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Return to Bolkhovitinov
the long tourist path. 6 While discussing our past, present, and future plans, I asked
Bereznyak when he first got the idea to give up on piston engine-propeller units in
his design and install only liquid-propellant rocket engines on the aircraft.
“You know,” he said, “I can’t answer that question precisely.Where and when
did it first happen? There wasn’t an exact time and place.This idea kind of came
over me spontaneously. In thoughts and on paper, I drew and added all sorts of
layouts, sometimes stupid ones. The liquid-propellant rocket engine had already
been invented some time ago and it seemed very simple.There wasn’t any intelligible
information on turbojet engines, just ideas. I finally managed to break
through to Likhobory, where I first saw a liquid-propellant rocket engine on a
bench. 7 Its shape reminded me of a bottle.When I understood what a voracious
bottle it was, and how much fuel it burned, I decided to just give it up and forget
about it. But there wasn’t anything else. Nothing at all!”
A stop at a snack bar during our tiring hike interrupted further elaboration of the
idea for the famous BI. 8 To restore our strength we each had a glass of thick sour
cream,washed it down with dry wine,and dreamed of one day sitting down and writing
our memoirs.At that time we felt it would be a shame to waste time on history.
in the spring of 1939, after the difficult sessions of the past academic year,
Germogen Pospelov talked me into vacationing in Koktebel to restore our
strength before our diploma projects. Koktebel had two advantages. First, there was
an MEI boarding house there where students could stay for next to nothing.
Second, Koktebel was the best place on the entire Black Sea coast.
I left Katya and our four-month-old son in Udelnaya, the home of her mother
Kseyniya Timofeyevna, who doted on her first grandson. Pospelov swore to Katya
that he would keep a strict eye on me—and if she would not allow me to go to
Koktebel, then as a sign of masculine solidarity, he would not go either.
In the summer of 1939, I spent a wonderful month with Pospelov in Koktebel
swimming and rock climbing along the Karadag. Our group also included chemistry
student Mikhail Gavrilovich Slinko. Many years later, the three of us would
become members of the USSR Academy of Sciences.At general Academy meetings
we never missed an opportunity to tease one another about various things—
our senile condition; the unattainable, beautiful “shores of Tavrida”; the radiant
cliffs of Karadag in our student days; and our contact with the literary Bohemia
residing at the legendary dacha of the poet Voloshin. 9
6. The Russian word sedlo literally means ‘saddle.’The Maloye (or Small) and Bolshoye (or Big) Sedlo refer
to two mountains in the vicinity of Kislovodsk.
7. The Reactive Scientific-Research Institute (RNII) was located at the site of a tractor factory
in Likhobory.
8. The BI (for Bereznyak-Isayev) was the first Soviet fighter with a liquid-fuel rocket engine.
9. Maksimilian Aleksandrovich Voloshin (1877–1932) was a famous Russian poet influenced by the French
Symbolists and Impressionists.
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