He would continue working in the institute until 1948, when he would obtain his Candidate of Sciences, the Soviet equivalent of a Doctor of Philosophy degree.

[1][4] The first attempts to build a practical fusion machine took place in the United Kingdom, where George Paget Thomson had selected the pinch effect as a promising technique in 1945.

After several failed attempts to gain funding, he gave up and asked two graduate students, Stanley (Stan) W. Cousins and Alan Alfred Ware (1924-2010[6]), to build a device out of surplus radar equipment.

This was successfully operated in 1948, but showed no clear evidence of fusion and failed to gain the interest of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment.

A tokamak (Russian: Токамáк) is a device that uses a powerful magnetic field to confine a hot plasma in the shape of a torus.

The tokamak is one of several types of magnetic confinement devices being developed to produce controlled thermonuclear fusion power.

Nevertheless, Yavlinsky's design prevailed as other Soviet scientists began to favor the tokamak and persuaded Kurchatov to leave the stellarator research to the Americans.

On 28 July 1962, while travelling from Lviv to Sochi through Aeroflot Flight 415, he and his family died in an airplane crash at Gagra.

While there has been speculation that his death was connected with politics, primarily over his intended developments in nuclear research, the government did not provide any clear indication that this was so.