[FPSPACE] Boris Chertok's Rockets and People, Vol. III: Hot Days of the Cold War

[Asif Siddiqi]

On Aug 14, 2009, at 3:30 PM, Sergey V. Andreev wrote:

> Very sad that this book is aquired as something like bible of soviet  
> space
> history.
> It's of course interesting source but memoires only. Moreover there  
> are
> evidences that they are not writen directly by Chertok.
> As memoires this book is not based on documents and miss a lot of  
> significant
> events and people.

Yes, absolutely. As I caution in the introduction, these are simply  
memoirs and suffer from the same problem that all memoirs do, i.e.,  
for the most part they represent a particular point of view.

I think any person interested in the history of the Soviet/Russian  
space program should weigh different sources and try to develop a  
composite view of historical events. I think the most useful sources  
are *primary* documents, some of which have been gathered into  
published collections (e.g., the recent Sovetskaya kosmicheskaya  
initsiativa v gosudarstvennykh dokumentakh, 1946-1964 gg.). For more  
enterprising researchers, I would urge them to go to Moscow and work  
through various archives.

> There are at least two books of same character but much more  
> truthfull:
> memoires of Moszhorin and memmoires of Appazov.

The Mozzhorin and Appazov books are indeed very good but also suffer  
from the same liabilities that all memoirs do.

> The most sad thing that real key persons haven't left any memoires-  
> they were
> too  busy.

I totally agree.

Best,

Asif Siddiqi
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