What did Korolev really serve for?
Sergei Korolev and Valentin Glushko, the fathers of Soviet space, were imprisoned in Stalin’s camps. Since the launch of Gagarin into space is the second most important achievement of the USSR, it may seem from the outside that Joseph Stalin was an enemy of science, repressing the best scientists of the country. A characteristic touch: Valentin Glushko was beaten during interrogations with truncheons and whips, and Sergei Korolev’s jaw was broken, because of which he later died, not even reaching the age of 60.
In order to justify the facts of physical abuse of the best scientists and designers of the USSR, apologists for Stalinism have already come up with two counter-theses:
1. No one broke Sergei Korolev’s jaw, there is no evidence.
2. Sergei Korolev was imprisoned not for politics, but for embezzlement.
The tone goes something like this: there was a young daring scientist, Korolev, who in the difficult years for the country, when it was necessary to prepare for war with Hitler, thoughtlessly spent state money on all sorts of nonsense – playing cards, laughing girls, expensive cars. He should have been shot for this, but the wise Stalin did not waste valuable personnel. The chief ordered to gently reason with the good-for-nothing slacker. Sergei Korolev was simply sent to work in a closed institute, the so-called “sharashka”, where he continued to work on airplanes and rockets with complete comfort. As for the broken jaw, it’s all Solzhenitsyn’s inventions: in Korolev’s criminal case, there is not a single line about the fractures received during interrogations.
Valentin Glushko, the second father of Soviet space, does not fit into this blissful picture of the prodigal designer’s reasoning, but the lecturer who came to the collective farm is not usually asked questions about Glushko. If they do, then the neo-Stalinists have a continuation of the story. Both Korolev, they say, and other scientists were constantly intriguing, writing denunciations against each other: there was a real tangle of snakes. Good Stalin tried to understand everything thoroughly, but it was almost a war time, Hitler had already signed the Munich Agreement, so sometimes there were misfires. Misfires are not critical, of course: it was even useful for Comrade Glushko to work in a sharashka. After all, it was almost a sanatorium: the same research institute as in Moscow, only instead of theaters and restaurants, there were walks in nature.
Now that we’ve heard the other side’s version, let’s look at the facts.
To begin with, the article “Embezzlement” is Article 116 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. And Comrade Korolev was convicted under Articles 58-7 and 58-11 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, that is, for counter-revolutionary actions and struggle against the working class.
People sometimes object to this: they say that Korolev was convicted of embezzlement, but wrote a different article in the verdict. I’m not sure it’s even worth taking this “argument” seriously—it’s wrong on many levels. I will say one thing: if Stalin’s courts had really blurted out articles in their sentences at random, condemning embezzlers for fighting against the working class, and tram pickpockets for illegal fishing, they would not have been courts, but branches of the Moscow Circus, with clowns in big shoes instead of judges.
Let’s move on, about the broken jaw. The circumstances of Sergei Korolev’s death are known from the book of his daughter, Natalia Koroleva, who was 31 years old at the time of her father’s death. By 1966, Natalia Koroleva had already received a medical education and worked as a surgeon, like her mother. In this way, she could judge the circumstances of the botched operation with the knowledge of the case, like a professional. I quote (link):
As for my father’s state of health, I was aware of the words of B.V. Petrovsky, at that time the Minister of Health of the USSR and the director of the Research Institute of Clinical and Experimental Surgery, where I had worked since its opening in 1963.
… I didn’t have a feeling of fear for my father – I hoped that the planned operation would be easy…
… Later, I carefully studied my father’s medical history, talked with Boris Vasilyevich and two of the three anesthesiologists, S.N. Efuni and G.Y. Gebel, who participated in the operation. And this is what happened. When B.V. Petrovsky tried to remove the polyp with the help of an endoscope, massive intestinal bleeding began, which could only be stopped by opening the abdominal cavity. To perform the intracavitary operation, the mask anesthesia, under which the father was located, was not enough. It was necessary to insert an intubation tube into the trachea, but none of the three experienced anesthesiologists were able to do so because of the anatomical features of the structure of his neck and the stiffness of his jaws, which were broken during interrogations after his arrest. As a result, the operation continued under mask ether-oxygen anesthesia with nitrous oxide, which is dangerous for a patient suffering from angina pectoris and atrial fibrillation…
It can be assumed that Korolev’s daughter made it all up, but this will be a weak version. First of all, you can’t accuse decent people of lying in such a casual way, without any grounds, this is a very barbaric practice. Second, there must be a motive for lying. For example, the motive would be if the story about the fracture of the jaw was heroic: say, if Korolev fought with hooligans who tried to smash a model of a missile, or stubbornly remained silent, refusing to give secrets to German spies. However, Korolev’s jaw was broken by his own Soviet men, during a routine interrogation. There is nothing heroic about this incident, as it portrays Korolev as an accidental victim rather than a hero. Only a pathological fantasist who lies for no reason, for the sake of the very process of lying, would invent such a thing.
Let’s move on. Korolev’s letter to Stalin dated July 13, 1940 has been preserved. There are the following lines:
… In 1938, investigators Shestakov and Bykov subjected me to physical repression and humiliation, forcing me to “confess”…
I believe this is enough to consider the fact of a broken jaw during interrogation to be considered proven. I will say more: if Stalin’s judges had considered the story of the turning point, they would certainly have been satisfied with what they read.
Now let’s see what kind of “embezzlement” or “sabotage” Sergei Korolev was convicted of. Here are excerpts from the letter of the rocketeer to the Supreme Prosecutor of the USSR (link):
… On June 27, 1938, I was arrested in Moscow by the 7th Department of the NKVD of the USSR. I was charged under Article 58, paragraphs 7 and 11 of the Criminal Code with the following:
I. In the fact that I was allegedly a member of an anti-Soviet counter-revolutionary organization, working at the Scientific Research Institute No. 3, former People’s Commissariat of Commerce and Industry, as a senior engineer.
In the fact that I allegedly carried out sabotage in the field of missile aviation, which, according to the indictment, consisted of the following:
1. Allegedly, I carried out the development of experimental rockets without proper calculations, drawings, and research on the theory of rocket technology.
2. Allegedly, I unsuccessfully developed the experimental rocket No. 217 in order to delay the other, more important work.
3. Allegedly, I did not develop a power supply system for the experimental rocket No. 212, which disrupted its tests.
4. Allegedly, I developed rocket engines that worked only for 1-2 seconds (!?).
5. Allegedly, I, together with engineer Glushko (arrested on March 23, 1938), destroyed a rocket plane in 1935.
On the merits of these accusations, I can say the following:
1. I repeatedly stated during the investigation, wrote to the People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs of the U.S.S.R. and the Supreme Procurator, and also categorically declared at the trial, and I declare once again now, that I have never, anywhere, or been a member of any anti-Soviet counter-revolutionary organization, and have never known or heard anything about it. I am 32 years old. My father, a teacher in the mountains. Zhytomyr, I lost 3 years ago. My mother is still a teacher in the Dzerzhinsky district of Moscow. I grew up under the Soviet regime and was brought up by it. Everything I had in life was given to me by the party of Lenin-Stalin and the Soviet government. Always, everywhere and in everything I have been devoted to the general line of the Party, to Soviet power and to my Soviet Motherland.
II. I worked on the extremely important problem for the defense of the USSR of the creation of rocket aviation. This is a completely new field of technology that has not been studied anywhere else. Nowhere had a real rocket plane, the idea of which was given by K.E. Tsiolkovsky in 1903, been successfully implemented. Abroad, this work has been intensively carried out in secret for 15-20 years. I began to work on rockets only in 1935 at Research Institute No. 3. However, in spite of such a short period of work, its great technical importance and difficulty, as well as the complete novelty of the work and the absence of any assistance or even consultation, I, together with my fellow workers, have achieved positive results. A number of experimental missiles were successively developed and implemented (Nos. 48, 06, 216, 217, 212, 201/301). For the first time in technology, hundreds of tests of these objects were carried out in the laboratory, on test benches and in flight. In parallel with this experimental work, a great deal of scientific work was carried out on the theory of rocket technology. As the completion of the first initial stage of our work on rocket flight, work began on the first rocket aircraft in 1935/36, which was completed in the autumn of 1937. In 1938 I successfully tested it under test conditions, and it was preparing for flights in the summer of 1938, but in June I was arrested.
Therefore, on the basis of all the above, on the merits of the charges of sabotage brought against me, I declare the following:
1. All developments of missiles and their assemblies without exception have always been carried out on the basis of drawings, calculations, experimental studies, preliminary blowdowns in wind tunnels, etc. For all objects of my work (numbers are indicated above), as well as for rocket aircraft No. 218/318, all drawings, calculations, technical acts, expert opinions from the Technical Institute of the Red Army, the Air Force Academy of the Red Army named after Zhukovsky, Research Institute No. 10 of the NKOP, etc., as well as all reports on the tests of these objects are in the secret part and archive of drawings of Research Institute No. 3, former NKOP, in files and folders, respectively, under the numbers of these objects.
In the proceedings of Research Institute No. 3 “Rocket Technology” from No. 1 to No. 5 there are a number of theoretical works on rocket flight (engineers Dryazgov, Shchetinkov, Glushko, and others).
In 1934 I wrote and published a book on Rocket Flight in the Stratosphere (Voengiz), a number of articles (“Technics of Vozd. of the Navy.” No. 7, 1935, etc.), as well as lectures at scientific conferences in the Academy of Sciences (Leningrad, 1934) and at the rocket conference (Moscow, 1935). Therefore, the accusation against me is false.
2. Rocket 217 was a planned work of the Institute, it was successfully performed by us with a significant overfulfillment of data (see the comparison of the results in the report on object 217 for 1936) and was fully accepted by the customer Research Institute No. 10 (former TS.L.P.S., Leningrad). Acceptance certificates in the file of object 217. There were no delays in other projects, and there could not have been, since the object of work No. 217 itself was very small. Therefore, this accusation is false.
3. Rocket No. 212 was developed by Ing. In 1936/37 and in 1938 it was tested at the test bench and the proving ground. Its food system was made (without which it would have been impossible to carry out any tests) and moreover in several versions. In 1937 and 1938 there was continuous research at Object 212, interrupted only by my arrest. For all reports, see Case No. 212. Therefore, this accusation is false.
4. Work on rocket engines has never been carried out by me, but has been carried out in another department of the Institute and by other persons. In addition, it is not at all clear what “work for 1-2 seconds” (!?) means. Despite the significant imperfection of the Institute’s rocket engines, all the above-mentioned numerous tests of objects were carried out with them. Therefore, this accusation is false and incomprehensible.
5. In 1935, the rocket plane did not exist at all. As I mentioned above, it was successfully tested in 1938. On the day of my arrest, June 27, 1938, he was standing in Research Institute No. 3, safe and sound. Nothing has ever been destroyed on it. For drawings, calculations, test reports and expert reports (Zhukovsky Military Academy), see case 218/318. Therefore, this accusation is false.
<… >
The investigation conducted by investigators Bykov and Shestakov was conducted in a very biased manner, the materials signed by me were forced by force and are completely and completely false, invented by my investigators. At the same time I wrote about this to the head of the III detachment. NKVD, in your name and the People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs, and also stated to the court.
After my arrest, on July 20, 1938, a report was submitted to the NKVD from Research Institute No. 3, several pages of which concerning me were shown to me. This act tries to tarnish my work. However, I declare to you that it is false and incorrect. The signatories have never seen the objects of my work (Kostikov, Dushkin, Kalyanova and Dedov) in action. The “facts” given in the report are fictitious, for example: there was no accident during the testing of the mock-ups of the object 201/301 by launch from the aircraft (see the reports and acts of the commission that carried out the tests). The necessary precautions were taken on my instructions, as recorded in File 201/301 long before the tests. In the act, a completely false allusion is made to the alleged “possibility of an accident”. Once again, I declare that all this is a lie and a fabrication, as well as other data related to my work in this act.
<… >
For 15 months now, I have been cut off from my favorite work, which has filled my entire life and has been its content and purpose. I dreamed of creating for the USSR, for the first time in technology, ultra-high-speed high-altitude missile aircraft, which are now a powerful weapon and means of defense.
I ask you to reconsider my case and drop the grave charges against me, of which I am completely innocent.
I ask you to give me the opportunity to continue my work on rocket aircraft in order to strengthen the defense capability of the USSR.
What a cruel irony: Stalin sentenced Comrade Korolev to 10 years in disastrous camps precisely for what monuments were later erected to Korolev, for which streets and cities were named after him, that is, for the development of rocket technology and jet aviation…
In the comments the other day, it was pointed out that if it were not for the catastrophe of 1917, then Nicholas II could have had time to see Russian spaceships. I think the calculation is correct. In 1948, Nicholas II would have turned 80 years old, a normal age for a 20th-century monarch. Without the civil war, without Lenin’s devastation, without starvation collectivization, and without a major war with the German Reich, which would hardly have risen from the ruins without the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the Treaty of Rapallo, science in Russia would have developed much faster. Let me remind you that after 1917 the country lost three-quarters of its scientists: this alone threw us far back.
So, if the development timeline had shifted 10 years to the left, we would have launched Sputnik in 1947, and Gagarin would have flown into space in 1951. Yes, Nicholas II could have seen this triumph of Russia with his own eyes.
Let’s get back to the real historical scenario. Only the last fragment of the neo-Stalinist myth remains to be dismantled, according to which the “sharashka” was just a closed sanatorium, so Sergei Korolev almost did not suffer from temporary imprisonment. I quote from the same source (link):
… With the onset of cold weather, it became even harder to work and live in the camp. Constant malnutrition and a complete lack of any vitamins did their job. People were getting sick and dying. The composition of the brigades changed periodically. An almost universal disease, which did not bypass my father, was scurvy, caused by vitamin deficiency. His gums were swollen and bleeding, his teeth were loose and falling out, his tongue was swollen, and his legs were swollen. Severe pain prevented me from opening my mouth. My father was in great pain, he could not eat or walk.
It was at this time that Mikhail Aleksandrovich Usachev, the former director of the Moscow Aircraft Plant, where the plane on which Valery Chkalov crashed in December 1938 was built, appeared in the camp. After the death of Chkalov, Usachev was repressed, and he ended up in Kolyma. He was a tall man, very strong physically (he had been a boxing coach in his youth) and quite domineering. Thanks to these qualities, he became a kind of “chief” among the prisoners. But at the same time, Usachev was confronted by the headman, a criminal who was, in fact, the master of the camp and made it his task to exploit all the “enemies of the people” as much as possible: at their expense to free “his own” from hard physical labor; to take away rations in order to better feed oneself and one’s comrades. In these internal relations between the prisoners, the camp authorities interfered little, and the criminals felt themselves masters of the situation. When Usachev, having arrived at the camp, saw this outrage, he was indignant and, with the consent of the camp authorities, began to restore order. The first thing he did was to tell the headman of the criminals that he was the boss now. In order to suppress his obvious dissatisfaction with this turn of events, however, he had to use his boxing skills, since it was the best language for talking to criminals. After that, the deposed elder quickly became obedient and took Usachev to show his “household”. In one of the tents, the warden said that “the King, one of your people, is lying here,” that he was ill and probably would not get up again. Indeed, there was a man lying under a pile of dirty rags. Usachev approached, threw off his rags, and saw Korolev, whom he knew well. Telling this story many years later to my father’s deputies, B.E. Chertok and P.V. Tsybin, Usachev recalled that at that moment it was as if something broke inside him: in front of him on a bunk bed in unimaginable rags lay a terribly thin, pale, lifeless man. Why did this happen? How did he get into this position? Usachev conducted almost an entire investigation. It turned out that it was the elder who had brought my father to such a state. At first, my father showed his character, he did not want to put up with what the criminals were doing, he did not obey the headman, but the elder used his methods: he left my father practically without rations, and when he was already completely exhausted, he began to drive him to work that was beyond the strength of a hungry person. In the end, my father collapsed. Usachev found him in time – he took him to the medical unit and asked him to stay there for a while. In addition, he forced the mayor to form a company, which began to give part of its rations to my sick father, who was actually already dying, thus organizing for him an increased diet. The camp doctor, Tatyana Dmitrievna Repyeva, brought raw potatoes from home, from which my father and other scurvy patients squeezed the juice and rubbed it on their gums. Another remedy for scurvy was a decoction of finely chopped branches of elfin forest: they were brewed with boiling water in a large vat and given to the sick to drink. There were no other methods of treatment in the camp. But thanks to these measures, my father got back on his feet and retained a feeling of deep gratitude to his saviors for the rest of his life. In the early 60s, already being the Chief Designer, he found Usachev and hired him as Deputy Chief Engineer of the pilot plant.
In addition to the fact that the prisoners themselves died of hunger, cold and disease, they could also be deprived of their lives by the so-called execution troikas, which operated in Kolyma. Speaking about their activities, journalist T.P. Smolina wrote: “Troika worked hard: it dealt with up to three hundred or more cases a day. Thus, on February 2, 1938, 309 cases were “considered”, 307 of which were sentenced to the death penalty. Prosecutor Metelev arrived at 2 a.m. at the Maldyak mine and at 6 a.m. “considered” more than 200 cases, sentenced 135 people to death. I didn’t ask a single question to any of the detainees.”
Fortunately, this fate escaped my father’s fate. But, having recovered a little in the medical unit, he was forced to return to exhausting work again. Most likely, he would not have survived this first winter of 1939-1940 – the scurvy was progressing, the general physical exhaustion was growing…
As you can see, it doesn’t look very much like a sanatorium, but it looks very much like a place where you can completely undermine your health in a year or two.
I believe that we have analyzed the myth of Sergei Korolev’s “embezzlement” in sufficient detail. It would be necessary to write about Valentin Glushko and other victims of revolutionary vigilance, but the fact that Soviet scientists met each other not at scientific symposia, but in the frozen barracks of Stalin’s camps is quite eloquent.
By the way, Mikhail Usachev, who saved Sergei Korolev from starvation, developed the I-15 and I-16 aircraft, which were the basis of the fighter fleet of the pre-war USSR. Later, of course, Mikhail Usachev was fully acquitted and returned to work again.
What did Korolev really serve for?
Sergei Korolev and Valentin Glushko, the fathers of Soviet space, were imprisoned in Stalin’s camps. Since the launch of Gagarin into space is the second most important achievement of the USSR, it may seem from the outside that Joseph Stalin was an enemy of science, repressing the best scientists of the country. A characteristic touch: Valentin Glushko was beaten during interrogations with truncheons and whips, and Sergei Korolev’s jaw was broken, because of which he later died, not even reaching the age of 60.
In order to justify the facts of physical abuse of the best scientists and designers of the USSR, apologists for Stalinism have already come up with two counter-theses:
1. No one broke Sergei Korolev’s jaw, there is no evidence.
2. Sergei Korolev was imprisoned not for politics, but for embezzlement.
The tone goes something like this: there was a young daring scientist, Korolev, who in the difficult years for the country, when it was necessary to prepare for war with Hitler, thoughtlessly spent state money on all sorts of nonsense – playing cards, laughing girls, expensive cars. He should have been shot for this, but the wise Stalin did not waste valuable personnel. The chief ordered to gently reason with the good-for-nothing slacker. Sergei Korolev was simply sent to work in a closed institute, the so-called “sharashka”, where he continued to work on airplanes and rockets with complete comfort. As for the broken jaw, it’s all Solzhenitsyn’s inventions: in Korolev’s criminal case, there is not a single line about the fractures received during interrogations.
Valentin Glushko, the second father of Soviet space, does not fit into this blissful picture of the prodigal designer’s reasoning, but the lecturer who came to the collective farm is not usually asked questions about Glushko. If they do, then the neo-Stalinists have a continuation of the story. Both Korolev, they say, and other scientists were constantly intriguing, writing denunciations against each other: there was a real tangle of snakes. Good Stalin tried to understand everything thoroughly, but it was almost a war time, Hitler had already signed the Munich Agreement, so sometimes there were misfires. Misfires are not critical, of course: it was even useful for Comrade Glushko to work in a sharashka. After all, it was almost a sanatorium: the same research institute as in Moscow, only instead of theaters and restaurants, there were walks in nature.
Now that we’ve heard the other side’s version, let’s look at the facts.
To begin with, the article “Embezzlement” is Article 116 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. And Comrade Korolev was convicted under Articles 58-7 and 58-11 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, that is, for counter-revolutionary actions and struggle against the working class.
People sometimes object to this: they say that Korolev was convicted of embezzlement, but wrote a different article in the verdict. I’m not sure it’s even worth taking this “argument” seriously—it’s wrong on many levels. I will say one thing: if Stalin’s courts had really blurted out articles in their sentences at random, condemning embezzlers for fighting against the working class, and tram pickpockets for illegal fishing, they would not have been courts, but branches of the Moscow Circus, with clowns in big shoes instead of judges.
Let’s move on, about the broken jaw. The circumstances of Sergei Korolev’s death are known from the book of his daughter, Natalia Koroleva, who was 31 years old at the time of her father’s death. By 1966, Natalia Koroleva had already received a medical education and worked as a surgeon, like her mother. In this way, she could judge the circumstances of the botched operation with the knowledge of the case, like a professional. I quote (link):
As for my father’s state of health, I was aware of the words of B.V. Petrovsky, at that time the Minister of Health of the USSR and the director of the Research Institute of Clinical and Experimental Surgery, where I had worked since its opening in 1963.
… I didn’t have a feeling of fear for my father – I hoped that the planned operation would be easy…
… Later, I carefully studied my father’s medical history, talked with Boris Vasilyevich and two of the three anesthesiologists, S.N. Efuni and G.Y. Gebel, who participated in the operation. And this is what happened. When B.V. Petrovsky tried to remove the polyp with the help of an endoscope, massive intestinal bleeding began, which could only be stopped by opening the abdominal cavity. To perform the intracavitary operation, the mask anesthesia, under which the father was located, was not enough. It was necessary to insert an intubation tube into the trachea, but none of the three experienced anesthesiologists were able to do so because of the anatomical features of the structure of his neck and the stiffness of his jaws, which were broken during interrogations after his arrest. As a result, the operation continued under mask ether-oxygen anesthesia with nitrous oxide, which is dangerous for a patient suffering from angina pectoris and atrial fibrillation…
It can be assumed that Korolev’s daughter made it all up, but this will be a weak version. First of all, you can’t accuse decent people of lying in such a casual way, without any grounds, this is a very barbaric practice. Second, there must be a motive for lying. For example, the motive would be if the story about the fracture of the jaw was heroic: say, if Korolev fought with hooligans who tried to smash a model of a missile, or stubbornly remained silent, refusing to give secrets to German spies. However, Korolev’s jaw was broken by his own Soviet men, during a routine interrogation. There is nothing heroic about this incident, as it portrays Korolev as an accidental victim rather than a hero. Only a pathological fantasist who lies for no reason, for the sake of the very process of lying, would invent such a thing.
Let’s move on. Korolev’s letter to Stalin dated July 13, 1940 has been preserved. There are the following lines:
… In 1938, investigators Shestakov and Bykov subjected me to physical repression and humiliation, forcing me to “confess”…
I believe this is enough to consider the fact of a broken jaw during interrogation to be considered proven. I will say more: if Stalin’s judges had considered the story of the turning point, they would certainly have been satisfied with what they read.
Now let’s see what kind of “embezzlement” or “sabotage” Sergei Korolev was convicted of. Here are excerpts from the letter of the rocketeer to the Supreme Prosecutor of the USSR (link):
… On June 27, 1938, I was arrested in Moscow by the 7th Department of the NKVD of the USSR. I was charged under Article 58, paragraphs 7 and 11 of the Criminal Code with the following:
I. In the fact that I was allegedly a member of an anti-Soviet counter-revolutionary organization, working at the Scientific Research Institute No. 3, former People’s Commissariat of Commerce and Industry, as a senior engineer.
In the fact that I allegedly carried out sabotage in the field of missile aviation, which, according to the indictment, consisted of the following:
1. Allegedly, I carried out the development of experimental rockets without proper calculations, drawings, and research on the theory of rocket technology.
2. Allegedly, I unsuccessfully developed the experimental rocket No. 217 in order to delay the other, more important work.
3. Allegedly, I did not develop a power supply system for the experimental rocket No. 212, which disrupted its tests.
4. Allegedly, I developed rocket engines that worked only for 1-2 seconds (!?).
5. Allegedly, I, together with engineer Glushko (arrested on March 23, 1938), destroyed a rocket plane in 1935.
On the merits of these accusations, I can say the following:
1. I repeatedly stated during the investigation, wrote to the People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs of the U.S.S.R. and the Supreme Procurator, and also categorically declared at the trial, and I declare once again now, that I have never, anywhere, or been a member of any anti-Soviet counter-revolutionary organization, and have never known or heard anything about it. I am 32 years old. My father, a teacher in the mountains. Zhytomyr, I lost 3 years ago. My mother is still a teacher in the Dzerzhinsky district of Moscow. I grew up under the Soviet regime and was brought up by it. Everything I had in life was given to me by the party of Lenin-Stalin and the Soviet government. Always, everywhere and in everything I have been devoted to the general line of the Party, to Soviet power and to my Soviet Motherland.
II. I worked on the extremely important problem for the defense of the USSR of the creation of rocket aviation. This is a completely new field of technology that has not been studied anywhere else. Nowhere had a real rocket plane, the idea of which was given by K.E. Tsiolkovsky in 1903, been successfully implemented. Abroad, this work has been intensively carried out in secret for 15-20 years. I began to work on rockets only in 1935 at Research Institute No. 3. However, in spite of such a short period of work, its great technical importance and difficulty, as well as the complete novelty of the work and the absence of any assistance or even consultation, I, together with my fellow workers, have achieved positive results. A number of experimental missiles were successively developed and implemented (Nos. 48, 06, 216, 217, 212, 201/301). For the first time in technology, hundreds of tests of these objects were carried out in the laboratory, on test benches and in flight. In parallel with this experimental work, a great deal of scientific work was carried out on the theory of rocket technology. As the completion of the first initial stage of our work on rocket flight, work began on the first rocket aircraft in 1935/36, which was completed in the autumn of 1937. In 1938 I successfully tested it under test conditions, and it was preparing for flights in the summer of 1938, but in June I was arrested.
Therefore, on the basis of all the above, on the merits of the charges of sabotage brought against me, I declare the following:
1. All developments of missiles and their assemblies without exception have always been carried out on the basis of drawings, calculations, experimental studies, preliminary blowdowns in wind tunnels, etc. For all objects of my work (numbers are indicated above), as well as for rocket aircraft No. 218/318, all drawings, calculations, technical acts, expert opinions from the Technical Institute of the Red Army, the Air Force Academy of the Red Army named after Zhukovsky, Research Institute No. 10 of the NKOP, etc., as well as all reports on the tests of these objects are in the secret part and archive of drawings of Research Institute No. 3, former NKOP, in files and folders, respectively, under the numbers of these objects.
In the proceedings of Research Institute No. 3 “Rocket Technology” from No. 1 to No. 5 there are a number of theoretical works on rocket flight (engineers Dryazgov, Shchetinkov, Glushko, and others).
In 1934 I wrote and published a book on Rocket Flight in the Stratosphere (Voengiz), a number of articles (“Technics of Vozd. of the Navy.” No. 7, 1935, etc.), as well as lectures at scientific conferences in the Academy of Sciences (Leningrad, 1934) and at the rocket conference (Moscow, 1935). Therefore, the accusation against me is false.
2. Rocket 217 was a planned work of the Institute, it was successfully performed by us with a significant overfulfillment of data (see the comparison of the results in the report on object 217 for 1936) and was fully accepted by the customer Research Institute No. 10 (former TS.L.P.S., Leningrad). Acceptance certificates in the file of object 217. There were no delays in other projects, and there could not have been, since the object of work No. 217 itself was very small. Therefore, this accusation is false.
3. Rocket No. 212 was developed by Ing. In 1936/37 and in 1938 it was tested at the test bench and the proving ground. Its food system was made (without which it would have been impossible to carry out any tests) and moreover in several versions. In 1937 and 1938 there was continuous research at Object 212, interrupted only by my arrest. For all reports, see Case No. 212. Therefore, this accusation is false.
4. Work on rocket engines has never been carried out by me, but has been carried out in another department of the Institute and by other persons. In addition, it is not at all clear what “work for 1-2 seconds” (!?) means. Despite the significant imperfection of the Institute’s rocket engines, all the above-mentioned numerous tests of objects were carried out with them. Therefore, this accusation is false and incomprehensible.
5. In 1935, the rocket plane did not exist at all. As I mentioned above, it was successfully tested in 1938. On the day of my arrest, June 27, 1938, he was standing in Research Institute No. 3, safe and sound. Nothing has ever been destroyed on it. For drawings, calculations, test reports and expert reports (Zhukovsky Military Academy), see case 218/318. Therefore, this accusation is false.
<… >
The investigation conducted by investigators Bykov and Shestakov was conducted in a very biased manner, the materials signed by me were forced by force and are completely and completely false, invented by my investigators. At the same time I wrote about this to the head of the III detachment. NKVD, in your name and the People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs, and also stated to the court.
After my arrest, on July 20, 1938, a report was submitted to the NKVD from Research Institute No. 3, several pages of which concerning me were shown to me. This act tries to tarnish my work. However, I declare to you that it is false and incorrect. The signatories have never seen the objects of my work (Kostikov, Dushkin, Kalyanova and Dedov) in action. The “facts” given in the report are fictitious, for example: there was no accident during the testing of the mock-ups of the object 201/301 by launch from the aircraft (see the reports and acts of the commission that carried out the tests). The necessary precautions were taken on my instructions, as recorded in File 201/301 long before the tests. In the act, a completely false allusion is made to the alleged “possibility of an accident”. Once again, I declare that all this is a lie and a fabrication, as well as other data related to my work in this act.
<… >
For 15 months now, I have been cut off from my favorite work, which has filled my entire life and has been its content and purpose. I dreamed of creating for the USSR, for the first time in technology, ultra-high-speed high-altitude missile aircraft, which are now a powerful weapon and means of defense.
I ask you to reconsider my case and drop the grave charges against me, of which I am completely innocent.
I ask you to give me the opportunity to continue my work on rocket aircraft in order to strengthen the defense capability of the USSR.
What a cruel irony: Stalin sentenced Comrade Korolev to 10 years in disastrous camps precisely for what monuments were later erected to Korolev, for which streets and cities were named after him, that is, for the development of rocket technology and jet aviation…
In the comments the other day, it was pointed out that if it were not for the catastrophe of 1917, then Nicholas II could have had time to see Russian spaceships. I think the calculation is correct. In 1948, Nicholas II would have turned 80 years old, a normal age for a 20th-century monarch. Without the civil war, without Lenin’s devastation, without starvation collectivization, and without a major war with the German Reich, which would hardly have risen from the ruins without the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the Treaty of Rapallo, science in Russia would have developed much faster. Let me remind you that after 1917 the country lost three-quarters of its scientists: this alone threw us far back.
So, if the development timeline had shifted 10 years to the left, we would have launched Sputnik in 1947, and Gagarin would have flown into space in 1951. Yes, Nicholas II could have seen this triumph of Russia with his own eyes.
Let’s get back to the real historical scenario. Only the last fragment of the neo-Stalinist myth remains to be dismantled, according to which the “sharashka” was just a closed sanatorium, so Sergei Korolev almost did not suffer from temporary imprisonment. I quote from the same source (link):
… With the onset of cold weather, it became even harder to work and live in the camp. Constant malnutrition and a complete lack of any vitamins did their job. People were getting sick and dying. The composition of the brigades changed periodically. An almost universal disease, which did not bypass my father, was scurvy, caused by vitamin deficiency. His gums were swollen and bleeding, his teeth were loose and falling out, his tongue was swollen, and his legs were swollen. Severe pain prevented me from opening my mouth. My father was in great pain, he could not eat or walk.
It was at this time that Mikhail Aleksandrovich Usachev, the former director of the Moscow Aircraft Plant, where the plane on which Valery Chkalov crashed in December 1938 was built, appeared in the camp. After the death of Chkalov, Usachev was repressed, and he ended up in Kolyma. He was a tall man, very strong physically (he had been a boxing coach in his youth) and quite domineering. Thanks to these qualities, he became a kind of “chief” among the prisoners. But at the same time, Usachev was confronted by the headman, a criminal who was, in fact, the master of the camp and made it his task to exploit all the “enemies of the people” as much as possible: at their expense to free “his own” from hard physical labor; to take away rations in order to better feed oneself and one’s comrades. In these internal relations between the prisoners, the camp authorities interfered little, and the criminals felt themselves masters of the situation. When Usachev, having arrived at the camp, saw this outrage, he was indignant and, with the consent of the camp authorities, began to restore order. The first thing he did was to tell the headman of the criminals that he was the boss now. In order to suppress his obvious dissatisfaction with this turn of events, however, he had to use his boxing skills, since it was the best language for talking to criminals. After that, the deposed elder quickly became obedient and took Usachev to show his “household”. In one of the tents, the warden said that “the King, one of your people, is lying here,” that he was ill and probably would not get up again. Indeed, there was a man lying under a pile of dirty rags. Usachev approached, threw off his rags, and saw Korolev, whom he knew well. Telling this story many years later to my father’s deputies, B.E. Chertok and P.V. Tsybin, Usachev recalled that at that moment it was as if something broke inside him: in front of him on a bunk bed in unimaginable rags lay a terribly thin, pale, lifeless man. Why did this happen? How did he get into this position? Usachev conducted almost an entire investigation. It turned out that it was the elder who had brought my father to such a state. At first, my father showed his character, he did not want to put up with what the criminals were doing, he did not obey the headman, but the elder used his methods: he left my father practically without rations, and when he was already completely exhausted, he began to drive him to work that was beyond the strength of a hungry person. In the end, my father collapsed. Usachev found him in time – he took him to the medical unit and asked him to stay there for a while. In addition, he forced the mayor to form a company, which began to give part of its rations to my sick father, who was actually already dying, thus organizing for him an increased diet. The camp doctor, Tatyana Dmitrievna Repyeva, brought raw potatoes from home, from which my father and other scurvy patients squeezed the juice and rubbed it on their gums. Another remedy for scurvy was a decoction of finely chopped branches of elfin forest: they were brewed with boiling water in a large vat and given to the sick to drink. There were no other methods of treatment in the camp. But thanks to these measures, my father got back on his feet and retained a feeling of deep gratitude to his saviors for the rest of his life. In the early 60s, already being the Chief Designer, he found Usachev and hired him as Deputy Chief Engineer of the pilot plant.
In addition to the fact that the prisoners themselves died of hunger, cold and disease, they could also be deprived of their lives by the so-called execution troikas, which operated in Kolyma. Speaking about their activities, journalist T.P. Smolina wrote: “Troika worked hard: it dealt with up to three hundred or more cases a day. Thus, on February 2, 1938, 309 cases were “considered”, 307 of which were sentenced to the death penalty. Prosecutor Metelev arrived at 2 a.m. at the Maldyak mine and at 6 a.m. “considered” more than 200 cases, sentenced 135 people to death. I didn’t ask a single question to any of the detainees.”
Fortunately, this fate escaped my father’s fate. But, having recovered a little in the medical unit, he was forced to return to exhausting work again. Most likely, he would not have survived this first winter of 1939-1940 – the scurvy was progressing, the general physical exhaustion was growing…
As you can see, it doesn’t look very much like a sanatorium, but it looks very much like a place where you can completely undermine your health in a year or two.
I believe that we have analyzed the myth of Sergei Korolev’s “embezzlement” in sufficient detail. It would be necessary to write about Valentin Glushko and other victims of revolutionary vigilance, but the fact that Soviet scientists met each other not at scientific symposia, but in the frozen barracks of Stalin’s camps is quite eloquent.
By the way, Mikhail Usachev, who saved Sergei Korolev from starvation, developed the I-15 and I-16 aircraft, which were the basis of the fighter fleet of the pre-war USSR. Later, of course, Mikhail Usachev was fully acquitted and returned to work again.