Not the first year on social networks has been walking the story of a courier picture allegedly taken by an American photographer in the USSR. We checked whether Internet users correctly represent people depicted on it.
In the picture, we see two women in simple clothes and scarves. One of them holds an object in hand, similar to a cigarette. According to publications, this is a photo of one of hundreds taken in the USSR in the 1950s and 1960s by American Thomas Hammond, Russianist and professor of the history of Virzhinsky University. If you believe the virus text, the Hammond, with the help of the Nobel laureate in physics of Peter Kapitsa, fell into the territory of the Moscow Physics and Technology Institute (MFTi), and not the merchants of mushrooms fell into the lens of his cameras, but two prominent specialists in the field of thermodynamics-Helga Adamovna von Treushenberg and Maria Aristidovna Sumarokov -Elston. Both of them allegedly had a noble origin, but remained in the country after the revolution, and dressed up in such strange clothes, since it was on Sunday, after a traditional trip for mushrooms initiated by the Capita.
Year after year, this story is walking on entertaining sites ("Picabu") And social networks (" "Living magazine","VKontakte" Telegram, Twitter). In July 2023, another publication with this text in Facebook I scored more than 3,800 reposts. In 2021, the story of Nobility from MFTi was published in the Scientific-Popular Journal of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine "Svitogly".
Really, Thomas Taylor Hammond (such a transcription of his surname is more correct) - Honorary Professor of the University of Virginia, who for more than 40 years gave lectures on Soviet history and foreign policy and traveled the entire USSR during the Cold War. From these trips, not only notes remained, but also a huge number of colored slides - Hammond was a gifted photographer. In the mid-2010s, Virginia University Laid The collection for open access on its website, after which a large number of people appeared on Russian -speaking resources CHAVE With the personnel captured by the researcher from Soviet life. Nowadays, the whole available collection from the professor’s archive is also available on the fund's website Wikimedia. There we really see a familiar photo with two womenbut it is placed in Category "Unenticted locations in Russia." As stated in the signature, this is one of those pictures, the description of which was absent, which is why the place, time and heroes of the photograph are unknown. “Verified” could not be found in open sources of any other information about the visit to Hammond MFTi, as well as about his acquaintance with Peter Kapitsa. All this questions the reliability of the story itself about the circumstances in which the picture was taken.
Let us turn to those details that can be found out from the viral text.
Kapitsa, indeed, since 1956 Headed The Department of Physics and Techniques of Low temperatures of the MIPT-an institute, to the appearance of which, first, as a faculty of Moscow State University, he himself once had a hand. So he could theoretically meet Hammond and lead him to the institute in the Dolgoprudny near Moscow.
Helga Adamovna von Traubeshenberg, supposedly standing in the picture on the left, is called a representative of the impoverished Saxon family in the text, “one of the pioneers of uneven thermodynamics” and “the nearest associate of Landau”, which “a couple of years before this picture was pulled out by the head of the Turukhan exile.” However, this kind is not in sight, it is not mentioned in open sources. Representatives of the genus moved to the Russian Empire (or rather, in the vicinity of the mentioned in the viral text of Yamburg) Raush von Traubenbergsome descendants of which (for example, an artist Konstantin) left a mark in Russian culture. However, the story with the name Helga does not know the famous carrier of this surname. Moreover, uneven thermodynamics as a section of physics does not exist, there is only Non -equated (also called thermodynamics of nonequilibrium processes).
Noble family of Sumarokov-Elstonov in Russia existed, and in 1885 to representatives of the surname I moved The title of princes of the Yusupovs. The most famous representative of the clan, the “same”, as stated in the text, Felix Yusupov (organizer of the murder of Rasputin), after the revolution emigrated to Europe. Apparently, the rest of his family did the same, since the Soviet history of the names of the new Sumarokov-Elstones did not preserve. There was no man named Aristid (a woman’s father in the photo) in this family before the revolution. There is no textbook on electrodynamics in the electrodynamics of authorship supposedly his daughter, and the homogeneous environment is Concept From a completely different section of physics.
The oldest discovered case of publishing a story about two unusual noblemen is dated October 15, 2018, when the text appeared in the collective blog D3, previously known as DIRTY.RU. In the postscript, the author under the nickname Aureus wrote in small letters: “Do not treat too seriously. Your humble servant has a good mood today " - and gave link On another post from the same day where he gave Stalin in the photo for an unknown pensioner, stealing brushes from car janitors.
Thus, all the facts say that the history of “trading mushrooms” is nothing more than a draw on the basis of real photography of unknown women. The author of the original source himself also admitted this.
Photo on the cover: social networks
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