Starinov Notebook
스타리노프 수첩
A captured notebook from a German engineering major killed by Colonel Ilya Starinov's sabotage unit during an 'Ice Campaign' raid on the northern shore of Taganrog Bay on 23 February 1942. The dead officer, later identified as nuclear physicist Hans Vandervelde, left a notebook containing formulas for the nuclear transformation of uranium along with charts and calculations indicating German interest in an atomic bomb. Delivered via Starinov to Sergei Kaftanov, the State Defense Committee's plenipotentiary for science, the notebook served, together with Georgy Flyorov's warning letter, as decisive material evidence in the case for restarting the Soviet atomic bomb project.
Related historical events
Sources
- Wikipedia (EN) English Wikipedia entry on Ilya Starinov detailing the 23 February 1942 raid on the Kosa Krivaya garrison, the capture of the notebook, identification of the dead officer as nuclear physicist Hans Vandervelde, delivery to Kaftanov, and the notebook's role as a 'trigger hook' for the Soviet atomic project.
- Wikipedia (RU) Russian Wikipedia entry with the full text of Starinov's January 1975 letter to Ivan Builo describing the raid, the notebook's contents (formulas, graphs, diagrams), its transfer via Malinovsky and Balezin to Kaftanov, and the subsequent decision to develop atomic weapons.
- history.milportal.ru Article by Sergei Builo in the Russian Defence Ministry's Military Historical Journal (2018), presenting for the first time the complete text of Starinov's letter and documenting Kaftanov's 1985 memoirs in Khimiya i Zhizn confirming that the notebook, together with Flyorov's warning, prompted Kaftanov and Ioffe to petition the GKO for an atomic research centre, leading to Stalin's 28 September 1942 order.
- spokesmanbooks.com Zhores Medvedev, 'Stalin and the Atomic Bomb', confirming 'the notebook of a major in the German engineers, who was killed not far from Taganrog, in February 1942' containing 'calculation and formulae which indicated an interest in the uranium bomb,' sent to Kaftanov.
- dokumen.pub David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb (Yale, 1994), confirming that in April 1942 Colonel I.G. Starinov delivered a captured German officer's notebook from the southern shore of Taganrog Bay to Kaftanov's assistant S.A. Balezin.