The fourth central research institute of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (4 TsNII MO). Category:4 CNII MO RF 4 CNII MO

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In 2009, it was 50 years since the creation of the Computing Center within the structure of the Research Institute of the USSR Ministry of Defense (about NII-4 MO, see the link on the left). A thick veil of top secrecy hid the serious work that was carried out by the institute in general and its CC in particular. Historical justice requires that on the eve of the glorious anniversary, the general public learns first-hand, and not by hearsay, what exactly the CC was doing in those distant years of space exploration and at the same time the Cold War between two powerful world systems.

Place and role of the Computing Center in the structure of NII-4

The military-scientific tradition of NII-4 dates back to 1919, when a military engineering school was created in Moscow, which, after a series of reorganizations, turned into the Moscow Military Engineering School, the location of which, since 1939, was chosen in the area of Art. Bolshevo Yaroslavl railway 25 km from Moscow. After the end of the Second World War, in the conditions of nuclear blackmail from the United States, the Soviet Union was faced with the task of developing missile weapons and its theoretical basis, therefore, by a resolution of the USSR Council of Ministers of May 13, 1946, the first concrete steps were taken to solve such a big task. In furtherance of this resolution, it was soon decided to create a special Scientific Research Artillery Institute of Jet Weapons No. 4, the best location for which was chosen to be the base of the military engineering school in Bolshevo. Lieutenant General A.I. was appointed the first head of the institute. Nesterenko, combat commander in units of the Guards rocket mortars (Katyushas). Colonel M.K. became his deputy. Tikhonravov, who had experience working with liquid-propellant jet engines since the days of the GIRD and was known among experts as the creator of the first liquid-propellant rocket in the USSR (1933). Tikhonravov was the first to raise the question of the need to create Earth satellites, speaking in 1950 at a meeting of the Scientific Council of NII-4.

In addition to M.K. Tikhonravov, many other scientists worked at the institute, including A.V. Brykov, P.E. Eliasberg, K.P. Feoktistov, M.D., V.D. Yastrebov. Thanks to their efforts, the idea of creating an artificial Earth satellite began to take on real shape, and a few years later, by government decree, work on its creation began. To track the flight of a satellite and calculate the flight path, it was necessary to have several measuring points that could measure its coordinates and transmit it to a special center for mathematical processing. This entire complex system was called the Command-Measuring Complex and its creation was entrusted to NII-4, which was then headed by Lieutenant General A.I. Sokolov. The Institute coped with this task brilliantly. Beginning in 1956, 7 ground-based measuring points were created on the territory of the Soviet Union, which were already ready for operation by the launch of the first satellite on October 4, 1957. The trajectory measurement data was submitted for processing to the Scientific Coordination and Computing Unit (SCCU) within the institute, which had a special group of computers calculating the flight trajectory using methods developed at the institute using slide rules. The latter circumstance, which was already an anachronism at that time, accelerated the creation within NII-4 of a powerful computing center that would perform calculations faster, more accurately and more reliably.

Work on the creation of a computer center (CC) was completed in 1959. Initially, the VTs operated two M-20 vehicles, manufactured at the Moscow SAM plant. The commissioning of two M-50 vehicles was unacceptably delayed due to the imperfect design of the machine, which, although classified as “top secret”, used obvious ideas, but at the same time had an imperfect address system. To this we must also add the low reliability of the element base used, the basis of which was not the best types of electronic tubes. The machines were manufactured in Zagorsk at a plant colloquially called “skobyanka”, since before that the plant specialized in the manufacture of hardware. In addition to computers, the computer center was supplied with semi-automatic data entry equipment (SID), also developed and manufactured at the SAM plant. Data from the NPCs was received at the PUVD, and then entered into the computer on punched cards. This was the time of mass introduction of computer technology in specialized army units. Since the necessary specialists were not available in the army at that time, some graduates of technical universities with specializations in radio engineering, electronics, automation and telemechanics were drafted into the army and sent to work in scientific units within various military units. About a hundred such specialists were sent to NII-4 and approximately a quarter of them ended up working at the Computer Center. At the same time, to train programmers for computer centers, almost the entire graduate class of 1959 from higher naval schools was transferred to the missile forces, and young naval officers underwent the necessary retraining in programming courses at NII-4. About half of them remained to serve at the Scientific Center NII-4.

Beginning in the fall of 1959, the CC was already processing trajectory measurements, calculating orbital parameters, target designations and special settings on board the satellite. The media reported: “The coordination and computing center is processing information received from the satellite.” However, the institute’s staff did not include such a unit; it was a generalized name for many services that provided flight support.

On the historic day of April 12, 1961, the NII-4 VTs was one of the most important links in a complex system that carried out the task, difficult at that time, of ensuring the first human flight into space. Both KIK and VC coped with their tasks perfectly. At that time, there were already four computers working in the computer center, and for reliability, they all solved the same problem - processing the flight path of a spacecraft with Yuri Gagarin on board. Many NII-4 officers received high government awards at that time. Among them were CC officers: Mark Kobzar, head of the laboratory at EVM-20, and Petr Butsko, deputy head of the department for the development of computer programs for solving space problems.

A little later, a special conference room was equipped in the CC, in which the flight path of a satellite or spacecraft was displayed on a large screen on a geographic map. On flight days, representatives of ministries and military departments that took part in the preparation of the space flight, often with the rank of ministers or their deputies, gathered in the conference room. The management and employees of NII-4 were rightfully proud of their involvement in the great cause of space exploration. However, nothing lasts forever under the sun. In 1961, the soul of the KIK and KVC, Lieutenant General Yu.A. Mozzhorin leaves the post of deputy head of NII-4 to the post of head of the neighboring NII-88. Having good experience gained in his previous work, Mozzhorin creates his own coordination and computing center in a new place, equipped with the latest Soviet technology, which takes over the main control of space object flights and, accordingly, over time, receives the name MCC (Flight Control Center) .

The further history of the VTs NII-4 is connected with the development of Soviet computer technology and its role in this development is described in detail.

On the question of “how it started”

Around the beginning of the 70s, a museum of the institute began to be created at NII-4 and the cells (otherwise “blocks”) of the first computers operated at the CC were to be presented as exhibits. However, it turned out that not a single lamp cell from either the M-20 or the M-50 was preserved - everything was destroyed, for unknown reasons. Of course, there were no photographs left either. This is how, during the formation years of computer technology, people involved in it did not realize the importance of historical documents. The issue with the cells is insignificant, however, it is indicative. The creators of the first computers were just as careless about preserving for history the events and circumstances of their work, which in the beginning was truly ascetic. On the other hand, when it finally came to the memories, it turned out that much had been forgotten, and some things were impossible to write about at that time.

As you know, the first computer in the Soviet Union was a small electronic calculating machine, created in Kyiv under the leadership of S.A. Lebedeva. His closest assistants L.N. Dashevsky (by the way, he was a reviewer of my graduation project) and Shkabara E.A. in 1981 they published the book “How It Began” about the history of the creation of this machine. In the final part of the book there is a phrase: “At the end of 1956, MESM was dismantled and transferred as a teaching aid to the Kiev Polytechnic Institute, which by that time had begun to graduate specialists in computer technology.” This is where the authors definitely make a mistake. In 1959, I graduated from the KPI and just in the spring of that year participated in the dismantling of MESM. Since the year of graduation from the institute is written on the diploma, I cannot be mistaken. And in 1956, KPI did not graduate any computer technology specialists. I began to comprehend this wisdom a year and a half before, when the corresponding subject was introduced to us only in the fourth year. I studied in the specialty “Automation and Telemechanics”, and students in the specialty “Computing Machines” were recruited into the first two groups of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering SM-1 and SM-2 only in 1958. This inaccuracy of the authors may seem insignificant, but it characterizes an underestimation of the importance of computing technology that then took place in the Soviet Union. The dominant ideology at that time declared cybernetics to be a “pseudoscience,” and computer technology was precisely its component.

The authors of the memoirs avoid this circumstance, but it played a fatal role in the development of computer technology in the Soviet Union. The eight-year gap from America was never overcome. Describing the circumstances of their work in the building of an abandoned monastery, the authors several times mention its “secrecy.” However, this was by no means a state secret, but a secret of S.A. Lebedev and his immediate circle, so as not to be accused of unseemly and even criminal activities. During the dismantling of MESM, employees of the institution that still remained there told us that Lebedev began work at his own peril and risk and they were not included in the work plans of the Institute of Electrical Engineering. Feofaniya was not chosen for nothing - in Kyiv there were enough premises for any kind of work, especially for “secret” work. It’s just that Lebedev worked away from the eyes of people and possible commissions that controlled the work of scientific institutions. The meager financing of the work was carried out in the “left” way at the expense of money allocated for a completely different program. Often, almost with our own money, we had to buy radio components at the “flea market”, the existence of which at the “Evbaz” (“Jewish” bazaar in Kyiv) is not without reason mentioned by the authors in their memoirs.

Meanwhile, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) somehow learned that America was running some “smart” machines that made complex calculations, including on military issues. The leadership of the Academy of Sciences was immediately called “on the carpet” in order to answer about the reasons for the lag of Soviet science. For the academicians, the matter could have ended in tears, but “the earth is full of rumors” and some of them heard out of the corner of their ears that something in this regard was being done in Kyiv. For academics this was a salvation. Having heard that the work was underway, but was being delayed due to insufficient funding (the academicians were also politicians!), the party leadership ordered sufficient funds to be allocated and the work to be completed as soon as possible. When they found out about this in Kyiv, they were seriously scared. Lebedev did not even think of creating a computer, but only a model of it. When a strict order and the necessary funding were received, the path to retreat was cut off. With excitement and fear, people waited for the completion of the work, but when the machine, to their surprise, began to make correct calculations, they realized that the risky undertaking was happily completed. This is how, or something like this, the people involved in this case talked about the circumstances of the creation of the first computer in the Soviet Union. Of course, something in their story was embellished, something was dramatized, but the main thing remains undoubted - the creation of MESM was the result of a private initiative of a small group of people, inspired by S.A. Lebedev.

Predecessor of VTs NII4 - VTs1 TsNII27

The secrecy regime in the missile forces was so strict that many ordinary employees of the NII-4 Computing Center were not even aware of the fact that our computer center at NII-4 of the USSR Ministry of Defense had a predecessor. He was the first Computer Center of the USSR Ministry of Defense created in 1954 (VTs-1/TsNII-27 USSR Ministry of Defense - military unit 01168). The initiator of the creation of VTs-1 of the USSR Ministry of Defense and its scientific director until 1960 was Anatoly Ivanovich Kitov. On the Internet you can find a lot of materials about A.I. Kitov and about VTs-1 USSR Ministry of Defense. Interesting information can be obtained, in particular, on the website www.kitov-anatoly.ru. Colonel V.P. talks in detail about the role of VTs-1 of the USSR Ministry of Defense at the initial stage of space exploration. Isaev on the pages of the book “First Forever,” specially released for the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s flight. Information from this article by V.P. Isaev was taken as the basis for the material proposed here.

So, VTs-1 of the USSR Ministry of Defense was created in 1954 and was intended to conduct mathematical calculations in the interests of the country’s Armed Forces, including for solving rocket and space problems on the most powerful at that time, the first domestic serial electronic computer “Strela”. Colonel A.Ya., who served in military unit 01168. Prikhodko characterizes A.I. Kitov as a pioneer of military informatics in our country and testifies to the following:
"" Few people know that the VTs-1 created by A.I. Kitov of the USSR Ministry of Defense ensured the implementation of ballistic calculations for all the first Soviet satellites, and subsequently for the first four manned space flights. So far, this page of domestic cosmonautics is covered in darkness, although without solving these problems, launches of ballistic intercontinental missiles would be impossible" (article by Prikhodko A.Ya. "A.I. Kitov - the founder of military informatics of the Soviet Union" in the book by V.A. Dolgov "Kitov Anatoly Ivanovich - pioneer of cybernetics, computer science and automated control systems" Moscow, 2010).

In 1952-54. A.I. Kitov was the head of the computer department at the F.E. Artillery Military Engineering Academy. Dzerzhinsky (now named after Peter the Great) and, as an experienced specialist, achieved a decision by the military leadership to create the country's first CC No. 1 of the USSR Ministry of Defense. At the same time, he received permission from the command of the Ministry of Defense to staff the computer center he was creating from among graduates of the Artillery Military Engineering Academy named after. F.E. Dzerzhinsky, who at one time began studying at the country's leading universities (MPEI, MAI, LPI, KPI and others), but were later drafted into the ranks of the Soviet Army. The young lieutenant engineers were specialists in automatic and computing devices, but at the same time they also possessed the necessary knowledge in the field of rocketry. They joined the personal officers of the Computer Department of the Art Academy, forming with them the core of the VTs-1 team of the USSR Ministry of Defense. A.I. himself Kitov, two years earlier (in 1952), defended his Ph.D. thesis on the topic “Programming problems of external ballistics of long-range missiles,” the first in the USSR on computer programming. The defense took place at the Academic Council of our Research Institute-4 of the USSR Ministry of Defense. Thus, the cooperation of VTs-1 of the USSR Ministry of Defense with the main center of Soviet rocket and space science, which was NII-4 of the USSR Ministry of Defense, was laid down already then. It was also important that A.I. Kitov himself had excellent mutually respectful friendly relations with the head of NII-4, General Sokolov, and one of the leading specialists of NII-4, an outstanding scientist in the field of astronautics, Professor P.E. Eliasberg.

At the dawn of the space age in the 1950s, NII-4 did not have its own Computing Center and its employees carried out calculations on rocket and space topics in VTs-1, since there was simply no other corresponding organization in the USSR Ministry of Defense at that time.

By the end of 1955, VTs-1 was already carrying out serious research in the interests of the defense of the Soviet Union. Specialists from NII-4 usually came with their tasks during the night shift, on the one hand, to ensure secrecy, and on the other, due to the higher reliability of computers at night. The last factor was especially important, since tube computers were very critical to power surges in the Moscow electrical network, which often occurred during the daytime. In 1956, research and practical developments carried out under the direct scientific and organizational leadership of A.I. Kitov, contributed to the implementation of space launches and laid the foundation on the basis of which the testing programs of the first long-range ballistic missiles, launches of artificial Earth satellites, and later programs of manned space flights and flights of space stations to the planets of the Solar System were subsequently implemented. After commissioning in 1959/60. At NII-4 of its computer center VTs-1 of the USSR Ministry of Defense, he continued work on space topics. Subsequently, computing support for the space flights of Yu. Gagarin, G. Titov, A. Nikolaev and P. Popovich was carried out there.

Together with A.I. Kitov contributed to the development of Soviet cosmonautics in its initial period, each at his own workplace, by such employees of VTs-1 of the USSR Ministry of Defense as B.N. Abramov, R.S. Andreeva, V.P. Bityutsky, N.P. Buslenko, A.M. Bukhtiyarov, G.N. Golofeevskaya, V.P. Isaev, G.A. Mironov, G.G. Ovsyannikov, S.A. Ponomareva, G.B. Smirnov, A.M. Sukhov, B.S. Trifonov, Yu.G. Uvarov and others. Their contribution to space exploration was real, and most importantly, timely, and therefore important and significant, which the veterans of VTs-1 of the USSR Ministry of Defense can rightfully be proud of.

VTs Command

Head of the CC Colonel V.M. Kolcheev Doctor of Technical Sciences.

Chief Engineer of the VTs Colonel M.T. Kobzar Doctor of Technical Sciences.

Deputy Head of the CC for Political Affairs, Colonel Poroshin S.N.

Head of the department, Colonel Tarapkin Yu.N. Candidate of Technical Sciences.

Head of the department, later head of the CC, Colonel V.M. Ionkin.

Head of the department, Colonel Oborin V.F.

The first chief of "BCh-5" Lieutenant Colonel Dubodil I.P.

Head of the Department of Power Supply and Air Conditioning Systems Major A.D. Myzdrikov

The last leaders of the Computing Center before its reduction as a structure within NII-4MO at the end of 1997.

Head of the CC Colonel N. G. Lyubchenko

Deputy Head of the CC Colonel V.S. Kharlamov

The personnel of the department headed by Col. Ionkin (in the center)
Department employees:

Lieutenant Colonel G.A. Zhivoglazov
Lieutenant Colonel V.M. Stetsyuk
Lieutenant Colonel V. Brigenek
Lieutenant Colonel Yu.I. Barkov
Art. engineer A. Averyanova
Art. engineer N. Yarmolenko
Art. engineer I. Repnikov
Art. engineer I. Kovrigin
Art. engineer V. Maksimov
Engineer N. Aistova
Art. technician L. Choblya
Art. technician T. Lyubchenko
Art. technician T. Chernova E.

Departments of the Computer Center

The Computer Center began to form in 1959 on the basis of the unit of Colonel V.A. Shishkin, and then was separated into an independent military unit 25840-B. At first, the duties of the head of the computer center were performed by Lieutenant Colonel L.T. Tyurin, and the chief engineer was Colonel Mukhin M.S., who later became the head of the computer center. After him, the commanders were Colonel L.T. Tyurin, Colonel V.M. Kolcheev, Colonel A.G. Boyarsky. In recent years, after separation from the programming departments, the heads of the CC were Colonel V.M. Ionkin. and Colonel Lyubchenko N.G. The VC had its own political department, the first head of which was Colonel Kiryan, who was replaced by Colonel Sibirev. Subsequently, the political secretary was abolished, and the post of political officer was introduced in his place. The CC included the following departments:

1. Department for programming space-related tasks. Chiefs: Colonel Yastrebov V.D., Colonel Butsko P., Colonel Sanyuk.

2. Department for calculating rocket flight missions. Chiefs: Colonel V.M. Kolcheev, E.A. Dadashyan Colonel Inozemtsev E.

3. Computer software department. Chiefs: Colonel Vershinin E.M., Colonel Chikhalov N.N., Afonin A.

4. Department of information and settlement systems. At one time he was removed from the VC. Chiefs: Colonel V.V. Khurbatov, V.A. Malenkov, V. Kharlamov.

By the anniversary year, only this department for servicing the IRS "Centaur" remained from the CC. Head of Department: Colonel Antonov S.G.

Dispatch station. Here programs are accepted for transfer to a computer and a preliminary analysis of the results of the executed programs is carried out. In the foreground are stacks of punched cards on which task programs and source data are written. The operator reviews the results of the solution before transferring them to the customer.

Lieutenant Colonel Antonov S.G. is debugging the information and settlement system "Centaur"

5. Department of communication and exchange of information with KIK. Then the technical systems department. Chiefs: Colonel Devyatkov, Colonel V.N. Kruglov.

6. Department of power supply and air conditioning systems. Chiefs: Lieutenant Colonel Dubodil S.P. (later - permanent deputy head of the department), Major Arkadyev L.N., Major Privezentsev, Major Myzdrikov A.D., Nazarenko Yu.A., Yungov M.N.

7. Department of Computer Science. Chiefs: Colonel Kobzar M.T., Colonel Oborin V.F., Colonel Tarapkin Yu.N., Colonel Parkhomenko A.N., Nikolaenko Yu.I.

Department of Colonel Tarapkin Yu.N.

Department personnel. 70s of the 20th century. In the photo from left to right:
1st row Gebert A., Krylova R, ..., in the center is the head of the department, Colonel Tarapkin Yu.N.,..., Lieutenant Colonel Gaev A.K., Vasilyeva O., Kornyakov A.E.
2nd row - Slavitinsky M., Ryazanova I, Puzikova T., Korotkov O.I., Kotov V., Boychenko N.T., Markin A., Rudominsky G..
3rd row - Nesterenko Yu, Dubrovsky V., Morozov Yu., Levina Raya, Shabarin V., Lyubavtseva L., Sinodsky E., Malogorsky V., Kunitsyn V.

Department personnel. 90s of the 20th century. Pictured from left to right
1st row - Shelokhanova E., Kochetkova T., Puzikova T.
2nd row - Parkhomenko A.N., Tulyakov S.,..., head of department Colonel Tarapkin Yu.N., Gordeev A.
3rd row - Zhivoglazov G.A., Shukshin V., Malenkov V., Tomashevsky A.,
4th row - Kharlamov V., Kornyakov A.E., Kryakov Yu.

Lieutenant Colonel A.K. Gaev

Lieutenant Colonel A. Parkhomenko

Lieutenant Colonel V. I. Brigenek

Lieutenant Colonel A. Gordeev

Lieutenant Colonel G.A. Zhivoglazov

Lieutenant Colonel V.M. Stetsyuk

Lieutenant Colonel E. Sinodsky

Engineer Dubrovsky

Senior engineer A. Kornyakov

Engineer Yu. Morozov

Machine park of the VC
The first computers installed at the CC in 1959 were two M-20s based on tube and semiconductor elements. In 1960, two M-50 computers with increased speed were put into operation. These first-generation computers were soon replaced by M-220 machines with a semiconductor element base, and after them two BESM-6 were obtained, the successful design of which and sufficient speed (1 million operations per second) ensured their long life as part of the machine park VC. The arrival of the Unified Series "Ryad" computers was expected with great hopes. The first of them, the ES-1020, could not yet compete with the BESM-6, but the introduction in 1976 of the ES-1050 computer and, especially its improvement into the ES-1052 modification, meant a transition to a qualitatively new level of work with software-compatible machines of a single logical structure and uniform principles of information management and processing. Subsequently, the fastest computer in the USSR, the EC-1060, was installed in the CC.

Second generation computer M-220
In the center there is a control panel and two input devices on paper tape, behind the panel there is a control device (CU) and an arithmetic device (AU), to the left there are three power supply racks. Next to the remote control on the left is a magnetic drum drive and four racks of magnetic random access memory (RAM). On the right is an input device on punched cards and four magnetic tape drives with a control device for them. In the foreground on the left is the ADPU (Alphanumeric Printing Unit)

Logical structure of ES computer models

Third generation computer

The computer park of the computer center was constantly updated and was always at the level of the latest achievements of Soviet computer technology. VTs NII-4 was one of the first in the Soviet Union to begin the development of computers of the Unified Series "Ryad". The first of them, the ES-1020, could not yet compete with the BESM-6, which was put into operation in 1967, but with the arrival in 1976 of the ES-1050 computer and, especially its improvement into the ES-1052 modification, the transition to a qualitatively new one began stage of working with software-compatible machines with a unified logical structure and unified principles of management and information processing

Machine room of the ES-1050 computer. Work is underway in multi-program mode on the ES-1050. In the foreground is Masha Kovrigina, at the control panel is Valentin Stetsyuk, in the background is Zina Davidenko

Magnetic disk drives
A separate compartment with a special microclimate was provided for external drives in the computer room. Entry here was limited as much as possible to avoid air pollution in the pit and influence its temperature and humidity. There were eight magnetic disk drives and eight tape drives. The memory capacity of each disk package is 7.5 MB. Later, these drives were replaced with more powerful ones, with packages with 30 MB of memory. In the photo, Lyuda Molchanova is placing a disk, Valentin Stetsyuk is preparing to give a visual signal to the control panel to begin computing work.

Preventative work on the EU-1060 is carried out by officers Viktor Kharlamov and Gennady Samsonov in the company of pleasant ladies.

Captain Kharlamov checks the readiness of the computer for work (in other words, he is preparing a new “surprise” for the operators.)

Senior engineer Yuri Chumakov fixes a RAM malfunction (catch "RIOP")

Senior technician Zhenya Chernova tries to put a reel of tape on the drive

General view of the machine room

Final Act acceptance into operation of the EC-1050 computer No. 5013 (year of manufacture 1975, serial serial number 13). Manufacturer: VEM Plant, Penza. May 1976

Lieutenant General Volkov holds a meeting with the designers of the ES 1050 computer and the management of the Computer Center. From left to right: Beg. VC Regiment Kolcheev V.M., chief designer of NICEVT Antonov V.S., chief designer of NICEVT Przhiyalkovsky V.V., head. political department of NII-4, head of NII-4, Lieutenant General E.B. Volkov, chief engineer of the VTs regiment. Kobzar M.T..
Left: General designer of the ES computer Antonov with the command of NII-4 at the control panel of the 1050 computer.

The act of putting into operation the ES 1050 computer No. 5013 is signed by the chief designers of NICEVT V.S. Antonov (in the center), V.V. Prizhyalkovsky (bottom right). Far left V.M. Kolcheev. In the background are representatives of the VEM plant (far right is the head of the sales department of the Kolodin plant, in the center are representatives of the quality control department)

Colonel Kolcheev reports to the command of the institute the technical capabilities of the 1050 computer.
Below: Senior engineer V.G. Maksimov advises the command.

Pictures from the sports life of the VC

At NII-4, sports and physical culture work was put at a high level, for which considerable merit was due to the sports leaders of the institute, Major V. Prakopas and SA employee A. Novikov. On a voluntary basis, the hockey team was coached by Viktor Titov, and the women's volleyball team by Boris Golubov. Competitions in many sports were held at different levels, from the management championship to the RV CH championship. The most popular competitions were in athletics, skiing, volleyball, and football. Competitions were also held in officers' all-around competitions, orienteering, swimming, chess, small towns, hockey, and handball. The unit had its own stadium with football and handball fields, numerous volleyball courts, and also a swimming pool. Mostly young people worked at the Computing Center, so good sports teams were selected without problems and most of them were favorites in the competition for the institute championship. The VC football team was especially strong, whose players were the backbone of the institute’s team for many years.

Repeated winner of the VC Football Championship, national team of the 2nd and 9th divisions. Lying: On the left is Valery Blazhnov, on the right is Grigory. Second row: second from left Evgeny Inozemtsev, in the center - Valentin Stetsyuk, far right Viktor Kurmanov.

Participants in the 4x100m relay from the track and field team of the 9th section at the unit championship. From left to right: Vasily Ionkin, Valentin Stetsyuk, Valentin Polovinkin, Valery Rebrov (in short, four Vas).

Team of skiers of the 9th section before the start of the 10,000 m race. From left to right: Valentin Stetsyuk, ..., Viktor Titulov, Viktor Dovbenko, Valya Saenko, Boris Temirov, Ivan Dashkov, ..., Anatoly Tokarenko

A team of VTs orienteers while standing on a line in competitions for the championship of the unit. From left to right: Luda Choblya, Vladimir Brigenek, ..., Andrey Lebedev, Alevtina Arkadieva, ..., Sasha Barteneva

They are the same, but with the captain. The mood is pre-start - there are either 18 or 20 km ahead through valleys and rapids, interspersed with ravines, swamps and strawberry meadows.

Alya Averyanova helps the captain either raise or lower the competition flag. This honor is given to the winners as an additional incentive.

The captain receives a challenge cup and a certificate for winning the competition. The awards are presented by the chief judge of the competition, A. Sedov. The panel of judges seems to be favorably disposed towards the winners, but the victory was won in a bitter struggle.

Competition for the VC championship in volleyball. The 1st department plays against the 9th.

4th Central Research Institute of the Order of the October Revolution and the Red Banner of Labor of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation ( 4th Central Research Institute of the Russian Ministry of Defense) is the largest scientific organization of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, solving a wide range of problems of scientific support for the construction of the Strategic Missile Forces and the development of strategic missile weapons. Located in the Yubileiny microdistrict of the city of Korolev.

4th Central Research Institute of the Order of the October Revolution and the Red Banner of Labor of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (4 Central Research Institute of the Russian Ministry of Defense)

Former name	NII-4
Based
Director	S. E. Tarazevich
Location	Korolev, microdistrict. Anniversary
Legal address	141091, Moscow region, city of Korolev, microdistrict. Yubileiny, M.K. Tikhonravova street, house number 29
Awards

The traditional direction of research of the 4th Central Research Institute of the Russian Ministry of Defense is the substantiation of tactical and technical requirements for new and modernized weapons, military-scientific support of the most important R&D. A significant component of the overall scope of the institute’s research is work in the field of automation of troop and weapons control, the introduction of modern telecommunications technologies into the practice of troops, and ensuring information security.

The 4th Central Research Institute of the Russian Ministry of Defense also monitors the technical condition of weapons and military equipment and provides the command of the Strategic Missile Forces with objective information about the technical condition and reliability of the weapons in use.

Story

Prerequisites for creation

In the 1950s, to test the then new R-1, R-2 and R-5 missiles at the Kapustin Yar test site, the need arose to create equipment capable of carrying out various kinds of trajectory measurements. For these purposes, NII-4 developed the concept of a polygon measuring complex (PIK). For the measuring points (IP) of this complex, on the instructions of NII-4, telemetric equipment “Tral” began to be created, trajectory measurement stations - radio rangefinder “Binocular” and phase-metric radiogonometer “Irtysh” (c), equipment of the unified time system (UTS) “Bamboo” ( at NII-33 MRP).

Carrying out flight development tests (FDT) of the first ICBM R-7 required the creation of new launch positions (primarily due to the design range of the product - 8000 km) and on February 12, 1955, a resolution was adopted by the Council of Ministers of the USSR on the creation of a Research Test Site ( NIIP-5 USSR Ministry of Defense). NII-4 was identified as a participant in the design of a test site and the lead organization for the creation of a test site measuring complex (PIK).

The creation of a test site measuring complex is a particularly large contribution of NII-4 to the development of rocket and space technology. After the creation of the measuring complex, the authority of the Institute among industrial organizations and the USSR Ministry of Defense increased significantly. The work was supervised by A. I. Sokolov and his deputies G. A. Tyulin and Yu. A. Mozzhorin. More than 150 scientific employees of NII-4 participated in the technological design of the test site facilities. Over 50 employees were sent to factories, design bureaus and design organizations, where they took an active part in the development of measuring instruments and monitoring the construction of polygon measuring complex facilities.

Work on an artificial Earth satellite

At the end of 1955, when intensive work was underway to create the R-7 rocket, S.P. Korolev turned to the country's leadership with a proposal to launch the first artificial Earth satellite on the future R-7 rocket, the flight tests of which were scheduled for 1957, before the Americans. On January 30, 1956, a corresponding decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR was issued and Korolev OKB-1 began designing the world’s first artificial Earth satellite (AES), which received the name “object D”, and NII-4 began designing a command and measurement complex (CMC).

The creation of the CIC was entrusted to NII-4 due to the fact that the Institute already had experience in creating the CIC at the Kapustin Yar test site. Moreover, it is worth noting that before the January 1956 Government Decree on designating NII-4 of the USSR Ministry of Defense as the leading one with the involvement of a large cooperation of developers of measuring instruments for the creation of CIC, the Ministry of Defense was against assigning to it, by analogy with PIK, the responsibilities of a CMC developer, citing work that was unusual for it carried out in the interests of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The USSR Ministry of Defense presented numerous arguments in favor of the fact that the creation and operation of measuring points to support satellite flights is primarily the business of the Academy of Sciences, and not the Ministry of Defense. However, scientists and industrialists believed that only the military could build, equip and operate measuring points scattered throughout the territory of the Soviet Union in hard-to-reach places. The debate on this issue was lengthy and heated until it was stopped by the Minister of Defense, Marshal of the Soviet Union G.K. Zhukov. He agreed with the industrialists' arguments, foreseeing an important role for space in the country's defense in the future. Since then, Zhukov has been credited with the phrase: “I’m taking over space!”

The project was approved on June 2, 1956, and on September 3, a resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR was issued, defining the procedure for the practical creation of a complex of measuring instruments, communication means and a unified time to provide ground support for the flight of the first satellite. It is this day, September 3, 1956, that is considered to be the day of the creation of the Command and Measurement Complex of the USSR. According to the technical specifications issued by NII-4 and OKB-1, new technical means (TS) for interaction with the “D” satellite were finalized and created. Vehicles modified to the level of interaction with the satellite received the prefix “D” in their name (for example, “Binocular-D”).

Preparations for the formation of the CIC began to boil, but by the end of 1956 it became clear that the planned launch plans for the first satellite were in jeopardy due to difficulties in creating scientific equipment for “object D” and lower than planned specific thrust of propulsion systems (PS). ) RN R-7. The government set a new launch date of April 1958. However, according to intelligence data, the United States could launch the first satellite before this date. Therefore, in November 1956, OKB-1 made a proposal for the urgent development and launch, instead of “block D,” of a simple satellite weighing about 100 kg in April - May 1957 during the first tests of the R-7. The proposal was approved and on February 15, 1957, a Government Decree was issued on the launch of a simple satellite, called PS-1, at the end of 1957.

Meanwhile, at NII-4, a project was developed for the creation of a CMC, providing for the creation of 13 command and measuring points (now they were called ONIP - a separate scientific measuring point, and in common parlance they were often called NIP), located throughout the Soviet Union from Leningrad to Kamchatka and the central launch point. Yu. A. Mozzhorin supervised the work on the creation of the CIC. All work was completed in record time - within one year.

In 1957, to support the launches of ICBMs, launches of satellites and other space objects, the Coordination and Computing Center (CCC), the prototype of the future Mission Control Center, was created at NII-4.

For the creation of rocket and space technology NII-4 in 1957 he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.

The results of research carried out at NII-4 in the late 1940s and early 1950s provided the theoretical foundation for further practical work on space exploration. Individual employees of his group who moved from NII-4 to OKB-1 in 1956 together with M.K. Tikhonravov, and in 1957 - Konstantin Petrovich Feoktistov (future cosmonaut) became the leading developers of artificial satellites and spacecraft. In 1957, a group of NII-4 specialists, including three from M.K. Tikhonravov’s group: A.V. Brykov, I.M. Yatsunsky, I.K. Bazhinov, were awarded the Lenin Prize for ensuring the launch of the first artificial Earth satellite.

Pacific Oceanographic Expedition

Preparation for flight testing of the R-7 ICBM at full range - in the Pacific Ocean - and expanding the scope of observations of flights of space objects required the creation of floating (ship-based) measuring systems.

In 1959, the Institute was appointed as the lead contractor for the creation of the TOGE-4 floating complex (under the legend of the 4th Pacific Oceanographic Expedition) consisting of four ships, and in 1960 - as the lead contractor for the creation of the TOGE-5 complex - consisting of three ships. A special marine laboratory was created at the Institute, which was transformed into a marine department in 1962. Captain 1st Rank (later Rear Admiral) Yuri Ivanovich Maksyuta was appointed commander of TOGE-4.

The formation of four warships was born as a result of the Aquatoria research project, developed by employees of the Scientific Research Institute-4 of the USSR Ministry of Defense in 1958. After successful firing of the R-7 missile in the Kamchatka region, it became obvious that in order to test the missile at its full range (12,000 kilometers), it was necessary to create a test site in the central part of the Pacific Ocean. To measure the accuracy of the fall of the warheads of intercontinental ballistic missiles, floating measuring points were built in 1959 - expeditionary oceanographic vessels "Sibir", "Sakhalin", "Suchan" and "Chukotka". The first combat work at the Akvatoria training ground was carried out on January 20 - 31, 1960.

The launches of the first interplanetary stations required the reception of telemetric information from their board in areas not controlled by the ground-based spacecraft and the Pacific expedition. To solve the problem, in 1960, the Atlantic group of floating measuring points was created, consisting of two ships of the Black Sea Shipping Company and one ship of the Baltic Shipping Company. These ships were removed from sea transportation and transferred to the disposal of NII-4. The head of the Atlantic telemetry expedition was an employee of NII-4 Vasily Ivanovich Beloglazov.

The ships of the NII-4 Floating Telemetry Complex set out on their first voyage on August 1, 1960. Each one had an expedition consisting of 10 - 11 employees of the institute, highly qualified specialists. During the 4-month voyage, the technology for conducting telemetry measurements in ocean conditions was developed. Work on significant spacecraft launches took place only on the next, second flight of the Atlantic complex, which began in January 1961.

Ensuring control of the Vostok ship

A bright page in the development of space ballistics was the provision of flight control for the manned spacecraft "Vostok" with Yu. A. Gagarin. NII-4 was designated as the lead in solving this important task. The independent development of methods, algorithms and programs was organized at NII-4, OKB-1 and the USSR Academy of Sciences and their coordination. Ballistics scientists have successfully solved this problem. The TOGE-4 ships Sibir, Sakhalin, Suchan, Chukotka and the ships of the Atlantic group Voroshilov, Krasnodar and Dolinsk took a direct part in ensuring the flight.

In 1961, for the creation of an automated measuring complex, uniform time systems and special communications that ensured the launch of a spacecraft with a person on board, Yu. A. Mozzhorin was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor. A.I. Sokolov and the head of the Institute of Management G.I. Levin were awarded the title of Lenin Prize laureates.

Institute as part of the Strategic Missile Forces

On December 31, 1959, the Institute was included in the Strategic Missile Forces and since 1960 has carried out work on orders from the General Staff, the Scientific and Technical Committee, and the Main Directorates. Along with the expansion of work on strategic missile weapons and rocket and space technology, comprehensive studies of the Strategic Missile Forces' weapons systems began to be carried out, and the methodology for testing rocket and rocket and space systems was improved. The volume of work on the combat use of missile units and formations and provision of troops with guidance and operational documentation has increased.

One of the important problems was the automation of combat control of troops on constant combat duty in high readiness for use. At the initial stage of solving this problem, difficulties arose in attracting industrial organizations to work on creating an automated control system. Work began to be carried out at NII-4. In 1962, the equipment manufactured at the Institute's experimental plant was successfully tested by the troops. An interdepartmental commission led by Academician B.N. Petrov gave a positive assessment to the research carried out and recommended starting development work in industry. After the adoption of the created system for service, the employees of NII-4 who supervised the work were awarded: V. I. Anufriev - the Lenin Prize, V. T. Dolgov - the State Prize.

In connection with the increase in the volume of space research, space specialties were created at NII-4 in the early 1960s (transformed into scientific departments in 1964). Directorate teams made a significant contribution to the justification of defense tasks solved with the help of space assets, determining the prospects for the development of space weapons, testing military spacecraft and solving many other problems related to the exploration of outer space.

In the mid-1960s, NII-4 began comprehensive research to substantiate the prospects for the development of weapons and military equipment of the Strategic Missile Forces and to search for ways to intensively increase the combat power of the Strategic Missile Forces. At that time, the US strategic “triad” contained almost 4 times more nuclear weapons carriers and approximately 9 times more nuclear warheads and aerial bombs than the USSR strategic nuclear forces. In this regard, in order to ensure the country's security, the issue of eliminating the gap with the United States and achieving military-strategic parity in the shortest possible time arose.

A government decision in 1965 established a large, comprehensive research project (code “Complex”). The main executors for the Strategic Missile Forces section are NII-4 and TsNIIMash, the scientific supervisors are the head of NII-4 A. I. Sokolov and the director of TsNIIMash Yu. A. Mozzhorin.

The scientifically based recommendations of the research work were fully implemented. In a short time, highly effective missile weapon systems with a given level of characteristics were created and entered into service, the deployment of which made it possible to significantly increase the combat potential of the Strategic Missile Forces group and ensured the achievement of sustainable military-strategic parity with the United States in the early 1970s. The results of this research and the subsequent five-year cycles of similar work substantiated the technical policy of the USSR Ministry of Defense in the field of development of weapons of the Strategic Missile Forces for the long term. In the 1970s and early 1980s, work to determine the prospects for the development of weapons and military equipment of the Strategic Missile Forces was carried out under the leadership of Evgeniy Borisovich Volkov, who was appointed head of the Institute in April 1970. Subsequently, research in this area was always led by the heads of the 4th Central Research Institute (Lev Ivanovich Volkov, Vladimir Zinovievich Dvorkin, Alexander Vladimirovich Shevyrev, Vladimir Vasilievich Vasilenko).

Not a single missile system created under orders from the Strategic Missile Forces was tested without the participation of the Institute. Hundreds of employees developed programs and test methods, assessed the flight performance of missiles based on launch results, and directly participated in work at test sites. The heads of NII-4, their deputies, heads of departments (A. I. Sokolov, E. B. Volkov, A. A. Kurushin, O. I. Maisky, A. G. Funtikov) were appointed chairmen of the State Commissions.

For work on the creation of new missile systems, the Institute was awarded the second Order of the October Revolution in 1976. The head of the Institute, E.B. Volkov, was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor.

In connection with the constant increase in the accuracy of hits by potential enemy missiles, one of the most important problems has become the provision of protection of missile systems from the damaging effects of a nuclear explosion. The Institute acted as the lead organization for scientific, methodological, organizational and technical support for almost all large-scale tests. The measuring instruments developed and manufactured at the Institute were unique and had no analogues in serial instrumentation in terms of accuracy and reliability of measurements of highly dynamic processes under conditions of intense interference. As a result of theoretical and experimental research and design improvements carried out in the 1970s and 1980s, the protection of Strategic Missile Forces facilities from damaging factors of nuclear weapons was sharply increased.

Further development

In the 1960s, the main task of the institute was to equip the Strategic Missile Forces with missile systems with the first intercontinental and medium-range strategic missiles.

The 1970s were characterized by major work to ensure the creation and development of a new generation of highly effective missile systems with missiles equipped with multiple warheads, which significantly increased the combat capabilities of the Strategic Missile Forces group and its deterrent role. During these same years, the institute substantiated the need to create mobile missile systems and defended this direction in front of large organizations that were supporters of stationary systems.

The activities of the institute in the 1980s were aimed at ensuring the high-quality development of the Strategic Missile Forces grouping based on mobile and stationary complexes of the new generation.

In the 1990s, the main tasks of the institute were related to maintaining the combat potential of the Strategic Missile Forces at the required level in the context of the military-political situation, the reduction of offensive weapons, and the reduction in funding for the Russian Ministry of Defense and defense industries.

At the present stage, the key direction of the institute’s research is the military-economic justification for the balanced development of strategic offensive, information, reconnaissance and defensive forces and means.

At the end of 1997, units of the 50th Central Research Institute of Aerospace Forces of the Russian Ministry of Defense and the 45th Central Research Institute of the Russian Ministry of Defense were integrated into the Institute.

In accordance with the order of the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation dated May 24, 2010 No. 551 “On the reorganization of federal government institutions subordinate to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation” and in order to improve the structure of the military-scientific complex of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, a reorganization was carried out from December 1, 2010 4 1st Central Research Institute of the Ministry of Defense of Russia: three research institutes were attached to it as structural divisions: , and 13th State Research Institute of the Ministry of Defense of Russia. The institute received the name FBU “4th Central Research Institute of Missile, Space and Aviation Systems of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.”

4th Central Research Institute of the Order of the October Revolution and the Red Banner of Labor of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation ( 4th Central Research Institute of the Russian Ministry of Defense) is the largest scientific organization of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, solving a wide range of problems of scientific support for the construction of the Strategic Missile Forces and the Aerospace Defense Forces, and the development of strategic missile and space weapons. Located in the city of Yubileiny.

The 4th Central Research Institute of the Russian Ministry of Defense also monitors the technical condition of weapons and military equipment and provides the command of the Strategic Missile Forces and Air Force with objective information about the technical condition and reliability of the weapons in use.

In October 2013, it was disbanded, with the creation on its basis of the Central Research Institute of Aerospace Defense Troops (Yubileiny, Moscow Region) and the Central Research Institute of the Air Force (Shchelkovo, Moscow Region).

Story

Prerequisites for creation

In the 1950s, in order to test the then new R-1, R-2 and R-5 missiles at the Kapustin Yar test site, the need arose to create equipment capable of carrying out various kinds of trajectory measurements. For these purposes, NII-4 developed the concept of a polygon measuring complex (PIK). For the measuring points (IP) of this complex, on the instructions of NII-4, telemetric equipment “Tral” began to be created, trajectory measurement stations - radio rangefinder “Binocular” and phase-metric radiogonometer “Irtysh” (c), equipment of the unified time system (UTS) “Bamboo” ( at NII-33 MRP).

Work on an artificial Earth satellite

At the end of 1955, when intensive work was underway to create the R-7 rocket, S.P. Korolev turned to the country's leadership with a proposal to launch the first artificial Earth satellite on the future R-7 rocket, the flight tests of which were scheduled for 1957, before the Americans. On January 30, 1956, the corresponding decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR was issued and Korolev OKB-1 began designing the world’s first artificial Earth satellite (AES), which received the name “object D”, and NII-4 began designing the command and measurement complex (CMC).

The creation of the CIC was entrusted to NII-4 due to the fact that the Institute already had experience in creating the CIC at the Kapustin Yar test site. Moreover, it is worth noting that before the January 1956 Government Decree on designating NII-4 of the USSR Ministry of Defense as the leading one with the involvement of a large cooperation of developers of measuring instruments for the creation of CIC, the Ministry of Defense was against assigning to it, by analogy with PIK, the responsibilities of a CMC developer, citing work that was unusual for it carried out in the interests of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The USSR Ministry of Defense presented numerous arguments in favor of the fact that the creation and operation of measuring points to support satellite flights is primarily the business of the Academy of Sciences, and not the Ministry of Defense. However, scientists and industrialists believed that only the military could build, equip and operate measuring points scattered throughout the territory of the Soviet Union in hard-to-reach places. The debate on this issue was lengthy and heated, until it was stopped by the Minister of Defense, Marshal of the Soviet Union, G. K. Zhukov. He agreed with the industrialists' arguments, foreseeing an important role for space in the country's defense in the future. Since then, Zhukov has been credited with the phrase: “I’m taking over space!”

In 1957, to support the launches of ICBMs, launches of satellites and other space objects, the Coordination and Computing Center (CCC), the prototype of the future Flight Control Center, was created at NII-4.

For the creation of rocket and space technology NII-4 in 1957 he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.

The results of research carried out at NII-4 in the late 1940s and early 1950s provided the theoretical foundation for further practical work on space exploration. Individual employees of his group who moved from NII-4 to OKB-1 in 1956 together with M.K. Tikhonravov, and in 1957 - Konstantin Petrovich Feoktistov (future cosmonaut) became the leading developers of artificial satellites and spacecraft. In 1957, for ensuring the launch of the first artificial Earth satellite, a group of specialists from NII-4, including three from M.K. Tikhonravov’s group: A.V. Brykov, I.M. Yatsunsky, I.K. Bazhinov, was awarded the Lenin Prize.

Pacific Oceanographic Expedition

Preparation for full-range flight tests of the R-7 ICBM - in the Pacific Ocean - and expanding the scope of observations of the flights of space objects required the creation of floating (ship) measuring complexes.

In 1959, the Institute was appointed as the lead contractor for the creation of the TOGE-4 floating complex (under the legend of the 4th Pacific Oceanographic Expedition) consisting of four ships, and in 1960 - as the lead contractor for the creation of the TOGE-5 complex - consisting of three ships. A special marine laboratory was created at the Institute, which was transformed into a marine department in 1962. Captain 1st rank (later rear admiral) Yuri Ivanovich Maksyuta was appointed commander of TOGE-4.

Ensuring control of the Vostok ship

Institute as part of the Strategic Missile Forces

Story

Prerequisites for creation

Work on an artificial Earth satellite

For the creation of rocket and space technology NII-4 in 1957 he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.

Pacific Oceanographic Expedition

Ensuring control of the Vostok ship

Institute as part of the Strategic Missile Forces

Further development

In the 1960s, the main task of the institute was to equip the Strategic Missile Forces with missile systems with the first intercontinental and medium-range strategic missiles.

In accordance with the order of the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation dated May 24, 2010 No. 551 “On the reorganization of federal government institutions subordinate to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation” and in order to improve the structure of the military-scientific complex of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, a reorganization was carried out on December 1, 2010 4 1st Central Research Institute of the Ministry of Defense of Russia: three research institutes were attached to it as structural divisions: , and 13th State Research Institute of the Ministry of Defense of Russia. The institute received the name FBU “4th Central Research Institute of Missile, Space and Aviation Systems of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.”

In October 2013, the 4th Central Research Institute of the Russian Ministry of Defense was reorganized in the form of separation from it of the Federal State Budgetary Institution "Central Research Institute of the Air Force" of the Russian Ministry of Defense (Shchelkovo, Moscow Region) and the Federal State Budgetary Institution "Central Research Institute of the Aerospace Forces" Defense" of the Russian Ministry of Defense (Yubileiny, Moscow region).

In 2016, the 4th Central Research Institute of the Russian Ministry of Defense celebrated its 70th anniversary.

Introduction

Myths have always played a big role in the history of all peoples, and in our time their influence on public life and even on global politics does not decrease. Only their content decreases. One of the global myths of the 20th century was the myth of Soviet military power. For the Kremlin rulers, for almost half a century, it was an effective means of intimidating the United States and Western Europe. The myth almost died out, but now it is being revived. There is a suspicion that this is a major bluff, because the military-scientific potential of Russia, which NII-4, among others, represented, has evaporated. However, even during its heyday, the institute barely had time to adapt new ideas in the conditions of the Soviet Union.

This is what is discussed below. By extrapolating from the past, we can more accurately imagine the true state of the modern Russian Armed Forces.

Contrary to the obvious facts and even the understanding of the mythical essence of the ideas about the armed forces of the USSR by people involved in them, such a policy was quite effective until this ugly empire collapsed under the pressure of internal contradictions. The foundations of the myth were laid in the victory over Germany in World War II, when the euphoria of victory obscured the many different factors that led to it. But already during the war, the superiority of the Allies over the USSR in communications, identifying enemy military equipment and troop control was noticeable. It is worth mentioning at least the use by the Americans of electronic radar stations and even the first computers.

There's a funny story about computers in general. Since computer technology is an integral part of cybernetics, which Marxist-Leninist philosophers dubbed “reactionary pseudoscience,” the development of computers in the Soviet Union did not take place for almost ten years after the Americans developed their first vacuum tube computer for military purposes. (In fairness, it should be noted that the German Zuse was the first to do this before the war, but his machine worked on electromechanical relays). Soviet scientists were never able to overcome the gap in computer technology during the entire existence of the USSR; it even increased over the years, although scientists were faced with demands to catch up with the Americans. And this lag would have been even greater if enthusiasts in Kyiv had not assembled the first computer in continental Europe on their own. Hidden away, in the basement of an abandoned monastery in Feofania, near Kiev, they secretly, out of their own curiosity, assembled this machine using vacuum tubes, sometimes even buying radio parts at a flea market. When it finally dawned on the party leaders that cybernetics was not another means of exploiting workers, but a very useful thing, one of them menacingly asked the Soviet scientists: “Why are we lagging behind the Americans? Who is to blame?” Obviously, the Kyiv inventors failed to keep the secret, so that leader heard the following answer: “No way, in Kyiv our specialists have already created a similar machine.” Such an answer probably saved someone from major troubles, but one could pay for a lie with one’s life. Therefore, an order was sent to Kyiv - the car should be ready by the end of the year and no later, and it was 1950. Of course, funding was immediately found, but the designers were seriously scared because they were not making a computer, but just a model of it. However, surprisingly, the model worked well and could perform some simple tasks, so it was called the “Small Electronic Computing Machine” (MESM). After this, the project leader S.A. Lebedev with a group of leading specialists was transferred to Moscow, where for many years he became the chief designer of Soviet computers. I know the little-known details of the creation of the first computer in Kyiv, since in 1959, with a group of students, I disassembled the MESM to transport it to the KPI for laboratory work, and therefore I heard with my own ears the stories of the people who created this machine. On occasion, you can note that at about the same time, the concept of an artificial Earth satellite was also almost clandestinely developed by a group of scientists from NII-4, in which I had to serve, which will be discussed below, and the magazine “Around the World” wrote about the history of the satellite. in the article Satellite: from a harmful idea to a national symbol.

Start of military service

After graduating from the KPI, I, like several hundred other graduates of Soviet universities, was drafted into the army to serve in the missile forces, since the army at that time did not yet have educational institutions of the required profile. I was destined to serve in these troops for 25 years and I could know the true position of this branch of the USSR Armed Forces much better than the members of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee. Of course, like all rocket scientists, I had to keep my mouth shut in those days, but sometimes among good friends or relatives, when asked about the quality of Soviet weapons, I answered something like this: “Have you seen a Japanese tape recorder? Compare it with ours and you can imagine the difference as electronics, which is the basis of modern military equipment." Of course, they didn’t believe my words about the imperfection of Soviet weapons, because in people’s minds, consumer electronics could be unimportant, but military electronics could only be excellent. And I even heard from my own superiors more than once: “We’re going to space on a cart!” The fact is that I served, as I already said, at the Scientific Research Institute No. 4 (NII-4) of the Ministry of Defense in the village of Bolshevo near Moscow. The Institute controlled the development, production and implementation of rocket and space technology in the military, and serviced the launches of satellites and spacecraft. The institute employed about three thousand military engineers and scientists and the same number of civilians. Suffice it to say that among them there were more than a hundred doctors of science and several hundred candidates. Like any military unit, we had so-called “commander training.” Since we were a research institute, this training was of a slightly different nature than in the troops. In addition to showing interesting films about the US armed forces, made at the studio of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff (GRU GSH), we were also given series of lectures on philosophy, physics, and sometimes even biology, which were given mainly by professors from Moscow University. I remember well how, at a lecture on genetics, our scientists meticulously asked the lecturer, then still a young doctor Maxim Frank-Kamenetsky, about the mechanism of cell division, to which he replied: “We raised this question with our physicists and biochemists, but nothing convincing came from them.” It’s easier for scientists in the West - when they come to unsolvable questions, they answer themselves that it’s all from God, but we, atheists, are not given such a right.” He probably took on this issue himself, because he is now a well-known biophysicist and works at Boston University. So, the lecturers behaved quite freely at lectures at times and we heard a lot of things that could not be read in books. All this, of course, influenced the formation of the worldview of young military scientists. True, in different ways. It should be said that there was a big difference between the Ukrainians and the Russians, mainly the Ryazans and the Penzyakams, who were the most numerous among our colleagues. The Khrushchev thaw was felt even in the army and we, the people of Kiev, were keen on listening to radio broadcasts of various “voices”, we listened more to Radio Liberty and Voice of America. On occasion, these programs were discussed quite openly between us, especially since our bosses did not hide the fact that they listened to BBC radio, which was not jammed at all due to the discretion of its broadcasts. So, the Russian guys were rather cool about discussions about the “voices” broadcasts somewhere in the smoking rooms and never took part in them, except to just listen. I often subscribed to Polish newspapers and magazines, and during the Prague Spring I bought Czech newspapers. Those Russians who knew about this treated me with suspicion, almost as a spy. And when the invasion of Czechoslovakia occurred, they all perceived this event with great enthusiasm, but not us. However, no one reported anyone to the special department. Only once, at the end of my service, did someone “pawn” me, but I suspect that it was not for ideological reasons, but out of a sense of personal revenge. Times were different and I got away with a slight fright. Be that as it may, I think that my boss Viktor Frolovich Oborin found out about my “freethinking”, but the reaction was completely unexpected - he appointed me as his deputy for political studies and sometimes gave me the task of going to the CPSU library and preparing “interesting” material for the seminar . I understood the hints and prepared something that was not exactly what was in the topic of the seminar. If the topic was, for example, “the decay of capitalism,” then in my speech I developed the idea that that “Leninist” capitalism had long since “rotten,” and now it has “revived” in a new form and is demonstrating certain achievements. The question of whether a new war would be beneficial for the Americans was especially hotly debated. The majority defended until they became hoarse the opinion formed by official propaganda that capitalists only profit from wars and are indifferent to the suffering of the common people. At that time, I was already studying the economic history of foreign countries and tried to convince my comrades, saying that wars harm international trade and therefore are not profitable for most capitalists. After such statements, the discussion went very lively, the seminars dragged on, and at the end the boss usually said: “We deviated somewhat from the topic, but everyone took an active part in the seminar, so I give everyone an “excellent”.” Oborin was a Muscovite, and Muscovites were noticeably different from the natives. from the "outback" with a broad outlook.

Something about NII-4

The institute occupied an area of several tens of hectares, on which twenty different buildings, mostly five-story buildings, were located. Later I became acquainted with several Moscow historians and linguists, whom I sometimes visited at their workplaces. I was very struck by the difference in the size of our institute and those institutes in which they worked, although in terms of status they were all-Union. For example, the Institute of Slavic and Balkan Studies occupied only one floor of a large building on Gorky Street. The area was so small that employees mainly worked from home or in libraries and came to work once a week, on the so-called “office day”. It was clear to the naked eye that military institutions flourished only due to underfunding of those areas of science that were not related to the army.

The most famous scientists at our institute were Professor M.K. Tikhonravov, one of the pioneers of rocket technology, the first to express the idea of the prospects for the creation and use of artificial Earth satellites, and Professor P.E. Eliasberg, one of the founders of the scientific field of "space ballistics", author of books on the theory of satellite flight. Both still remain known only among specialists. The institute consisted of 10 departments, a computer center and an experimental plant. By the way, after the war, the equipment of this plant was literally removed down to the last screw from one of those factories where the famous designer of the German V-2 rockets, Wernher von Braun, worked. At our plant, among other things, we sometimes repaired rockets, which often experienced various malfunctions. The missiles were delivered by train at night so that it would not be too noticeable to the local population. True, the population already knew very well what the military unit was doing, which, to divert attention, had the number 25840. The very name “NII-4 MO” was considered secret, but in the Moscow region, even far from Bolshevo, they knew about our institute. I played football for some time for the institute team and remember how at one meeting with the team of some remote animal farm, after explaining to the captain of the opponents, our team began to be called “Maloe Bolshevo”, he nevertheless, greeting us before the match, barked out of habit : “Greetings to the NII-4 physical education team!” And in the popular version of the thieves’ song in those places, the criminal heroes “handed over to the authorities of the NKVD” the alleged foreign spy, who offered them a generous reward for the “NII-4 plan.”

Purpose of CC NII-4 and its construction

From the first day of service, I was sent to work in the Computing Center (CC), and the rest of my colleagues were sent to scientific departments. Due to the great secrecy, I knew little about their work, but there was a performance. We had physical education three times a week in the morning. Most of the officers at this time were mainly playing football, and at work until lunch they discussed the vicissitudes of each meeting, so to speak, did an analysis. At the same time, the authorities also took part in the debate. Each officer had a quarterly plan for scientific work, but for many it was not very intense. The quarterly report could be written in a week, and besides, you could work according to your own plan. I knew officers who spent months developing, based on knowledge of probability theory, programs for playing sports lotto to win. True, unsuccessfully. The top management of the research institute suspected that some of the officers might be working carelessly and therefore the quarterly reports were checked very carefully. While the institute was still small, one person, Colonel Lapochonok, was responsible for checking the reports. Sokolov pulled him out of Kapiyar (Kapustin Yar), where he was the editor of a large-circulation newspaper, and at the institute he initially worked as a literary editor of reports. I don’t know how many classes he completed, but he grasped scientific knowledge literally on the fly and could pose questions to the performers that were to some extent close to the topic being studied. For example, he quickly learned to distinguish between diodes, triodes, tetrodes and pentodes on an electronic circuit and could ask in a stern tone, pointing his finger at the circuit. Is this pentode input or output? A delay in response could be assessed as ignorance of the subject, so it was necessary to answer very quickly and clearly, in a military manner. If the pentode was neither input nor output, then it was unnecessary to give any explanations. I should have answered: No way. Passage. Then Little Sweet would nod his head with ostentatious understanding and give the report a good rating. In a word, our institute was a real “feeding trough” for officers. At least that’s how he was assessed by those who managed to transfer to us from the troops. But, nevertheless, many young officers had a talent for scientific activity and it was often they who took the initiative in scientific research. Thanks to them, our programmers quite quickly began to work not in machine codes but in programming languages - "Algol", "Fortran", etc. Also, thanks to calculations of the probability of missiles hitting a target, made by one lieutenant, whose last name I have forgotten, the need arose to organize Institute of New Management, which specialized in rocket flight simulation. At the same time, simulation technology was studied using imported computer games, which some officers were fond of. One of them, namely Valery Blazhnov, having mastered this technology well, seriously began using it to simulate a retaliatory strike on the missiles of a potential enemy. Demonstration on the screen of a model of such actions of the Strategic Missile Forces to the commissions checking the work of the institute was one of the reasons for highly appreciating its work. Subsequently, after leaving the reserve, Blazhnov worked for a long time as a leading programmer at Eagle Dynamics. This fact alone speaks volumes about the level of the institute’s programmers. However, according to my information, Blazhnov did not share his experience in simulating military operations in Russia with anyone.

While the Computer Center was being set up, I “was considered the operational duty officer of the NKVCH.” Going to Moscow in civilian clothes almost every day, I always had with me an officer’s ID with the specified position in case I needed to ensure the integrity of my person, because the NKVCH sounded almost like the NKVD. In fact, it was a scientific coordination computing unit, whose tasks included processing telemetry data that came from seven ground-based measuring points (GMPs). The measuring points were equipped with optical and radar technology, which made it possible to determine the coordinates of artificial space objects, i.e. rockets, satellites, etc. From the very beginning, there were eight of them on the territory of the Soviet Union from Yevpatoria to Kamchatka, but a year later one was flooded during a large flood on the Yenisei. Over time, there were twelve NPCs, maybe more. The development, organization and management of NIPs was carried out by NII-4, and in this matter later the deputy heads of the institute, G. A. Tyulin and Yu. A. Mozzhorin, who, while remaining generals, worked in high positions in the Ministry of Defense Industry, made a good career for themselves. Telemetry data was first processed using large slide rules by a large group of computers and this continued for so long that the results of the calculations were not very useful and the first flights of Soviet satellites were completely uncontrollable. It was clear that such work had to be done on computers, which were then called electronic computers.

Thus, the main task of the computer center was to process telemetric information so that the trajectory of a space object could be calculated in advance in order to correlate it if necessary or determine the landing point. Of course, the computer center had to calculate other scientific and engineering programs, also related to rocketry. Initially it was planned that the Ural and Strela computers would operate in the computer center. The machines were tube-based and generated a lot of heat, so they had to be cooled with cold air through special air ducts from refrigeration equipment. This equipment was managed by Ivan Petrovich Dubodil, and for some time after the war he supervised one of the laboratories of the German institute that developed rocketry. As a fellow countryman, he told me a lot of interesting things about the organization of research work in Germany, which impressed me a lot.

During construction, my job was to monitor the progress of construction work and the laying of these same air ducts. The institute was expanding significantly at that time, and construction work was carried out by several construction battalions, in which mostly illiterate soldiers from Central Asia served. These soldiers punched large holes in the main walls to lay air ducts. However, they often made mistakes and punched holes in the wrong places, so they had to punch them again, and the old ones remained unfilled. Then it turned out that while the CC building was being built, new, more modern computers appeared, and their air duct layout was different. The same story with holes being punched began again. As a result, it became clear even to a non-specialist that the walls of the building were very weak in the basement and there was a risk that it could collapse over time. But there is always a risk in the army, so everything remained as it was. The CC building did collapse, but this happened after I finished my service. Just like this computer center, all Soviet computer technology collapsed, finally unable to withstand the competition with the American one.

Ways of development of Soviet computer technology

While my colleagues and I were overseeing the construction battalions, graduates of higher naval schools took programming courses on the third floor of our computer center. Obviously, Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev decided that with the presence of intercontinental missiles, the navy had already lost its prospects, but perhaps there were not enough funds for its expansion and modernization in the Soviet Union. One way or another, in 1959, the entire graduating class of these schools was transferred to the missile forces, and naval officers began to be turned into programmers. They had to learn how to write programs for solving mathematical problems using provided algorithms, which were prepared by other employees of the institute. Programs were written in “machine codes”, i.e. in the octal number system. Then it was converted into binary code using special devices and punched out on punched cards, where holes punched with a punch in special positions meant “one”, and “zeros” were unpunched places.

Over the course of 25-five years, I witnessed the development of not only Soviet computer technology, but also programming systems, and I well understood the reasons for the lag behind both of them from the American ones. The basis for this lag was economic. Writing a program required not only special knowledge, but also great care and pedantry. It was possible to train a programmer in six months, but to become a highly qualified specialist, you had to gain experience for several years. When in America the number of machines that were widely used in many areas of science, technology, and the national economy began to increase, the problem of a shortage of programmers arose. To solve this problem, special programming languages were invented, which, having easily studied, each scientist could easily write a program for his own algorithm. In fact, the link between the scientist and the machine, which was the programmers, became redundant, especially considering that many programming languages were created in accordance with the specific problems that had to be solved. In the Soviet Union, such a problem was not acute, because there were few machines, and the need for new programmers for the armed forces could be solved by a new set of graduates from colleges. I don’t know how it is in other computer centers, but in ours they started introducing programming languages not “from above,” as they should be, but “from below.” Among our programmers there were those who were interested in new developments in their specialty and they, while on business trips to civilian institutes, learned that they somehow acquired the American language “Algol”. Some enthusiasts embraced it, saw its benefits, and began pitching the idea of using it on a large scale to their bosses. The corresponding equipment was not produced in the Soviet Union, so we had to use telegraph devices, which still needed to be modernized, and in fact add a few more special characters to the keyboard. This was done by our technicians in the workshop, which was located in the CC. For some reason, it was not possible to re-equip the Soviet devices, so teletype machines manufactured in the German Democratic Republic were soon purchased for this purpose.

In our computer center, the introduction of programming languages met with spontaneous resistance from programmers. Feeling that their specialty was becoming unnecessary, the “sailors” proved various advantages of programming in machine codes, and some of them never mastered any of the algorithmic languages until the end of their service. Computers were very expensive, computer time, i.e. The programmer's time working on it was greatly appreciated. But programmers used this time irrationally, especially during debugging of programs, when they were literally “picking their nose” at the console. They could abandon the machine and run to break the punched card in order to eliminate an error in the program on it. At the same time, the processor (it was then called an arithmetic unit) of the machine, its most expensive part, was idle, but it was already idle in the process of entering or outputting data. In order to use the processor more intensively in America, multiprogram machines with special operating systems were designed that allowed several programs to work simultaneously on one computer. All these ideas were used belatedly in the USSR.

A little about the USSR Strategic Missile Forces and space exploration

However, Soviet missiles were still quite good, considering their engines, especially those produced in Dnepropetrovsk at the plant headed by Yangel. The missiles (for the sake of secrecy they were called only “products”) from the Korolev and Chelomey factories were not taken seriously by the troops. The rocketeers then said: “Chelomey works for show (for the toilet), Korolev for TASS, and Yangel for us.” However, the electronic filling of all rockets was poor. Often their flights during tests were uncontrollable, at times the rocket fell to an unknown location, and sometimes the tests ended tragically. A great tragedy occurred at the Tyura-Tam training ground in 1960, during which many people died, including the commander-in-chief of the missile forces M.I. Nedelin. Then the newspapers reported that he had died in a plane crash. Since then, I have had the opportunity many times to witness the shameless lies of the Soviet press. Not only the testing of combat missiles, but also the planned launches of Earth satellites and spacecraft were never announced in advance. There were exceptions only when missiles were fired somewhere into the Pacific Ocean. To avoid accidentally hitting a foreign ship, the military command asked TASS to report the shooting in advance.

After our computer center was finally built and equipped with a computer, I worked on the M-50 machine as a shift supervisor. The design of the machine was classified as "Top Secret", although the embodied idea of increasing the speed of the machine, which the designers wanted to keep secret, was obvious to any engineer. In America, it was used by all computer manufacturers more successfully than on our “secret” M-50. The point was to ensure that the machine’s processor would not be idle when exchanging information with the drives. But to do this, the machine had to have a standard program that would make sure that when the processor was freed up for one part of the program, and while information was being exchanged, it could work for some time on another. In America, such programs, the so-called supervisors, were developed and used by all programmers who developed their own special programs. In our CC, as elsewhere in the USSR, they did not come to such an idea, although we had a department of standard programs. To reduce the running time of a program, each programmer must add a special block for each of his programs, which must monitor the progress of its execution. Nobody wanted to do this additional work, especially since it was difficult to determine the time for the continuation of the exchange of information, and the machine did not give signals about the end of the exchange process. It was rumored that the designers used the secrecy classification in order to receive a State Prize for a “pig in a poke.” But in reality this was Lebedev’s unsuccessful project and this “blunder” is not mentioned in his biographies, although later he was awarded the State Prize for the BESM-6 machine. The latter, however, was a successful design, but neither its software nor hardware were designed for the possibility of modernization, so it was the last success of Soviet computing technology. As far as I remember, in our computer center one BESM-6 worked for about seventeen years, right up until the time when personal computers appeared in the West. For comparison, I note that it, together with the drives, occupied an area of 110 square meters. meters.

In the early 60s, M-20 vehicles were also quite good; There were two of them in our CC, just like the M-50. These four machines worked together during satellite launches. We called this “operational work,” and the media reported about us like this: “the coordination and computing center is processing information coming from the satellite.” For a long time, the cosmonauts themselves did not know where this mysterious “center” was located, or what it looked like, so they later began to be brought to us on excursions and they had fun at the control panel, solving simple problems like “twice two”. True, before this they had to explain the principles of binary arithmetic.

The head of the Computer Center, Colonel Kolcheev, reports to the head of NII-4
Lieutenant General E.B. Volkov.
Left: Deputy Head of the Institute for Scientific Work, Lieutenant General A.A. Kurushin.

At that time, the launch of each satellite, especially with a crew, became a major event in the life of the country and another trump card for party ideologists to praise Soviet science and technology, and at the same time the Soviet social system. True, these ideologists themselves did not know when that trump card would fall into their hands. Typically, the Central Committee reported only successful launches. Our institute was equipped with a conference room where part of the Soviet elite (the other went to the launch pad to see Korolev) gathered, involved in space affairs, to monitor the progress of the flight and even watch the movement of the satellite on the large screen, on which the entire earthly ball.

Left: Conference hall VC. Photo from the site "military unit 25840, US "Beluga". The role of NII-4… "

There was also a large globe in the conference room, around which toy satellites were supposed to move on wires in synchronization with real ones. True, this system worked very unreliably, but the globe also attracted the attention of visitors because it was supposedly from the office of Stalin himself, i.e. this was the globe with which, according to Khrushchev, the leader directed military operations during the war. After Stalin’s death, they didn’t know what to do with the globe, and it was a pity to throw it away, or maybe they were afraid, and finally, a new use was found for it.

If the launch was successful, various ministers, generals, admirals milled about in the hall for a long time and each of them tried to inform their superiors about the new success as soon as possible. But the advantage was on the side of the head of our institute. He had a direct Kremlin telephone (“turntable”) and could quickly contact any member of the Politburo and be the first to report a successful launch. And so that no one else could use the phone, it was installed in a separate room, away from the conference room and few people knew about it. Since the head of the institute was also always hanging around in the conference room, the officer on duty was left at the telephone. I was also on duty several times. My function was to call someone from the conference room to the phone, so I knew who had been there and what he looked like, because no one from the “lower ranks” was allowed there, except for technical workers who always kept their mouths shut. Sometimes I was also present at our general’s conversations, if, however, he did not turn me out of the door. Most often he called the Secretary of the Central Committee F.R. Kozlov, who before D.F. Ustinov was responsible for space in the CPSU Central Committee. Sometimes Kozlov was not at work and then the general spent a long time looking for him at home or somewhere in the country. The report was something like this: “Hello, Frol Romanovich! The head of NII-4, Lieutenant General Sokolov, is reporting. Today at 11:26 a.m. the Soviet Union was successfully launched...” Frol Romanovich did not always understand the importance of the event and then the general explained to him, in what lies behind the new victory of Soviet science. Of course, when the launch was unsuccessful, everyone quickly ran away and no one reported anything to anyone.

The origins of "freethinking"

Before operational work, our computer center took on a festive look. Long corridors, staircases and machine rooms were covered with carpet runners, which were also covered with linen. It was a troublesome job for the officers, fetching and carrying, unrolling and rolling up heavy carpet bales, especially considering that there were so many unsuccessful or delayed launches. Sometimes this had to be done for several days in a row and, despite military discipline, the officers often grumbled, expressing their dissatisfaction to the command. To this, the head of the CC M.S. Mukhin told us: “When you receive guests, do you put the apartment in order? Do it. You do the same here.” One could agree with this if these “guests” did not come so often and the officers were not distracted from work during the very tense time of preparing vehicles for operational work. We did not have any support staff, so there was no one to do this work except the officers.

Our institute had about eighty departments, and each department had to publish a wall newspaper every month. And so, in one of the newspapers there was a sad picture of officers laying out carpets in the corridor, and the caption to it was “Back to space”, a cliche in the Soviet press of those times. The middle management along with everyone else laughed at that cartoon, but the head of the CC and the political officer did not see it, otherwise the newspaper would definitely have been taken down, which sometimes happened for manifestations of “freethinking” in publications. One of the trade union organizations of our department published its own newspaper called “Our Voice”. It didn’t hang for even a day; the head of the political department ordered it to be taken down, for the reason that that was once the name of the Menshevik newspaper. In fact, the reason was different - trade unions at our institute were not allowed to have a newspaper. It should be said that the wall newspaper, of which I was editor for several years, was for me a good school in samizdat and penmanship. At one time, the editorial board consisted of people with artistic taste and literary talent, therefore, both in content and in form, our newspaper was very far from the officialdom and primitiveness that permeated all political work in the army. And the level of that work can be imagined from such an example. One day our political officer gave us a lecture about the victory over the Germans near Moscow in 1941, when he was still a teenager. The audience was dozing peacefully and, in order to interest people, he said that the children of their village then rode on the frozen corpses of German soldiers like on a sled. At the same time, he also described what the corpses turned into after such abuse. Carried away by the story, the political officer did not even notice the reaction of the officers, who were outraged by this level of his morality.

In contrast to the political commissars, intellectuals with a broad mental outlook prevailed among the command. At that time, Sokolov’s deputy was Major General Yu.A. Mozzhorin is a very smart and intelligent person. Sokolov was also smart, but he was always somewhat gloomy and angry, and we, young officers, were very afraid of him. Moreover, he spoke somehow inarticulately. Sometimes, when I was in his office with some business papers, I guessed more about the meaning of his illegible words, and was very afraid of anger if I understood him incorrectly.

Soviet propaganda and how it really happened

In 1961, Mozzhorin was appointed director of NII-88 (later called TsNIIMASH), which was subordinate to the Ministry of Defense Industry and which was previously headed by Korolev. It was a very powerful structure, from which the plant and two experimental design bureaus (experimental design bureau) were ultimately to be separated. One design bureau was headed by Korolev, and the second by Yangel. After that division, NII-88 itself faded into the background, but Mozzhorin breathed a second life into it. He built a large computer center with new generation machines and a large “reflection hall” in his institute, equipped much better than the conference room at NII-4. Thus, our neighbors (NII-88 and NII-4 were on opposite sides of the Moscow-Monino railway) seized the initiative from us forever. Later, that entire complex was named MCC - Mission Control Center.

But before that, the main work during launches took place in our computer center, where, to guarantee, four computers calculated the same task: the trajectory of the space object. Such extreme caution was not superfluous, because the machines often malfunctioned, and to confirm the reliability of the result it was necessary to have at least two of them identical. During operational work, Colonel Pavel Efimovich Elyasberg, a native of Zhitomir and the smartest man, was always in the room. I respected him especially because during a conversation I accidentally overheard with another colonel, he expressed the following “sedition”: “Our scientists claim that the Ukrainian language was formed in the 14th century, but how can we explain that in Transcarpathia, which was part of Hungary since the 10th century, do people use the same language? So, this Eliasberg personally checked the calculation data of the machines and became so good at this matter that one day he showed literally fantastic abilities. One day, the spacecraft's automatic landing system failed. The astronauts had to land the ship manually. However, while the negotiations were going on, time passed and they went on an extra revolution around the Earth. And with each revolution, the trajectory of movement deviates several degrees in the easterly direction. If we also take into account the inaccuracy of manual landing, then the ship should have landed somewhere unknown (if it could have done it at all). And then an additional revolution passes, at a certain moment the cosmonauts are given an order to turn on the braking engines. But people are not electronics, they cannot carry out an order with an accuracy of a second, much less turn off the engines at the right moment and throw out landing parachutes. I don’t know how it was there, but the ship somehow lands, although no one knows where. TASS immediately reports that the flight ended “successfully” as always, but there is no word on where the ship landed. But he sat down somewhere in the remote taiga and there is no connection with them, and it is unclear where to look for them. And here Pavel Efimovich helps everyone out. He calculated the trajectories in his head, walked up to the map and said: “Look here!” The entire USSR Air Force was lifted into the sky. Planes and helicopters spent the whole day plowing the sky over the indicated area (and it was still quite large!) And towards evening the cosmonauts were finally found. Meanwhile, the radio played cheerful marches and waltzes all day long, but not a word about the fate of the cosmonauts, and in the evening they sang in triumphant ecstasy: “The Soviet Union successfully tested the manual control system for spacecraft.”

But there was a greater lie. In the early 70s, the Soviet Union developed a spacecraft that was supposed to make an automatic soft landing on the Moon. This was supposed to be a belated response to the landing of American astronauts on the night luminary. The launch had to be carried out at a time when the Sun, Earth and Moon were almost in line, with the Moon between the Sun and Earth. This situation occurs approximately once a calendar month and lasts about three days. During this time the launch should take place. And every month we carry out operational work on processing ship flight data. My job is to keep my machine (now M-220, based on semiconductors) in working order, but what the programmers do on the machine is not for me to know. But once you learn this secret, the whole essence of the matter becomes clear when the same command appears on the machine every month. So, for more than a year, ships were launched onto the Moon with the aim of a soft landing, and each time they plopped onto its surface like meteorites and turned into a pile of scrap non-ferrous and precious metals. A year passed and, after unsuccessful attempts, that work was stopped and the following order was given to those involved in the case: At all levels from top to bottom, check all calculations in detail. It was calm for about two months, but then the next congress of the CPSU (possibly a conference) approached. And the congress should be greeted with new labor victories. Give a soft landing on the moon by the opening day of the congress! Our programmers came running to the machine, confused: “It’s good that, contrary to the secrecy instructions, they didn’t throw away the old program while they were developing a new one! Here, put the magnetic tape in, we’ll process the launch.” We set and launched the task, and on the second day we found out that the ship crashed again. After this, everyone finally calmed down and about six months later, after all sorts of local alterations, the ship landed safely on the Moon. There was noise on the air and in the press: We are ahead again! Our technology is the best! We protect people, we do not put the lives of astronauts at risk, like these soulless Americans, who sent living people almost to certain death!

Near the control panel EC-1050

And few people know how many previously broken ships lie on the surface of the Moon. Maybe someday a certain company will get rich from cleaning up that scrap metal, because a lot of it has accumulated there. But this was the money that could have been used to produce at least millions of tons of smoked sausage, which had already become a big shortage in the country.

Spaceship parts were produced at factories of ministries of various types: defense industry, "medium", "special" and some other mechanical engineering, etc. This whole bunch of industrial ministries worked exclusively for the production of weapons or space objects, but in the country's budget they passed through the division of the national economy. And this gave reason for party propagandists to make noise to the whole world that, in contrast to the Americans, who spend 40% of their budget on military purposes, the Soviet Union allocates only 7% to defense. And one could only wonder how, with such meager funds, the Soviet Union maintained an army that was not inferior in power to the American one.

But money for rockets came not only from underfunding of the food or light industries. There was not enough money even to develop military communications. The telephone network and devices were from the Second World War. To get through, for example, to the training ground in Tyura-tam (known as Boykonur), you had to turn the dial and ask the telephone operator in Moscow: “Strait”? Give me "Agate"! The answer to this was usually: “Agate” is busy until 6 pm. Shall I put you in the queue?" Most of the officers in the apartments did not even have local telephones. I was often called to repair the car at night and this was done on purpose, since there was no way to install a telephone in the apartment. In case of war, there was a special notification scheme in which those those who still had telephones, having received an alarm signal, had to run immediately not to the unit, but to the officers without telephones, wake them up and transmit the signal, and they got up and ran to wake up the next ones. The alarm meeting lasted about two hours, which in missile conditions. nuclear war could have catastrophic consequences.

And during the Cuban crisis, there was a real threat of war. For what reason the crisis arose, we had a very vague idea. Only later did I learn that units of the Vinnitsa Missile Army were redeployed to Cuba literally within two months, which, of course, could not go unnoticed by the Americans. Then we were ordered to keep suitcases ready with a supply of linen and food for three days. To gather officers on alert, there was a command: “Come to duty with a suitcase!” And when one day early in the morning such a team came to the hostel, we did not know whether the war had already begun, or whether it was just a training camp. We gathered then for two hours, and then only those who did not live in Moscow, but only near the military unit. Fortunately, everything worked out fine, because I can’t imagine how we would have fought with those “alarming” suitcases. Each officer was armed with a pistol, but they were lying somewhere in warehouses and were never issued to us, even for annual shooting. To do this, each department received two shot PMs for one day, and each officer received six live rounds.

To fire a rocket at a target, a special flight mission on a perforated tape or magnetic wire had to be inserted into it. These tasks for various purposes were calculated and prepared in our center and had to be delivered to the troops. Officers joked that the most reliable delivery of flight missions during the war could only be carried out by horse messengers. Imagine how long it would take to ride a horse from Moscow to the Trans-Baikal Missile Army. And even if the “products” were fired at the planned target, few of them could have hit it. As I already recalled above, one military engineer at our institute calculated this probability and found that it was approximately 30%. The command had much more optimistic considerations. The officer reported his calculations to the head of the laboratory, who checked - everything was correct. The head of the laboratory went to report to the head of the department, but said that the probability was 40%. He ran to the head of the institute and inflated the number to 50%. But even this significance allowed him to convince the commander-in-chief of the Strategic Missile Forces of the need to organize a special department within the institute, which was supposed to have the task of developing a system for mathematical modeling of the flight of various missiles in order to increase their reliability. One directorate is an additional one general’s hat and ten colonels’ hats. Plus the promotion of several dozen officers. Clearly this is a cause worth fighting for. Although even with the existing reliability, America could be destroyed with one missile strike. The structure of the Strategic Missile Forces had 40 missile divisions, which could launch several thousand missiles at once with a total number of nuclear units of several tens of thousands. Thus, the development of the missile forces themselves was also to a certain extent determined by the human factor - the more divisions, the more generals.

In the hall of external storage devices. Each cabinet – 7.5 MB

Of course, people more closely associated with rocket technology, especially those who served at the Tyura-Tame training ground or in the army, could tell much more interesting things. I know this because I have heard their stories more than once, but I don’t want to write from other people’s words, I haven’t been there myself. I can only speak more or less competently about Soviet computer technology, because for several years I was the head of the largest computing complex in Europe, built on the basis of the ES-1050 computer, later modernized into the ES-1052. It was one of the cars from a single series, which was built according to the American model. Then the “party and government” set the scientists the task of catching up with American computer technology, which in the sixties was measured by a decade. Obviously, the same task was assigned to the Soviet intelligence services, one of which (exactly which one, I don’t know) stole diagrams of American IBM machines for scientists. However, it was not possible to steal the documentation for them, that is, bad luck. According to these schemes, Soviet engineers had to construct the same computers as American ones, but using Soviet elements. I will not go into technical details, I will only say that by the time these new “Soviet” machines started working, just ten years had passed, that is, the gap with the Americans remained the same. Time was spent on development, manufacturing and design changes. I know about this because I interned for a year and a half at the Scientific Research Center for Computer Technology (NICEVT), where these machines were developed, and then for another six months I was on a business trip to Penza, where the EC-1050 machines were manufactured. Even after the plant produced 12 of these machines and customers bought them, not one of them was yet operational due to many shortcomings. The designers, in order to speed up the work, without understanding it properly, threw out some “unnecessary” circuits in their opinion, but they were precisely needed to perform control functions, etc. After that, some things were completed in the machines, but some of their functions had to be simply abandoned refuse. But even after all the shortcomings were corrected, the machine worked very unreliably. In addition to being the head of the complex, I was also the only specialist on the processor of a machine in which serious problems occurred monthly, and minor failures occurred several times a day. When programmers I knew came to work on the machine, they sometimes jokingly asked: “Well, how is your first in Europe and second in the world working today? "). Once it happened that everything worked well except for one program. They looked for the problem for several months during daily hourly maintenance work. Finally, it was discovered that out of several thousand contacts, one was not soldered. I’ll also add for comparison, the ES-1050 occupied that area of 110 sq. m. and worked even when America already had modern personal computers with significantly higher speed and large amounts of memory.

In Ukraine, few people now know about the existence of such an institution as NII-4 MO, although twelve graduates from the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, which I graduated in 1959, were called up for military service for a period of 25 years. We all ended up in NII-4, the service was not difficult, nevertheless we all dreamed of returning to Kyiv. For several years we stuck together, went together to cheer for Dynamo Kiev, listened to Radio Liberty, but gradually Moscow “sucked us all in.” After finishing my service, I was the only one who returned to Ukraine. For me, the service was truly a “term” and this impression was strengthened by the fact that for most of the service I lived behind barbed wire.

A word about the head of NII-4 Sokolov A.I.

I would like to express my opinion about the whole era of the rise of the authority of NII-4 during its leadership by General Andrei Illarionovich Sokolov.

For quite a long time I had to communicate directly with Andrei Illarionovich, when I was appointed by him as Chairman of the internal audit commission to verify the financial and economic activities of the institute (again, a legacy of the troops). And this is, at least, a monthly report on current events and a detailed report on the results of the annual audit.

In addition, often, while still a major, I was appointed assistant to the duty officer at the Institute. At 5 p.m., the secretary, Kira Vasilievna, left, and the assistant on duty took her place until Sokolov left. I had to answer calls, call employees, and notify department heads about Sokolov’s departure. In the evening, Sokolov worked especially actively, so most of the heads of departments remained in service until his departure. (When there were no departments yet, department heads remained in service - V.S.)

General Sokolov was a very extraordinary person. He worked most of his life in the apparatus of the Komsomol Central Committee and then in the CPSU Central Committee. With Furtseva, then, under Khrushchev, who held the post of Minister of Culture, he had been on very good, friendly relations since his youth. At the Komsomol Moscow City Committee, both were heads of departments, then became heads of departments of the CPSU Central Committee. Sokolov was in charge of the Ministry of Defense. He had ebullient energy. (Furtseva even gave a lecture once at the officers’ house - V.S._

On instructions from the Central Committee, he, without a higher education, headed the 4th Directorate of the Main Artillery Directorate, formed to manage work on missile weapons. He was immediately awarded the rank of major general! Of course, he did not make much progress in the field of missile weapons, but he gained experience, and after some time he was sent to head the Missile Research Institute - NII-4 MO.

General Sokolov had great erudition and incredible business acumen. Highly competent, strong-willed, he enjoyed the trust of the government and military leadership, had extensive business connections and, of course, was a talented organizer. For all that, he did not even, as I noted earlier, have a technical higher education. Already with me, he graduated from the Rostov Rocket School as an external student. Using his connections in the CPSU Central Committee, he achieved almost unlimited funding for the institute. He correctly formulated the priority tasks of the institute, which under him became the largest and very authoritative research institute of the Ministry of Defense. He selected the leading personnel of scientific departments himself.

He understood that scientific work requires complete concentration on the problem being solved, so the researcher should be protected from everyday troubles. Consequently, it is necessary to rapidly develop the domestic sphere of the towns. In a short period of time, many residential buildings were built, which made it possible to provide individual apartments to almost everyone in need.

They said that working with General Sokolov was not easy. His exactingness towards his subordinates was reminiscent of the severity of Marshal Zhukov. But if he was convinced that his employee had done everything necessary, but the work still stalled, Andrei Illarionovich personally got involved, supported his subordinate with his specialist experience and high authority among management and subcontractors.

My friend, Lieutenant Colonel Evgeniy Kazmichev (from Babich’s department), said that when he was on a business trip, he witnessed the scolding that Sokolov made to the construction bosses due to the delay in the construction and commissioning of the test and research base at the Sary Shagan test site, on the shore of Lake Balkhash.

Kira Vasilievna, a tall, pretty and very powerful woman, was then working as Sokolov’s secretary. She had a phenomenal memory for the names and telephone numbers of not only superiors, but also leading employees of the institute. When she went home, she called the duty officer at the institute and asked him to send an assistant on duty to the reception room in her place.

Officers with the rank of major were usually appointed as assistants on duty. The distribution of orders was in charge of the head of the combat department, Major Razdorov. He was a born, very pedantic combat officer. Everything was clearly planned out for him. He not only personally briefed the institute duty officer and his assistant, but also compiled a list of reliable officers for this purpose. I was on this list and therefore only served as an assistant on duty, and later as a duty officer at a research institute. (Razdorov was a lieutenant colonel, the major was the commandant of the garrison Maslennokov. Together with Colonel Voronin, this trio ensured strict order in the unit - V.S.)

A.I. Sokolov usually worked very hard until late in the evening. He often did not go home and stayed overnight in the town in a service apartment. In addition to directing the research activities of the institute, he constantly monitored the work of all services and delved into economic affairs. The beautiful blue spruce trees in front of the new administrative building were selected from the tree nursery of the CPSU Central Committee and planted with his personal participation. A.I. Sokolov devoted a lot of time to the construction of research institute facilities, in particular, a new scientific building, which then housed our combat control and communications departments. He personally supervised the development of the project for the Strategic Missile Forces Museum, the buildings of which were to be built in the Committee Forest. And they would have built it, but Sokolov’s health had failed. There are now residential buildings in the Komitetsky Forest microdistrict, the city of Korolev.

I remember General Sokolov as a man who did not tolerate dishonesty. In my service description, written by the regiment commander, Colonel Pinchuk in Sazanka, in addition to my successes in the construction of simulators, it was noted that I successfully led the commission to verify the financial and economic activities of the unit. Someone read this, and lo and behold, I was appointed first as deputy chairman of such a commission, and then as chairman of the institute’s commission for checking financial and economic activities. One day I reported to General Sokolov about the results of another inspection that revealed abuses by some officials in the rear service. He immediately, in front of me, called his deputy for the rear, Colonel Trofimov, and pointed out in strong terms the shortcomings of his subordinates. (Trofimov was a very plump man and during one of his visits Nedelin recommended him to lose weight. There was another Trofimov at the institute, the head of an experimental plant. He had a skinny figure. At the next visit, Nedelin praised him for listening to his advice – V.S.).

He did not allow cases of abuse by management of their official position, and he himself did not give any reason for this.

One day General Sokolov called me through his secretary. I was amazed, because earlier I myself, through the secretary, asked to be accepted for the report. I, puzzled, literally ran to the waiting room. Kira Vasilyevna says: “Come in.” I came in and reported as expected. He greeted me and said:

– Evgeniy Anatolyevich, I have a confidential order for you: I was given a personal letter from one of the respected officers, which states that Comrade Kuznichenkov (Head of the Political Department), using his position, carried out luxury renovations at state expense in the new apartment provided to him. The amount of repairs is more than 15 thousand rubles. You should check this fact without attracting attention. I emphasize again - without attracting attention. Go to Lieutenant Colonel Voronin (chief of the regime service), he will familiarize you with the text of the letter, and agree with him on the verification procedure. Do you understand the task? - Yes sir!

With Lieutenant Colonel Voronin, we outlined a procedure for checking so as not to arouse suspicion among the performers of the work. As a result of a thorough check, it was found that Kuznichenkov (or his wife) did not like the doors and simple parquet flooring in the apartment prepared for him. They demanded that the doors and parquet be replaced with new ones made of valuable wood. Their demands were fulfilled. The funds spent were allocated to other items, this was discovered by the head of the financial department, Lieutenant Colonel Syroed. He did not approve these expenses of the ECH. The author of the letter apparently found out about this.

I reported to General Sokolov the results of the inspection. Sokolov thanked him and released him. I discovered the result only during the annual inspection of the financial part. A pay slip was discovered, which indicated that Kuznechenkov had paid for additional work performed during the renovation of the apartment. The amount was slightly less than previously announced. Consequently, someone advised Kuznechenkov to pay the costs. (Sokolov was no longer there when another police chief was indignant at the work of the rear service. The institute was allocated several sheepskin coats that were fashionable at that time. However, during their distribution, this chief was deprived, which caused his public indignation at one of the conferences - V.S.)

In everyday life, Sokolov was modest. In the Committee Forest he had a modest official dacha, built under General A.I. Nesterenko. When Sokolov came to head the research institute, the institute had only three buildings, two of which were rebuilt from two-story soldiers’ barracks. The residential town had three four-story dispensaries and a small one-story club.

This club later housed with difficulty the Central Laboratory of Instrumentation and Control Instruments of the institute. The laboratory was headed by our LIAP member from the special recruitment team, Seryozha Shabalin. Thanks to his initiative and activity, the concept of the central verification service of the Strategic Missile Forces was developed and established.

Under Sokolov, construction began on both scientific special buildings and residential buildings. A residential town was built up with five-story houses, floors were added to the residential buildings, and the layout of 3-4 rooms was made more comfortable. They were populated with heads of departments and heads of departments. During the time of Khrushchev, a dozen five-story block houses, two four-story dormitory houses were erected in the residential town, a department store, a canteen, and a children's technical station building were built.

Construction of the second microdistrict began at an accelerated pace on Bolshevsky Field. Two or three houses were mortgaged at once. In a short time, more than a dozen houses, two shops, a secondary school, and a children's factory were built. A chic modern House of Officers was built, in which (thanks to the efforts of the Minister of Culture Furtseva) the best artists of the country performed. (At the officers’ house there was also a gym and a swimming pool - V.S.). Workshops of a unique plant were built on the territory for the manufacture of various experimental devices, installations and stands. Special stands were built for testing experimental rocket engines, a unique supersonic wind tunnel, the only one in the country. An installation was built for conducting experiments in space, simulating rarefied layers of the atmosphere, installations for simulating the stability of rockets during launches under various conditions, and many other laboratory installations and stands. Unique spherical shelter stands were built for testing explosives in the interests of missile defense.

A film studio for the Strategic Missile Forces was built. The operators of this film studio made historical film footage of man launching into space and rocket launches from our test sites. They filmed footage of the tragedy - the explosion at the launch of the Yangel 8K64 intercontinental missile, when many people died, including the commander-in-chief of the Strategic Missile Forces, Marshal M.I. Nedelin. (Somewhere among the kilometers of films there are stills of my special one in a film about the relationship between a machine and a person - V.S.)

To get acquainted with the research carried out at the institute, the President of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Academician M.V., came to us several times. Keldysh together with Academy staff, participants in the development of rocket and space technology.

When we arrived in Bolshevo, in the second town (that’s what everyone called it) a high school was built, a second children’s factory was being built, and a dairy kitchen was being built. A large second automatic telephone exchange with 10 thousand numbers was being built.

Sokolov, like all leaders from “God,” had a special “sense” for active people, he boldly promoted them to key, leadership positions. So he found Colonel Trofimov among the troops and appointed him as his deputy for construction and logistics. (One of the streets in the city of Yubileiny is named after him.) Earlier I wrote about the very successful head of the planning department, Major Lapochenko.

Every Monday Sokolov walked around his property in the morning. He walked ceremoniously, with dignity, along the road. To his right, but half a step behind, was carried his plump body by his rear deputy, Colonel Trofimov. On the left, also half a step behind, the head of the regime service, Lieutenant Colonel Voronin, walked briskly. The head of the combat department, Major Razdorov, brought up the rear with a folder in his hands (for recording comments). Before they left, Sokolov’s secretary, Kira Vasilyevna, called all the departments and informed the bosses: “Sokolov is on the territory!” All work in the departments stopped, and all the bosses, big and small, were preparing to receive the “distinguished guest.” Everyone was watching the road and wondering where Sokolov would turn today. Sokolov always found some shortcomings and, without mincing words (without ever swearing), inflicted destruction on the next boss!

It was funny to look at Klychnikov at these moments! He called both heads of laboratories to him and ordered that the employees' desks be put in order (the presence of any papers or books in the desks was considered a violation of secret office work) and that all officers and civilian employees clean their shoes until they shine! It was funny for us to even think that General Sokolov personally checks how his employees’ shoes are cleaned and what they have in their desk drawers. Complete insanity! How could a person with such narrow thinking be entrusted with the leadership of the scientific department!

Fortunately for us, Sokolov came into our office very rarely. They said he believed that the operation of technology is not a science. This is strict compliance with the requirements of operational documentation and statutory documents. General Sokolov belonged to a cohort of people - executive leaders who devoted all their knowledge and strength to serving the state. He didn’t have a car or a garage, and he still had his personal dacha from his previous job. (In approximately the same spirit, Mikhail Botvinnik described the manager of the Urals energy system, my fellow countryman S.A. Kostogryz. This type of leader was common in the Soviet Union for a long time. By the time the state collapsed, there were almost none left - V.S.)

Sokolov left work at NII-4 only after a serious illness (repeated stroke), but despite this. Until the end of his days I thought about the institute and was interested in its affairs.