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Rockets and People
The institute’s work was disrupted for a prolonged period of time. In the ensuing
period up until 1944, no serious work was performed in the Soviet Union
on long-range rockets as weapons, and much less on rockets as a means for penetrating
into outer space.
In January 1937, RNII was transferred to the People’s Commissariat of the
Defense Industry and renamed Scientific-Research Institute 3 (NII-3). 2 Two years
later, NII-3 was transferred to the People’s Commissariat of Ammunitions, and in
July 1942 it was directly subordinated to the USSR Council of People’s Commissars
and renamed the State Institute of Reactive Technology. In February 1944, the
institute was transferred to the People’s Commissariat of Aviation Industry and
named Scientific-Research Institute 1 (NII-1).Twenty-one years later, NII-1 was
transferred to the newly created Ministry of General Machine Building and given
the name Scientific-Research Institute for Thermal Processes (NII TP). 3 Finally, at
the end of the twentieth century, NII TP became part of Rosaviakosmos in 1992,
and in 1993 was renamed the M.V. Keldysh Research Center.
The Soviet State, which was the first in the world to stimulate the practical
development of cosmonautics, actually inhibited the development of large rocket
technology for six years beginning in 1937.The behavior of leaders in a totalitarian
state does not always lend itself to explanation from the standpoint of
common sense.
it was winston churchill who stimulated the new approach of actively working
on pure rocket technology in the USSR. In July 1944, he appealed to Stalin
with the request that English specialists be allowed to inspect the German rocket
firing range that Red Army troops were about to capture in the territory of Poland.
Our troops had the opportunity to capture the Germans’ most secret weapons,
about which the English intelligence service knew more than ours.We could not
allow that, and our specialists received an order to inspect everything that could be
inspected by the attacking troops before the English would be allowed in.
I will write in greater detail in other chapters about the activity of the
Germans in Poland and subsequent events regarding the Anglo-Soviet searches
for German rockets.
Here, I would like to note that Stalin entrusted the inspection activity to the
People’s Commissar of Aviation Industry, Aleksey Ivanovich Shakhurin, and this
responsibility was in turn placed on NII-1—the former RNII, which was subordinate
to Shakhurin.Aviation generals and aviation scientists were among the leadership
of NII-1 at that time, and it would seem that it was then that the prospects
for seizing a new field of research unfolded before the leadership of the aviation
industry. Stalin himself instructed Shakhurin to do this, rather than Vannikov,
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2. NII-3—Nauchno-issledovatelskiy institut 3.
3. NII TP—Nauchno-issledovatelskiy institut teplovykh protsessov.