Sergei Korolev. Unnamed chief designer

"RG" completes the 2017 project "Know, do not forget, condemn. And - forgive" with the last publication from the series of video interviews "My Gulag". They were conceived for the sake of opening a nationwide monument to the victims political repression"Wall of Sorrow", installed in Moscow on October 30. Close the project of memories of Great Terror daughter of one of the most famous "inmates" of the Gulag and the first space explorer Sergei Korolev - Natalia Sergeevna Koroleva.

The daughter of the great Queen learned at the age of four that her father was an "enemy of the people". Her playmates in the courtyard - the boy Alik and the girl friends - refused to play with her. Alik told her:

My mom won't let me. Your dad is under arrest.

And the girl thought that her dad was a pilot, and, as her mother said, he flew away on a business trip. Years later, Natalya Sergeevna learned everything about the arrest of her father from her mother and grandmother. Everything was like everyone else. Mom came home from work and told Sergei Pavlovich that two suspicious men in uniform were standing at their entrance.

This is probably for me, - simply answered Korolev's wife. By that time, the entire leadership of the research institute where she worked had been arrested. Sergei Pavlovich understood that he was next. - I sold bonds today and bought a record. Come on, let's listen.

They turned on the gramophone. Plastic for 78 turns. On one side - the Russian folk song "Metelitsa", on the other - "There was a birch in the field." The daughter was at her grandmother's dacha, they had dinner without turning on the light, then they sat and listened to music.

At half past twelve there was a knock at the door. Two entered. Those same "suspicious" from the NKVD. The search went on until half past five in the morning. And Korolev and his wife, holding each other by the hand, sat silently on the sofa.

Sergei Korolev was arrested. On September 27, 1938, he was convicted "for wrecking" by the military board of the Supreme Court of the USSR and sentenced to ten years in camps. Then there were the Butyrka prison in Moscow, the transit prison in Novocherkassk. In 1939, he was transferred to Kolyma, where, at the Maldyak gold mine of the Western Mining Directorate, the genius of space science was busy working on " general works- handyman.

Years later, the daughter learns a terrible thing: Sergei Korolev remained alive by accident. He almost immediately fell ill with scurvy in the gold mines. For the "political" this meant a slow death: they did not want to eat, they did not have the strength to work. They were simply "forgotten". "Forgotten" and the Queen. He was accidentally discovered in rags that were supposed to be burned, half-dead, by the criminal authority and camp foreman Usachev, a former subordinate of Sergei Korolev in one of the research institutes in Voronezh.

I was saved by criminals, - said Korolev more than once.

Mom and grandmother immediately began to seek a review of the case, Natalya Sergeevna recalls. - They called the pilot-heroine Valentina Grizodubova. She is Beria. It was Beria who insisted on reviewing the case, then a research project was launched. space project, Beria supervised him. So the father was promised to be transferred from the real Gulag "to a resort" - to a Tupolev "sharaga". "Sharashka" is also a camp, but, if I may say so, "elite" - with a personal bedside table, clean sheets, normal food and even a piece of butter in the morning. And most importantly - Tupolev assembled a team of researchers-designers, who in the "sharaga" got the opportunity to continue research. In anticipation, the father again sat in the Butyrka prison in Moscow. So I went on a date with my father for the first time.

Dad, how did you get in here on your plane? I asked him when I saw the tiny prison yard. I was still sure that dad was a pilot.

Eh, baby, - the guard answered instead of dad. It's easy to get in, but to get out...

This was in 1940. Soon, the aircraft designer and future space explorer Sergei Korolev was tried a second time. By a special meeting of the "troika" he was sentenced to eight years in prison and sent to the Moscow special prison of the NKVD TsKB-29, the same "Tupolev sharaga", where, under the leadership of Andrey Tupolev, also a prisoner, he took an active part in the creation of the Pe-2 and Tu- 2. At the same time, Korolev, on his own initiative, developed projects for a guided air torpedo and a new version of a missile interceptor. In July 1944, Sergei Korolev was released early from prison with the removal of a criminal record, but without rehabilitation. That was Stalin's personal instruction. Soon Korolev himself asked to go to Kazan, where specialized research was being carried out on rockets, which would later be called space rockets.

In 1947, the convicted and not rehabilitated Sergei Korolev met with Stalin on his personal initiative.

Father was struck by Stalin's competence in matters of missiles, - recalls Natalya Sergeevna Koroleva. - It was evident that Stalin carefully prepared for the meeting. There were some notes in front of him, he cited documents from the institute where Korolyov had worked before his arrest, asked substantive and pre-recorded questions. My father always spoke highly of Stalin and, like everyone around him, sincerely believed that "repressions are a mistake."

Sergei Pavlovich Korolev was rehabilitated "due to the lack of corpus delicti" in 1957.

We all know that under the krrrrrrrrrrrrrrran ™ Stalin, the great designer space technology Sergei Pavlovich Korolev was convicted - but not everyone knows what exactly he was convicted of. Korolev in 1937-38 developed guided missiles - cruise and anti-aircraft. We know that now cruise and anti-aircraft missiles are a serious fighting force. Naturally, it even looks strange that a person who was engaged in such an important development, according to our concepts, was arrested. But, when Korolev had just started his work, the developers of autopilots immediately said that they were not able to make a control system capable of operating under the conditions of a rocket flight - if only because there starting overloads are an order of magnitude higher than overloads for any aircraft evolution. They were, unfortunately, right. Even the Germans, who were ahead of us in terms of instrumentation by a couple of generations of instruments, managed to create a flying cruise missile - Fieseler-103, better known as V-1 - only in 1943. Fau - the first letter German word Vergeltung - retribution. The Germans proclaimed England's participation in the war against the Germans as a betrayal of its racial origin - accordingly, a weapon capable of reaching England was called "Retribution". And German anti-aircraft missiles did not leave the experimental stage until the very end of the war, although they were vital for Germany to counter the massive raids of British and American bombers on German cities. But it didn’t work out - even the Germans could not create normally flying anti-aircraft missiles. Accordingly, Korolev would certainly not have succeeded in 1938. He was told this. He knew it. In addition, the Germans used an air-jet engine on the Fieseler-103 - it takes an oxidizer from the surrounding air, and only fuel is stored on board. Korolev, on the other hand, was building a cruise missile with a liquid jet engine: she had to carry both fuel and oxidizer on board. It is clear that the total energy reserve is an order of magnitude less than in the German version. Fizeler-103 flew up to three hundred kilometers, and the Korolev rocket, according to the project, was calculated for a flight range of 30 km. The military immediately told him: in principle, we do not need a missile of this range; at such a distance it is easier to send an ordinary plane at low level flight - it will fly unnoticed, hit the target without a miss; and your rocket, firstly, will inevitably hit the wrong target, and, secondly, it costs almost the same as the plane, but the rocket is disposable, and the plane will return; we do not need a rocket with such characteristics. But Korolev was just very interested. He was a man in the highest degree enthusiastic, like all rocket scientists of that era (no wonder the abbreviation GIRD - research group jet propulsion- the participants themselves deciphered as "a group of engineers working for nothing"), and really wanted to do at least something. As a result, he built 4 prototypes of a cruise missile. They all flew wherever God sends them. God even sent one of them to the dugout at the missile range, where at that moment there were several generals who came to look at such exotic weapons. Naturally, Korolev was arrested on charges of attempting to assassinate representatives commanders Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army, misappropriation of public funds and undermining the country's defense through misappropriation of funds, since the Rocket Research Institute, where Korolev worked, was financed from the defense part of the state budget. But during the investigation, the charge of assassination immediately fell away: after all, if a rocket flies anywhere, if it is impossible to create an autopilot for it, it means that it is impossible to consciously aim it at a dugout with the generals. Therefore, although Korolev was arrested in the first category, crimes in which were punished death penalty, but this accusation was dropped during the investigation, and they gave him 10 years for the totality of other acts. From which, by the way, it is clear how, under the bloody regime, they attributed to everyone what horrible crimes and punished for what they attributed. It was under Yezhov, but under Beria this accusation was revised and they came to the conclusion that there was misappropriation of funds (when you do something obviously useless, which you have already been told from all sides that it is useless, then this is undoubtedly misuse of funds ), but there was no undermining of the defense capability, because Korolev did not act out of malicious intent, but out of sincere delusion - and, accordingly, his term was reduced from 10 years to 8, which is prescribed by law precisely for the misuse of state funds. True, he spent these years in closed design bureaus - the so-called sharashkas - and his talent was used for its intended purpose. But, as you can see, the accusations were, unfortunately, well-founded. I believe that now for such an attitude towards state money, Korolev would receive about the same. Unless, of course, someone bothered to protect the treasury.

He expressed this idea: "Journalist, political consultant, erudite. Born in Odessa on 12/12/09/03/30, 1952. A thermal engineer by training. For more than two decades he worked as a programmer (15 years as a system programmer). Multiple winner intellectual games. The most recognizable face of Runet. Author of the live journal awas1952.livejournal.com", Anatoly Wasserman

It turns out that Koroleva was condemned or because:

1. He spent public money on a missile that the military refused.
2. Instead of a rocket, you can send a plane at a strafing flight, it will fly by, be bombed and return.
3. The military said they did not need a missile with a range of 30 km. V-1 flew at 300.
4. At that time it was impossible to make a control system for a cruise missile. Only the Germans succeeded in 1943, which means that Korolev would not have succeeded even more so.
5. The Germans never managed to make an anti-aircraft missile, no matter what.
6. Korolev was imprisoned, but sent to a closed design bureau, where he worked in his specialty.

1. Any engineer knows that the financing of work takes place according to the plan approved by the management and the money is allocated by this very management. In 1937, Sergei Pavlovich was still only a young 30-year-old engineer, and not general designer and academician.
In the USSR, money is far from everything, funds, materials, parts, equipment were needed, which still had to be obtained or, as they said then, knocked out.
So I see two scenarios.
First. After the project was closed, and the money had already been spent on it, the missiles were already ready or almost ready, Korolev and his comrades for free (they called themselves "working for nothing") assembled these 4 missiles in secret from the management, and tested them. There was no waste here, so the money has already been spent.
Second. There was no shutdown of the project at all. Otherwise, how would the army leadership come to look at the launches. Someone called them, and obviously not those who made these launches in secret.
And one more thing: what Korolev was doing is called R&D (scientific research and development work), to find in them the wrong use of funds - you need to have too good an imagination.

2. I.e. it is known that generals are always preparing for last war, but we are not in 1938, but in 2013, and we know very well that in 1941, it was very rarely possible to send a plane (since most of them were destroyed on the ground), even if it was possible to send a plane, then he very rarely managed to reach the target, even more rarely accurately bombed, and his chances of returning were minimal.

3. About the range and accuracy of shooting.
V-1 was not an army weapon. She couldn't hit her target. It was used to fly to London and explode there, causing at least some damage, mostly moral, if possible.
Those. if the leadership of the Wehrmacht had set a different task for its rocket scientists, then surely the results of their activities and the design of the rocket would have been different.
To obtain such a range, speed had to be sacrificed (V-1s were shot down by English fighters over the sea), so that its air-jet engine was not a brilliant decision of German designers, but a compromise.

The V-1 control system was very primitive. A gyroscope (a rapidly rotating flywheel in a cordan suspension), steering machines and an aerolag (a propeller connected to a counter, they measure the path that the aircraft flew). The rocket was fired in the direction of London, the aerolag counted how far it flew, and after counting the given path, the rocket dived down. There were no adjustments for the wind either.
London was too big a target to miss, but still only %40 of the missiles made it to London.
Moreover, % 40 is everything, after the British pilots learned to shoot them down, the number of missiles that flew to London fell sharply.

Imagine that in the USSR in 1941 there would be an analogue of the V-1, where would they shoot?
For what purposes? In the occupied Soviet cities?

4. The missile control system consisted of a gyroscope, servos and electromagnetic amplifiers. Neither cars nor boosters are afraid of starting overloads, the only part that can not survive an overload is a gyroscope, but even here there are a dozen purely engineering solutions how to overcome this problem: here you can choose more suitable materials and make changes to the design and even put horoscopes on stoppers at the start, which would be released after the start.

No special technologies not available at that time were required. Those. or the competence of the developer himself was not high - it was most likely not Chertok or Eisenberg. Or, about the impossibility of making such a system, it was already discussed in the office of the investigator, the NKVD. After all, all the data is taken from the preserved criminal case.

By the way, the Germans did not succeed in many things.
They could not create automatic welding, multiple rocket launchers, they could not do something close to the T-34. So, such an argument that if the Germans failed something, then Korolev would not have succeeded, and even more so, should not be taken into account at all.

5. Anti-aircraft missiles.
The group really developed cruise missiles, as well as anti-aircraft gunpowder and long-range ballistic missiles.
Wasserman does not mention the latter. I would have to say that such a V-2 rocket was made by Wernher von Barun, with the same purpose to shoot at London, and it became the foremother of all current LRE rockets.
But then Korolev developed only the concept. Before the implementation of which was still far away.

Then there really was no technology that would allow the missile to be aimed exactly at the target.
Although Korolev proposed a guidance system for a light beam. Those. all technologies were available.
However, at that time there was nothing in this area.
Aircraft control systems engineers don't design a control system for something they don't know. Those. while there is no rocket, i.e. most aircraft, at least its parameters, no one develops a control system for it. Those. something had to be started.

It is clear that hitting a stationary city and a flying plane are two big differences, as they say in the homeland of Comrade Wasserman.
Therefore, anti-aircraft missiles appeared only after the war.
But even here I want to note that the Germans became interested in anti-aircraft missiles only when bombs rained down on Germany, i.e. in 1943.
And it was for them, not the most better time in terms of resources, technological capabilities and time for quiet work.

6. And they sent Korolev not to the closed SHARAGA design bureau, but first to a prison, where his jaw was broken during interrogations, which later became the cause of his death (during the operation they could not put a tube for ventilation of the lung), and then to a camp in Kolyma. And he got to Sharaga already from the camp, it was lucky that Tupolev, who was sitting in prison, was his head of the graduation project and pulled him out of Kolyma to Sharaga.

Later, when he became the general designer, after greatest victories and achievements, he said in the company of his friends:
“Another time you wake up at night, lie down and think: now they will give a command, and the same guards will brazenly enter and
throw: "Well, bastard, pack your things."
The guards are the ones who guarded his dacha, exactly the same as those who guarded him in prison.

P.S.
Misconceptions of people who are considered great experts in their field:

I think that in the world market we will find demand for five computers. (Thomas Watson - director of IBM, 1943)

No one may need to have a computer in their home. There is no reason for this. (Ken Olson - founder and president of "Digital Equipment Corp." - "DEC", 1977)

A device such as a telephone has too many shortcomings to be considered as a means of communication. Therefore, I believe that this invention has no value. What's the use of this electric toy? (William Orton, president of Western Union, rejecting Alexander Graham Bell's offer in his memo to purchase his breathless telephone company for $100,000, 1876)

$100 million is too much high price for Microsoft. (IBM, 1982)

Who the hell cares what the actors say? (Harry Warner, Warner Brothers' reaction to the use of sound in cinema, 1927)

Flying machines heavier than air are impossible! (Lord Kelvin - President of the Royal Society, 1895)

640 KB should be enough for everyone. (Bill Gates, 1981)

Life proved that they were wrong and now we read them, refuted by life, expert opinions as curiosities.
But the opinion of unknown experts, and even those taken from the protocols of interrogation, you know where, is brought to us not as a curiosity, but as the ultimate truth.

I want to dedicate this post to the memory of our outstanding compatriot, a man who has done an incredible amount for a decisive breakthrough into space for mankind - Sergei Pavlovich Korolev. To a large extent, thanks to his efforts, the USSR won the then space race. It is to his great merit that Russian name Yuri Gagarin is forever inscribed in the history of all mankind. Thousands of years will pass, but their names will not be erased in the memory of people, just as we now remember Columbus and other pioneers.

Unfortunately, in recent times there was a tendency to say that all these achievements are the merit of the CPSU and personally greatest genius all times and peoples. That they imprisoned the Queen - for the cause, allegedly he stole money from his native state, That they imprisoned him on a denunciation, since then denunciations were written by EVERYONE and Korolev - too. That the investigation and trial were fair and just. That he was sitting for only six months - a penny! That he was pulled out of the camps by a vigilant genius who cares about the future of rocket technology. That in the "sharaga" it was even easier for the designers to work than in the wild. One particularly frostbitten comrade even claimed that convicts in sharaga were paid very large salaries, even more than freemen. And they even gave out special rations.

So, in order to somehow stop the flow of this disgusting lie, I decided to publish some quotes from the book: "Korolev: Facts and Myths", Vyacheslav Golovanov, Moscow "Science" 1994. ISBN 5-02-000822-2. Pay attention to the year of publication and publisher.

Work on the book lasted twenty-six years. During this time, I traveled to many places associated with Sergei Pavlovich: Zhitomir, Nezhin, Odessa, Kyiv, Koktebel, found his apartments in Moscow and even asked to be locked in his cell in Butyrka prison. Traveled to the GDR and Germany. I managed to visit the Kapustin Yar training ground. For ten years as a journalist, I worked at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, at the Mission Control Center near Moscow, at the deep space communications station in the Crimea. For twenty-six years I have read dozens of books, hundreds of articles about Korolyov, rocket technology and astronautics, reviewed all the secret and unclassified newsreels related to my hero. I searched and found Korolev in the archives of Nezhin, Odessa, Kyiv, Moscow, in the archives of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, the former RNII, in the House-Museum in Ostankino. I was helped by KPI and MVTU, the museum of N.E. Zhukovsky in Moscow and the Museum of K.E. Tsiolkovsky in Kaluga, the KGB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Military board Supreme Court and Home military prosecutor's office, command of Kapustin Yar and Baikonur. There was no organization that I turned to that would refuse to help me. Nevertheless, the documentary archive of the Queen is very scarce. More precisely, not scarce, but monotonous and dry. It is based on scientific and technical reports and protocols of various tests. These documents are impersonal both in form and in language. They talk about rockets, not rocket scientists. From them it is impossible to find out what they thought about, what they dreamed about, what they argued about, what they were angry with, whom they loved, how they were dressed, where they lived, what they ate, what the weather was like. These documents are not even facts, but skeletons of facts, they are devoid of living human flesh. I realized this a long time ago, barely starting work. I realized that it is possible to write a book about the life of Sergei Pavlovich only based on the memories of people who lived and worked next to him. Such a decision was fraught with many dangers. The human memory is imperfect. I was deceived by the most worthy and most sincere people, not at all out of a desire to distort the truth, but out of pure faith that the way they remember it was. It would seem that Korolyov is not Pythagoras, he is our contemporary, but his life after death is full of legends. And that's great! For in the very fact of the existence of legends there is an unconscious desire to fill the information vacuum formed over many years of silence and half-truths. This is wonderful, because, as Alexander Blok said, "life, combined with a legend, is already" life "". Therefore, there are legends in the book.

But there were other, less candid informants. There were people striving, for example, to sign up as close friends of Korolev or deliberately distorting their own contribution to his life and work. I was vigilant, but I did not want to be suspicious - after all, not trusting people is worse than being deceived. And so I admit that there are errors in my book. There are no rough ones, but in particulars, probably, there are, and this is natural. Therefore, I am grateful in advance to those who point them out.

But besides the errors, there are various points view of certain events in the life of the Queen, astronautics, the country. And this is also natural, as it should be. Even the great Miguel Cervantes de Saavedra said that "it is absolutely impossible to write a work that would satisfy all readers." The trouble is not in the dissent itself, but in the hostility that it generates in us.

However, at all true and imaginary costs, this book would not have been written if many people, having taken to heart what I had conceived, had not helped my work. For twenty-six years, I met, corresponded with about 200 people, starting with Lidia Mavrikievna Grinfeld, a teacher who taught little Seryozha to read and write in Nizhyn and outlived her student, ending with Leonid Vasilyevich Smirnov, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, who placed the urn with the ashes of the Queen in the niche of the Kremlin wall. My interlocutors were Sergey's friends from the Odessa construction vocational school. Kyiv polytechnic institute, Moscow State Technical University named after Bauman. Soarers from the Uzun-Syrt mountain near Koktebel and Planernaya near Moscow. Aviation industry engineers of the late 20s and early 30s, with whom he worked. Enthusiasts from the basement on Sadovo-Spasskaya, where GIRD was born. Fellow believers from the RNII. Prisoners of Kolyma - victims Stalinist repressions. And the executioners too. Convicts from sharashkas, from workshops girded with thorns at the factories of Omsk and Kazan. "Civilian" colonels who, like Korolev, came to Germany to get acquainted with German technology. Officers and generals from land and sea ranges, veterans of Kapustin Yar and Tyuratam. Scientists led by their president M.V. Keldysh. Cosmonauts of the first, Gagarin, detachment. Outstanding rocket scientists, chief designers, members of the Council of Chief Designers, associates of Sergei Pavlovich, whom I cannot but name by name: A.P. Abramov, S.M. Alekseev, G.N. Babakin, V.P. Barmin, E.A. Bashkin, K.D. Bushuev, V.P. Glushko, O.G. Ivanovsky, V.M. Klyucharev, E.I. Korzhenevsky, S.S. Kryukov, V.I. Kuznetsov, N.D. Kuznetsov, N.S. Lidorenko, V.P. Makeev, G.Yu. Maksimov, V.P. Mishin, A.V. Pallo, N.A. Pilyugin, Yu.A. Pobedonostsev, A.G. Reshetin, G.I. Severin, M.K. Tikhonravov, G.A. Tyulin, V.I. Feodosiev, K.P. Feoktistov, P.V. Flerov, M.S. Floriansky, E.A. Frolov, V.I. Frumson, M.S. Khomyakov, P.V. Tsybin, V.N. Chelomey, E.V. Shabarov.

So, FOR WHAT they put S.P. Queen... Quote:

What exactly was Korolev accused of?

First and foremost: he is a member of a counter-revolutionary wrecking organization. This is proved by the testimony of Kleimenov, Langemak and Glushko. No documents, no material evidence, nothing but the unraveling signatures of three men beaten half to death.

On this occasion, Korolev wrote: “... I have never been a member of any anti-Soviet counter-revolutionary organization anywhere and have never known or heard anything about it. I am 32 years old, my father, a teacher in the city of Zhytomyr, I have lost 3 years of age. My mother is still a teacher in the Dzerzhinsky district of Moscow. I grew up under Soviet power and was brought up by it. Everything that I had in life was given to me by the party of Lenin-Stalin and the Soviet government. Always, everywhere and in everything, I was devoted to the general line of the party, the Soviet government and the Soviet Motherland.
The second accusation: the development of missiles was carried out without drawings, calculations, theoretical justification, i. there were missiles, but this is only one appearance, deceit, sabotage, sabotage. But after all, all the drawings, calculations - in secret notebooks, they are stored, they can be viewed.

Reports of tests and purges in wind tunnels, theoretical foundations in the collections "Rocket Engineering", which were published by the institute - there have already been five issues of them, all acts of examinations of the Technical Institute of the Red Army, the Air Force engineering academy named after N.E. Zhukovsky, Research Institute No. 10 NKOP and other institutions - all this exists! Not burned, not destroyed, not even hidden - everything lies in its place. You just have to take it and look, and all this accusation bursts.

The next point: he specifically developed the unsuccessful 217 rocket in order to delay other, more important developments. Of course, Korolev had a lot of failures at the RNII, but just the 217 rocket can be attributed to the number of successes. The customer - Research Institute No. 10 in Leningrad - accepted the rocket, there are acts. In comparison with other developments of Korolev, the 217 missile is more than a modest object that simply could not slow down other missiles due to the small amount of work. And then again, there are documents for everything.
Another accusation: the power supply system of the 212 rocket was not developed, which thwarted its tests. But after all, the system, even several of its variants, really exists in metal, you can feel it! And the tests were carried out many times, there are protocols! And it is impossible to conduct tests without a power supply system!

The Queen is accused of developing unusable rocket engines that only lasted 1-2 seconds. “Work on rocket engines was never carried out by me,” writes Korolev, “but was carried out in another department of the institute and by other persons.” This is the true truth: in all his life, Korolev did not develop a single rocket engine.
Finally, it was stubbornly argued that back in 1935, he and Glushko destroyed a rocket plane. The most remarkable thing is that it was impossible to destroy it in 1935 with all the will, if only because it did not exist then. And how is it destroyed if the whole of 1938 was regularly tested on it ?! “On the day of my arrest on June 27, 1938,” writes Korolev, “he stood safe and sound at NII-3.”

When Sergey Pavlovich Korolyov was immediately brought into the room for the first interrogation on the morning of June 28, 1938, upon his arrival at Lubyanka, he saw a young, dark-haired, black-eyed, handsome guy, about the same age as him and even similar to him with a dense, thick-set figure.
- Do you know why you were arrested? - he asked, perhaps with an arrogance in his voice unnecessary for the first question.
“No, I don’t know,” Sergey Pavlovich answered simply.
- Oh, you don't know... your mother!! - suddenly terribly roared a handsome guy. - Bastard! Scum! - with these words, he relish, having accumulated hot saliva in a cry, spat in the face of the Queen.
Korolev rushed at him instinctively, no longer thinking where he was, who was in front of him, but his dash, it turned out, was foreseen. Sweepingly - so the goalkeepers knock the ball into the field - the investigator hit him in the groin with his boot, instantly knocking him down. Having lost consciousness, Korolyov writhed for some time on the floor, scratched the parquet with his nails, then calmed down.

Now Korolyov was standing against the wall, and the investigator was sitting at the table.

So that's it, - said the investigator without any trace of the former rage in his voice, very casually and businesslike. - You will stand on the “conveyor line” until you sign the testimony.
Korolev stayed until evening. They were not allowed to eat, they were not allowed to drink. In the evening another investigator came, quite young, about twenty-two years old, no older, with a beautiful blond curly head.
What is a "conveyor"? - quietly asked Korolev.
- “Conveyor,” the curly-haired man explained with a smile, “it means you will stand, and we will take turns.
- How is it? .. - Korolev did not understand.
- There will be three of us. We'll be here around the clock. Isn't it clear to you? I advise you to sign.
He did not frighten, indeed it was so: in the evening another one came, and early in the morning again that first, handsome one.
. . .
Pest! Why blew up the engine? BUT? Be honest. Because it will be easier...
We didn't blow up anything! He is whole! You can go to the institute and see...
- Where I go, I decide. It is not my business to go to the institutes, but my business is to get evidence from you, to find out who else is hiding there in your institute. And you will call them to me! Call everyone!!! You name it, you bastard fascist!!!
The whole body was filled with blood and, somehow jumping sideways to the Queen, he sharply and very strongly hit him in the face, knocking him down.
I woke up when I was doused with cold water.
The investigator was sitting at the table, sorting through the papers, purring under his breath: “Wait, wait, my beauty, let me look at you, joy ...”
Sergei Pavlovich's cheek was slightly stuck to the floor from drying blood. When he stirred, the investigator nimbly got up from the table, came quite close, silently kicked him in the face...

With this kick in the face, the Stalinist servant broke S.P. Queen jaw. It didn't fit well and his mouth didn't open properly. This played a tragic role already in the 60s - during the operation, breathing stopped, it was necessary to insert a hose into the throat, but the mouth did not open. While the doctors were figuring out the check, they were doing it, while they were breaking their jaw (for the second time), time passed and the country lost outstanding person... Thanks to a kick with a boot in 1938 ...

And here is the RESULT of this work

.. Sergei Pavlovich Korolev for participation in the anti-Soviet terrorist and sabotage Trotskyist organization operating at Research Institute No. 3 of the People's Commissariat for the Defense Industry; disruption of the development and commissioning of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army of new types of weapons sentenced to ten years in prison ... final ... not subject ...

Regarding the mass denunciations among the citizens of the USSR of those years:

The investigator of Georgy Erichovich Langemak, 28-year-old junior lieutenant Mikhail Nikolaevich Shestakov, was obviously not yet as experienced and skillful as his colleague Lukhovitsky, and he had to tinker hard with Langemak: Langemak stubbornly refused to plead guilty to at least something. Only on the twelfth day, already losing the connection of events and at times falling into a state of dynamic unconsciousness, when he could walk, sit and talk, being at the same time, as it were, beyond the threshold of thought, Langemak signed a statement that he "decided to abandon his useless denial and testify to the investigation about his counter-revolutionary activities.

It was according to his "denunciation" knocked out by inhuman torture that S.P. was taken. Queen.

Ivan Terentyevich Kleymenov and Georgy Erichovich Langemak were sentenced to death. The verdict was not subject to appeal and was carried out on the day of its announcement. stood very coldy, and when they were being taken to the “workshop”, Kleimenov was cold in his cap.

Who saved the life of S.P. Queen.

The greatest genius of all times and peoples is here for sure - nothing to do with it. He had one task - to destroy everyone who was smarter than himself. And they mowed down everyone.

- If you start to bother, they will also put you in jail.
- You have to work hard! - Maria Nikolaevna was the embodiment of active energy, - I will go to the NKVD and write a letter to Stalin!
She was not allowed into the NKVD, but she did write a letter to Stalin. Perhaps it still lies in the Stalinist archives, although it is impossible to imagine such an archive that would contain all the letters to Stalin. Of course, she did not receive an answer, but her energy did not run out. After some time, Maria Nikolaevna sends a telegram to Stalin. Having passed through the Great Ring of Complaints, this telegram settled in the archives of the prosecutor's office. Peculiar document of the era:
"Moscow. Kremlin. Stalin. In addition to my letter on July 15 of this year, the case of Sergei Pavlovich Korolev's son, who worked at Institute No. 3 of the NKOP, was arrested by the NKVD on June 27 of this year. I urge you to read the letter urgently. My son, recently wounded with a concussion on duty, is under conditions of imprisonment, which will fatally affect his health. I beg you to save the only son of a young talented rocket engineer and pilot, to take urgent measures to investigate the case. Mother Queen Maria Balanina. Moscow, Oktyabrskaya, 38, apt. 236. July 22, 1938.

The convicts thought about food all the time, they understood that it was impossible to do this, but they were powerless to drive away these thoughts. Where, how, when is it more convenient, from whom, with the help of whom or what, to get a crust of bread? Everything, the whole world, the whole universe revolved around a crust of bread. And then came the worst: and these thoughts disappeared. At some near-death stage, hunger turned people into animals. Complete apathy to everything around them took possession of them, a dull indifference to both troubles and joys. They did not react to death either, and the very corpse of a person was not perceived as it is usually perceived. They did not respond to life either. They will say - you have to go, go. They won't say it won't. They will poke into the hole - they do not resist. They will take away the coveted ration - yesterday they would have cut their throats for this, and now they don’t even give a damn about it: before they die from exhaustion, they don’t want to eat anymore. Not only physical, but also mental immobility sets in, and life freezes, quietly goes out, like a candle burned to the bottom.

In winter, Korolyov would have died, he would not have survived the winter - he himself spoke about this. The winter was terrible. of the five hundred prisoners of the Maldyak camp, no more than a hundred people survived until spring.

As Maria Nikolaevna said, Sergei sent her a letter from Magadan in which ... he admired the brave female pilots who set the women's record for the flight distance on an airplane. This aircraft received the neutral name "Motherland", and the former - ANT-37-bis - was dangerous to name (see Art. 58, paragraph 10 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR), since ANT himself - Andrei Nikolaevich Tupolev - was already sitting by that time. In the letter, Korolev specifically commemorated Grizodubova and sent greetings to "Uncle Misha." Maria Nikolaevna realized that her son was telling her where to get help from and quickly found the addresses of Grizodubova and "Uncle Misha" - Mikhail Mikhailovich Gromov.

Korolev greatly appreciated Gromov, admired him, collected all the clippings about his flights in his Kyiv folder and was proud of his acquaintance with the famous pilot. They met at TsAGI, when Korolev worked in the aviation industry.
Maria Nikolaevna went home to Gromov without calling. He lived on Bolshaya Gruzinskaya. It was a clear spring day, suddenly somehow it immediately poured from the roofs, streams ran. In wet felt boots and a dripping squirrel coat, Maria Nikolaevna looked pathetic.
Gromov was tall, slender and very handsome, but without that sweetness that is often marked by recognized handsome men. He was forty years old - a man in the very juice, he looked forty, he sat very straight (riding to a ripe old age kept him in shape), listened attentively.

Then he said:
- All clear. I'll try to help, but in what form, I don't know. I must consult with my secretary... You see, I'm a non-partisan...
“Seryozha is also a non-party,” said Maria Nikolaevna.
- Call me in two or three days...

Mother S.P. she also turned to Grizodubova, the first woman, a hero of the Soviet Union.

Maria Nikolaevna decided to turn to Grizodubova as well. Valentina Stepanovna - young, beautiful, famous - was at the zenith of her fame.

She had just received a new apartment not far from Petrovsky Castle, not yet painted everywhere, with newspapers on the floor (it was necessary to carefully look at the newspapers beforehand so as not to spread a portrait of the leader on the floor. A dirty golosh mark on a newspaper could cost a person life). By the time Maria Nikolaevna found her apartment, it was already dark. The door was opened by Valya's mother Nadezhda Andreevna. After listening to Maria Nikolaevna, she threw up her hands:
- Serezha Korolev! Well, such a nice boy, I remember him in Koktebel ...
She screamed into the far rooms:
- Valyusha! Go here. This is Serezha Koroleva's mother. Do you remember Seryozha? Valya came out, with loose hair, in a peignoir:
- Seryozha... Well, of course, I remember...
Her father always took her with him to Koktebel. She was just a girl, the gliders loved her and spoiled her. Feodosia, Astoria Hotel, the pilots stood under the balcony, their heads up and their mouths open, she threw grapes into their mouths ... There are some trifles that, for some unknown reason, get stuck in memory forever. Black-eyed strong man Seryozha Korolev. Swimming very well...
- You calm down, we can, we will do everything, - Nadezhda Andreevna said affectionately. - Valya, I need to write a note to the Supreme Court ... Just think, and Seryozha ...

There was also a third point. A.N. Tupolev, who was already beginning to organize a "sharashka" at that time, remembered his talented graduate student, Korolev, and wrote a memo in which he demanded him to come to him. He took risks. After all, if S.P. Korolev was at large - such a note would have led to his arrest, conviction, etc. But, Tupolev had information about what was happening "in the wild" and rightly decided that if Korolev was "in the zone", then such an application could save his life.
It was the coincidence of these three factors that led to the fact that the case of S.P. The Queen decided to reconsider. He was called to Moscow. It is characteristic that he traveled from Kolyma to Vladivostok, in fact, on his own. And only in Vladivostok he was again taken under escort. He was incredibly lucky - he was LATE for the steamer "Indigirka", which was supposed to take the convicts to the "mainland" on the last flight. This steamboat ran into rocks off the coast of Japan. Japanese rescuers removed the crew of the ship. But the captain did not tell them about the prisoners in the hold. All prisoners died. The queen used this cup, although he was striving to get on this ship.
D Elo Queen revised. 10 years changed to 8..

"CLOSING INDICTMENT
on the trail, case No. 19908
on charges of the Queen

Sergei Pavlovich according to Art. 58-7; 58-11 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR

On June 28, 1938, the NKVD of the USSR, for belonging to a Trotskyist, sabotage organization operating at Research Institute No. 3 (NKB of the USSR)73, was arrested and prosecuted by the former engineer of the said institute, Sergei Pavlovich Korolev.

During the investigation, Korolev pleaded guilty to having been recruited into a Trotskyist wrecking organization in 1935 by the former technical director of Research Institute No. 3, Langemak (convicted)74.
During the investigation of the Langemak case, he was not specifically interrogated about Korolev and testified about the latter's participation in an anti-Soviet organization that he knew about it from the words of Kleimenov, the former director of NII-3 (convicted) (case file 41).

On the instructions of the anti-Soviet organization, Korolev carried out wrecking work to disrupt the development and commissioning of new weapons by the Red Army (case files 21-35, 53-55; 66-67, 238-239).
By the decision of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR of September 27, 1938, Korolev was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

On June 13, 1939, the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the USSR annulled the verdict of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, and the investigative case on the charge of Korolev was transferred for a new investigation (see a separate file of the court proceedings).
During the re-investigation, Korolev testified that the testimony given by him during the investigation in 1938 did not correspond to reality and were false (case files 153-156).
However, the materials of the investigation and the documentary data of Korolev available in the case reveal that:

In 1936 he led the development of a powder winged torpedo; knowing in advance that the main parts of this torpedo - devices with photocells - for controlling the torpedo and aiming it at the target, cannot be manufactured by the central laboratory of wire communications75, Korolev, in order to load the institute with unnecessary work, intensively developed the missile part of this torpedo in 2 versions .

As a result of this test, four torpedoes built by Korolev showed their complete unsuitability, which caused damage to the state in the amount of 120,000 rubles and delayed the development of other, more relevant topics (case sheet 250-251).
In 1937, when developing the side compartment of a torpedo (winged), he made a wrecking calculation, as a result of which research work on the creation of torpedoes were thwarted (case files 23-24, 256).
He artificially delayed the production and testing of defense facilities (object 212) (case files 21, 54, 255).

On the basis of the above
accused

Korolev Sergey Pavlovich, born in 1906, born in mountains Zhytomyr, Russian, c. of the USSR, non-partisan, before arrest - engineer of NII-3 NKB of the USSR,
in that:

From 1935, he was a member of the Trotskyist wrecking organization, on whose instructions he carried out criminal work at NII-3 to disrupt the development and commissioning of new types of weapons by the Red Army, i.e. in the crimes of Art.Article. 58-7, 58-11 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR.
He pleaded guilty, but subsequently retracted his testimony.
Exposed by the testimony of: Kleymenov, Langemak, Glushko; testimony of witnesses; Smirnov, Rokhmachev, Kosyatov, Shitov, Efremov, Bukin, Dushkin76 and acts of expert commissions.

Send the case against Korolev to the Prosecutor's Office USSR by jurisdiction.
The indictment was drawn up on May 28, 1940 in Moscow.
Investigator of the investigative unit of the GEM NKVD of the USSR ml. lieutenant of state security Ryabov.
Pom. early investigator of the GEM NKVD of the USSR Art. lieutenant of state security Libenson.

"I agree". Beginning Investigator of the GEM NKVD of the USSR, Major of State Security Vlodzimirsky.

"I confirm." Deputy early of the Main Economic Directorate of the NKVD of the USSR Major state security Nasedkin.
May 26, 1940”77.

About the situation in "sharagas"

Tupolev Beria said bluntly:
- Let's agree, Andrey Nikolaevich, the plane is in the air, and you all go home!
- But don't you think that, being at home, you can make airplanes? Tupolev asked with a frown.
- Can! It's possible, but dangerous. You can't imagine what traffic is on the streets, a bus can crush - Lavrenty Pavlovich was a man of great and subtle humor.

But Tupolev didn't smile for some reason.

The prisoners destined for the Sharag had to be dressed up and fattened up a little, since many of them were not fit for any work, especially the Kolyma, Norilsk and goners from the Arkhangelsk logging sites. However, talk to the convicts and you will learn about the previously unknown, even more deep hell, and you will understand: the limit is the very scary place- cannot be installed.

Years after Stalin:

Many years will pass, and Korolev will gather friends in his house in Ostankino. The guards of the mansion, unlocking the gate, will inquisitively examine the guests of the academician. Someone will remember this in the midst of a friendly feast, and Sergei Pavlovich will say with a smile:
- You know, I can’t get rid of the thought that they can come into my house at any moment and shout:
- Queens! Well, bastard, pack your things! ..

The son of designer Valentin Glushko does not agree with the version of cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, who claimed that Korolyov was arrested on the denunciation of his father.

The repressions at the Reactive Research Institute No. 3 (RNII-3, later - NII-3) began with a statement by the head of one of the departments, Andrei Kostikov, written by him in the spring of 1937 and sent to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks - Nikolai Yezhov, in which he all the mistakes made in the development of new technology, passed off as sabotage and waste folk remedies, accusing the director of the institute Ivan Kleymenov, his deputy Georgy Langemak, as well as leading engineers Valentin Glushko and Sergey Korolev of mediocrity and incompetence.

The testimonies allegedly signed by Kleimenov and Langemak became the first "facts" confirming the "wrecking activities" of both Glushko and Korolyov. What were these testimonies?

Kleimenov put his signature under a statement in which he admitted that, in addition to him and Langemak, the following were members of the wrecking organization: Glushko, Pobedonostsev, Korolev and Schwartz. Langemak was also forced to admit "concrete facts of sabotage."

Having received the necessary information, the leadership of the NKVD on January 10 and 11, 1938 sentenced Kleimenov and Langemak to death.

In addition to Glushko and Korolev, other employees of NII-3 were also registered as members of the wrecking organization. However, none of them were hurt. This gives reason to believe that only those employees who could interfere with Kostikov's implementation of his plans were dealt with.

Having got rid of the leadership of NII-3, Kostikov launched a vigorous activity to expose the arrested "enemies of the people", demanding from Glushko and Korolev, who were at large, to speak at the meeting with the words of their denunciation. And when they refused, he began to threaten violence.

And he carried out the threat. In the days of the execution of Kleimenov and Langemak (is it by chance?), the party committee received four more statements about the activities of Glushko, and his persecution began at the institute. On February 13 and 20, 1938, meetings of the Engineering and Technical Council were held, at which Glushko's activities were assessed as "wrecking". Particular emphasis was placed on writing, together with Langemak, a "wrecking book" "Rockets, their design and use."

In February 1938, the NKVD prepared a warrant for the arrest of Glushko, which was only put into effect in March. It talked about the testimony of Kleimenov and Langemak, signed by them during the investigation, and quoted from them.

March 23, 1938 Valentin Glushko was arrested. According to the information now available, he held out for two and a half months without confessing or signing the interrogation protocols. The statements signed by him, which allegedly appeared the day after the arrest, are probably backdated. In statements, he admitted that he was involved in a wrecking organization by the former head of the Gas Dynamics Laboratory, Nikolai Ilyin.

From the text of these statements it is clear that Glushko does not say a word about the Queen. Of the accomplices of the organization, he names (or is named for him) only the deceased Tikhomirov, the shot Ilyin and the already arrested Kleimenov and Langemak.

The first protocol of interrogation of Glushko is dated June 5, 1938. In the typed text, he makes several corrections and additions and signs it. Reading this protocol, one is amazed at how carefully it speaks of those who are still at large. As for Korolyov, Glushko presented him as the executor of his will and nothing more, that is, he did everything to save his comrade from the impending arrest.
But on June 27, 1938, the car also takes Korolev, who had just been discharged from the hospital.

From the arrest warrant for S.P. Koroleva, published in the book by Natalia Koroleva "Father", it follows that the name Glushko does not even appear in this document. This fact once again proves his complete non-involvement in the arrest of Korolev. From this we can conclude that any attempt to accuse Valentin Glushko of involvement in the arrest of Korolev has no basis.

Another interesting fact is that on January 24, 1939, Glushko, still unaware of Korolev's conviction, denying everything signed earlier, is trying to pull his comrade out of the swamp into which they fell together.

But it is still unclear why Korolyov was arrested? It is impossible to find an answer to this question in the testimony kept in the materials of the investigation cases of Kleimenov, Langemak, Glushko and Korolev, since none of them actually had anything to do with this arrest.

In connection with these events, the judgment of Yaroslav Golovanov, who writes in his book Korolev: Facts and Myths, is interesting, that Korolev prevented Kostikov from taking the post of director of NII-3.

Another biographer of Korolev Georgy Vetrov in the book “S.P. Korolev and astronautics. First Steps ”writes that Sergey Pavlovich got involved in the organization of RNII-3 because the scale of the Jet Propulsion Study Group (GIRD) no longer suited him, he needed an institute.

These opinions about the Queen only confirm that he was a rival for Kostikov, who was eager for power. It can be assumed with a high degree of certainty that while Korolev was at large, Kostikov understood perfectly well that he would not be the director of NII-3. There is only one way out - plant!

Leonid Dushkin, one of the leading employees of NII-3, in his interview published in the journal "Wings of the Motherland", claimed that one of the reasons for Korolev's arrest was Kostikov's revenge for the fact that Korolev did not design his cruise missile and rocket plane for Kostikov's oxygen engine , and under nitric acid Glushko, for which he was punished.

Thus, we can conclude that it is not Valentin Glushko and the previously arrested Kleimenov and Langemak who are to blame for the arrest of Korolev, but the future false author of the “Katyusha” Kostikov.

REFERENCE

Andrey Kostikov (1899-1950) - a specialist in the field of mechanics. Hero Socialist Labor, laureate of the Stalin Prize of the first degree.

Since September 15, 1938, Kostikov has been acting deputy director of NII-3.

In July 1941, Kostikov was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor "... for the invention of one of the types of weapons that increase the combat capability of the Red Army" ("Katyusha").

In 1957, Kostikov's merits, including the invention of the Katyushas, ​​were called into question.

Valentin Glushko (1908-1989), founder of the Russian liquid rocket engine industry. Since 1974 chief designer space systems, general designer of the Energia-Buran reusable rocket and space complex, twice Hero of Socialist Labor, laureate of the Lenin and State Prizes.

In 1939, Valentin Glushko was convicted by a Special Meeting of the NKVD of the USSR for a period of 8 years. Until 1940, he worked in the design group of the 4th Special Department of the NKVD (the so-called "sharashka"). Later, Glushko was transferred to Kazan, where he continued to work as chief designer of the Design Bureau of the 4th Special Department of the NKVD.

In 1944, by decision of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, he was released ahead of schedule with the removal of a criminal record. Rehabilitated in 1956.

After triumphant victories in space Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, chief designer spaceships, the government donated a mansion in Moscow, in Ostankino. Once Korolev confessed to friends who had gathered at his place: “It happens that you wake up at night, lie down and remember. And it seems that suddenly a guard will come in and bark: “ Well, bastard, pack your things!". Before last days bitter resentment for the insult and mockery of him, for everything he had experienced, burned and tormented his soul.

Conflict

In the early 1930s, two organizations worked on the creation of powder rockets and liquid-fuel rocket engines in our country: the Gas Dynamics Laboratory ( GDL) - in Leningrad and the Jet Propulsion Study Group ( GIRD) - in Moscow. It was clear that it was time to unite them, organize a single rocket research center, a specialized institute. And marshal Tukhachevsky, then Deputy People's Commissar-Voenmor Voroshilov, who saw missiles as a very promising weapon, sought the creation of such an institution.

The case, as usual, progressed with a creak. Only by the autumn of 1933, on the outskirts of Moscow, in Likhobory, they finally found a suitable building, and the world's first Jet Research Institute ( RNII) started to work.

He was appointed head of the RNII Ivan Terentievich Kleymenov, who had previously briefly headed the Leningrad Gas Dynamics Laboratory. He graduated from the engineering department of the Air Force Academy, but knew little about rocket technology.

Kleimenov's deputy was 26-year-old Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, former boss GIRD. His relationship with the boss did not work out from the very beginning. Yes, this is not surprising. Their style of work differed sharply. Korolev dreamed of developing new, unprecedented designs. Kleimenov, on the other hand, strove for a quiet life, did not want to take risks, and did not approve of the “fantasy” of his deputy, complaining about the difficult nature of the Queen.

The main subjects of the RNII were combat powder rockets, rockets, eres. The Queen's thoughts extended much further. He was engaged in cruise missiles with liquid engines. Moreover, a rocket plane for human flight. Korolev was ahead of his time and much ahead of his time (by ten years, no less).

Sergei Pavlovich was infuriated by Kleimenov's slowness, irritated by his tendency to nobility and love to live.

The situation at the institute was difficult. A serious conflict was brewing.

The way out was found in the fact that the post of deputy head of the RNII was abolished. Instead, the position of chief engineer was introduced, and this chair was no longer occupied by Korolev, but by a military engineer who arrived from Leningrad, from the disbanded GDL, a military engineer, a specialist in the field of solid-fuel rockets Georgy Erichovich Langemak.

Korolev suddenly fell down the career ladder. However, he did not regret it much. Rather, he even breathed a sigh of relief, because now he could devote more time to research, cruise missiles, which, as he rightly believed, had a huge future.

The main goal was still the rocket plane. The stumbling block on the way to the coveted rocket aircraft remained the liquid rocket engine ( LRE), over the development of which the engine engineer fought in the neighboring department Valentin Petrovich Glushko.

Arrest

The news of the arrest of Marshal Tukhachevsky on May 26, 1937 sounded like thunder for Korolev, for all the employees of the institute. Is the famous marshal a spy, a participant in a military fascist conspiracy, an enemy of the people? This did not fit in the mind. Together with Tukhachevsky, seven more prominent Soviet military leaders were arrested and then shot.

Kleymenov was a protégé of Tukhachevsky. It was the marshal who recommended Ivan Terentyevich for the post of head of the jet institute. And therefore Kleimenov was doomed, however, like many others.

In fact, repression soon reached the RNII. They came for Kleimenov on the night of November 2-3. Langemak was arrested the next day. Both were about to be shot. Glushko was also arrested.

Work at the institute continued, but a depressing mood seized everyone. Sergey Pavlovich led the engine tests for the future rocket plane, " object number 318».

Korolev worked, seeing that clouds were also gathering around him. He was suddenly demoted (from the head of the group he was transferred to senior engineers), accused of political sins (does not go to meetings and demonstrations, eschews public affairs). He wanted to join the party, however, he was refused admission, even into the ranks of sympathizers. He no longer doubted that his arrest was not far off.

June 26, 1938, Sunday, the first elections were held in The Supreme Council RSFSR, and at night an ominous call sounded to the Korolevs' apartment on Konyushkovskaya.

Three Chekists conducted a senseless search for a long time, memorized, leafing through and shaking books, rummaging through the desk drawers. Of course they didn't find anything. Only in the morning did they finish the protocol. " Gather your things", - said one of the Chekists Xenia Maximilianovna, the wife of Sergei Pavlovich, and took him to the Lubyanka.

The grounds for the arrest were the testimony Kleimenova, Langemak and Glushko, which claimed that Korolev was a member of the counter-revolutionary Trotskyist organization, which aimed to weaken the country's defense power. How such evidence was obtained is now well known. Very soon I learned this on myself and Korolev.

This is how a well-known journalist described his interrogation Yaroslav Golovanov:

“When Sergei Pavlovich was brought into the investigator's room for the first interrogation, he saw a young, handsome guy.
— Do you know why you were arrested? he asked.
— No, I do not know, Korolyov replied simply.
— Oh, you don't know...your mother!! the handsome man suddenly roared. — Bastard! Scum!- and with these words, relish, having accumulated hot saliva in a cry, spat in the face of the Queen.

Instinctively, no longer thinking where he was, Korolyov rushed at the investigator. But this breakthrough, it turns out, was foreseen. Sweepingly - the way goalkeepers knock the ball into the field - the investigator hit him in the groin with his boot, instantly knocking him down. Having lost consciousness, Korolev still writhed for some time on the floor, scratching the parquet with his nails, then calmed down.

When he came to, a doctor was nearby, feeling his pulse. " It's OK' he said and left.

Korolev stood on the conveyor for a day. The investigators changed, and he stood against the wall on stiff legs. They were not allowed to drink or eat. The sympathetic again from time to time became furious, pricked the interrogated person with a needle in the stomach, yelled: “ You say everything, you fascist bastard!! Completely furious, he deftly, like a boxer, knocked down the Queen again, and then kicked the lying man in the face. Korolev woke up already in the cell ...

Court

He was accused under the famous Article 58, more precisely, under its 7 and 11 points: undermining the state industry, for counter-revolutionary purposes, participation in anti-Soviet organizations.

The accusation was so absurd and far-fetched that it could only occur in delirium. It stated, for example, that for sabotage purposes Korolev developed missiles without proper calculations and drawings, not being consistent with the theory that all unsuccessful launches (during one of them, Sergei Pavlovich miraculously survived) he deliberately adjusted from sabotage considerations and just as deliberately burned his experimental rocket plane (and the plane stood unharmed).

All this could be easily verified and refuted, but the trouble was that no one was going to check it. The accusation was fabricated from start to finish.

The archive of the current FSB stores two protocols of interrogations of a prisoner Sergei Pavlovich Korolev. The first is dated June 28, 1938, that is, it was drawn up on the day after the arrest. The second was written a month later, on August 4th. What happened between these dates? Nobody will tell us about it. One thing is clear, the masters of shoulder cases did their best.

About a month after his arrest, as follows from the second protocol, Korolyov admitted that he was a member of the anti-Soviet wrecking organization in which Langemak had involved him, and that Kleimenov and Glushko were also members of it. Many years later he would say to his wife: I signed the protocol because they threatened me: “If you don’t sign, we will destroy your wife and daughter».

Like other innocent prisoners of Butyrka, Sergei Pavlovich awaited trial with great hope. It seemed that the absurdity of the accusation would finally be revealed there. The trial took place on September 27, 1938. The Queen was judged by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR under the chairmanship military jurist Ulrich- a terrible person. For him, who sent to execution such figures as Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin, Berry and many others, the case of the little-known engineer Korolev was ordinary.

To Ulrich's standard question: " Do you plead guilty?"Sergey Pavlovich replied:" No, I do not admit and I refuse my testimony". He was waiting for the court to start looking into it now. But no, nothing like that happened.

The trial took only 15 minutes. No one asked the defendant about the merits of his work at the RNII. In an impassive voice, the presiding judge read the verdict, from which it followed that Sergei Pavlovich Korolev "for participating in an anti-Soviet terrorist and sabotage organization, disrupting the development and delivery of new types of weapons" was sentenced to 10 years in labor camps with a loss of rights for 5 years and confiscation of property.

Maldyak

The monstrous verdict suppressed the Queen. He was taken back to Butyrka, to the former prison church, which had become a place for prisoners waiting for the transfer. They were sent from Moscow (obviously overburdened) to transit prisons in other parts of the country.

Sergei Pavlovich ended up in Novocherkassk. Here, behind the thick walls of the largest prison in southern Russia, he had to stay for a long time, eight months, until the summer of 1939. And then fifty prisoners were stuffed into the prison car; enemies of the people, along with criminals, and were taken across the country to the east, into the unknown.

The destination was the so-called Second River. There was a gigantic transit camp here. From here, sea vessels took batch after batch to the gold mines of Kolyma.

Korolev was in transit for only ten days. A huge batch of prisoners was waiting in the hold of the motor ship Dalstroy, the hold sticky and fetid with vomit. Manhole covers slammed shut. We swam.

A week later, crazy from stuffiness, pitching (it was fairly stormy in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk) and the rattling of iron, hundreds of slaves arrived in Magadan, and then in covered trucks along the bumpy Kolyma tract, starving and without a drop of hot, drove another 600 kilometers to the north. The final destination was the Maldyak camp, a mine where more than half a thousand prisoners worked, mined gold.

Korolev worked hard underground - in pits, he hollowed permafrost jackhammer, and on the surface - drove heavy wheelbarrows, eaten by clouds of mosquitoes and midges.

Hunger was constant. During the year, up to 400 prisoners died from exhaustion and diseases - scurvy, pellagra. Others were brought in to replace them.

In mid-October 1939, Sergei Pavlovich wrote a letter to the Supreme Prosecutor of the USSR. He listed the main work that he performed before his arrest.

“I am convicted,” he wrote, “on the basis of vile slander on the part of the previously arrested Kleimenov, Langemak and Glushko, who, as they told me during the investigation and as mentioned in the indictment, testified against me ...
For 15 months now I have been cut off from my favorite work, which filled my whole life and was its content and purpose. I dreamed of creating for the USSR, for the first time in technology, ultra-high-speed high-altitude rocket planes, which are now the most powerful weapon and means of defense.
I ask you to reconsider my case and remove heavy charges against me, in which I am completely not to blame. I ask you to give me the opportunity to continue my work on rocket aircraft to strengthen the defense capability of the USSR.”

"Sharashka"

When Sergei Pavlovich wrote a letter to the Supreme Prosecutor, he did not know that something incredible had happened. It turned out that on June 13, 1939 (that is, while he was being transported to the east in a prison car), the Plenum of the Supreme Court overturned the verdict.

They say he cried when he was ordered to get ready for Moscow. From Maldyak to Vladivostok, Sergei Pavlovich got half alive. He was swollen and lost half of his teeth, he moved with great difficulty. He traveled, of course, accompanied by an escort, he rode with the hope that in Moscow he would finally receive the long-awaited freedom. Why were they called then?

However, it was not there. Right from the station on a black funnel he was taken to the familiar Butyrka. The Plenum of the Supreme Court referred Korolev's case for additional investigation. And now - a new verdict: 8 years in labor camps!

For Korolev, this was a far worse blow than the 1938 sentence. Hopes dashed. Is it really Kolyma again? He knew that he would not survive the new penal servitude.

Sitting in prison, Sergei Pavlovich writes a letter to Stalin. At hand is only a small piece of paper from a school notebook in a box. In small, small handwriting, saving every square centimeter, he again tries to tell as convincingly as possible about the importance of his work on rocket technology.

“For the third year I have been wandering through prisons from Moscow to Nagaev Bay and back, but I still do not see the end. I am still cut off from my work, and my personal situation is so disgusting and terrible that I am compelled to ask you for intercession and help. I ask you to appoint a new objective investigation in my case. I can prove my innocence and I want to continue working on rocket planes for the defense of the USSR.”

No one replied to this letter. Another saved him. He became the head of the NKVD, who had the brilliant idea to create " sharashki», prison design bureaus. They were to be staffed by specialist convicts. Korolev was in sharashka", which was led Andrey Nikolaevich Tupolev, also a prisoner. There was a forced design bureau in Moscow, on the corner of Radio Street and Saltykovskaya Embankment. The designers worked behind bars, but slept in clean beds, ate in a normal dining room. For those who drank dashing in the camps, it seemed like a miracle.

The war began, the design bureau was transferred to Omsk. Korolev did not find himself in aviation. The missiles didn't let him go. He thought about them all the time.

Already in Siberia, he learned that in Kazan his former colleague at the jet institute Glushko, being a prisoner, was still working on rocket engines. And Korolev decided to make his way to Kazan. He managed to achieve this. Sergei Pavlovich began to develop rocket boosters for bombers and he himself tested "hellish machines" in the air, constantly risking his life.

Even during the war, in July 1944, Korolev and Glushko were "early released with the removal of a criminal record," as stated in the Decree.

War is over. Sergei Pavlovich returned to Moscow. The nightmare is left behind. I wanted to work with my sleeves rolled up. A new one started great stage in his life.