1980 technical exchange with Soviet welding scientists

Carter-era exchange program; first delegation of 30 American scientists, then 8, then 2. Tom is one of the final 2, accompanying Julius Szekely. Two-hour interview with Gurevich at Paton Institute in Kiev. KGB surveillance.

Jimmy Carter, President Carter, had an exchange program with the Soviets. Besides them coming to MIT and RPI, the guy who ran the whole program with a professor in this department, Nick Grant — he had set it up with the National Science Foundation for the whole country. The first time, 30 American scientists went over to the Paton Institute. The next time they had an exchange, I think eight went. And the next time, two. This was 1980. President Reagan was trying to shut this down. Carter had reached out, and Reagan didn't see any value in cooperating with the Soviets. I was one of those two people. I was still an untenured professor, but Julius Szekely, who has now passed away, was in this department. He still had an NSF contract, and the State Department was sponsoring it. He wanted someone to go with him.

Tom returning from his first European trip in 1980 and learning from the *International Herald Tribune* (front-page story) that the Soviets had fielded a titanium submarine — the Alpha class. This was simultaneously the public disclosure of the Alpha sub and the moment Tom's heavy-section titanium welding work (begun 1977 under ONR funding) became urgently relevant.

In 1980 I'm coming back from my first trip to Europe, I'm on the plane, and they hand out a copy of the International Herald Tribune — or maybe it was the international Wall Street Journal, whatever it was — and on the front page it announces that the Soviets now have a titanium submarine. This was the Alpha sub. The U.S. Navy may have known a little bit earlier, but it was now on the front page of an international newspaper.

Extended travelogue/case sequence. Tom's 1980 visit to the Paton Welding Institute in Kiev. Two specific demonstrations: (a) underwater wet welding electrodes producing weld quality unattainable in the West, later licensed (Tom suspects) to Broco; (b) titanium welding under Gurevich, the welding expert who taught the Soviets to weld the Alpha submarine.

In 1980 I was over at the Paton Welding Institute in Kiev, which was the world's largest welding institute. It still probably is. Has five or ten thousand people. Paton's father had been a hero of the Soviet Union under Stalin in World War II because he repaired the armor on tanks and got them back to the front to kill those Germans. He was a welding engineer in Kiev, and after the war they named it the Paton Welding Institute.

Tom's trip to the Soviet Union with Professor Szekely, late in the Carter-era NSF/State Department scientific exchange that Reagan was shutting down. Visit to the Paton Institute in Kiev; two-hour interview with S.M. Gurevich; Gurevich's gift of the titanium welding book.

It turns out about that same time I had a chance to go to the Soviet Union with Professor Szekely. Professor Szekely was a Hungarian who had gotten out of Hungary in 1956 during the revolt, went to Imperial College, and had started at MIT the same week I did. He was a full professor, I was an assistant professor, but we were pretty good friends. President Carter had started a scientific exchange with the Soviet Union. The first exchange had a metallurgical project funded by the National Science Foundation, but I think some of the money came from the State Department.

The framing case for the whole lecture. Tom's two-hour interview with Gurevich at the Soviet welding institute, conducted in front of Mariinsky the KGB minder, established that the Soviets had abandoned gas metal arc welding for titanium and were using electroslag and semi-submerged GTA — technology the US Navy was still chasing.

We were talking about welding of titanium, and I was telling you a little bit about Gurevich, the Soviet titanium expert. He just quit publishing in 1974 because, most likely, the Soviets had decided around that time they were going to build a titanium submarine, and they were using a lot of his technology.

The dominant narrative thread. Tom's recollection of the Paton Institute exchange — what he learned about Soviet welding processes for titanium submarine hulls (electroslag, deep TIG / semi-submerged arc), who the players were (Medovar, Paton, Patarya, Marinsky as KGB host), the texture of the exchange itself (the Sadoway/Ukrainian story, the Flemings/Marin-che joke, the customs incident, the opera walk-back, the grocery-store revelation in Cambridge).

This guy in the Soviet Union had a job, and there you kind of have employment for life. He had become a scientist there and decided, oh, I'm going to do welding of titanium. They had applications from the military to weld heavy section titanium. He was just a scientist, a wonderful person, had no political aspirations whatsoever. The other interesting thing is, while we were sitting there having this conversation, the KGB agent was sitting right next to us, listening to everything and encouraging him to answer my questions. They didn't want us — they wanted to keep this exchange going with the United States. It was a very valuable exchange. We learned all kinds of things from it, and they learned things from it too.