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Chapter 23
In Search of a Real Boss
We soon started to receive pessimistic letters from Isayev in Moscow: “Horrible,
horrible, horrible! . . .We don’t have anything sensible to work on! Our patron is no
longer interested in our research. He wants to go back to work at the Academy.”
Using the darkest images to describe the work life and unsettled daily life in
Moscow, Isayev reminisced about the Villa Franka and Bleicherode. “Our work in
Bleicherode—that was just a beautiful dream. Here the primary “missile-related
concerns” are firewood, early freezes, and agricultural work. . . .Your Katya is a real
trooper! She wants you to come home. She met with the patron himself. He said
that it was your own fault that you had stayed too long in Germany. Nobody was
making you stay there.You were loyal to him during the most difficult time and now
suddenly you have ‘sold your own sword’; and to whom?—to the artillerymen.”
This was November 1945. It was hard to read Katya’s letters about the difficult
life in postwar Moscow with two little boys. And what’s more, the youngest was
always getting sick. Katya had to travel all the way across Moscow to NII-1 for the
rations to which she was still entitled, rush off to the children’s clinic for milk for
the sick baby, and repair the eternally burned-out electric hotplate. It was cold in
the apartment—it was even difficult to dry underwear.The autumn wind blew in
around the windows. Often the water didn’t make it up to the fifth floor, so she
had to run down to the water fountain on the street. After returning with the
water, she had to repair the electric wiring.There was a short circuit somewhere
and the fuses were always burning out.
After General Kuznetsov’s accident, which had him confined to a hospital bed
for a long time, it was understandable that receiving news like this prompted me
to petition for leave. I reached an agreement with Pilyugin that he would take over
all the business of managing the Institute RABE for about two weeks. But it
turned out that Moscow had not forgotten us.
General Gaydukov ordered that none of us were to leave Germany. He was
evidently one of the first among our military leaders to appreciate the prospects of
the work we had undertaken and its scope. He understood who was propping it
all up, and he lobbied in Moscow for energetic support of the Institute RABE.
We could sense this. First, there was an increased stream of specialists at our
disposal who had been sent on temporary assignment from various agencies.
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