to open next chapter. - NASA's History Office

School in the Twenties
the journal, returned it, commenting,“I see that today it is going to be difficult for
you to transport yourselves back to the time of War and Peace.I excuse you, Zoya,
from your report, but a week from today you and the new writer will present a
report together on ‘Natasha and Prince Andrey.’ Meanwhile, today I will deviate
from the syllabus and tell you about Russian Symbolists.”
The class broke into applause. We already knew about our teacher’s penchant
for the Symbolists; he was a bit of a poet himself. For two hours, holding our
breath, we listened to what was for those times a forbidden lecture about the
poetry of Balmont, Belyy, early Blok, and Bryusov. 18
With their initiatives, Nirenburg and Zoya had eclipsed my glory for the time
being. But the following week, the school newspaper Iskra (Spark) was posted on
the wall. In the traditional “Comic Quiz” section the following question appeared:
“How do you use radio tube reflexes to change a “D” to an “A” in mathematics
and literature?”
Three months later I received an honorarium of sixty rubles, which for those
times was not much at all, but it was my first paycheck in the field of science.This
article was the crown of my radio engineering activities during those years.
In the spring of 1929, having completed nine grades, we were triumphantly
given certificates attesting to the successful completion of comprehensive school.
We were released into a life where each of us was faced with selecting our own
path.We of course all dreamed of going straight into an institute of higher learning.The
resources that School No. 70 had given me did not go to waste.
Forty years later, after meeting with several former classmates, we calculated that
our class alone had produced four doctors of science, five candidates of science, and
three or four production managers. Only three girls became professional librarians;
the others had obtained higher pedagogical, civil engineering, or literary
education. One of our classmates even graduated from the conservatory as a
pianist. Everyone whom we recalled from the graduating class of 1929 had sooner
or later obtained higher education. Three did not return from the front during
World War II.
My entry into school coincided with the end of the Russian State’s general
systemic crisis (1914-1923). Industrial production during the crisis period was
one-fifth of the production level for 1913, and agricultural production two-thirds.
Six years later, when we finished school, industrial production had already
surpassed the 1913 level. The country’s integrity was restored and the backward
peasant nation had begun moving headlong toward achieving the status of a great
industrial power.
A universal, burgeoning passion for technology and precise science had already
begun in those years. Seven to ten individuals competed for each opening in the
18. Konstantin Dmitriyevich Balmont (1867-1942) and Andrey Belyy (1880-1934; his real name was Boris
Nikolayevich Bugayev) were famous Russian Symbolist poets.
53