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Rockets and People
Behind him were just over five years as a Soviet zek—at Butyrka, a transit prison,
Kolyma, Butyrka again, the sharaski in Moscow, and then Omsk and Kazan.
And then suddenly Korolev was in Thuringia, the “green heart” of conquered
Germany, in the uniform of a lieutenant colonel, with documents that opened
every checkpoint, alone behind the wheel of a “trophy” car racing like the wind.
He could drive wherever he wanted over such good roads. He could stop and
spend the night in any town in the Soviet occupation zone.The military authorities
would always give him refuge, and even if they weren’t around, a good local
gasthaus would take him in. Freedom! How beautiful! That is how, many years later,
I imagined the feelings that must have overcome Korolev. He wasn’t yet forty years
old! He had so much yet to do! But he had the right now to take something from
life for himself.
Soon after that memorable first encounter with Korolev in Bleicherode,
Pobedonostsev arrived. He had spent a great deal of time in Berlin, and was now
well informed about the organizational problems that troubled the Guards’
Mortar Units command, the Party Central Committee military department, the
industry People’s Commissariats, and our institute. He reported that for the time
being in Moscow, there was total confusion “at the top” as to who would
become the actual boss of missile technology in the country. Meanwhile all of
the power was in the hands of the military and the Central Committee apparatus.
We would therefore be working according to the principle: “He who pays
the piper calls the tune.”
Pobedonostsev told Pilyugin and me in detail “who was who” at RNII and
who Korolev was. Pobedonostsev was the first to tell us that Korolev had been
Glushko’s deputy in the “special prison.” Glushko had been sentenced to eight
years in a prison camp “for participating in the Kleymonov-Langemak sabotage
organization.” He was retained to work at the NKVD Fourth Special Department
Technical Bureau. In 1940, they transferred him Aircraft Factory No. 16 in
Kazan to develop aircraft jet boosters. In 1941, they appointed Glushko chief
designer of an OKB staffed with imprisoned specialists. Over a three-year period
they developed several types of boosters with thrusts from 300 to 900 kilograms.
These boosters underwent tests on Petlyakov,Yakovlev, and Lavochkin aircraft. In
1942, at Glushko’s request, they transferred prisoner Korolev from the Tupolev
sharashka in Omsk to Glushko’s OKB, where he was assigned as Glushko’s
deputy for testing.
According to all sorts of gossip, Glushko was supposedly delivered under guard
to Stalin at the Kremlin in August 1944.There he not only reported on the work
he had done, but managed to tell Stalin something about the future outlook.
Glushko left the Kremlin a free man. Without a guard, he initially experienced
some difficulty getting settled.
In 1944, the authorities decided to free Glushko and thirty-five other specialists
who had worked in his OKB before their sentences had been served out, and
their previous convictions were expunged. Korolev was also freed somewhat later
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