On 18 December 2018, 60 years since the day when JINR Scientists’ Club opened its doors to the Institute’s staff was celebrated. A festive evening was dedicated to this event, which gathered sincere and devoted friends of the Scientists’ Club.

“This Club has been warming souls for 60 years,” JINR Vice-Director M.G. Itkis said. Summing up the results of a long way, at the beginning of which there were leading scientists, founders of Dubna laboratories, JINR Director V.A. Matveev noted: “Today, we celebrate the jubilee of this lovely place of not only our friendly meetings but meetings with numerous outstanding cultural workers. The Scientists’ Club has become our Home. It is difficult to overestimate the role it has played in uniting the multinational staff of the Institute into one friendly family connected by common interests.” Victor Anatolievich also shared his personal memories about how it was difficult in years of his youth to become a member of the elite, as it is called now, club, and expressed his hope that it would keep being the cultural centre of Dubna.

Professor V.A. Nikitin told the audience about his meetings with Andrei Voznesensky who inquisitively asked the young physicist about work of scientists. Moreover, he cited Andrei Tarkovsky who wrote in the welcome book in 1979: “Science and the arts are two sides of the same medal of human mind and heart.”

“All life was spent here…” professor V.L. Aksenov said about the JINR Scientists’ Club. He came to Dubna in 1970 being a student and recalled echoes of discussions about physicists and lyricists (“it is definitely not about Dubna!”), about the life in the 1970s spent in the dormitory at the Leningradskaya, 12, the JINR laboratories and the JINR Scientists’ Club…

Professor I.N. Semenuishkin was Chairman of the Scientists’ Club for 9 years. He spoke about cultural and enlightening, exhibition, concert and theatre, social and political, sports and health activities carried out in the Club and far beyond as well.

On this day, people were remembered without whom the Club would not have become so valuable and necessary to us. Among them, there were Directors of the Scientists’ Club Oleg Zakharovich Grachev, Irina Nikolaevna Petrovskaya, Dmitry Dmitrievich Kruikov and Marina Dmitrievna Kruikova, as well as the glorious cohort of the Club’s Chairmen – starting from Lev Nikolaevich Belyaev, Igor Grigorievich Semenuishkin and Anton Grogorievich Volodko… All the Club’s staff was congratulated: administrator Luidmila Yurievna Furyaeva, Coordinator Lilia Sergeevna Kharitonova, Supply Manager Raisa Sergeevna Manantseva.

Anniversary celebrants made a gift to themselves and their guests who gathered on that evening in the hospitable Club: a concert of soloists of the State Chamber Orchestra “Moscow virtuoso players” the programme of which included masterpieces of chamber music. Works by Bach, Mozart and Tchaikovsky were performed in the first part of the concert; the second part was devoted to melodies by Piazzolla.

Evgeny Molchanov, JINR Weekly Newspaper
Photos by Elena Puzynina, JINR Scientific Information Department