In September 1938, Sergei Korolev, the creator of Soviet rocket and space systems, was convicted and received 10 years in high-security camps. At that time, hundreds of thousands of innocent people, including famous scientists, fell under Stalin's repressions.
Korolev worked at the Jet Institute and was already designing cruise and ballistic missiles.
He was accused of participating in an anti-Soviet Trotskyist organization and disrupting supplies for the army, fabricated the case, by torture extracted a confession. Korolev refused it at the trial, but was sent to Kolyma anyway.
He was returned thanks to the petitions of famous pilots Mikhail Gromov and Valentina Grizodubova.
Korolev was able to work in the prison design bureau. They were called "sharashki". There, under the leadership of Andrei Tupolev, another famous designer, also condemned as an enemy of the people, Korolev developed combat aircraft, rocket engines and installations.
He was released in 1944, but rehabilitated only in 1957 before the launch of his brainchild – the first artificial satellite of the Earth.
The great designer died in 1966 on the operating table. Injuries sustained during interrogations in the NKVD prevented a successful operation.
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Image: RG