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

Mon Aug 17 09:54:17 EDT 2009

Asif,

I'm afraid I must take issue with your comments below.  When one reads your
"series introduction" comments, one does not come away with the impression
that "These are simply memoirs and suffer from the same problem that all
memoirs do, ie for the most part they represent a particular point of view."

Let's take your comments from the most current volume, just released.from
the introduction which you wrote in October 2004.

Page ix:  "Academician Chertok's memoirs, forged from experience in the Cold
War, provide a compelling perspective into a past that is indispensable to
understanding the present relationship between the American and Russian
space programs..  As such, although Chertok's work focuses exclusively on
Soviet space programs to explore space, it also prompts us to reconsider the
entire history of spaceflight, both Russian and American.."

Page xiii:  "Because of Chertok's story-telling skills, his memoir is a much
needed corrective to the outdated Western view of Soviet space achievements
as a mishmash of propaganda, self-delusion, and Cold War rhetoric...
Chertok's reminiscences are remarkably sharp and descriptive.  In being
self-reflective, Chertok avoids the kind of solipsistic ruminations that
often characterize memoirs.  He is both proud of his country's
accomplishments and willing to admit failings with honesty.."

Page xv:  "..Chertok ably illustrates, however, that avoiding the pursuit of
scholarly history does not necessarily lessen the relevance of his story,
especially because it represents the opinion of an influential member of the
postwar scientific and technical intelligentsia in the Soviet Union.."

>From these above mentions of your glowing comments, it sounds like you are
attempting to promote the idea that Chertok's memoirs are the current "Gold
Standard" on Soviet space history.And they're not.  There are errors, and at
times egregious ones.  Some are by commission; other errors are those of
omission. And these errors go back to the very first volume, beginning with
activities of Chertok during WW 2, and the Soviet visitations to Germany.  I
am not the one that found these errors, either.  Others have found them, and
shared such findings with me.

I think the most accurate thing that can be said of Soviet space history
volumes (even those published in the post-Yeltsin era) is that all have
elements of fact in them, but none are 100% true.

It brings to mind the Russian proverb:  "No one lies as convincingly as an
eye-witness."

Let's talk about "Gold Standards."  

Contrary to your comments in the Chertok series' introduction about the
availability of Russian archives open to researchers (naming three-State
Archive of the Russian Federation; Russian State Archive of the Economy, and
the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences), it is well known to most
scholars of Russian materials that the vast majority of Russia-based
archives have been closed to Western Researchers since approximately the
mid-1990s.  This took place during the Yeltsin era.  One can actually see
the evolution about the early opening, and then subsequently, the closing,
of many important history-linked archives from reading the "Cold War
International History Project" Bulletins of the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars.  (These are on-line.)  

I would like to know if anyone here (that are
scholars/researchers/journalists in the West) has been able to have free,
unfettered access (or any sort of access) for example, to the archives of
RKK Energia in the last three years, whether to actual documentation, or to
their huge photo library.  If you have Asif, I'd like to know about it.  Or
the archives of the Khrunichev enterprise.  Or to any other space
collective's historical archives.  If anyone has, please step forward, and
tell everyone here.  It is absolutely necessary to know if any have opened
their materials up to Western researchers on a regular, semi-regular, or
even under a singular, unique basis.

Unless someone has evidence to the contrary, the actual number of documents
about the Soviet space program (as in "official government entity
documents") that have been released are quite meager in number.  Perhaps
less than 1500.  Or perhaps less than 1000.  Or perhaps even less than 500.
(Printing them up in a book doesn't fulfill the obligation here.)  How many
such documents with "Sov Sekretno" stampings upon them been released?  A
case in point are the notebooks of Konstantin Feoktistov about the Vostok
program that were in a Sotheby's auction back in the early 1990s.  Every so
many years (if memory serves) Sotheby's reported that he had to lug his
notebooks in to the classification authority to have them inspected and
"re-authorized" to keep them currently classified.  Even if the materials
were not official materials, his materials had to be inspected by
classification authorities.

Another example are the N-1 films shown to the fpspacers who had visited
Moscow during the sponsored visits.  If memory serves, a number of those
actually had "Sov Sekretno" figuring prominently at the beginning of the
reel somewhere near the titling.  The secrecy was pervasive.  And this
secrecy affects availability and access.

Even in regards to Novosti Kosmonautiki, I wonder if Igor Lissov could
provide any anecdotes on whether or not they have unfettered access (or even
regular access) to historical archives of the space collectives in Russia.
If they do, under what circumstances do they have such access?  It would be
instructive to know of what the protocols that Novosti Kosmonautiki's
editors work under when they do write their stories about historical events,
if these articles include materials from space collective historical
archives.

One of the large issues in regards to "documents" coming from Russian
archives is the notion of whether the documents accurately reflect reality,
or they reflect the nature of the Soviet bureaucracy to "have something on
paper" to put into a filing cabinet.  At times, it is difficult to know
whether the document reflects the "ultimate reality" of what was done in a
particular space project.  Selective release of documents by Russian
officials also aids in the distortion of perceptions, in that they will
release a particular document to push whatever their idea is of what history
they want to purvey.

And one thing is that Soviet space policy was not done in the manner that US
space policy was enacted.  One cannot know (at this juncture) for certain
whether alleged "Kremlin" or "Politburo" or "Central Committee" documents
(that ultimately were manufactured/typed up, etc.) about the conclusions
from discussions about space policy are what actually was decided upon, as
well as being an accurate recording of when these decisions took place.  And
it is highly likely that much of what the Politburo/Central Committee
decided in conferences had already been okayed long before-as in years
before, or months before.  The actual nature of Central Committee
discussions (outside of reactive things-such as to the Hungarian Uprising,
or which notes are extant), and how they are arrived at, remains an
inky-black unknown.  Up to this point, I don't believe that there have been
any materials uncovered (before the Boris Yeltin-era shut-down) that
actually had Central Committee notations about space policy at all.  If
someone knows of such materials, by all means enlighten me, and the fpspace
readership here.

If we are going to talk about diaries/memoirs, I will put forth again the
question that I did back in 2007:  Did Yuri Andropov keep a diary?  If so,
where is it currently located?  I would add the question of whether minister
Afanasyev kept a diary, and if so, where is it currently located?

Another issue is the perception that Russian historical materials and their
reportage of same are on par with Western-style historical materials-whether
in veraciousness, accuracy, or quality.  For the most part, most are not.
(It is due in large part to the fact that Soviet space activities was a
security-classified endeavor.) And the Russians that are handling these
materials are for the most part not trained in Western-style documentation
recording, and so one is often left with the question whether the
reproduction (not facsimile) of alleged Soviet government documents in
Russian texts are actually of those we should be looking at, or not.  As to
a lot of declarations in Russian texts one cannot chase down a document to
verify, or not verify, the declaration.  One cannot chase down a person to
interview to verify, or not verify, a said declaration in most cases as
well.  

And if we go back to the notion that Soviet space was a security-classified
endeavor, then Russia-based scholars are going to have to find a mechanism
to get the material declassified.  I am not aware of such a mechanism where
Russian citizens or scholars can wander over to a Russian government
bureaucratic office and request that certain things be looked for (and then
the subsequent effort made to declassify them).

Perhaps it would be better to attempt to define what would be "Gold
Standard" materials on Russian space history.  These would have to be
materials that were recorded without political interference or influence.
(No KGB censoring, No GRU censoring, no self-censoring, no current National
Security Service censoring.)  These document families may be few in number,
but these do exist.  I think that there are two that come to mind that may
fulfill this definition.  One would be the technical notations of Vasiliy
Mishin.  Which Asif is aware of, but who does not have full access to a
complete set.  The other is the launch logs of the Strategic Rocket Forces
at Tyuratam.  For which I have seen excerpts published from in a singular
case-not by the Russians, but by a European journalist.  One of the problems
with the Mishin technical notations is that they are often-times cryptic,
and often-times acronym-city. (Sadly, it appears that there was no effort to
go back after a day's activities were recorded on the part of Mishin to
provide more elucidating commentary.)  I have not seen actual facsimiles of
the Strategic Forces launch logs, so I can't comment on their appearance.

So there needs to be an outside "rectifying agent" to the Soviet/Russian
space histories and the meager documentation releases now in hand.

I will leave the discussion here.

  _____  

From: fpspace-bounces at friends-partners.org
[mailto:fpspace-bounces at friends-partners.org] On Behalf Of Asif Siddiqi
Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2009 1:13 PM
To: fpspace at friends-partners.org
Subject: Re: [FPSPACE] Boris Chertok's Rockets and People,Vol. III: Hot Days
of the Cold War

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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