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Rockets and People
Pobedonostsev knew Korolev very well because he had worked with him at
GIRD and RNII starting in 1930.Their families had lived in the same apartment
building on Konyushkovskaya Street in Krasnaya Presnya. They had worked and
socialized together almost everyday until Korolev’s arrest on 28 June 1938. I first
met Pobedonostsev in 1942 when he,A. G. Kostikov, and L. S. Dushkin arrived in
Bilimbay to observe the firing tests of the liquid-propellant rocket engine developed
at RNII. After the annihilation of the first RNII chiefs, Kleymenov and
Langemak, Pobedonostsev was saddled with the heavy burden of organizing the
program on solid-propellant rocket projectiles and launchers.
In 1944, Pobedonostsev and I often dealt with each other on projects at NII-1
under our common patron, Bolkhovitinov. I met with Pobedonostsev almost every
day at the big dining table in the mess hall for the NII-1 managerial staff. This
dining hall was a meeting place for the NII-1 employees who had known Korolev
very well throughout all of his previous work. Among them was Mikhail
Klavdievich Tikhonravov, Korolev’s collaborator on the first rocket programs at the
Moscow GIRD. But never during that time—not at the table, or anywhere else—
did I hear the names of Korolev or Glushko mentioned.
In Germany I associated with Pobedonostsev very often, but here as well
Korolev’s name had never been mentioned, until the telephone call from Berlin.
Some unwritten law had placed a taboo on the names of those who had been
repressed. One could mention them and speak of them only during closed Party
meetings and at various political activist meetings that came out immediately after
their arrest. Here one was obliged to say,“We had failed to notice that we had been
working side by side with enemies of the people.” “Good form” at that time
required that everyone stigmatize enemies of the people, and in doing so, in a fit
of self-criticism, list all the shortcomings that one could possibly think of in the
work of one’s group, department, or entire institute.Then, having pledged our allegiance
to the great Stalin, who warned us in time about the acute situation of the
uncompromising class struggle, we were supposed to say that we would rally
around “the great cause,” we would correct the shortcomings that had been
committed, we would strengthen, and we would “fulfill and over-fulfill” the plan
ahead of schedule.
After a revelatory campaign and a series of similar public speeches, the names
of the “enemies of the people” were to be erased from one’s memory. If they
were authors of books or magazine articles, then those books and magazines were
removed from libraries. Usually they were hidden in a so-called “special archive”
and issued only in extreme necessity with the permission of a governmental representative
who was an employee of the state security apparatus.
That was the situation from 1937 until the beginning of the war. During the
war some repressed military leaders and designers were freed, but nevertheless,
the taboo remained in effect practically until the end of Stalin’s life.
During those years, I committed a gross violation against the system by storing
the scientific works of “enemies of the people.” In 1935, I saw a book at a kiosk at
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