It appeared to become an unusual state visit, no doubt, but routine for the scientists of the British center for atomic research at Harwell: the visit of Chrustchev and Bulganin. This picture had radically changed by the evening of the 25th April of 1955.

In the wake of the politicians Kurchatov arrived, one of the fathers of the Soviet atomic bomb. His legendary talk at Harwell (Figure: title page of the manuscript following this lecture) rang in the international cooperation in the field of fusion research.

Of course, it was a political decision to liberate this branch of nuclear research from the strait-jacket of military secrecy. As it turned out, the time was ripe. The "atomic age" appeared to come closer, and at the UN conference "Atoms for Peace" in 1958 one did largely agree that it should be possible to master the use of nuclear fusion for electricity generation within about two decades.