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Rockets and People
technical institutes of higher learning. Entrance exams were not the only barrier
to admission. In addition to the usual admissions board, a sort of screening board
was at work. Such boards were supposed to ensure that the vast majority of those
admitted were workers who had served at least three years in an industrial internship,
members of a trade union, or children of pure proletarian lineage. Next priority
was given to peasants, and white-collar workers and their children were
admitted to the remaining positions.
According to the “social lineage” chart, I was the son of a white-collar worker
and had virtually no hope of being accepted the first time around. Nevertheless, I
applied to enter the MVTU school of electrical engineering. Out of naiveté,
assuming that my radio engineering works might play some role, I wrote about
them in detail in my autobiographical essay, citing the three inventor’s certificates
I had already received and my journal publication. I passed the exams, but naturally
did not fit into the social lineage chart. A member of the acceptance board,
who was specially designated to interview applicants, explained this to me quite
frankly:“Work about three years and come back.We’ll accept you as a worker, but
not as the son of a white-collar worker.”
Of all the working-class specializations, the most attractive to me was electrician.The
Krasnaya Presnya silicate factory was the closest to our house. Equipped
with imported processing equipment, it began to produce white silicate brick. I
was accepted at the factory as an electrician on a probationary basis. Finding myself
placed under the charge of a stern senior electrician, a Latvian who spoke Russian
poorly, I probably would have been taken on as an apprentice. But suddenly it
turned out that the factory had acquired a German power shovel with electric
drives.The company sent a German fitter to assemble the machine and put it into
operation. The German didn’t know Russian and he needed an assistant who
understood him. My reserves of German vocabulary from my school days proved
to be sufficient for this man to say sehr gut (very well), and after working with him
for a month, I received a high evaluation as a “foreign specialist.”Thus, I skipped
over the humiliating (in terms of self-esteem and income) apprentice level and
became a fourth-class electrician on a seven-class scale.
The work of an electrician at a brick factory proved to be anything but easy.
Silicate brick was manufactured from a mixture of sand and unslaked lime. The
sand was added using the German power shovel. It chomped into a mountain of
sand that in the winter had served as the favorite and sole venue for alpine skiing.
Carts loaded with sand were raised by a cable drive along a trestle to high towers
where the sand was mixed with the lime.The electrician’s duties included, among
other things, splicing the steel cable, which frequently broke.To this day I remember
how many times I cursed that cable when I had to splice the frayed steel wires
with bare hands in an icy winter wind, while following all the safety regulations.
The wires pricked my numbed, disobedient fingers until they bled.
Troubleshooting a failure in the electric drives of the ball mills that pulverized
the lime was even less pleasant.The acrid cloud of lime dust made it impossible to
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