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

[David Portree]

Peter, Asif, et al:

 

This kind of thing sounds arcane to a lot of people, but I love every word of it. This is why I rejoined FPSpace. It's not really arcane at all, since it touches on complex and important issues: the historiography of Russian space, but also the veracity and usefulness of archival sources, memoirs, and (I might add) oral history interviews (which I tend to lump with memoirs), and the openness of a given society. 

 

For what it's worth, a lot of NASA materials are "classified" by misuse of National Archives regulations (calling working papers personal, for example), destroyed under cover of night (shred, shred, shred), or illegally removed by their originators, who have developed a sense of ownership for them (then dispersed when their kids find them in the garage after they pass away and toss 'em). Most US space memoirs are suspect; I use them mainly for clever quotes and descriptive passages (never being sure that the quote I use isn't a product of the ghostwriter's imagination). The point is, the Russians don't have a monopoly on this kind of thing. It just comes with the territory. 

 

David S. F. Portree

dsfportree at hotmail.com
dportree at usgs.gov
 
http://robotexplorers.blogspot.com/
http://beyondapollo.blogspot.com/
 
http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/About/People/DavidPortree/
 



 


From: pjp961 at svol.net
To: siddiqi at fordham.edu
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2009 09:54:17 -0400
CC: fpspace at friends-partners.org
Subject: Re: [FPSPACE] Boris Chertok's Rockets and People, Vol. III: Hot Days of the Cold War









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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