KAP1TZA 67 Rutherford held a very high opinion of Kapitza's work and to advance it, he acquired a grant of £15000 for building a permanent magnetic and cryogenic laboratory, known as Mond Laboratory. Kapitza served as its first director from 1930 to 1934. During his stay at Cambridge, Kapitza maintained his citizenship of the Soviet Union out of love for his country and sympathy with the Soviet Government's goals of economic and social progress. Since 1926 he had paid visits to the Soviet Union almost every year. The Collegium of the High Council of the People's Economy Board of Science and Technology kept in regular contact with Kapitza and its successive presidents, Leon Trotsky, Leo Kamenev and Nikolai Bukharin, corresponded with him. In the summer of 1934 when Kapitza went to the Mendeleev Conference in the Soviet Union, his services were eommsssioned by the Soviet Government andhewas retained in the Soviet Union. The Soviet ambassador in reply to a query from Rutherford explained the Soviet action thus : In the Soviet Union the system in operation is that Soviet Government plans not only the economy of the country, but also the distribution of labour, including the distribution of scientific workers. While our scientific institutions were able to get along with the tasks assigned to them with the available scientists the Soviet Government did not raise any objection to Mr. Kapitza working in Cambridge. Now; however, as a result of the extraordinary development of the national economy of the USSR due to the successful completion of the First and the energetic prosecution of the Second Five Year Plan, the available number of scientific workers do not suffice, and in the circumstances the Soviet Government has found it necessary to utilise for scientific activities within the country all of those scientists, Soviet citizens, who have hitherto been working abroad. Mr. Kapitza belongs to this category. He has now been offered highly responsible work in his particular field in the Soviet Union, which will enable him to develop fully his abilities as a scientist and a citizen of his country. Kapitza's correspondence with his wife in Cambridge and the campaign by Western scientists led by Rutherford to secure Kapitza's return to the Mond Laboratory leave one in no doubt that despite Kapitza's sympathy with the Soviet cause and his loyalty to his motherland, he was retained in the Soviet Union involuntarily. The facts that the Soviet Government provided for the Institute for Physical Problems, the premier institute for research in the Soviet Union under his directorship and the successful researches that he conducted in the following half a century cannot underwrite the emotional trauma that the scientist had to undergo. How does one judge a situation like this ? The books under review take diametrically opposite stands in judging this eveiU.