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Birth of the Institute RABE
sentation,’ which had been ordered to direct the study and expropriation of
German missile technology.
After determining “who was who,” Kuznetsov announced that the Institute
RABE and all of us were subordinate to the GAU military command, as per the
decision of the Central Committee, which had instructed the military to head this
activity until the industry could sort out which one of the Peoples’ Commissars
would be in charge. Having discussed these problems in our own aviation circle,
we decided that it wasn’t worth it to put up a fight. After all, in Germany at that
time, the military were our masters.The aircraft industry had really abandoned us
or forgotten us, and no one else had picked us up yet. Soon thereafter we made
the acquaintance of General Lev Mikhaylovich Gaydukov, who had arrived for an
inspection. He was a member of the Guards Mortar Units military council and also
a Central Committee department manager. He impressed us as an energetic man
who was full of initiative, and we liked that he made no secret of the fact that he
would support in every way the expansion of our operations in Germany, to the
extent that he would even issue the appropriate Central Committee and governmental
resolution.
In August 1945, the Institute RABE became fully established and began to
expand its activity.The following month, commissions and all sorts of plenipotentiaries
from Moscow—ranging from the serious to the idly curious—began
making regular visits to determine who we were and what we were doing.
After returning to Moscow, Gaydukov really got down to business. The first
result of his efforts was the arrival of a group that consisted of future chief designers
Mikhail Sergeyevich Ryazanskiy, Viktor Ivanovich Kuznetsov, and Yuriy
Aleksandrovich Pobedonostsev, as well as Yevgeniy Yakovlevich Boguslavskiy and
Zinoviy Moiseyevich Tsetsior.We had now been brought up to full strength with
radio and gyroscopic specialists. This was an interagency group organized at
Gaydukov’s initiative by decision of the Central Committee.
When Viktor Kuznetsov saw the gyroscopic platform that we had in our laboratory,
he announced that it should be sent immediately to his institute in Moscow.
But it didn’t work out that way. Pilyugin categorically objected.This was the first
serious conflict between the two future chief designers. Later, in the early 1960s,
disagreements as to who should make gyroscopic instruments and what they
should be like led Pilyugin, who had obtained a powerful production base, to
begin successfully developing and producing gyroscopic instruments and highly
sensitive elements for inertial navigation systems.
Yevgeniy Boguslavskiy, who remained with us at the institute to the very end,
immediately immersed himself in the mysteries of the lateral radio correction and
range radio control systems.
to consolidate its policies, the GAU sent cadre officers from its staff and
troop units.And so, the following people turned up first in Berlin, and then at our
place: Georgiy Aleksandrovich Tyulin, who would later became director of the
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