Аннотация: Alexander Shliapnikov and Oleg Baklanov. (And Victor Hugo.) Dreams and hopes. A biographical note.
Alexander Shliapnikov and Oleg Baklanov. (And Victor Hugo.) Dreams and hopes. A biographical note.
On July 28, 2021, Oleg Baklanov (1932 - 2021) passed away.
I read the memoirs about Oleg Baklanov and biographical information about him that appeared over these few days, and words are coming to memory. The words from the preface to the first volume of the memoirs by Alexander Shliapnikov (1885 - 1937), one of the members of the first Soviet government (People's Commissar of Labor of the RSFSR in 1917 - 1918): "Collecting material about Shliapnikov, getting acquainted with official documents, sometimes you feel as if you are falling into emptiness: there is so little reliable evidence of the life of a person whose name was forgotten for many years."
Who is Oleg Baklanov? Where does such a sharp rise from the very bottom to the top (of state power) come from? What are the springs (jet engines) that pushed it from the bottom to the top? What are the features of his character? Who were his parents, his ancestors? How did they affect him? What were his talents?
None of this can be understood from seperate memoirs and biographical references.
Both Shliapnikov and Baklanov took their place on the border between reality and legend.
Shliapnikov is a worker who has become a member of the government.
Baklanov is also a worker who became a minister (Minister of General Machine Building of the USSR in 1983-1988).
Baklanov's name is closely related to the Buran project. The first Soviet/Russian spaceplane, the first shuttle orbiter Buran had one successful flight.
One flight is enough to speak about the success of the project?
Further flights were stopped.
The situation turned out to be between reality and legend.
[Baklanov:] 'If it had not been for the collapse of the USSR, which we tried to prevent, then, I am convinced, we would have already visited Mars. A unique rocket "Energia" could send a human there and to return him back. That's what we were aiming for! And there were such elaborations, and the technique allowed. With this rocket, in general, we created a different dimension: one block with a mass of 105 tons! Can you imagine the Mir-2 system assembled from such modules ?! This is a whole space city and a launching complex. We planned to modernize this rocket so that it could put 200 tons into orbit (...) " (https://aif.ru/society/science/tot_kotoryy_stremilsya_na_mars_oleg_baklanov_byl_v_centre_sobytiy_20_veka?utm_source=yxnews&utm_medium=desktop)
'In size, - if we had [system] Energia-Buran, as it was planned, - it [one block, one module] would be about 50 meters long and about 8 meters in diameter. This is, in fact, the volume of a huge apartment, a good dacha, - said Baklanov in an interview with the Voice of Russia, - There you could go in for sports and creativity quite comfortly. After all, we now have an international station [ISS] based on our station [MIR], which, by the way, we drowned so ineptly [thoughtless]. We have each module 20 tons. A station is made of them. Twenty tons is our limit of possibilities, of our civilized world. And on the basis of these twenty tons an international station is being made. And if we had not stopped work on Energia-Buran, we would have had one module weighing one hundred tons. Is there a difference? .. And taking into account the modernization of Energia, we could have a mass of one module of 180 tons. This is a whole space city that would constantly function, replenish, and the crews would change. And on the basis of this technology, this dimension, it would already be possible to make an expedition to Mars and back. We have lost so easily more then twenty years period. " (https://aif.ru/society/people/za_rodinu_i_kosmos_chlen_gkchp_oleg_baklanov_veril_v_nauku_i_v_svoy_narod)
There is an elusive charm in dreams and hopes ...
The biographies of Shliapnikov and Baklanov can be approached from the other side. It can be emphasized that "ordinary people" (talented, active people) got acquainted with the achievements and theories of outstanding people, pioneers (Shliapnikov - with the achievements and theories of Western Social Democrats) (Baklanov - with the achievements and thoughts of Sergei Korolev), and made an attempt to follow their path. Something was achieved, something didn't work ...
The idea of a spaceplane ("rocket plane") was familiar to the founders of cosmonautics, it was realized for the first time in the USA ...
From publicly available sources, you can find out that only two launches of the Energia rocket were carried out:
May 15, 1987 with an experimental load: the Polyus satellite (mass and size model of the Skif-DM orbital laser platform), - was not launched into orbit due to a failure of the attitude control system of the spacecraft itself;
November 15, 1988 as part of the "Buran" complex (Buran was lifted into space, on an uncrewed mission, by the specially designed Energia rocket) ...
Reasoning from this logic, after the appearance of the Shuttle program, the Buran program should have appeared ...
Then - everything according to the scheme: government decree, allocation of funding, drawing up a project, connecting subcontractors, etc. Talents and personal energy are combined with a potential and with organizational schemes created or improved during the activity of Sergei Korolev ...
And "secrets" should be sought not in the biographies of Shliapnikov and Baklanov, but in the biographies of theorists and practitioners of Western Social Democracy (for Shliapnikov) and in the biography of Sergei Korolev (for Oleg Baklanov).
This option looks much less romantic ...
(It seems that neither in Shliapnikov, nor in Baklanov we can find what was in Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885) ...).
Both Shliapnikov and Baklanov tasted a life behind bars.
Each of them is the author of books.
Once I downloaded the memoirs by Alexander Shliapnikov without any difficulty.
I haven't been able to get Oleg Baklanov's books for reading yet.
We will not underestimate the scale of the personality of either Alexander Shliapnikov or Oleg Baklanov ... We only express our regret on the minimal amount of biographical details, which makes it difficult to understand the personality of Oleg Baklanov.
It remains to be hoped that after reading the books written by Oleg Baklanov, I will be able to understand the secrets of his personality and the keys of his biography.
August 5, 2021 02:25
Translation from Russian into English: August 5, 2021 13:53.
Владимир Владимирович Залесский 'Александр Шляпников и Олег Бакланов. (И Виктор Гюго). Мечты и надежды. Биографическая заметка'.