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At the Beginning of the War
from the northwest. In the event of a swift breach by the Nazi tank armies, we in
Khimki—along with our factory and all the work that had been done on the BI
aircraft—would find ourselves on the “German side.”
Increasingly alarming information was coming to us from Moscow about the
evacuation of one military factory after another.After one of these routine distressing
reports Isayev had a confidential conversation with me. He proposed that we
create a guerrilla detachment. Isayev spoke with great enthusiasm, as if he were
proposing that we take part in a recreational hike.This conversation took place on
the eve of the Nazis’ breach of the Mozhaysk and Volokolamsk lines.
On 15 October, the State Committee of Defense ordered the emergency evacuation
of all central Party and State institutions from Moscow. The next day, 16
October, was the beginning of the mass evacuation that went down in the unofficial
history of the war as “the Moscow panic.” On that day, the People’s
Commissariats, the leaders of all central institutions, and all factory directors
received a very strict order to evacuate east by any means available to new relocation
sites for their institutions and enterprises.
Not having warned any of their subordinates, Bolkhovitinov and chief engineer
Volkov disappeared on 16 October. Later we found out that they had not
been cowards, but had been following an order by Shakhurin, who had
summoned the directors and chief designers to the People’s Commissariat and
then ordered them to immediately leave Moscow without returning to their
respective workplaces. Bolkhovitinov and Volkov had traveled to the population
center specified by Shakhurin: Bilimbay, which was 60 kilometers west of
Sverdlovsk in the Urals. Like the other directors, they would have to make
arrangements with local authorities to begin receiving the evacuated enterprises
so that operations could immediately be continued.
The next day the Moscow panic had reached Khimki, but we had not yet
received an official order to evacuate the factory.
Blow up and destroy everything and join the guerrillas—that was my frame of
mind as I set off on 17 October for Moscow, hoping that my wife Katya, who had
been in Udelnaya, had come to the Golubkina Museum to stay with her cousin
Vera, the museum director. Actually, having heard about the panic, Katya had tied
all her things into a bundle, grabbed our son, and rushed to the station. One by
one, overcrowded trains left Moscow and rushed on with no stops. They even
coupled metro cars into the trains. But not one was traveling to Moscow! Finally,
some overcrowded train headed for Moscow stopped in Udelnaya.
With the help of her mother and sister, Katya and Valentin squeezed into the
jam-packed railroad car. Somehow Katya, carrying her enormous bundle and
two-year-old son, managed to make her way from the train station to Bolshoy
Levshinskiy Lane. That is where I found them. But Polya Zvereva was there
before me. She was the former wife of Sergey Gorbunov. Several years after his
death, she had married a well-known test pilot who had worked at LII. On the
day of panic, she had remembered her fellow Zaraysk natives, had come to the
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