in New York, Theremin immediately patented his musical instrument and alarm system, rented a six-story building in the city center for a music and dance studio for 99 years and registered two companies - Teletouch and Theremin Studio. Where the Soviet inventor got the money for this is still debated. He may have received them from Soviet intelligence, but it is just as likely that it was money received from the sale of a license to the American company RCA for the right to serial production of a simplified version of the theremin.

One way or another, Theremin managed to successfully combine business and intelligence activities. Soviet spies worked under the roof of the trade missions of the USSR, which he organized in a rented building. Once a week, Theremin met with his supervisors, informing them of the information received and receiving new assignments.

At the same time, the inventor became more and more popular. His studio was visited by George Gershwin, Maurice Ravel, Charlie Chaplin, Albert Einstein ... In parallel with business and espionage, Theremin was engaged in his favorite business. So, in 1932 he created a light-musical instrument "rhythmikon". It was a huge transparent wheel with a printed on them geometric pattern that rotated in front of a stroboscopic lamp. As soon as the musician changed the pitch, the frequency of the strobe flashes changed along with the sound. The play of light changed the drawings and seemed to change the interior surrounding the audience, for example, raising and lowering the walls.

Lev Theremin also worked hard on his other musical invention - terpsiton, named after the muse of the dance Terpsichore. In fact, it was the same theremin, only the sound and multi-colored lamps were controlled here not by the hands of the musician, but by the bodies of the dancers - music was born from dance.

Lev Theremin with terpsiton

Andrew3858 / Flickr

It was not possible to finish work on terpsiton: love interfered, oddly enough. The troupe of dancers invited by Theremin to create a concert program danced the beautiful mulatto Lavinia Williams, whom Theremin fell in love with and whom he later married.

On this, his popularity quickly faded away, since in America in the thirties, marriages of "whites" with people of a different skin color were not encouraged. Left without a stream of guests, Theremin was left without informants. As an intelligence officer, he was no longer needed, and in 1938 he was recalled to the USSR, depriving him of his wife and all the accumulated millions.

For some time he was knocked about without work, then he was arrested and sentenced to eight years under the fifty-eighth article. He was charged with an attempt to kill Kirov with the help of a mined Foucault pendulum. It is difficult to invent a lot of nonsense, but for the then judges it was quite enough for a verdict. Once in the camp, Theremin invented a self-propelled wheelbarrow on a monorail and soon after that he was sent to the so-called "sharashka" of Tupolev. There he was found by the Great Patriotic War. Theremin developed equipment for radio control of unmanned aircraft, radio beacons for naval operations. Here, in the sharashka, he developed his famous Buran eavesdropping system.

Freed, Theremin worked for some time at the KGB research center, developing various electronic systems. In 1963, he began to work in the acoustic laboratory of the Moscow Conservatory, but he did not come to court here either. After publishing about him in the New York Times, he was expelled from the conservatory in disgrace. He spent the last 25 years of his life in the acoustics laboratory of Moscow State University, where he was listed as a sixth-grade mechanic.

All this time, the inventor, surprisingly, was not a member of the party. He became a member of the CPSU only in March 1991, when not only the party, but also the state itself was threatened with an imminent collapse. When asked why he decided to become a communist after all, Theremin replied: "I promised Lenin." And he kept his word.

"Echoes of the future, sounding from the past"

The incredible fate of Lev Termen

V.P. Borisov,
candidate of technical sciences
Institute of the History of Natural Science and Technology
S. I. Vavilov RAS, Moscow

Many Muscovites first heard the name of Lev Sergeevich Termen in the summer of 1997 during the celebration of the 850th anniversary of Moscow. The invited magician Jean Michel Jard, who created a phantasmagoria of music and light near Moscow University, announced that he was performing his works on an electronic musical instrument invented by Theremin. Thanks to the visiting maestro. Perhaps now domestic lovers of modern music will be able to recognize the "Theremin's voice" in the soundtrack to the Disney movie "Alice in Wonderland", Led Zeppelin's disc "Lotte's Love", and Beach Boys' compositions "Good Vibrations."

Theremin and theremin, 1924

The invention, made by a Russian engineer ninety years ago, finds new incarnations in the world of modern electronic music. This is what the American journalist had in mind when he spoke of Theremin's instrument as "an echo of the future, sounding from the past." The "father of the musical synthesizer" Robert Moog called Theremin a genius. But, apparently, such is the peculiarity of the life of Russian geniuses that especially a lot of villainy is going on around them.

UNIVERSITIES OF PHYSICO-LYRICS

Lev Sergeevich was born on August 15 (August 27, new style) 1896 in St. Petersburg, in a wealthy noble family. He showed his versatile abilities already in childhood... With the same enthusiasm he mastered playing the cello and was engaged in experiments in physics. After graduating from high school, he was admitted to the St. Petersburg Conservatory in the cello class. However, this was not enough for Theremin, a year later he also entered the Faculties of Physics and Astronomy of St. Petersburg University.

The world war prevented me from getting a second higher education. He is drafted into the army. The cellist-physicist is studying at the Military Electrotechnical School. After the October Revolution, Theremin was recruited again: as a military radio specialist, he had to join the ranks of the Red Army. The service took place at the Detskoselskaya radio station near Petrograd and at the military radio laboratory in Moscow.

At the beginning of 1920, the civil war came to an end, Theremin got the opportunity to change his military clothes to civilian ones and return to Petrograd.

COUNTRY WIDE ELECTRIFICATION OF INVENTION

The place of work of the demobilized radio specialist was the physical and technical department of "daddy" AF Ioffe at the X-ray Institute. Soon after Termen's arrival, this department was transformed into an independent institute (the famous Phystech).

The first engineering development of the young specialist was the creation of a capacitive-type burglar alarm device. The device was simple and effective: an intruder approaching a protected object found himself in an electric field created by a capacitor plate. The change in capacitance caused a deviation in the frequency of the oscillatory circuit, as a result of which a sound generator was triggered on the central console, emitting a signal similar to a whistle.

The thought, meanwhile, developed further. In the same 1920, Theremin made his first electronic musical instrument, which he called the etherophone. The main part of the instrument consisted of two high-frequency oscillatory circuits tuned to a common frequency. The capacitor plate of one of the circuits had an external output in the form of an antenna. The movement of the hand near the antenna created a heterodyne effect, which the amplifier converted into sound. The pitch changed as the hand approached or moved away from the antenna. In an unprecedented way - as if from the air ("ether") - a melody arose. The musician did not need strings or keys: Theremin's hand was floating in space. With a movement of his other hand, Theremin increased or decreased the volume of the sound.

In February 1921 he demonstrated his instrument at a meeting of the Petrograd branch of the Russian Society of Radio Engineers. In October of the same year, he addressed the participants of the VIII All-Russian Electrotechnical Congress. The Physicotechnical Institute patented the Theremin musical instrument in Germany, Great Britain, France, and the USA (the first application is dated June 23, 1921). In 1922, Theremin presented his instrument, along with security alarm devices, to the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars V. I. Lenin. After receiving a special mandate to travel throughout the country, the inventor held about 180 lectures and concerts in different cities of Russia.

Beginning in 1922, Theremin was also engaged in research in the field of television. During this period, he completed his technical education by attending lectures at the Petrograd Polytechnic Institute. As a thesis, he was presented in 1926 with a prototype of the current television installation using a 64-line mechanical scanning system. The television image was reproduced on a screen with sides of about 0.5x0.5 m.

The command of the Red Army was the first to show interest in the Theremin TV. By order of the military department, an improved installation of optical-mechanical "far-sightedness" was manufactured. A television reception camera was installed above the entrance to the Red Army Administration on Arbat Square. People's Commissar K.E. Voroshilov demonstrated to the red commanders in the reception room next to his office the amazing opportunity to see people approaching the building without looking out the window.

Although the work on the television system is only an episode in the biography of Theremin, the installation he created became a milestone in the history of the development of domestic television.

And yet, in the mid-twenties, the "theremin" (theremin's voice), as his musical instrument began to be called, received a greater public response. The country, which carried out electrification and industrialization, needed to expand its ties with industrialized countries. Theremin are beginning to be included in the composition of delegations that went abroad to show the achievements of culture and science of the country of the Bolsheviks.

FOREIGN TRIUMPH

In 1927, Theremin was sent by the People's Commissariat of Education to Germany, England and France. Skinny performances aristocratic appearance Russian and his performance musical works on the theremin were held with great success. The concerts at the Grand Opera aroused such interest that the theater, due to the full house, for the first time in its history, organized the sale of standing tickets in the boxes.

At the end of the year, Lev Sergeevich leaves for the United States. In January 1928, his first concert took place in New York, which was attended by composer Sergei Rachmaninov, conductor Arturo Toscanini, violinist Jozsef Szigeti. The performance took place in the hall of the Plaza Hotel, Theremin performed works by Offenbach, Scriabin, Schubert in the arrangement for his instrument. The musician performed a similar program a few days later in the large hall of the Metropolitan Opera. The envoy of Russia received a loud publicity - this was discussed at an elite reception held the same evening in the house of K. Vanderbilt, and subsequent publications in newspapers and magazines testified to the same. This success had to be consolidated. Theremin receives permission from the Soviet authorities to found a studio firm "Teletouch" in New York. The firm's mission was to further develop musical instruments and commercialize them in the United States.

Theremin works with great creative enthusiasm. By 1930 he had created three types of theremin for solo and ensemble performance, covering different sound registers. Develops a monophonic keyboard instrument for four octaves, then - an electronic cello of high sound power. The customer for the cello was Leopold Stokowski, who noted that it was only with this instrument that he was able to harmoniously perform Claude Debussy's Prelude No. 10 with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Theremin combined his inventive work with musical performance. His concerts were successfully held in Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Boston and other cities in America. His studio in New York was attended by M. Ravel, J. Gershwin, C. Chaplin, A. Einstein, A. Ziloti, L. Stokovsky and other celebrities.

RCA (Radio Corporation of America) in 1929 bought a license from the inventor for the right to manufacture theremins (the American name for instruments) in the United States. Business success is evidenced by the fact that the thereminist musicians' union in the United States in 1936 had about 700 members.

Clara Reisenberg, a promising violinist who emigrated to the United States from Russia at a young age, became an outstanding master of playing the Theremin instrument. The hungry years in post-revolutionary Petrograd affected musical career Clara is her right hand became not strong enough for a professional violinist. The transition from violin to theremin allowed us to get away from this problem, and soon Clara Rockmore (this became her surname after marriage) was recognized as an unsurpassed virtuoso of playing an electronic instrument. Clara's marriage seems to have been linked to some degree with thoughts of a future career. Her husband Robert Rockmore was famous in the world of music show business. Our reader will be interested to know that R. Rockmore became, in particular, the impresario of the singer Paul Robson, who repeatedly came to the USSR.

Clara's marriage markedly upset Termen, who was long time in an ardent romantic relationship with her. Nevertheless, this did not weaken his inventive talent. In 1931, Theremin, in collaboration with the composer G. Cowell, created a rhythmicon - an instrument that reproduces sounds of different frequencies when rotating wheels interact with light rays. At the same time, Lev Sergeevich is developing terpsiton - a "musical platform", the sounds of which were generated by the movements of the dancers who were on it. Theremin's idea - that dance should give birth to music, and not vice versa - was the most fantastic. To implement it, the inventor starts working with a group of dancers from the African American Ballet Company. However, Theremin failed to achieve the necessary musical accuracy from them. The synthesis of dance and music with the help of terpsiton remained in the plans for the future.

At the same time, working with the dancers of the African American Ballet Group made changes in Theremin's personal life. The charming mulatto ballerina Lavinia Williams became his wife.

The attitude of American society towards mixed marriages has varied throughout the history of this country. After his marriage to Lavinia, Theremin very quickly realized that the doors of many houses of the New York elite were closed to him.

FROM SHIP TO ... PRISON BUNCH

The point in the American period of his life was put by his return to the USSR in 1938. best traditions detective genre, came as a complete surprise to Theremin. Another veil must be lifted to explain the incident. The fact is that, while in America, he was constantly in contact with agents of the NKVD.

For this department, he had to obtain the necessary information, talk about his contacts with famous people. Therefore, it seems quite probable that after the reduction of the circle of acquaintances, Theremin, as a source of information, has largely lost its value for the NKVD. According to his American biographer S. Martin, Russian musician had the imprudence to seek financial assistance from the German mission in New York, and this is what provoked an angry reaction from Moscow.

"Our people" came to the Termen house on 54th Street in New York and escorted the musician to a Soviet ship that was at the mouth of the Hudson. As Lev Sergeyevich later recalled, he was told that he was urgently needed "to clarify some formal issues." Maybe it will seem incredible to someone, but the Chekists did not hard work to take a famous person out of the center of New York without his consent and without observing the necessary rules of passport and customs control.

Already on the ship, Termen was told that he was returning to the USSR. First of all, Lev Sergeevich asked if his young wife could join him. He was assured that she would be sent to the USSR on the next flight. Luckily for Lavinia, no one was going to keep that promise. The disappearance of the Russian husband remained a big mystery for the black ballerina.

In the USSR, Termen was awaiting a pre-trial detention center. The investigator advised the musician to voluntarily admit that he was involved in a conspiracy to kill Kirov. Theremin's arguments that he could not do this while in America were not convincing enough. By a court decision, Theremin was sentenced to eight years. In fact, the imprisonment lasted twenty years. The most difficult was the first year of imprisonment, which had to be served in the notorious Kolyma. He survived, although the musician's hands did not immediately adapt to hauling heavy cars with frozen ground. Then the GULAG leadership remembered technical education"conspirator". He was transferred to work in the "sharags" of Omsk, then Moscow, where he was engaged in equipment for radio control of unmanned aircraft, as well as radio beacons for use in naval operations.

Zek's ways are inscrutable. At the end of the war, Theremin is tasked with developing outdoor listening devices for conversations in buildings. The inventor solved the problem using the latest achievements in radio engineering. At that time, employees of foreign embassies in Moscow had no idea that in order to eavesdrop on conversations in the room, it was enough for specialists to receive scattered radio radiation reflected from a window glass. For the development of equipment codenamed "Buran" Theremin was awarded in 1947 the Stalin Prize of the 1st degree.

The bugs created during that period for eavesdropping were distinguished by their high technical perfection. In the early 1950s, employees of the American Embassy in Moscow discovered a miniature metal cylinder inside the carved wooden coat of arms of the United States hanging in the ambassador's office. The "bug" puzzled Western experts, since it had neither batteries nor electrical circuits. The principle of operation was only revealed to the British service M-15, which appreciated the ingenuity of the unknown Russian.

Theremin had to deal with this specific technique for almost 10 years. He will not be condemned by someone who has been in a situation where choice is a matter of survival.

RETURN TO THE WORLD OF MUSIC

Theremin received full rehabilitation in 1958. The almighty department thanked him goodbye with an apartment in a house on Kaluzhskaya Zastava (now Gagarin Square) in Moscow. Twin daughters grew up from a marriage with an employee of the same department. Life went on as usual.

But for Theremin, life was in creativity. How many years he dreamed of the wonderful world of lamps, circuits, wires, giving birth to sounds obedient to the maestro's hand! He waited for the return to the forgotten world, but this world was no longer waiting for him. Performances on the Parisian and New York stages have faded into oblivion; The personnel officers saw in front of them only a person of retirement age with a suspicious profile.

Finally, in 1964, Theremin got the opportunity to work temporarily in the acoustics and sound recording laboratory of the Moscow Conservatory. The inventor was given a corner for experiments, he was not supposed to have assistants; Lev Sergeevich also had to take care of obtaining materials and components himself. Despite this, he managed to restore many of the once developed electronic musical instruments. There was no hope for help in making a standard chassis or body. When assembling a tool of the "Ritmikon" type, he bolted all blocks and boards to a planed board.

But soon a dramatic ending came. The fact that the once famous Termen is alive, sooner or later, representatives of Western information publications should have learned. The first happened to be a correspondent for the New York Times. In one of the issues for 1967, his note appeared, announcing that the inventor of electronic music, who mysteriously disappeared in 1938, had not died, and after many misadventures he lived and worked in Moscow.

The reaction to this message was not long in coming. The "opinion" about the employee's excessive talkativeness was brought to the attention of the management and party organization of the Moscow Conservatory. Theremin was fired, his tools were thrown away, some were even smashed with an ax to be sure.

Thanks to Academician Rem Viktorovich Khokhlov, he helped after all this to get a job in the workshop of the Physics Faculty of Moscow State University. To keep Termenu able to receive a pension, he was registered as a worker. In fact, most of the time he was engaged in what could make a worker of sufficient qualifications, since, as in the Moscow Conservatory, he had to work without assistants.

Times, however, have changed. Electronic instruments increasingly entered the world of music. The aging maestro began to pass on the art of playing the theremin to his students. The most capable was her great-niece Lida Kavina, whom Theremin began to teach from the age of nine. By the age of twenty, Lydia Kavina became a virtuoso of playing an electronic instrument. Her art is now admiring audiences in concert halls in Europe and America, as the performances of Lev Termen and Clara Rockmore once admired.

In his declining years, the inventor of electronic music himself again had the opportunity to appear before a foreign public. In 1989 he attended the Bourges Music Festival in France. Two years later, 95-year-old Theremin made a nostalgic trip to the United States - a country where he had to endure triumphant recognition, romantic infatuation and the collapse of many illusions.

The film, shot by Stephen Martin during this trip, remembers the shots when the elderly maestro walks a little confusedly through Manhattan, hardly recognizing the places where ten years of his life have passed. The central place in the film is the meeting between Lev Termen and Clara Rockmore. Women are women: 80-year-old Clara did not agree to this meeting for a long time, not wanting to appear before the adored maestro in an unfamiliar guise.

The trip to America was not last trip abroad Theremin. In 1993 he visited the Netherlands for the "Schoenberg - Kandinsky" festival. “I’m so tenacious,” Lev Sergeevich liked to say, “because my surname, on the contrary, reads“ does not die ”.

Theremin died on November 4, 1993 at the age of 97 and was buried at the Novo-Kuntsevsky cemetery in Moscow.

It so happened that the death of the inventor happened a day after the showing on British television of the film directed by S. Martin "The Electronic Odyssey of Leo Termen". The deceased maestro did not have to see either this film or the program dedicated to it on Russian television.

Theremin lived a long life, but did not live up to real recognition quite a bit. What to do, such is, apparently, the fate of many great people.

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. Once, in the absence of the old man, someone destroyed his closet, which served him not only as a dwelling, but also as a scientific laboratory: broke the instruments, destroyed the records. The old man was forced to move to his daughter, and there he soon died. The crime remained unsolved. But hardly anyone could be interested in destroying the laboratory, except for neighbors in a communal apartment - who would like it when an ancient old man takes a room, and even puts some incomprehensible experiments?

This old man's name was Lev Theremin.

Perhaps not everyone reading these lines is familiar with this name. To begin with, briefly about what he invented. Termen Lev Sergeevich (1896-1993) - inventor, physicist, musician. Creator of the world's first electronic musical instrument theremin (1919-20), one of the first television 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. Theremin also used the principles of the theremin when creating a security system that reacts to a person approaching a protected object. The Kremlin and the Hermitage, and later also 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 with a degree in cello. And in parallel - the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Petrograd University. The revolution found him as a junior officer of the reserve electrical engineering battalion, which served the Tsarskoye Selo radio station, the most powerful in the empire, 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, on the basis of an electrical measuring device developed by him, invents the famous theremin, an instrument that could be played with just the slightest hand movements in the air. The musician slightly brings his hands closer or moves away from the instrument's antennas - the capacity of the oscillatory circuit changes and, as a result, the frequency of the sound.

World-renowned theremin virtuoso Clara Rockmore plays Saint-Saens's The Swan

Soon the device was shown to Lenin. The young scientist explained how the burglar alarm would work on the basis of the theremin, and Lenin tried to play Glinka's "Skylark" on the instrument. It is not known whether he succeeded in anything, because to play the theremin it is necessary to have an ideal ear for music. However, the leader appreciated the work of the scientist and Theremin continued to invent.

During 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 - "vision".

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

In 1927, Theremin was invited to the international music exhibition in Frankfurt am Main. His speech and the demonstration of the theremin cause simply deafening success: “the virtuoso touches the space,” the newspapers write, his music is “the music of the spheres”. After that, Theremin, remaining a Soviet citizen, moved to the United States: on the one hand, as a great inventor, on the other, of course, "on the instructions of the Motherland."

In the United States, he patented the Theremin and his security alarm system. Designed alarm systems for Sing Sing and Alcatraz prisons. Organized 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 USA, under the "roof" of which Soviet intelligence officers could work.

Theremin soon became a very popular person in New York. In the mid-1930s, he was included in the list of twenty-five celebrities in the world and was a member of the millionaire club. George Gershwin, Maurice Ravel, Yasha Kheifetz, Yehudi Menuhin, Charlie Chaplin, Albert Einstein have visited his studio. His circle of acquaintances included financial tycoon John Rockefeller and future US President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

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

Lavinia Williams in 1955

In 1938, Theremin was recalled to Moscow. They didn’t allow my wife to be taken with them - they said that she would come later. When they came for him, Lavinia happened to be at home, and she got the impression that her husband was taken away by force. They never saw each other again.

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

There are two versions of the charge brought against him. According to the first, he was accused of involvement in a fascist organization, according to the other - of preparing the assassination of Kirov. He was forced to testify that a group of astronomers from the Pulkovo Observatory was preparing to place a land mine in Foucault's pendulum, and Theremin was to send a radio signal from the United States and detonate a land mine 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 at the NKVD of the USSR sentenced Termen to eight years in the camps, and he was sent to the Kolyma.

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

Another development of Theremin is the Buran eavesdropping system, which reads the vibrations of glass in the windows of the listening room with the help of a reflected infrared beam. 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 award, and the closed 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 of Cryptography at the United States National Security Agency. Photo: Wikipedia

Finally, here he created the Zlatoust endovibrator, an eavesdropping device without batteries and electronics based on high-frequency resonance. Such a device was installed in the office of the American ambassadors (it was hidden in a wooden panel, which the Soviet pioneers donated to the embassy) and worked unnoticed for eight years. Moreover, the principle of operation of the device was unsolved for several years after the discovery of the "bug".

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, Natalia and Elena. Natalia today is one of the world's most famous theremin music performers.

Lev Theremin plays the theremin. 1954 g.

In 1964 Theremin got a job at the laboratory of the Moscow Conservatory. Here he devotes himself entirely to the development of electric musical instruments. However, in 1967 he was recognized by the music critic Harold Schonberg who happened to be at the conservatory. He writes an article about him in the New York Times. In the United States, the article becomes a sensation - after all, everyone there has long been convinced that Theremin was shot back in 1938. And he, it turns out, is alive and well, only the greatest scientist is working in some godforsaken place. In the USSR, this article also attracted attention - and Termen was fired from the conservatory.

After that Termen, already a very elderly man, not without difficulty got a job in a laboratory at the Physics Faculty of Moscow State University. Formally listed as a mechanic of the faculty, in the main building of Moscow State University, he held seminars for those wishing to hear about his work, to study the theremin. But now his performances, which once aroused audiences in Europe and the United States, drew only a few eccentrics.

Theremin did not lose heart, he continued to work and in general was distinguished by a rare love of life. When, in the 1970s, his second wife Lavinia, upon learning that her Leon was still alive, began a correspondence with him, he even suggested that she marry him again. He joked about his own immortality - and as proof offered to read his name backwards: "Theremin - does not die!" And the world did not forget about him. In the late 80s and early 90s, he finally got the opportunity to travel abroad, he was invited to a festival in Bourget (France) and to Stanford University.

Lev Termen at Stanford University. 1991 year

At home, he had difficulty, with the help of the Hero Soviet Union, the legendary pilot Valentina Grizodubova, managed to knock out a tiny room for a laboratory for research. The one that was destroyed by unknown vandals. Theremin died on November 3, 1993. Later, the newspapers wrote: “At ninety-seven years old, Lev Theremin went to those who made up the face of the era - but behind the grave, except for daughters with families and several men, carrying the coffin, There was no one..."