This man survived so that, having gone through thorns, he would be the first to lead humanity to the stars. His name - Sergei Pavlovich Korolev. There was probably no other person on Earth before him who loved the sky so much. And women.

Love and space

Even his first kiss with the girl of his dreams happened on his roof. He lived then in Odessa. U Ksenia Vincentini, or at Lyali, as everyone called her, there were always many fans. Earring Korolev is just one of them. But he tried to do everything so that she would become only his girlfriend: he walked around her upside down, swam under a barge in the sea, and even did a handstand for her on the edge of the roof of a two-story Odessa morgue. Apparently, all this made the necessary impression on Lyalya. And then, right on the roof, she finally allowed him to kiss her for the first time.

While leaving to study at the aviation department of the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, Seryozhka proposed to her. She replied that, although she loved him, she did not intend to get married until she learned to earn money on her own.

It turned out that he studied in Kyiv, then at the Moscow Higher Technical School in Moscow, and she in Kharkov, to become a doctor. After graduation, Ksenia is assigned to work in Donbass. While there, Korolev again tries to get Lyalya’s consent to the marriage. She refuses again, citing a new reason: what’s the point of getting married if you still have to live apart for two or three years while you work as assigned. And Korolev decides to get his superiors to release Ksenia early. In the end, in August 1931, she became his wife, and soon he still took her to Moscow...

Sergei Korolev with his wife Ksenia Vincentini. 1932 Photo: RIA Novosti

But here’s a mystery: as soon as Korolev achieves what he has dreamed of all these 7 years, he quickly loses interest in his wife and begins to get carried away with other women. They told the following story: “One day Lyalya was cleaning Sergei’s jacket. And suddenly... two tickets to the Bolshoi Theater fell out of her pocket. Korolev didn’t say anything about them. So, Lyalya decided, she would go with some lady. And Lyalya had an admirer from high-ranking military men. And it was not difficult to persuade him to take her to the Bolshoi. Both couples encountered a beautiful brunette during the intermission. Seeing his wife, Korolev rushed away from his beauty, like a cat from the table, and immediately began to make excuses, saying: “They accidentally proposed. tickets... It was inconvenient to refuse... Where will we meet after the performance?" - "Why should we meet? - asked Ksenia. “They will escort me out.” And she looked at her military man. Here Korolev could not stand it: “No. We'll go together!" Where he took his lady is unknown. But he took his wife away from the theater himself..."

Such adventures of her husband brought Ksenia to the point that in the spring of 1948 she poured out all her feelings in a letter to Korolev’s mother: “You know the whole story of our love well. There was a lot of grief even before 1938 (the year of Korolev’s arrest. - Author) to survive, and, despite the remaining feeling of affection and some kind of love for S., I firmly decided... to leave him so that he could continue his life under his favorite slogan “Let everyone live as he wants...”

Sergei Korolev and Ksenia Vincentini dated and were “listed” as married for a quarter of a century, but lived together for about 8 years, and only in fits and starts. Their daughter Natasha, who was under the influence of her mother, learned about her “father’s infidelities” at the age of 12. She tore into small pieces all the photographs of him that came to hand, and declared that she did not want to see him anymore. The rift between daughter and father remained for life. They met rarely, but most often they were like strangers. The Queen was not at her wedding either. In turn, according to the famous chronicler of the space age Yaroslava Golovanov, when Korolev called her from Baikonur to congratulate her on her birthday, she hung up. And he sat and cried...

Loneliness

The second wife could probably subscribe to many of the pain-filled words of the first.

To get an idea of ​​how he started relationships with the weaker sex and how he behaved further, let’s use the memories of his second wife, Nina. She told Yaroslav Golovanov about this with all the details. So: “In the spring of 1947, at NII-88 I was the only “English” woman, the rest of the translators were “Germans.” One day the boss says: “Korolev has accumulated a lot of English magazines. Go, he will show you what to translate..."

I'm coming. The secretary says: "He's busy." I hear him talking on the phone. The conversation ended, and the office door opened slightly: “Are you coming to me? Please... Sit down...” He introduced himself: “Sergei Pavlovich Korolev.”

Nina Ivanovna,” I say. - Unemployed translator.

“That’s what I understood,” Korolev smiled and took out a pile of English and American magazines. - Translate this article, please.

I understood that I had made a bad translation because I didn’t know the meaning of purely technical terms... “Yes, it’s really bad,” said Korolev. They gave me an engineer with whom I could translate the article correctly. I'm going to see Korolev again. And so he began to call me more and more often. Somehow I put the translation in front of him, he reads it, and he... takes my hand. I move my hand away. He paused. Asks:

What are you doing on Sunday?

I don't have any plans yet...

Do you mind relaxing together?

What do you mean?

Well... let's go to the restaurant... let's dance...

I don’t like restaurants, but let’s go, I say, just somewhere away from the city...

His driver took us to Khimki. We walked along the embankment near the River Station. Then we had lunch at a restaurant. We drank a little. And suddenly he began to tell me so openly about his life, about Germany, about the family to which he decided not to return... I was even confused: we had met only recently...

When we were returning to Podlipki, I asked where to take me. She gave the address. To our great surprise, it turned out that we live not only in the same house, but also in the same entrance: my mother’s apartment is on the first floor, and the Queen’s is on the second. We went up to him. Now why lie: I stayed with him that first evening. And, as it turned out, for the rest of my life... I was 27. He was 40.”

What happened next?

His wife has changed, but Korolev is again on indefinite business trips, and he is again tormented by loneliness. More than once, as if apologizing, Sergei Pavlovich writes to his new wife about his difficulties and experiences. He writes that he has no one else to tell about this, since his closest friend and girlfriend is her! It is no coincidence that he always adds the words: “After all, I have no one to talk about this with except you.” Apparently, his new wife is also starting to get tired of his “outpourings” about eternal problems at work and in the soul. And with the new woman he loves so much, he feels lonely. In general, geniuses are most often unlucky in their personal lives. I remember the words Natalia Nikolaevna Goncharova to Pushkin: “And how tired I am of you with your poems!” And Korolev writes: “Well, I can’t help but write to you, my friend, and pour out my soul...” The eternal tragedy of geniuses!!!

Dossier

S. Korolev was born on January 12, 1907. Under his leadership, the Jet Propulsion Research Group (GIRD) launched the first Soviet rocket on August 17, 1933. Then there was the Jet Research Institute (RNII), then the arrest. He was accused of “sabotage as part of an anti-Soviet organization.” At first they gave me 10 years. Then, in 1940, the term was reduced by 2 years. He spent his time working in the “Tupolev charaga” - the design bureau behind barbed wire. For work that was of “important defense significance”, he was awarded a personal letter Beria to Stalin- released early in August 1944. In September 1945, Korolev was sent to Germany to study the experience of Nazi engineers. Returning in January 1947, he quickly and successfully designed and tested his own missiles, which immediately increased the power of the USSR Armed Forces.

In 1957, the R-7 rocket was successfully tested, with the help of which the world's first artificial Earth satellite was soon launched into orbit. On April 12, 1961, the same rocket ensured Gagarin's flight. The first female astronaut also broke through into the Universe on it. V. Tereshkova, And A. Leonov, who performed the first ever spacewalk in March 1965. Unfortunately, this success was the last in the life of the great designer; he died in 1966.

By the way

There is a legend among astronauts: after the cremation of Korolev’s body Gagarin And Komarov begged for part of his ashes to send it to the interplanetary station in a special container with a coat of arms Soviet Union to the moon. How was it really? Probably no one knows anymore. Komarov died tragically. A year later, Gagarin passed away no less tragically.

Exactly 105 years ago, a pioneer of astronautics was born in Zhitomir

“Mom recalled that her father declared his love for her and offered to become his wife when they were both 17 years old - immediately after graduating from school in Odessa,” she said by phone from Moscow daughter of the designer of the world's first space rocket Sergei Korolev Natalya. “Mom then reasonably answered: “Where and for what will we live? First you need to get higher education" So my parents - Ksenia and Sergei - got married only eight years later. All this time we lived and studied in different cities, rarely seeing each other. But they often wrote to each other. The wedding took place when my mother came on a business trip to Moscow for a few days. Here it must be said that she graduated from a medical institute in Kharkov and was assigned to the Donbass, to the city of Alchevsk. Dad was a student at the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute for several years. When the aviation department at this university was closed, I transferred to the Moscow Higher Technical School. In Moscow he was then offered a job in his specialty.

*Having read Konstantin Tsiolkovsky’s book about the possibility of space flights in his youth, Korolev became interested in the idea of ​​​​creating rockets. In the picture he is photographed with the first cosmonaut of the Earth Yuri Gagarin

It seemed that my father would devote himself to aviation. He became deputy chief engineer for flight testing at the famous Central Hydrodynamic Institute. But after reading Konstantin Tsiolkovsky’s book about the possibility of space flights, I became interested in this idea. He specially traveled to Kaluga to meet with Tsiolkovsky. In Moscow I met like-minded people. After their main work, they gathered in the evenings in a shabby basement and designed the first Soviet rocket. The launch took place in August 1933. The rocket soared into the sky to a height of 400 meters. Of course, its creators were not paid any money. My grandmother said that when Sergei lacked tin for soldering contacts, he begged her for several tin spoons. The importance of the work of these enthusiasts was appreciated by Marshal Tukhachevsky. He helped create the world's first Jet Institute. My father was appointed deputy director. But the relationship with the director did not work out. In the end, dad was demoted - he became just an engineer. As it turned out, this saved his life, because when the repressions began, the leadership of the institute was shot. And the father was sentenced to ten years.

At the beginning of October 1938, dad was sent to a transit prison in Novocherkassk. He sent several letters from there. In one of them he mentioned that he had heard about the achievements of the famous pilot Valentina Grizodubova, and in conclusion asked to say hello to Uncle Misha.

“There was no person with that name among the relatives or close acquaintances,” Natalya Koroleva continues the story. - Maria Nikolaevna and her mother guessed - we are talking about the Hero of the Soviet Union, pilot Mikhail Gromov, who made a flight with his crew through North Pole in America. At the time this was an outstanding achievement. My father suggested turning to Gromov and Grizodubova for help, because these people known throughout the country knew him. With considerable difficulty, the grandmother found out that the famous pilot lived in a new, as they now say, elite house on Bolshaya Gruzinskaya Street. The building is surrounded by a lattice fence. The gatekeeper sits in a booth at the gate. Maria Nikolaevna dressed in her best - her favorite dress, patent leather shoes, a squirrel fur coat. In the tone of a confident woman, she asked the gatekeeper: “Is Mikhail Mikhailovich home?” Take me to him." The trick worked. Gromov agreed to help - he made a written request to the Chairman of the Supreme Court of the USSR Ivan Golyakov, and as a result, Korolev’s case was reviewed. Mom also found Valentina Grizodubova. The pilot also wrote a letter to Ulrich asking him to help my father.

“After his experience at the Kolyma mine Maldyak, dad hated gold all his life.”

“But in the transit prison in Novocherkassk they didn’t know about all this and sent dad to Kolyma to the Maldyak gold mine,” says Natalya Sergeevna. “On the way, the prisoners came up with the idea of ​​throwing small letters through the bars of the carriage. They were written with a pencil stub on narrow pieces of tissue paper, so the messages consisted of only a few words. The leaves were placed in triangular envelopes made from shag wrappers, sealed with bread crumb, and the address was indicated. To make the letter easier to notice, a crust of bread was tied to it with threads pulled from a towel. Between the envelope and the cover, they inserted a ruble and a note with a request to stick a stamp and throw it in the mailbox. Several of these letters from my father reached my mother.

Dad miraculously survived at the mine. His health had deteriorated greatly - his legs were swollen, his teeth became loose and began to fall out, and his tongue was swollen. The headman - an authoritative criminal - got mad at him because his father stood up for some goner prisoner. The Queen began to be deprived of rations. I went to Maldyak in the 1990s. I met an elderly woman there who worked as a camp doctor. Even then she told me about Stalin's times in a whisper. There were no medicines. All diseases were treated with potassium permanganate. To strengthen the patients' teeth affected by scurvy, the medical staff carried grated toothpaste from home. raw potatoes.

My father was saved by the former director of the Moscow Aviation Plant, Mikhail Usachev. He also received a sentence. When he was taken to the mine, he managed to make the criminals respect him. In one of the tents, the headman showed him Korolev and explained that he was not a tenant - he was not even able to stand on his feet. Usachev recognized his father and got him transferred to the infirmary. And soon an order came to send the pope to Moscow to review the case. By the way, from then on he literally hated gold. A second trial took place, which commuted the original sentence - from ten to eight years in prison.

Around this time, another prisoner who later became famous, aircraft designer Andrei Tupolev, received a government task to create a new bomber. The work was carried out in the so-called “sharashka” - an institute behind barbed wire where slaves worked. When gathering the team, Tupolev asked to give him Korolev, whom he remembered as a student. Dad created the wing design of the Tu-2 - one of the best bombers of the Great Patriotic War Patriotic War. The team rightly assumed that after the successful completion of work on this aircraft, the designers would be released. But my father found out that in Kazan his colleague, also a prisoner, Valentin Glushko was working on a plane with a jet engine. He wrote a statement and was transferred to Valentin Petrovich as a deputy. In Kazan, my father almost died: during testing, the car began to burn. The pilot shouted for his father, who had taken to the skies as a test engineer, to jump with a parachute. But Korolev wanted to understand the causes of the problem and stayed. Fortunately, the pilot was able to land the plane safely. My father and several other people were released early in the summer of 1944 - almost a year after Tupolev’s group was released.

"Me and all my children are Queens"

“Dad was able to get home only in the fall of 1944,” recalls Natalya Sergeevna. “I was nine years old then.” I didn't know that my father was in prison. At first, my mother said that he was carrying out an important government task, and when the war began - that he was at the front. I recognized him immediately - from the photographs, and overjoyed, I rushed to call my grandmother and mother at work. Throughout the next night, dad told them what he had experienced during his six years of imprisonment. However, this did not embitter the father. You know, he was sincerely upset when Stalin died in March 1953. Korolev met with the leader twice after his release. I was surprised by his competence in matters of rocket technology.

— Was your father rehabilitated then?

- No. They just let me go. The state rehabilitated him only in 1957, before the launch of the first artificial Earth satellite in human history. By the way, the Nobel Committee wanted to award the leader of this project with the Nobel Prize. But the name Korolev was kept secret. The committee made a second attempt after Yuri Gagarin's space flight. Khrushchev responded to the appeal from Stockholm: “One person cannot be named; the creator of new technology in our country is the whole people.” The world learned his father's name after his death in January 1966. But the Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously.

— Immediately after the victory in 1945, did you live with your father in Germany?

- Yes. Dad was given an officer rank and, as part of a group of specialists, was sent to defeated Germany to understand the secrets of the German V-2 rocket, designer Wernher von Braun. We lived with my father all summer, but in the fall my mother decided to return to Moscow with me. She was pregnant at that time. Dad really wanted this child, but mom decided not to give birth.

— Already then there was a rift between the parents?

- Maybe. When dad returned from Germany, he and mom lived in an apartment on Konyushkovskaya, and I lived with some grandparents, sometimes with others. I dreamed: I would finish school and move in with my parents. And suddenly, like a bolt from the blue, my father filed for divorce. The relatives were in shock. I was 14 years old when the marriage was dissolved. Dad moved in with his new wife Nina Ivanovna (she was 27 then, Korolev was 43 years old. - Author). They had no children. So I am the only daughter of the Queen. My mother set a condition: I can see my father, but without his wife. This condition was difficult to fulfill, because Nina Ivanovna was next to her dad all the time. Our meetings at the dacha turned out to make me terribly upset and cry. Of course, I was very offended by my father.

After school, I entered medical school, my dad was busy with space affairs, so we rarely communicated. When I got married, I began to see my father more often. I went to visit him first on my own, then with my husband and son. The father passed away due to an unsuccessful operation when his grandson was three years old. Dad carried two kopeck coins in his jacket pocket for good luck. When he went to the hospital to undergo surgery, there were no “lucky” coins in his pocket... (The intervention to remove the polyp, which was performed by Health Minister Boris Petrovsky, did not seem difficult to the surgeons. But serious complications arose that the doctors could not cope with. - Author .)

*This photograph taken in 2000 shows Natalya Koroleva with her three children Andrei (left), Sergei and Maria

“I have two sons and a daughter,” continues Natalya Koroleva. “I named my second son Sergei in honor of my father. Me and all my children are Queens. I already have five grandchildren. One of the granddaughters has the same name as me - Natalya Sergeevna. She is 24 years old, she followed in my footsteps. Another granddaughter - she is also 24 - was named after my mother, Ksenia. The grandson received the name Pavel (he is now 15 years old) with the expectation that if he has a son, then he, like his great-grandfather, will be Sergei Pavlovich Korolev. I worked at the operating table for 40 years as a thoracic surgeon. She defended her doctorate, professor, laureate of the USSR State Prize. Now I teach at the First Moscow Medical Institute. I lead an active lifestyle. On New Year I went skiing to France in the Alps. I take part in many special events. Last summer, for example, I was at the opening of the monument to Yuri Gagarin in London on Trafalgar Square. Prince Michael took part in this ceremony.

Photo from Natalia Koroleva’s book “S.P. Korolev. Father"

According to the waves of my memory

Natalia, daughter of the famous General Designer Sergei Korolev: “I couldn’t understand how my father exchanged my smart, beautiful mother to another woman"

April 12 - Cosmonautics Day
“Father” - so simply and succinctly Natalya Sergeevna called her book in two parts, which was published in 2002, - a fusion of documentary chronicle, strict historical research and personal confession.

Natalia Sergeevna Koroleva and I have known each other for a long time. A well-known pulmonary surgeon in Moscow, Doctor of Medical Sciences, teacher, professor, laureate of the USSR State Prize, an interesting interlocutor - Natalia Sergeevna is a remarkable person in herself. I remember the shock I felt when I first entered the home museum of Sergei Korolev in the late 70s, created shortly after the death of the General Designer by his mother Maria Nikolaevna Balanina. Among the exhibits I saw a camp mug and other belongings of prisoner Korolev... And here I am again on 2nd Miusskaya. The mistress of the house, as in previous years, has an extremely busy schedule: lectures, exams, consultations and work that has been ongoing for so many years to perpetuate the memory of her father. “Father” - so simply and succinctly Natalya Sergeevna called her book in two parts, which was published in 2002, - a fusion of documentary chronicle, strict historical research and personal confession. I read it before the meeting in Moscow without stopping.

"FATHER DID NOT LIKE GOLD UNTIL THE END OF HIS LIFE"

- Natalia Sergeevna, many books have been published about the General Designer here and abroad, among them such fundamental ones as “Korolev. Facts and Myths” by Yaroslav Golovanov. When and why did you feel the need to put pen to paper yourself?

I conceived a book about my father a long time ago, shortly after he passed away and the name of the chief designer was declassified. Many writers came to us and offered, including me, to create a book together.

Back then I still thought that only writers write books. Grandma Maria Nikolaevna Balanina thought so too. In the end, she decided that she would tell journalists and writers everything she knew about her son, especially about his childhood and youth - about what no one but her could tell. My mother, Ksenia Maximilianovna, made the same decision... Everything that was published by writers then was largely written from their words. But the more books about my father appeared, the more the desire matured in me to tell everything myself. Alas, all hands did not reach. I was incredibly busy: I operated every day... There are nine people in the house: three children, grandmother, mother-in-law, mother...

I hope you have noticed that in my book direct speech occurs only where the story comes from me: what I myself saw, heard, felt. Unlike, say, Golovanov’s truly fundamental book. He has a continuous direct speech: “Korolyov thought...”, “Korolyov said...”. The author did not see any of this, did not hear, was not present and could not be present, so he has too much myths. I initially avoided such things in every possible way. Everything is based on documents, letters, and memories - my own, my mother’s, my grandmother’s and people who knew Sergei Pavlovich closely.

You did what none of Korolev’s biographers succeeded in: you went around and flew around all the places where he lived, worked, and suffered. Butyrka, transit prisons in Novocherkassk, Khabarovsk, Vladivostok, Kolyma... What new things have you discovered?

In one of the letters to her brother Vasily in Saratov, my grandmother wrote during the war: “Seryozhka is still there... Fortunately, there are not only Kostiks living in the world (“Kostik” - Kostikov, a member of the 1938 expert commission, who played a sinister role in "delo Korolev"), but there are also small, inconspicuous, warm-hearted, or rather, humane people." Meaning those who helped her son in those terrible years.

My father, a leading engineer at one of the research institutes and a specialist in rocket aircraft, was arrested on June 27, 1938 as “a member of an anti-Soviet Trotskyist sabotage organization.” Accused "of a crime - as he wrote in one of his many statements from prison - in a case that is the goal of my life and created by me." This monstrous accusation at that time was punishable by the highest degree. The search went on all night. I was then with my grandmother Sofia Fedorovna Vincentini at the dacha. At dawn, my father was taken away. Mom immediately called Maria Nikolaevna. She said: “Sergei is no more.” - “Why not! Is he dead? Alive? Well, thank God.” Mom: “You probably didn’t understand. Sergei was arrested. He’s no more.” And the grandmother replied: “He is alive, so we will fight.”

At the family council, it was decided that Maria Nikolaevna would bother the NKVD, since the wives of “enemies of the people” were often arrested after their husbands, and mothers were not touched. She knocked on all doors. Alas... The first to respond were Mikhail Mikhailovich Gromov and Valentina Stepanovna Grizodubova - legendary pilots, Heroes of the Soviet Union, deputies of the Supreme Council. It was thanks to their petition that the decision was made to reconsider the case and to return the father to Moscow.

While the “notice” about the delivery of the prisoner Korolev to Moscow for reconsideration of the case was passing through the authorities, the father was taken to the Kolyma penal servitude at the Maldyak gold mine. At this mine he went through all the circles of hell in the Gulag penal servitude. He did not like gold until the end of his life. And he repeated more than once: “I hate gold!”

“THE CRIMINAL ELDER SHOWED THE “WORK”: “THE KING... FROM YOURSELF. IT'S LIKELY TO RECOVER"

- One day a young guy came to see his mother on Konyushevskaya early in the morning. I gave a letter from my father. Vasily - that was the guy's name - was serving time for a criminal offense and lived in the same tent with prisoner Korolev.

From him, my mother and grandmother learned that my father’s health was deteriorating every day. His gums were bleeding, his teeth became loose and began to fall out, his tongue became swollen, and his legs began to swell. There was almost no chance left, no hope, and then Mikhail Aleksandrovich Usachev, the former director of the Moscow Aviation Plant, where the plane on which Chkalov crashed in December 1938, was built, appeared in the camp. The director, of course, was immediately imprisoned.

A former boxing coach, Usachev decided to restore order in the camp and rein in the head of the criminals, who especially mocked “enemies of the people.” After two or three “boxing lessons,” he became obedient and took Usachev to show “his farm.” In one of the tents, the headman showed him a “gone man”: “The king... One of yours. He’s unlikely to recover.”

Usachev came up, threw off his rags and recognized the “goon” as Sergei Korolev, whom he remembered well from Moscow. On the same day, at his insistence, my father was transferred to the medical unit and provided with “enhanced” nutrition. The camp doctor brought raw potatoes from home, from which those suffering from scurvy squeezed the juice to rub their sore gums.

My father, by the way, never forgot the people who helped him. In the early 60s, he found Usachev and took him to work. Mikhail Aleksandrovich has a sin - it happened that he looked into the bottle. Nevertheless, the father called his deputy and said: “Whatever this man does, don’t touch him.”

- Apparently, the memory of the camp lived in him until the end of his life?

Leonid Lvovich Kerber, Doctor of Technical Sciences, laureate of the Lenin and State Prizes of the USSR, Deputy General Designer, also a former prisoner, told me about his last meeting with his father in 1965. In the evening he came to Korolev’s Ostankino house not alone, but with Yeger Sergei Mikhailovich, a famous aircraft designer, Hero of Socialist Labor, also a laureate and a former prisoner. Kerber remembered the guards at the gate and the words of Korolev, full of sad irony: “You know, guys, the most amazing thing is that there is still so much in common between this current situation and that time. Sometimes you wake up at night, lie and think: “Here, Maybe someone has already found him, gave the command, and these same polite guards will brazenly come in here and say: “Come on, you bastard, pack your things!”

- What happened after Kolyma?

Butyrka again. Internal prison of the NKVD. And after the “revision” there were agonizing days of waiting for a new stage, from which the “Tupolev Sharashka” - the diabolical invention of the system - saved. In the special prisons of the NKVD, "sharashkas" - with a special, more tolerant regime, normal nutrition - the most talented engineers, general designers, world-class specialists worked in the design bureau, created new aircraft, jet engines, and military equipment, which played a significant role during the war. These “sharashki”, and this also cannot be ignored, saved the lives of my father, Tupolev, and many future Heroes of Socialist Labor and laureates.

I read somewhere: every person, in addition to the usual superiors, has two generals: General Chance and General Luck!

They, these generals of fate, played a huge role in my father’s life. He could have been shot in Moscow in the first weeks after his arrest, and in Kolyma, in Maldyak, where the firing squads worked tirelessly.

I was told about a case when a prosecutor, a member of the “troika,” arrived at two in the morning and by six in the morning had “considered” more than 200 cases. 135 people were sentenced to death. All this is in absentia. None of them were asked a single question. This father's fate has passed.

When I read your book, I couldn’t help but feel that you were conducting some kind of unspoken polemic with Golovanov, with other authors of books about your father. First of all, about the personal drama that your family has experienced. According to Golovanov, discord in the Korolev family began long before his arrest (1938). “Natasha found out about her father’s “betrayal,” the journalist writes. “She tore into small pieces all his photographs that were found in the house, and stated that she did not want to see him and henceforth refused to see her father.” And this alienation continued. “Korolyov made several attempts at reconciliation with his daughter, encountered a sharp, if not aggressive, refusal and abandoned the attempts.” How was it really like for grandfather?

Just as it is written in my book. I spoke absolutely frankly about the family drama, about my father’s departure, about our relationship, without polemicizing with anyone. Especially with Golovanov. I told him everything I wanted earlier, at the presentation of his book. She said that a lot of things about him were not true. And, pouring salt into the difficult-to-heal wounds of family drama, he denigrates my mother, my grandmother, and me.

Who gave him the right to write in the book that, they say, the Queen was annoyed by her wife’s pregnancy? My parents were really expecting a child, and my father definitely wanted a daughter. I even came up with a name long before I was born - in honor of my favorite literary heroine Natasha Rostova. Everyone who was part of the circle of people close to my father knew this well. After listening to my remark, Golovanov said: “I think so.”

What about the story with the photographs? Never in my life have I torn up a single photograph of my father. I think it's just dishonesty.

Golovanov and I were on very good terms - he spent a lot of time at our house and recorded his grandmother many times. He gave her books with beautiful inscriptions: they say, you, Maria Nikolaevna, “can consider yourself a co-author of everything that I wrote about your son...”. This did not stop him from placing a libel on her in Komsomolskaya Pravda on her grandmother’s 90th birthday: they say that she undeservedly accepted congratulations from people. What did she supposedly do for her son? That's all she gave birth to...

Nevertheless, when Golovanov died, at his wake, at the memorial service, I considered it my duty, since he wrote a book about my father, to speak. And, of course, I said good things about him...

"MOM FOUND OUT THAT A WOMAN APPEARED IN FATHER'S LIFE"

- Natalia Sergeevna! I remember one conversation you had with your father. I even wrote out these lines to myself: “Finally, I asked him a question that had been on my tongue from the very beginning, why did you and your mother break up? He answered that the relationship between a man and a woman is a complex area of ​​​​human relations and that I will be able to understand it then when I get married myself. This answer did not satisfy me..." Then. And now?

He left, and all night I thought about him, about my mother, about how much I love them both. And how bad it is that we don’t live together. Why are two people who loved each other so much: he sought my mother’s hand for seven years, breaking up? Now I think I can explain it. They were both very strong personalities. The father's determination is well known. My mother was also a very strong person: an associate professor of the department, she successfully operated, taught - she was a self-sufficient person in everything. No wonder they say: two bears cannot live in the same den.

And further. Nina Ivanovna Koroleva (father's second wife) breathed Sergei Pavlovich. After marriage she did not work, she was always at home waiting for him. Mom couldn't do that.

In the summer of 1945, my father, as a rocket specialist, was sent to Germany. The Rabe (Raven) Institute was created there, where Soviet and German rocket scientists worked side by side. In March 1946, families of rocket officers were allowed to come to Germany. My father - by that time a lieutenant colonel - immediately wrote to my mother and me. He was very happy about our arrival. All his free time, and this was in the summer, he tinkered with me. Finally, my parents, who loved each other, separated by the will of fate for eight long years, began to live together again under one roof. Unfortunately, living together did not bring joy and satisfaction.

My father, having finally gotten his hands on what he loved, was incredibly busy and very tired. Mom rarely saw him. I languished from inaction and loneliness. She wrote in her diary: “Yes, truly, I don’t know how to be a housewife, who represents nothing like “I,” a person and just a wife.” She was eager to leave Germany, and by the beginning of 1947 we were already in Moscow.

History repeated itself in the spring of '47. Father was given one-room apartment at his place of work in Kaliningrad (now the city of Korolev). He invited my mother to move there with me. It would seem that the mother-in-law should have said: “Of course, go. Maybe this move is the last chance to save the family.” But even she, being a very wise woman, told her daughter-in-law: “No. There is no need to go.” Do you understand? This means there was already some kind of crack. It is felt (the camp years did not pass without a trace) even in the most tender, piercing letters from captivity. Let me quote excerpts from some of them. Here is one conveyed by my father with the opportunity in January 1942:

“Lyale. Only in person... How many times during these many long months and years of our separation, my wanderings and ordeals, I remembered you, I remembered down to the smallest detail, down to the individual strokes and words of our life! It would seem that much that was forgotten, came up in my memory again and again. And always and everywhere these memories gave me strength for further life and the struggle for life. You were the personification of light and happiness in my life. All the best, the happiest is connected with you, and it is not surprising that. I remember all this and will never forget.

As always, in the most difficult moments of my life, you and only you alone knew how to share and alleviate my grief. I know that (to say) over the years you have suffered as much as can befall a person. But I know that you endured everything courageously and that our friendship and our love did not go out. It fills me with pride and gives me a lot of strength and vigor."

And in the same letter there are bitter words about the future:

“I don’t see an end to my situation... in general, what can I count on next, for I am always and again a likely candidate (for imprisonment. - N.K.). And besides, this means always burdening your and Natasha’s fate. I don’t even know, in the best case scenario, whether we can all live together again, since you and Natasha are my whole life - I have and cannot have anything else..."

For his excellent work in creating jet systems for airplanes, his father was released early only in August 1944 (with his criminal record expunged, but without rehabilitation, which he would achieve only in April 1957). Freed, he is back to doing what he loves. Only at the end of November 1944 did he manage to fly to Moscow for a short time.

“... our Moscow meeting somehow flew by especially quickly and each of us was left with a lot of unsaid and, perhaps, misunderstood things,”- my father wrote immediately after returning from Moscow to Kazan.

"...You're right, we've both become better people, and we've both begun to treat people and ourselves more thoughtfully and carefully. I'm making every effort to finally get to Moscow for a longer period, to be with him longer and closer you - that’s how it’s formed in my head and in my heart now, and without discord this time. But life together, as, for example, we had on this visit, it confuses me very much...

...I remember our cat as often as is probably possible for such a strange and busy person like me. Her big card is on my table... I hug and kiss you tightly. Be calm and strong, my beloved... Always yours, Sergei."

Amazing letters. They are filled with great love and uncertainty, and a reluctance to burden the fates of people dear to him. So it's not just about two strong personalities?

Perhaps you are right. The letters really do explain a lot. In Germany the crack has deepened. Mom then felt that something was happening, not at all what was needed. Although, by the way, she was pregnant. And another child could be born. Maybe the son his father dreamed of.

Hard to say. For a man, this argument is probably not decisive. And then a woman appeared in my father’s life, Nina Ivanovna. Mom found out about this and stayed in Moscow. I had no idea about the drama, the catastrophe that was approaching. Thunder struck only on the day of the divorce.

Mom lived then on Konyushevskaya, in one room of our former two-room apartment. After my father’s arrest, the second room was confiscated, and it was occupied by the policeman’s family. At that time I lived with two grandparents in Maria Nikolaevna’s apartment. My father came to visit me and my grandmother, his mother. I dreamed that I would graduate from school and finally we would settle somewhere and live together.

June 24, 1949 is one of the darkest days on my calendar. I was called from the dacha. At home I saw crying grandmothers and upset grandfathers. Mom, who was in a terrible state, said: “You don’t have a father anymore.” I asked: “Is he dead?” - “No, he didn’t die, but he left our family.”

"THE FATHER SAID THAT YOU SHOULD WRITE: 'WAS ARRESTED.' RELEASED WITH A CRIMINAL RECORD CLEARED"

- Natalia Sergeevna, I understand how painful it is to remember. Still, what was your first reaction?

It was a big trauma for me. I absolutely could not understand how a person whom I loved very much - this was instilled in me since childhood - could do such a thing. He was gone for many years, yet everyone: mother, grandmother, said only good things.

- Did you know his story?

Of course not. I had no idea he was under arrest.

- At 14 years old?

It was impossible to talk about it then. The arrest of Sergei Pavlovich became popular topic only in the 80s.

- And in the family?

They protected me in every possible way. When I was little, my mother and grandmother, explaining my father’s long absence, said: “Your dad is a pilot. He’s on a business trip.” Since the end of 1940, apparently, in order to raise the morale of prisoners, the Tupolev Sharashka began to allow visits from relatives from time to time. The meetings took place in Butyrka prison. Before the first such date, mom said that dad had flown in for a while, and we would go to see him. We walked to the meeting place through a small courtyard. When I saw my father, my first question was: “How could you land your plane in such a small courtyard?” Instead of his father, the “uncle” accompanying him answered: “Oh, girl, it’s easy to land here, but it’s much more difficult to fly away.” During the war years, it was even easier to explain my father’s “business trip.” In a word, I didn’t know...

Only later, when it was time for me to fill out the forms, my father once said that I needed to write: “I was arrested. Released with my criminal record expunged.” But we digress...

- What happened after the divorce?

The next day, my father came to me with Nina Ivanovna - he wanted to introduce us. But I was completely numb and couldn’t talk. I couldn’t understand how my father could exchange my smart, beautiful mother for another woman. Therefore, we did not have any kind of emotional meeting. They left, and I cried and worried for a very long time. Grandmother, Maria Nikolaevna, said: “Well, what to do... Since this happened, you must forgive your father. When you grow up, you will understand”...

I just hated him then. And not so much him as Nina Ivanovna. How can one do this, knowing that Sergei Pavlovich has a wife and daughter? How could you sit down in a living place? Here I had a living resentment towards my father (this feeling had long passed) and, of course, the voice of blood. All the years after he left I really wanted to see him.

In the fall of 1958, I unexpectedly fell ill with pulmonary tuberculosis. Mom was in despair: my grandfather, Pavel Yakovlevich Korolev, died young from this disease. He is buried in Kyiv. The father responded immediately to the grandmother's alarm call. The very next day he went with me to the clinic, where I was given a ticket to a sanatorium near Moscow. The treatment was successful. On New Year's Eve I received a letter from my father. He wrote that due to being busy he could not visit me, which he really regrets.

Letters from my father... Among them is a very special one, written for my coming of age. On April 10, 1953, I turned 18 years old. Here are the lines that are etched into the soul, into the memory for life: "... always love our people and the land on which you grew up... Your personal life is largely in your hands, and good people you will meet a lot in the world. There will be great love and friendship - all this will definitely happen!” This surprisingly bright letter also contains sad lines, the quiet cry of a sick father’s soul: “I think your behavior towards me is wrong, dear Natasha. I ask you to think about it carefully. I sincerely love you, I remember you often and I really want you to see me again and so that the alienation that has been created over the years is broken.” last years. You are now an adult yourself
you understand a lot... Don’t forget your father, who loves you very much, always remembers and will never forget. I hug and kiss you tightly, tightly. Always your friend Sergei."

After receiving this letter, I thought painfully for a long time about how to behave. My heart was torn between love for the two people dearest to me. I really wanted to see my father, but my mother remained adamant about my inevitable meetings with Nina Ivanovna, the “homewrecker.” And I didn’t consider myself to have the right to upset her. I still can’t forgive myself for not going to my father’s 50th birthday. He sent a car for me. Mom wasn’t there then, and I didn’t know what to do: I got dressed, undressed... In the end, the car left without me. It was a mistake, of course.

- Perhaps you communicated with him less than you could have?

Certainly.

“THE FATHER LOVED WOMEN, BUT HE CAN’T TOLERATE THEM AT THE LAUNCH SITE”

- And yet, which of the meetings do you particularly remember?

In July 1956, I completed an internship at a hospital in the village of Khotkovo near Moscow. One day my father unexpectedly came there. For about three hours we walked with him through the forest and talked. There was so much we wanted to say to each other. My studies, plans for the future, my girlish sympathies - everything interested him. My father talked about his work. He talked about upcoming flights into space, about space trains and interplanetary terminal stations. All this seemed like a fantasy to me, something distant and unrealistic. “I see you can’t believe it,” my father remarked, apparently sensing my reaction, “but all this will definitely happen. And you yourself will soon be convinced of this.” Quite a few years passed, and much of what my father spoke about then became reality.

This meeting meant a lot to me. Although the turning point in our relationship came a little later. In 1961, I got married and began to live separately from my mother. One fine day, it was a day off, I called my father on the phone. I heard his voice and immediately hung up. She ran out into the street, took a taxi and rushed straight there. “Dad,” she said, “I love you very much. And I want you and I to see each other more often, so that we have a good relationship.” After that, I visited him often - myself, and with my husband Vadim, and with my first-born Andryusha.

We met as often as possible given my father’s busy schedule and his frequent business trips. They usually came to his home on Ostankinskaya, not far from VDNKh, where he lived in recent years. I established a normal relationship with Nina Ivanovna. And she said to my mother: “You must understand me. I have already become independent. You didn’t want me to meet Nina Ivanovna, and I didn’t want to hurt you. And now I will do as my conscience tells me.” She sighed: “Do as you please.”

“Probably, there was no person on Earth before him who loved the sky and women so much.” This is written about Sergei Pavlovich.

Yes, he loved women, and women loved him. There was something about him that attracted attention to him, and he himself was not averse to getting carried away. I even know these women. One friend advised me to write about them in my book, but I didn’t do it. It’s enough that my book talks about my mother and Nina Ivanovna. What was - was. But despite all this, business always remained in the first place. At the launch pad of the cosmodrome - many people told me about this - he did not tolerate women: they say that this can distract men from complex work and lead to mistakes.

The past year was an anniversary for you. As they say, it's time to collect stones. What do you consider, Natalia Sergeevna, the main thing in your life?

Shortly before her death, my grandmother (she died in the summer of 1980) gave me a photograph of herself, taken on her 90th birthday, with the inscription: “My only inheritance from my son, who was so close and dear to me, my Natasha!”

It so happened that my father had no more children. He passed away when my first-born, Andrei, was barely three years old. And now he has three grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. My second son was named Sergei in honor of my grandfather. They are Queens. After the divorce, I gave them my last name. From my second marriage, on February 19, 1973, I had a daughter, who was named Maria in honor of my grandmother Maria Nikolaevna.

A thin thread that could have broken was preserved and strengthened. The children have grown up. Andrey Korolev is a doctor of medical sciences, traumatologist, orthopedist, like his grandmother. Sergei graduated from the Bauman Moscow Higher Technical School, the same faculty as his grandfather. Maria graduated from the Moscow Medical Academy.

Our family is friendly. On January 12, we celebrate our father’s birthday together. Father's comrades, cosmonauts, and friends come. These meetings give a charge of vital energy, love and memory for a long time. The Korolev family continues, and the memory of my father lives on. Isn’t this the main thing to which I devoted myself entirely?

- In conclusion. What place did Ukraine occupy in your life and in your conversations with your father?

Since I can remember, the very word “Ukraine” was pronounced reverently in our family, with great love. My father spent his childhood in Nizhyn; he was born in Zhitomir and lived in Kyiv and Odessa. My father spent the first 24 years, almost half of his allotted life, in Ukraine. He loved her very much. He loved Ukrainian songs, “Ukrainian language”. That's for sure. “I marvel at the sky”, “Reve ta stogne Dnipr wide” - the favorite songs of my grandmother and father. Therefore, I personally - perhaps genetically - have inherited a special attitude towards Ukraine.

I was in Zhitomir - there is a wonderful museum in the house where my father was born. Much was recreated from the memories of the grandmother, who gave away many things that were preserved in the family. And every time I cross the threshold of the museum, I feel great excitement, because my father took his first steps in this house. At the Kiev Polytechnic there is an auditorium named after Korolev, there is even a desk where he sat. It is specially tied with a ribbon.

- What would you like to wish to the readers of Ukraine?

First of all, peace and prosperity. Also, so that Ukraine remembers the people who were born on Ukrainian soil and who made a significant contribution to the history of mankind. The book “One Hundred Great Ukrainians” was recently published in Ukraine. The father is also in this book.

P.S. On April 10, Natalia Sergeevna Koroleva celebrated her birthday. "Gordon Boulevard" wholeheartedly congratulates the birthday girl and wishes her good health, success and prosperity.

The first artificial satellite of the Earth, the first launch of a dog into orbit, the first manned flight into space - the world owes these victories to Sergei Pavlovich Korolev. For the country, he remained an invisible man. Only his subordinates and management knew his face. His name was shrouded in such a veil of secrecy that he even signed his articles for the Pravda newspaper with the pseudonym K. Sergeev.

There are almost no newsreels with the chief designer. And his daughter wrote in her questionnaires about her father that he was an “engineer.” No one suspected that this was the same Academician Korolev. The only daughter of the number one designer turns 80 on April 10.

Sergei Korolev at the Kapustin Yar cosmodrome. Photo from personal archive.

— Natalia Sergeevna, your mother’s maiden name is Vincentini. Are you of Italian descent?

— My mother’s grandfather was Italian, his name was Maximilian. At the age of 25 he came to Bessarabia, converted to Orthodoxy and after baptism became Nicholas. I know about my great-grandfather that he was the director of the Chisinau School of Viticulture and Winemaking for fifteen years and received a noble title. He named his son Maximilian. My mother is Vincentini Ksenia Maximilianovna. She did not change this surname and bore it all her life.

— Your father Sergei Pavlovich Korolev was arrested in 1938. But the family escaped reprisals?

— First, Ivan Kleimenov, the director of the Jet Institute, was arrested, then Georgy Langemak, the chief engineer, by the way, one of the creators of the legendary Katyusha. Their families were repressed. If my father had remained as deputy director, we would have suffered the same fate. My father was saved by his character. He had big disagreements with Kleimenov. A career military man, he thought more about the defense of the country, and Sergei Pavlovich also dreamed of space flights. Ultimately, Kleimenov posed the question to Tukhachevsky: “Me or Korolev.”

- But your mother was probably still waiting for the arrest?

“My mother was expecting arrest all the time. In the hallway there was a small suitcase containing everything needed. She lived in terrible tension. And every evening Yuri Aleksandrovich Pobedonostsev, a friend of my parents, who lived on the first floor of our house, came to see her. Mom was very afraid to be alone. And he sat with her until one in the morning, and then went to his place. After one o'clock in the morning they were no longer arrested.

But there were still concerns, so just in case, so that I would not end up in an orphanage, documents were prepared about my adoption by my maternal grandmother Sofia Fedorovna.

“At that time, the relatives of those arrested wrote letters to all authorities, hoping that they would sort it out and release them. Did your family also bother?

“When dad was arrested, I was only three years old. Mom, of course, said that she would intercede for her husband, but the family council decided that she did not have the right to do this, because she had a small child, and her father’s mother, Maria Nikolaevna, would intercede. The mothers were not touched. And my grandmother rushed to save her only son. She wrote letters and telegrams to Stalin, Yezhov, and then Beria.

A year before my grandmother died, I recorded her story on a tape recorder. She was 91 years old, but she had a phenomenal memory. She remembered all the details.

— Letters to the leaders remained unanswered?

- No answer. It was my father who came up with the real idea of ​​salvation. In one of the letters, he mentioned that he had heard about a flight to the Far East of a female crew, which included Valentina Grizodubova, and also asked to convey his regards to Uncle Misha. The family, of course, knew that dad knew Valentina Stepanovna, but they didn’t immediately understand who Uncle Misha was. There were no men with that name in our family. When they began to analyze the letter, they realized that it could only be Mikhail Mikhailovich Gromov, one of the first Heroes of the Soviet Union. No one in our family knew the addresses of Gromov and Grizodubova, but my grandmother managed to find them.

— Did the intercession of the Heroes help?

- Very. Without their intervention, my father would have died in a camp in Kolyma. Gromov wrote a note to the Chairman of the Supreme Court Ivan Golyakov, who on March 31, 1939 opened the door to his office for his grandmother. There were a lot of sufferers hoping to get an appointment. And on Maria Nikolaevna’s statement, Golyakov wrote: “Comrade Ulrich, please check the correctness of the conviction!” Ulrich headed the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. He tried my father and gave him 10 years.

At that moment my father was in the Novocherkassk transit prison. It could still be returned. But the prison machine worked slowly, and the stage with my father was already gone.

— Sergei Pavlovich ended up in Kolyma, at the Maldyak mine, where prisoners spent the night in canvas tents in 50-degree frosts. How did he survive?

“Dad miraculously survived. I flew to the Maldyak mine in the summer of 1991. It was a small village where two barracks were preserved in which the authorities lived. But the camp doctor Tatyana Dmitrievna Repyeva was still alive. She, of course, did not remember the prisoner Korolev, but she told how they saved people from scurvy: they brought raw potatoes from home, rubbed the gums of the sick, and made decoctions from fir cones. The father was able to survive.

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Usachev, director of the Moscow Aviation Plant before his arrest, also played a major role in the rescue of Sergei Pavlovich. The plane on which Chkalov crashed was built. Usachev was a master of sports in boxing, and he decided to restore order in the camp where criminals ruled. He called the headman: “Show me your farm!” They went into the tent where my dying father lay. Usachev asked: “Who is this?” - “This is the King, one of yours, but he won’t get up!” When Usachev threw away his rags and saw my father, whom he knew before, he realized that something incredible had happened and he needed to be saved. He got his father transferred to the infirmary and forced the criminals to share their rations. And soon an order came to send the pope to Moscow to review the case. A second trial took place, which sentenced him to eight years in prison. After the Maldyak mine, my father hated gold all his life.

“I heard a version that your father’s jaws were broken during interrogation.

- This is true. The fact that the jaws were broken did not subsequently make it possible to carry out normal intubation anesthesia during the operation. Dad died on the operating table.

He was tortured to make him confess. I read the interrogation reports. “Do you plead guilty?” - “No, I don’t admit it. I was not involved in any anti-Soviet activities.” They beat him, and then the investigator used a psychological technique: “If you don’t confess, tomorrow your wife will be arrested, and your daughter will go to an orphanage.” The thought of this was terrible for my father. And he decided to sign ridiculous accusations and deny everything in court. But at the trial he was unable to say a word.

He told his mother and grandmother about what he had to endure in November 1944, when, having already been released, he came to Moscow on a business trip. The conversation continued all night, but the father never returned to these memories. He wanted to forget everything that happened, like a bad dream.

“I read that his favorite expression was: “They’ll slam you without an obituary”...

“He said this when he worked in the so-called Tupolev “sharaga”, where he ended up in September 1940. A new bomber was being created there.

To raise the spirits of imprisoned specialists, the NKVD leadership allowed visits with their closest relatives. I didn't know that dad was arrested. Mom said that he is a pilot, he has an important job, so he does not live with us. Before the first date that my mother and I went on, she explained that my father had arrived on his plane. I remember the small prison yard and the question I asked my father: how was he able to land his plane here? The warden who was present at the date answered: “Eh, girl, it’s easy to land here, but it’s much more difficult to fly away.”

- Your family was not repressed, but God forbid anyone to experience what befell you...

“I was three years old, and the boy with whom I was friends was four.” When I returned from the dacha, he came up and said: “Mom doesn’t allow you to hang out with you because your dad is arrested!” We both did not understand the meaning of this word, but I was very offended. I cried and ran to my mother. Mom told grandma and the nanny that there was no need to walk in the yard anymore, it was better to go to the zoo.

Mom turned gray on the night of her arrest. She was 30 years old. Very beautiful, with blue eyes, she began to wear a headscarf, because people turned around and shook their heads: “So young, and already gray-haired!”

She was always very friendly, and everyone used to enjoy talking to her. And now some acquaintances were crossing to the other side of the street. There were doctors who refused to assist her in operations.

When my father was arrested, my mother went to the chief doctor of the Botkin Hospital, Boris Shimeliovich, who later suffered in a trumped-up case of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. Boris Abramovich called the party organizer and the chairman of the local committee, and they decided that she would remain in her position as a resident doctor in the trauma department. And Professor Mikhail Fridland, who headed the department of the State Central Institute for Advanced Medical Studies, proposed a dissertation topic for my mother so that she could be hired as an assistant at the department.

Since there was a catastrophic lack of money in the family, and it was necessary to transfer money to my father, my mother got a job at a clinic and took on an additional 15 shifts a month. Nanny Lisa’s mother had to tell her that there was nothing more to pay, but the nanny replied: “I’ll give you my money, I don’t need it now. Just don’t drive me away!”

- Natalia Sergeevna, in the most difficult time the family survived, and then, when life got better, your parents separated...

— Long separation does not strengthen the family. She destroys. They both loved their jobs too much. Mom was a brilliant trauma surgeon; she worked for 60 years. Both have a strong character. When my father had to work in Podlipki, he suggested that my mother quit her job in Moscow. Maybe she would have gone for it, but she heard a rumor that he was having an affair with Nina Ivanovna, who worked as a translator at his company and was 13 years younger than her mother. Mom once went to Podlipki to visit her father and heard a woman’s voice outside the door. She understood everything and didn’t even bother to come in. I cried and went back. It was all the more offensive because she was pregnant. The father wanted a second child, but in such a situation she got rid of him.

— Nina Ivanovna didn’t have children?

“Maybe God punished her to some extent.” She invaded our family, knowing that Sergei Pavlovich had a wife and child. So I am his only daughter. But we must pay tribute: Nina Ivanovna devoted her whole life to him.

Mom continued to love my father and only years later she married his best friend Evgeniy Sergeevich Shchetinkov, with whom he worked at the Jet Institute. He even went to Sergei Pavlovich and asked if he minded. Gradually his mother fell in love with him. And he fell in love with her at first sight back in 1931. When Shchetinkov participated in the second examination in 1940 in the case of my father, he could have signed a destructive act and in this way eliminated his rival. And he wrote a special opinion that the work is experimental, and during experiments there may be errors, malfunctions, and failures. When my father was shown this document, he was very touched.

— Did your parents’ divorce greatly affect your relationship with your father?

- Yes, it was a terrible shock for me. I adored both my mother and my father. I lived with my grandparents and only dreamed that I would graduate from school and we would finally be together. And suddenly such disappointment. I was called from the dacha on the day of the divorce, and my mother immediately said: “You no longer have a father!” I thought he died. My mother was sitting in a chair, tearful, two grandmothers were in tears, and grandfathers were terribly upset. This picture is still before my eyes.

I couldn’t understand how my father could choose any other woman over my mother. Mom was for me an ideal woman, a doctor, and a person. She said: “It is believed that grandmothers love their grandchildren more than their children. I also love my grandchildren, but Natasha most of all!”

— This resentment towards your father led to the fact that you did not communicate for several years...

“I didn’t even go to his fiftieth birthday, which I really regret.” Then I lived with my mother, and she made me promise that I would not meet with Nina Ivanovna. How could it be possible not to meet if he usually came with her to her grandmother’s apartment and to the dacha? Every time I had to make excuses. Mom and grandma took the word! For Maria Nikolaevna it was generally a tragedy. On the day of my father’s anniversary, my mother was in a rest home, and I was unable to contact her. Dad sent a car for me, I put on a new dress and took it off three times. I really wanted to go, and my grandfather, my mother’s father, said: “You gave your word to your mother that you wouldn’t go!”

I went to my father only in 1961, when I got married. She began to live separately in a communal apartment on Malaya Bronnaya. I really wanted to see my father. One day off, I called him on the phone, he came up, I immediately hung up, jumped out of the house, took a taxi and rushed there. When I arrived, my father was very surprised, and Nina Ivanovna thought that I needed something. I said that I don’t need anything other than communication. My father hugged me and we kissed. When I returned, I immediately told my mother. From then on, I began to visit my father’s house.

“It is known that he was a phenomenal workaholic. The kind of person who comes to work first and is the last to leave. I flew to the cosmodrome only at night, so as not to lose a day on flights.

“He valued time very much and did not like idle talk.” When there were guests, the father came out, said hello and went to his room. He did not watch a single theatrical performance to the end: work interested him most of all.

— Your father was supposed to become a Nobel Prize laureate, but secrecy got in the way?

— My father could have won the Nobel Prize twice. He would use this money for the development of astronautics. The first time they wanted to reward him for the launch of the first artificial Earth satellite, the second time - after Yuri Gagarin’s flight into space. To the appeal of the Nobel Committee, Khrushchev replied that the creator of new technology in our country is the entire people. The world learned his father's name only after his death in January 1966. And the Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously.

— Could Sergei Korolev call Nikita Khrushchev directly?

“Father was not afraid of anything or anyone in life. If he needed something, he simply picked up the phone and spoke with the ministers, with Khrushchev. I thought that if it’s an important matter, you have to start from the top, because it takes a long time from the bottom. His authority at that time was indisputable.

— Your father is buried in the Kremlin wall. Did this circumstance create difficulties with the visit?

— This is a state necropolis. I have a pass and have never had any problems. It was more difficult to change the plaque on the Kremlin wall, where the father’s date of birth was first indicated in the old style - December 30, 1906. I corrected this error, and now the correct date of his birth is indicated - January 12, 1907.

- Natalia Sergeevna, you won’t be found at home. You have published the three-volume book “Father” and participate in events related to space exploration. A year ago we went skiing. What qualities have you inherited from your father?

- Probably determination. Since childhood, I wanted to become a surgeon, like my mother. True, she was categorically against it, believing that the medical profession was penniless and difficult. I didn’t regret my choice for a single minute; I worked at the operating table for 55 years. I also inherited a hard work ethic. Even now I can work from morning to night. I always valued time very much, then I found out that my father was the same. If he had not left so early - at the age of 59, perhaps we would not have given the Moon to the Americans.

But we made rockets

The first artificial satellite of the Earth, the first launch of a dog into orbit, the first manned flight into space - the world owes these victories to Sergei Pavlovich Korolev. For the country, he remained an invisible man. Only his subordinates and management knew his face. His name was shrouded in such a veil of secrecy that he even signed his articles for the Pravda newspaper with the pseudonym K. Sergeev.

There are almost no newsreels with the chief designer. And his daughter wrote in her questionnaires about her father that he was an “engineer.” No one suspected that this was the same Academician Korolev. The only daughter of the number one designer turns 80 on April 10.

Sergei Korolev at the Kapustin Yar cosmodrome. Photo from personal archive.

— Natalia Sergeevna, your mother’s maiden name is Vincentini. Are you of Italian descent?

— My mother’s grandfather was Italian, his name was Maximilian. At the age of 25 he came to Bessarabia, converted to Orthodoxy and after baptism became Nicholas. I know about my great-grandfather that he was the director of the Chisinau School of Viticulture and Winemaking for fifteen years and received a noble title. He named his son Maximilian. My mother is Vincentini Ksenia Maximilianovna. She did not change this surname and bore it all her life.

— Your father Sergei Pavlovich Korolev was arrested in 1938. But the family escaped reprisals?

— First, Ivan Kleimenov, the director of the Jet Institute, was arrested, then Georgy Langemak, the chief engineer, by the way, one of the creators of the legendary Katyusha. Their families were repressed. If my father had remained as deputy director, we would have suffered the same fate. My father was saved by his character. He had big disagreements with Kleimenov. A career military man, he thought more about the defense of the country, and Sergei Pavlovich also dreamed of space flights. Ultimately, Kleimenov posed the question to Tukhachevsky: “Me or Korolev.”

Photo from personal archive.

Photo from personal archive.

- But your mother was probably still waiting for the arrest?

“My mother was expecting arrest all the time. In the hallway there was a small suitcase containing everything needed. She lived in terrible tension. And every evening Yuri Aleksandrovich Pobedonostsev, a friend of my parents, who lived on the first floor of our house, came to see her. Mom was very afraid to be alone. And he sat with her until one in the morning, and then went to his place. After one o'clock in the morning they were no longer arrested.

But there were still concerns, so just in case, so that I would not end up in an orphanage, documents were prepared about my adoption by my maternal grandmother Sofia Fedorovna.

“At that time, the relatives of those arrested wrote letters to all authorities, hoping that they would sort it out and release them. Did your family also bother?

“When dad was arrested, I was only three years old. Mom, of course, said that she would intercede for her husband, but the family council decided that she did not have the right to do this, because she had a small child, and her father’s mother, Maria Nikolaevna, would intercede. The mothers were not touched. And my grandmother rushed to save her only son. She wrote letters and telegrams to Stalin, Yezhov, and then Beria.

A year before my grandmother died, I recorded her story on a tape recorder. She was 91 years old, but she had a phenomenal memory. She remembered all the details.

— Letters to the leaders remained unanswered?

- No answer. It was my father who came up with the real idea of ​​salvation. In one of the letters, he mentioned that he had heard about a flight to the Far East of a female crew, which included Valentina Grizodubova, and also asked to convey his regards to Uncle Misha. The family, of course, knew that dad knew Valentina Stepanovna, but they didn’t immediately understand who Uncle Misha was. There were no men with that name in our family. When they began to analyze the letter, they realized that it could only be Mikhail Mikhailovich Gromov, one of the first Heroes of the Soviet Union. No one in our family knew the addresses of Gromov and Grizodubova, but my grandmother managed to find them.

— Did the intercession of the Heroes help?

- Very. Without their intervention, my father would have died in a camp in Kolyma. Gromov wrote a note to the Chairman of the Supreme Court Ivan Golyakov, who on March 31, 1939 opened the door to his office for his grandmother. There were a lot of sufferers hoping to get an appointment. And on Maria Nikolaevna’s statement, Golyakov wrote: “Comrade Ulrich, please check the correctness of the conviction!” Ulrich headed the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. He tried my father and gave him 10 years.

At that moment my father was in the Novocherkassk transit prison. It could still be returned. But the prison machine worked slowly, and the stage with my father was already gone.

With Yuri Gagarin. Photo from personal archive.

— Sergei Pavlovich ended up in Kolyma, at the Maldyak mine, where prisoners spent the night in canvas tents in 50-degree frosts. How did he survive?

“Dad miraculously survived. I flew to the Maldyak mine in the summer of 1991. It was a small village where two barracks were preserved in which the authorities lived. But the camp doctor Tatyana Dmitrievna Repyeva was still alive. She, of course, did not remember the prisoner Korolev, but she told how they saved people from scurvy: they brought raw potatoes from home, rubbed the gums of the sick, and made decoctions from fir cones. The father was able to survive.

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Usachev, director of the Moscow Aviation Plant before his arrest, also played a major role in the rescue of Sergei Pavlovich. The plane on which Chkalov crashed was built. Usachev was a master of sports in boxing, and he decided to restore order in the camp where criminals ruled. He called the headman: “Show me your farm!” They went into the tent where my dying father lay. Usachev asked: “Who is this?” - “This is the King, one of yours, but he won’t get up!” When Usachev threw away his rags and saw my father, whom he knew before, he realized that something incredible had happened and he needed to be saved. He got his father transferred to the infirmary and forced the criminals to share their rations. And soon an order came to send the pope to Moscow to review the case. A second trial took place, which sentenced him to eight years in prison. After the Maldyak mine, my father hated gold all his life.

“I heard a version that your father’s jaws were broken during interrogation.

- This is true. The fact that the jaws were broken did not subsequently make it possible to carry out normal intubation anesthesia during the operation. Dad died on the operating table.

He was tortured to make him confess. I read the interrogation reports. “Do you plead guilty?” - “No, I don’t admit it. I was not involved in any anti-Soviet activities.” They beat him, and then the investigator used a psychological technique: “If you don’t confess, tomorrow your wife will be arrested, and your daughter will go to an orphanage.” The thought of this was terrible for my father. And he decided to sign ridiculous accusations and deny everything in court. But at the trial he was unable to say a word.

He told his mother and grandmother about what he had to endure in November 1944, when, having already been released, he came to Moscow on a business trip. The conversation continued all night, but the father never returned to these memories. He wanted to forget everything that happened, like a bad dream.

Photo from personal archive.

- I read that he favorite expression was: “They’ll slam you without an obituary”...

“He said this when he worked in the so-called Tupolev “sharaga”, where he ended up in September 1940. A new bomber was being created there.

To raise the spirits of imprisoned specialists, the NKVD leadership allowed visits with their closest relatives. I didn't know that dad was arrested. Mom said that he is a pilot, he has an important job, so he does not live with us. Before the first date that my mother and I went on, she explained that my father had arrived on his plane. I remember the small prison yard and the question I asked my father: how was he able to land his plane here? The warden who was present at the date answered: “Eh, girl, it’s easy to land here, but it’s much more difficult to fly away.”

- Your family was not repressed, but God forbid anyone to experience what befell you...

“I was three years old, and the boy with whom I was friends was four.” When I returned from the dacha, he came up and said: “Mom doesn’t allow you to hang out with you because your dad is arrested!” We both did not understand the meaning of this word, but I was very offended. I cried and ran to my mother. Mom told grandma and the nanny that there was no need to walk in the yard anymore, it was better to go to the zoo.

Mom turned gray on the night of her arrest. She was 30 years old. Very beautiful, with blue eyes, she began to wear a headscarf, because people turned around and shook their heads: “So young, and already gray-haired!”

She was always very friendly, and everyone used to enjoy talking to her. And now some acquaintances were crossing to the other side of the street. There were doctors who refused to assist her in operations.

When my father was arrested, my mother went to the chief doctor of the Botkin Hospital, Boris Shimeliovich, who later suffered in a trumped-up case of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. Boris Abramovich called the party organizer and the chairman of the local committee, and they decided that she would remain in her position as a resident doctor in the trauma department. And Professor Mikhail Fridland, who headed the department of the State Central Institute for Advanced Medical Studies, proposed a dissertation topic for my mother so that she could be hired as an assistant at the department.

Since there was a catastrophic lack of money in the family, and it was necessary to transfer money to my father, my mother got a job at a clinic and took on an additional 15 shifts a month. Nanny Lisa’s mother had to tell her that there was nothing more to pay, but the nanny replied: “I’ll give you my money, I don’t need it now. Just don’t drive me away!”

- Natalia Sergeevna, at the very hard times the family survived, and then, when life got better, your parents separated...

— Long separation does not strengthen the family. She destroys. They both loved their jobs too much. Mom was a brilliant trauma surgeon; she worked for 60 years. Both have a strong character. When my father had to work in Podlipki, he suggested that my mother quit her job in Moscow. Maybe she would have gone for it, but she heard a rumor that he was having an affair with Nina Ivanovna, who worked as a translator at his company and was 13 years younger than her mother. Mom once went to Podlipki to visit her father and heard a woman’s voice outside the door. She understood everything and didn’t even bother to come in. I cried and went back. It was all the more offensive because she was pregnant. The father wanted a second child, but in such a situation she got rid of him.

Sergei Korolev with his wife Ksenia Vincentini and only daughter Natalia. Photo from personal archive.

— Nina Ivanovna didn’t have children?

“Maybe God punished her to some extent.” She invaded our family, knowing that Sergei Pavlovich had a wife and child. So I am his only daughter. But we must pay tribute: Nina Ivanovna devoted her whole life to him.

Mom continued to love my father and only years later she married his best friend Evgeniy Sergeevich Shchetinkov, with whom he worked at the Jet Institute. He even went to Sergei Pavlovich and asked if he minded. Gradually his mother fell in love with him. And he fell in love with her at first sight back in 1931. When Shchetinkov participated in the second examination in 1940 in the case of my father, he could have signed a destructive act and in this way eliminated his rival. And he wrote a special opinion that the work is experimental, and during experiments there may be errors, malfunctions, and failures. When my father was shown this document, he was very touched.

— Did your parents’ divorce greatly affect your relationship with your father?

- Yes, it was a terrible shock for me. I adored both my mother and my father. I lived with my grandparents and only dreamed that I would graduate from school and we would finally be together. And suddenly such disappointment. I was called from the dacha on the day of the divorce, and my mother immediately said: “You no longer have a father!” I thought he died. My mother was sitting in a chair, tearful, two grandmothers were in tears, and grandfathers were terribly upset. This picture is still before my eyes.

I couldn’t understand how my father could choose any other woman over my mother. Mom was for me an ideal woman, a doctor, and a person. She said: “It is believed that grandmothers love their grandchildren more than their children. I also love my grandchildren, but Natasha most of all!”

— This resentment towards your father led to the fact that you did not communicate for several years...

“I didn’t even go to his fiftieth birthday, which I really regret.” Then I lived with my mother, and she made me promise that I would not meet with Nina Ivanovna. How could it be possible not to meet if he usually came with her to her grandmother’s apartment and to the dacha? Every time I had to make excuses. Mom and grandma took the word! For Maria Nikolaevna it was generally a tragedy. On the day of my father’s anniversary, my mother was in a rest home, and I was unable to contact her. Dad sent a car for me, I put on a new dress and took it off three times. I really wanted to go, and my grandfather, my mother’s father, said: “You gave your word to your mother that you wouldn’t go!”

I went to my father only in 1961, when I got married. She began to live separately in a communal apartment on Malaya Bronnaya. I really wanted to see my father. One day off, I called him on the phone, he came up, I immediately hung up, jumped out of the house, took a taxi and rushed there. When I arrived, my father was very surprised, and Nina Ivanovna thought that I needed something. I said that I don’t need anything other than communication. My father hugged me and we kissed. When I returned, I immediately told my mother. From then on, I began to visit my father’s house.

“It is known that he was a phenomenal workaholic. The kind of person who comes to work first and is the last to leave. I flew to the cosmodrome only at night, so as not to lose a day on flights.

“He valued time very much and did not like idle talk.” When there were guests, the father came out, said hello and went to his room. He did not watch a single theatrical performance to the end: work interested him most of all.

— Your father was supposed to become a Nobel Prize laureate, but secrecy got in the way?

— My father could have won the Nobel Prize twice. He would use this money for the development of astronautics. The first time they wanted to reward him for the launch of the first artificial Earth satellite, the second time - after Yuri Gagarin’s flight into space. To the appeal of the Nobel Committee, Khrushchev replied that the creator of new technology in our country is the entire people. The world learned his father's name only after his death in January 1966. And the Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously.

— Could Sergei Korolev call Nikita Khrushchev directly?

“Father was not afraid of anything or anyone in life. If he needed something, he simply picked up the phone and spoke with the ministers, with Khrushchev. I thought that if it’s an important matter, you have to start from the top, because it takes a long time from the bottom. His authority at that time was indisputable.

— Your father is buried in the Kremlin wall. Did this circumstance create difficulties with the visit?

— This is a state necropolis. I have a pass and have never had any problems. It was more difficult to change the plaque on the Kremlin wall, where the father’s date of birth was first indicated in the old style - December 30, 1906. I corrected this error, and now it is indicated correct date his birth was January 12, 1907.

- Natalia Sergeevna, you won’t be found at home. You have published the three-volume book “Father” and participate in events related to space exploration. A year ago we went skiing. What qualities have you inherited from your father?

- Probably determination. Since childhood, I wanted to become a surgeon, like my mother. True, she was categorically against it, believing that the medical profession was penniless and difficult. I didn’t regret my choice for a single minute; I worked at the operating table for 55 years. I also inherited a hard work ethic. Even now I can work from morning to night. I always valued time very much, then I found out that my father was the same. If he had not left so early - at the age of 59, perhaps we would not have given the Moon to the Americans.