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Rockets and People
The factory Party organization still did not know that Klevanskiy’s father, a
prominent economic planner, had been expelled from the Party for his ties with
the Trotskyites. The exclusion of his son “for failure to provide information” was
preordained. Klevanskiy, the soul of Party/Komsomol society, the merry optimist,
shot himself. In his suicide note, Klevanskiy wrote that he could not live if he were
expelled from the Party. Klevanskiy’s suicide stirred up a campaign to expose
“hidden class enemies” in all of the factory’s organizations. This campaign also
affected my subsequent fate.
Among various sorts of statements, the Party committee received a denunciation
wherein the author asserted that I had concealed the truth about my parents
when I joined the Party. It stated that my parents lived abroad, that my mother was
an active member of the Menshevik party, and that during the NEP years, my
father was a bookkeeper in a private enterprise.
A Party purge was looming ahead, and it was proposed that in my situation
this personal matter be dealt with so that it would not reach the purging
commission, in which case the factory Party committee would be considered
guilty—Why hadn’t they been aware of this? Why did they wait for the purging
commission? Outflanking the Party committee, Bogdanov convened an enlarged
session of the Komsomol committee and gave a speech exposing me.“Chertok is
not a class enemy, but we cannot tolerate anyone in our ranks who is not
completely candid and who hides his past.” The majority of those who spoke
were people with whom I had almost no contact on the job. My close comrades
sat in dispirited silence.
In my own defense, I said that my mother had left the Menshevik party three
years before I was born. My father had worked at a state-owned factory that the state
had leased to a private company in 1922.All the workers and office workers had kept
their jobs. My father had not been deprived of his right to vote, and they had even
recommended that my mother join the VKP(b) during the Lenin enrollment. I had
told my parents’ entire history in detail to Wasserman in 1931 before I was received
as a VKP(b) candidate. He was the standard of the Party conscience and a model
technical leader with a prerevolutionary record dating from 1905 in what was then
the OBO department.After attentively hearing me out and consulting with the shop
Party cell secretary,Wasserman said that I should not expand on that subject in detail
in the meeting. “Your parents are honest people.You do excellent work.You’re a
shock worker and an inventor.The fact that you were born in Poland has been written
in all the questionnaires, and everyone who needs to, knows this.”
Having succinctly recounted this history, I concluded by saying that I could
not imagine life outside the Komsomol and the Party.The majority voted for my
expulsion from the Komsomol ranks, but my close comrades voted for a severe
reprimand and a warning. Formally, I was expelled from the Komsomol, but
remained a member of the Party.This took place during very troubled times for
the factory. Gorbunov had died, and Mitkevich had not yet been appointed. My
situation was put on the back burner.At home, without holding back, I told my
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