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lenko was active in important causes of his day,
defending Udmurt peasants accused of ritual
murder (1895-96), resigning in protest (with the
playwright Anton
CHEKHOV
) from the Russian
Academy after the czar annulled its election of
Maksim
GORKY
, investigating the 1903 Kishinev
pogrom, and speaking out in favor of Mendel
BEILIS
, a Jewish bricklayer accused of ritual mur-
der in 1911. Korolenko's political sympathies were
with the Populists, and he served as editor of
their influential periodical,
Russkoe Bogatstvo
(
The
Russian Wealth
), from 1908 to 1914, although not
continuously. After 1902, he mostly lived in the
Ukrainian town of Poltava. After the
OCTOBER
REVOLUTION
and during the civil war, he protested
vigorously against acts of injustice and terror
committed by all participants. Korolenko com-
pletely rejected Communist claims of speaking in
the name of the whole people, and he was
sharply rebuked by
LENIN
. He died of hunger and
deprivation in Poltava during the 1921 famine. A
prolific writer, Korolenko is best known for his
short stories and his three-volume
Istoriia moego
sovremennika
(
History of My Contemporary
), which
chronicles his own life in the years between 1905
and 1921. Although a 10-volume edition of his
collected works was published after
STALIN
's
death, his brutally honest diary of the civil war in
the Ukraine was not published during Soviet
times.
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and absorbed his interest
in rocket and space technology. In 1931, together
with F. Tsander, Korolev organized the Group for
the Study of Cosmic Travel (GIRD), and in 1933
he transferred to the newly created Institute for
Jet Research. During these years Korolev
became a leading figure in the development of
the Soviet ballistic missile program, but in June
1938, the NKVD (secret police) arrested him for
allegedly selling information to a German com-
pany. Sentenced to 10 years' hard labor, he was
dispatched to Kolyma, but from 1940 he worked
in a special prison laboratory on military uses of
rocket planes. He was thus one of a remarkable
band of scientists who did pioneering work
while in prison. Korolev was released in July
1944 and appointed to the team that evaluated
German rocket technology after the war. Reha-
bilitated after
STALIN
's death in 1953, Korolev
joined the
COMMUNIST PARTY
in 1953 and was
elected a corresponding member of the USSR
ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
. Later in 1958, he became
a full academician and was awarded the
LENIN
PRIZE
. During the 1950s his penchant for theo-
retical research, construction work, and teaching
made him a major designer and builder of the
space rocket vehicles that placed the Soviet space
program at the forefront of space technology.
Beginning with the first artificial earth satellite
in 1957, Korolev was actively involved in the
design of many Soviet rockets, including
Vostok,
Voskhod, Elektron, Molniya-I,
and
Kosmos.
He also
directed the launches of interplanetary probes to
Venus (1961-65) and Mars (1962). His first mar-
riage did not survive the camps and he later
married one of his assistants. Korolev died of
cancer on January 14, 1966, and is buried in the
Kremlin Wall. He was long known in the Soviet
press only as “The Designer,” and the full story of
his arrest was not printed until 1987.
Korolev, Sergei Pavlovich
(1907-1966)
space rocket designer
The leading designer of the Soviet space program
of the 1950s and 1960s. Korolev's contributions
were kept secret until after his death in 1966. He
was born in Zhitomir, the Ukraine, on January
12, 1907, and graduated from the Odessa Profes-
sional School in 1924. Attracted to aviation, he
began constructing gliders and worked in Odessa
glider clubs. After further studies he graduated in
1929 from the Bauman Higher Technical School
in Moscow with a degree in aeromechanics. In
1930 he became a senior design engineer at the
Central Air Dynamics Institute. At this time he
became acquainted with the pioneer scientist
Kosmodemianskaia, Zoia Anatolievna
(1923-1941)
partisan fighter
Kosmodemianskaia was born in rural Tambov
oblast (province) on September 13, 1923. Her
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