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Rockets and People
and the film Vstrechnyy all stuck in our memories. 23 Artists renowned throughout
the country considered it an honor to come to our factory. For such occasions a
temporary stage was set up in the new final assembly shop. Opera singers would
give inspired performances of classical arias before an audience of several thousand,
seated amongst half-assembled bombers.
Of the factory’s 12,000 young laborers and white-collar workers, half had
already become members of the Komsomol organization.The committee heading
the Komsomol enjoyed great authority among the masses of young workers.
Compared with the Komsomol,the factory’s Party organization was relatively small,
a fact explained by the age demographic and workers’ brief period of service.The
old Bolsheviks viewed the Komsomol’s emergence out from under Party influence
as a dangerous phenomenon. They alluded to Trotsky, who had flirted with the
youth under the slogan Youth Is the Barometer of the Revolution.
Party committee secretary Aralov was one of the factory veterans who had
worked there since the time of the Junkers company. He was promoted to that
responsible post by the Party organizations of the shops, which saw him as one of
their own, a man who had emerged from the working masses, who knew about
production, and who understood the needs of the workers. Aralov was respectful
of the Komsomol initiatives. Most of the members of the Komsomol committee,
including myself, were always invited to the Party committee meetings.We even
prepared for them in advance so that we could participate in the discussion of
issues that worried the young workers rather than just listen passively.
At one of these Party committee meetings,Aralov proposed to all the Komsomol
committee members and secretaries of the leading shops that they join the Party. In
his words, this was supposed to ensure Party influence and enable the actions of the
active Komsomol members to be monitored.So it was that in 1931 I became a candidate
and in 1932 a member of the VKP(b).
One day in early 1932, I was summoned to the Party committee during work—
which was quite unusual. The active members of the Party and Komsomol were
assembled. District committee secretary (at that time it was the Frunze district)
Ruben had come to see us.We had seen him at the factory on a number of occasions,
and moreover, I had also been in the district committee building on
Zubovskiy Boulevard when I was received into the Party. A woman unknown to
us accompanied Ruben. She was tall with short hair and wore a dark, English-style
suit. She appeared to be over forty years old, and had the aura of a strict school
matron—the terror of girls’ preparatory schools.
Ruben said that we had been assembled at his request to familiarize ourselves
with a secret Politburo resolution. He read a brief excerpt from the document
23. Vsevolod Vitalyevich Vishnevskiy (1900–51) was a famous Soviet playwright whose play “Optimistic
Tragedy” opened in 1933. Pogodin was the pseudonym of Nikolay Fedorovich Stukalov (1900–62), another
famous Russian playwright.Valentin Petrovich Katayev (1897–1986) was a Russian novelist and playwright who
was famous for many satirical works on post-Revolutionary conditions in the Soviet Union.
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