Space exploration in Ukraine

You can find a lot of the names of prominent Russian scientists and designers, as well as the list of their space exploration achievements, in any Western reference book on astronautics. The names and achievements are real and worthy of note. However, there is a problem: are they really “Russian scientists,” or is the identification of their ethnic origin and place of research a more complicated thing than the reference books suggest?

One always recalls on October 4 that the first artificial Earth satellite was launched on this day in 1957. Also recalled is the one thanks to whom this sputnik became a reality – the chief designer Sergei Koroliov: in Russia as a Russian designer and in this country as an outstanding Ukrainian. There are certain grounds for both affirmations as well as for remembering that out of the top five most outstanding Soviet rocket scientists, according to Western experts, – Sergei Koroliov, Mykhailo Yangel, Volodymyr Chelomei, Valentyn Hlushko, and Aleksandr Nadiradze – the first four were Ukrainians and the fifth a Georgian.

Yet, naturally, whenever an outstanding figure of the past is mentioned on the occasion of a specific historical date, the main thing remains untouched – the person and their dramatic and contradictory destiny. It is perhaps for this reason that the so-called “public-outreach trend” in political writing has drawn so much scathing criticism.

It is little wonder, for when Ukrainians are told that they are so nice and historically-acclaimed guys, it essentially boils down to banal didactics and education of the “common people” in the “right direction,” when the rightness of the Ukrainian spirit and deeds is being constantly emphasized. Meanwhile, things are far more complicated, all the more so when it is about really interesting and notable people and about national history of the past few centuries. Here there are plenty of dramatic stories, unconventional figures, and contradictory actions. But nobody, except for Den/The Day and one or two journals, have ever reached this level of telling about the past. It is a pity indeed because there was, for example, a contradiction between national self-identity and technocratic expediency in the life of Sergei Koroliov, which had dramatic consequences.

Mikhail Rebrov, one of Koroliov’s leading biographers, reveals the following fact: in 1952 the rocket scientist wrote his biography for the last time by hand (from then on, he had it typewritten and signed). He did not mention his ethnicity at all. Is it surprising or not? 1952 saw a new campaign of hunting “Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists.” It is in those years that Leonid Brezhnev, who had earlier identified himself as Ukrainian in autobiographies, became Russian. Koroliov, who had not been hiding his Ukrainian roots so far, just did not mention his ethnicity.

Later on, the typewritten text would say “Russian.” At the same time, Lieutenant-Colonel Oleksandr Voitenko, who was assigned a job at the Baikonur launch complex, had a tete-a-tete talk with Koroliov who was already famous, even though his name was still kept secret. The rocket scientist greeted him: “Hello, Cossack! Do you speak Ukrainian?” Later, when Voitenko was a general and the deputy commander of the Baikonur launching site, he and Koroliov would speak their mother tongue, sing Ukrainian songs almost clandestinely, and dream of flying to the Moon.

Will an American or a Frenchman understand this story? On the other hand, will a Ukrainian ultra-patriot forgive the chief rocket designer his readiness to call himself a Russian or God knows who and join the CPSU (yet without crossing himself off the list of Ukrainians with his own hand) for the sake of achieving his dreams – a piloted flight around the Earth and then to the Moon and Mars?

Conversely, the No. 2 man in Soviet cosmonautics, Valentyn Hlushko, whose engines powered the rockets that put the first sputnik and the first cosmonaut into orbit, had always referred to himself as Ukrainian – even in a GULAG prison camp. The same is emphasized in Hlushko’s biography written by his younger son. Incidentally, it does not mention singing folk songs (by contrast with Pavlo Popovych who sang “I’m gazing into the sky…” on the orbit for Koroliov to hear), maybe, because Hlushko was a classical music buff (in his youth he attended violin classes at the Odesa Music Academy).

Yet the principal story in Hlushko’s life was different: at 16 he finished the manuscript of his first book The Problems of Exploiting Planets. This book deals with humankind’s outer space mission and outlines the main stages of exploring the Moon and solar system planets. At a time when airplanes, to speak nothing of rockets, were still quite an exotic thing, the young Hlushko set the main goals of his lifetime and began achieving them step by step, designing increasingly powerful rocket engines. His book also contains philosophical reflections on the need to combine the scientific and technological progress with esthetic and ethical factors, which sound strikingly profound and topical even today.

This is the way they were – those whom the Nobel Committee was about to award unplanned prizes in 1957 right after the first man-made satellite was launched. The Kremlin was asked who the sputnik’s creators were. Clearly, both Koroliov and Hlushko would have been Nobel Prize winners. But Nikita Khrushchev pompously answered that the whole Soviet nation was the creator.

In all probability, the NKVD torturers, who were once breaking Koroliov’s and Hlushko’s bones, outlived them, having exalted ranks, handsome pensions, and decorations for “conspicuous gallantry.”

Naturally, all accounts – not only about spacecraft designers – usually focus on the professional side of their life. But pages on private life are in no way worse or are perhaps even more interesting. For example, the story “Sergei Koroliov and Women.” The famous rocket man, a good womanizer in his youth, became an ardent Casanova after being released from the GULAG – whether in Germany, where he was sent to study the cutting-edge achievements of Wernher von Braun’s team, or at proving grounds, or later, in the space-flight era, after the first sputnik was launched. This must have been rooted in a quite natural desire of a man who had just regained freedom after going through a terrible ordeal (Koroliov was not even 40 after “doing time”) to prove to everybody and, above all, to himself that he was still alive and kicking, and the “coolest guy” of all. Later on, this turned into almost a sport, which is also natural for middle-aged men: look what I am capable of in addition to rockets. (Incidentally, it would be also interesting to discuss rockets as phallic symbols in this context.) And Koroliov was not the only one of this kind.

And what about Valentyn Hrushko, a fashionista (called “modish boy” by his colleagues), a fop, and an ex-convict as well? Look at the dates of his children’s birth: the daughter Yevhenia – 1938, when Hlushko had just turned 30 and was in the Butyrka jail; the daughter Elena – 1948, after coming back from Germany; the son Yurii – 1952, when father was in his forties; and the son Oleksandr – 1972: you can easily calculate how old the happy father, academician and twice Hero of Socialist labor, Valentyn Hrushko was. Frankly, I did not try hard to find how many times the general designer was married. To my mind, the problem is different: Hlushko was such an unconventional person and so much different from the vast majority of his colleagues by his innate aristocratic behavior that this made a fantastic impression on women. And what about such a detail as an immaculately clean and well-ironed handkerchief in the breast pocket – even in the prison camp?

The relationship between Koroliov and Hlushko is also a subject to dwell upon. For as their cooperation resulted, to a large degree, in the phenomenal successes of Soviet cosmonautics between 1957 and the mid-1960s (incidentally, achieved without a sound technological basis), so much their later conflict caused a chain of failures, including, above all, the grandiose Moon Project.

And why not study in detail the problem of favoritism in the Soviet system on the example of Volodymyr Chelomei, who deliberately employed in his design bureau Nikita Khrushchev’s son Sergei, an undoubtedly talented person but still the son of the CPSU first secretary with the implications? In general, Chelomei is Koroliov’s antipode in psychological terms. Here is what the cosmonaut and designer Konstantin Feoktistov wrote about this: “Chelomei… was undoubtedly an outstanding engineer. But he had a major drawback: he was an absolute dictator in his design bureau. Koroliov was also an absolute dictator, but he never imposed any technical decisions (perhaps except when they were quite obvious), let alone design ideas, on us. The impression was that Chelomei ruled supreme in his bureau not only in terms of organization but also in terms of choosing a goal and making a concrete technical decision.” In other words, one was totally absorbed in his own ego, while the other (who valued himself no less than his counterpart did) found it interesting to work with interesting people, even though they were young, na ve and not yet drawn into the whirlpool of everyday life routine, and this interest overpowered all the other considerations and resulted in brilliant designs.

Another touch to the first satellite’s history: Koroliov seemed to be deliberately duping the Communist Party and the government when he was designing space exploration launching vehicles under the guise of military missiles and literally beseeching to be given the right to make a sputnik and launch a human into outer space. In 1954 Koroliov submitted his first memorandum, “On the Possibility of Creating the First Artificial Satellite of the Earth,” to the USSR Council of Ministers. He resorts to a ruse: instead of telling straightforwardly about his initiative, he begins with the purely bureaucratic phrase “In pursuance of your instructions…” and then presents translated materials on preparations for the launching of a US satellite, then adds the memo of his colleague Tikhomirov, and then, at last, his own conclusions. The Soviet government kept silent. A year later: a new memo, this time to the Academy of Sciences, and meetings with those in charge of the defense sector – with no results. In 1956: a new letter to the CPSU Central Committee about the satellite.

Only in 1956 did the USSR Council of Ministers resolve to task the Academy of Sciences with developing the satellite. The reason why the stand was so radically changed was all too simple: the US was also getting ready to launch this kind of satellite and it was necessary to prove the “advantages of socialism.” Well, if it had to be done, it would be done, and, what is more, it would a tangible result for the entire human race!

Koroliov was making the legendary R-7 rocket, which would put the first sputnik into orbit, as a military missile, and when Khrushchev was visiting Baikonur, Koroliov asked his permission to use it also for launching satellites because this would ostensibly not affect the military side of the matter. Khrushchev gave the permission, but the Academy of Sciences failed to meet the satellite construction deadline. So Koroliov ordered the first satellite to be designed and built by his own bureau within three months. His bureau also developed the second sputnik in just four weeks. A triumph of cosmonautics! The first satellites! But the R-7 turned out to be a not very good ballistic missile for military purposes – the missiles designed and built by Mykhailo Yangel in Dnipropetrovsk formed the basis of the Soviet nuclear missile power. Meanwhile, the R-7 became an ideal basic version for peaceful space exploration launching vehicles. The modified “seven” carried not only piloted spaceships but also the first unmanned spacecrafts to the Moon, Mars, and Venus. Even today, the Soyuz carrier rocket used by Russia is a radically upgraded R-7.

In my opinion, one must draw the following conclusion from all these stories as well as from a huge number of facts that have remained undiscussed: although “littered” with colonial and totalitarian myths, an incredibly interesting Ukrainian history is full of thought-provoking, contradictory and, at the same time, integrative characters. And what is perhaps the central problem for our society in this context is being able to juxtapose the history of people and the history of ideas – OUR history, not that of any other, no matter which, country.

Then, at last, Western sources will also be supplying true information.