The Last Workshop on Theoretical Physics in the Soviet Union

Abstract

Twenty years ago, in October 1990, I found myself attending a workshop on Theoretical Physics in Chernomorka (Ukraine) intended only for Soviet physicists. That trip to the USSR/CCCP as well as the preceding months at CERN were highly surrealistic with plenty of adventures, crucial events and anecdotes, the most amazing one involving Niels Bohr. A few months later the Soviet Union collapsed. In this article I make a personal account on the happenings of 1990, with emphasis on my incursions into the European communist world during, and also before, that year.