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