1970's Russian Physics

[proudofthefish]

I am working on a background for a new RPG character. I have some flexibility in dates, but I am a bit confused and am trying to map everything out. My character is a female scientist who specializes in plasma physics. Her power armor is powered by a Tokamak Reactor. I would like her to have studied under or been mentored by Lev Artsimovich who

Comments

[clodia_risa]

I have no answers for you. However, I'm curious what system you're playing. Care to share?

[proudofthefish]

Hero system 6th ed.

[brune_hilda]

Theoretically yes. If she's born in 1952 she can work with Artsimovitch as a third-forth year student.
As I know the Ioffe Institute is a research institute, not education one. So there are no students there, but she can be a postgraduate student.
The structure of soviet high education.
Graduate - 5-6 years
Postgraduate (candidate or PhD by american system) - 3,5 year
Often the postgraduate that period was possible only after 2 or three years of work. But if she was very smart and good in physics she could get the possibility of postgraduate just after the high education was finished and theoretically she could work with Artsimovich was beeing a student as the low level employee.
I think it will be more realistic to make her be born a little bit earlier, for instance, 1946-1948.

[proudofthefish]

thanks for this. I'll move dates if I have too. Also good to know that Ioffe is research only. Is what you call graduate what we call college in the US? Or if the different names are confusing could you just give me typical ages of a person at each stage. Thanks for the help.

[brune_hilda]

Yes, it's a big problem to make correspondance between the West and Soviet education system

[jgofri]

>>Yes, it's a big problem to make correspondance between the West and Soviet education system.
>>Shortly we had
>>1. Secondary school - 8 or 10 (then 9 or 11 years)
wasn't it 7 back then? Rather then 8?

>>2. after 8 (9) years a person could go to the something like college where he/she got secondary and professional education. Of course this kind of education could be got after the secondary one (10 or 11 years). These were professions like nurse, hairdresser, locksmith etc.
I think in the closest thing they have in the US is the vocational school. Or had, having never encountered one I am not sure. But basically it would be like a high school plus vocational training plus some college-level classes, close to the Associate degree. If you went to college after graduating from one, you would be allowed to skip couple of years.

[fragesteller]

3) Where would she have studied for a PHD (or equivalent) in plasma physics and how long would it have taken?

First place to go: Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and being smart enough she could get an internship at Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics. Further it could be Leningrad State University and one of many colleges in Novosibirsk's Akademgorodok.

[jgofri]

To add to the above: the first 7 years were obligatory, sort of grade school, the last two probably best correspond to the high school in the US. You had to be either highschool graduate or get some kind of equivalent to get into college (so, the fastest track would be to just graduate the school, however, between 1940 and 1956 those last three grades were not free, the parents had to pay, not an outrageous amount, but still something. If her father was killed in WWII, she might've gotten some discount, I am not sure). The earliest she would've graduated would be 16, if she was born in, say, December and her parent decided to send her to school slightly earlier rather then slightly later

[next_friday]

You're correct, Phys-Tech would be the most logical place for plasma studies. It was the most unorthodox schools in the Soviet Union ever, and definitely a place to be (Artsimovich or not). If your character is born in 1952, she'd graduate from 'high school' in 1969, and then she could study there from 1969 to 1974 (six years). After that she could join some research lab in Kurchatov's Institute and work on her PHD. The timings would be flexible since they'd be more dependent on the project. Besides it would already count as 'work', not 'study'.

However, note that Plasma studies department was open there only in 1972, and there was lots of reorganizations and moves during that time. I think it's possible for Artsimovich to give some guest lectures, but it would be unlikely for him to be very involved with the students.

[proudofthefish]

This is exactly what I needed to know. thanks