page_title: Sergei Korolev
section_title: Imprisonment
hierarchical_section_title: Sergei Korolev / Imprisonment
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Первая фотография после ареста. Бутырская тюрьма.
context_page_description: Sergei Pavlovich Korolev was a lead Soviet rocket engineer and spacecraft designer during the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s. He is regarded by many as the father of practical astronautics. He was involved in the development of the R-7 Rocket, Sputnik 1, and launching Laika and the first human being, Yuri Gagarin, into space.
  Although Korolev trained as an aircraft designer, his greatest strengths proved to be in design integration, organization and strategic planning. Arrested on a false official charge as a "member of an anti-Soviet counter-revolutionary organization", he was imprisoned in 1938 for almost six years, including some months in a Kolyma labour camp. Following his release he became a recognized rocket designer and a key figure in the development of the Soviet Intercontinental ballistic missile program. He later directed the Soviet space program and was made a Member of Soviet Academy of Sciences, overseeing the early successes of the Sputnik and Vostok projects including the first human Earth orbit mission by Yuri Alexeyvich Gagarin on 12 April 1961.
context_section_description: Korolev was arrested by the NKVD on 27 June 1938 after being accused of deliberately slowing the work of the research institute by Ivan Kleymenov, Georgy Langemak, leaders of the institute who were executed in January, and Valentin Glushko, who was arrested in March. He was tortured in the Lubyanka prison to extract a confession during the Great Purge, and was tried and sentenced to death as the purge was waning; Glushko and Korolev survived. Glushko and Korolev had reportedly been denounced by Andrei Kostikov, who became the head of RNII after its leadership was arrested. The rocket program fell far behind the rapid progress taking place in Nazi Germany. Kostikov was ousted a few years later over accusations of budget irregularities.
  Korolev was sent to prison, where he wrote many appeals to the authorities, including Stalin himself. Following the fall of NKVD head Nikolai Yezhov, the new chief Lavrenti Beria chose to retry Korolev on reduced charges in 1939; but by that time Korolev was on his way from prison to a gulag camp in the far east of Siberia, where he spent several months in a gold mine in the Kolyma area before word reached him of his retrial. Work camp conditions of inadequate food, shelter, and clothing killed thousands of prisoners each month. Korolev sustained injuries and lost most of his teeth from scurvy before being returned to Moscow in late 1939. When he reached Moscow, Korolev's sentence was reduced to eight years to be served in a sharashka penitentiary for intellectuals and the educated. These were labor camps where scientists and engineers worked on projects assigned by the Communist party leadership. The Central Design Bureau 29 (CKB-29, ЦКБ-29) of the NKVD, served as Tupolev's engineering facility, and Korolev was brought here to work for his old mentor. During World War II, this sharashka designed both the Tupolev Tu-2 bomber and the Petlyakov Pe-2 dive bomber. The group was moved several times during the war, the first time to avoid capture by advancing German forces. Korolev was moved in 1942 to the sharashka of Kazan OKB-16 under Glushko. Korolev and Glushko designed rocket-assisted take off boosters for aircraft and the RD-1 kHz auxiliary rocket motor tested in an unsuccessful fast-climb Lavochkin La-7R. Korolev was isolated from his family until 27 June 1944 when he—along with Tupolev, Glushko and others—was finally discharged by special government decree, although the charges against him were not dropped until 1957.
  Korolev rarely talked about his experience in the gulag. He lived under constant fear of being executed for the military secrets he possessed, and was deeply affected by his time in the camp, becoming reserved and cautious. He later learned Glushko was one of his accusers and this may have been the cause of the lifelong animosity between the two men. The design bureau was handed over from NKVD control to the government's aviation industry commission. Korolev continued working with the bureau for another year, serving as deputy designer under Glushko and studying various rocket designs.
caption: Korolev shortly after his arrest, 1938
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