Russian rocketry before WW II

The members of GIRD with one of their rockets.

Soviet rocketry before World War II

In 1917, the Bolshevik revolution spurred profound changes in the Russian society. The leaders of the Soviet Russia called for turning the country from an agrarian peasant society into an industrial power. Technological progress became a crucial point of the Soviet official policy.

In accordance with Vladimir Lenin′s doctrine that "revolution should defend itself," Soviet government also spared no effort in modernizing the newly-formed Red Army. In line with this strategy, on March 1, 1921, engineer I. Tikhomirov organized a lab for research in rocketry under uspices of the military with the goal of developing "rocket-propelled mines." In 1925, Tikhomirov's lab moved to the city of Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was renamed at the time. In 1928, Tikhomirov's lab recieved a name of Gas-Dynamic Laboratory or GDL under Revolutionary Military Council, RVS, the procursor of the Ministry of Defense.

The researchers at GDL worked tirelessly on perfecting military missiles and developing new types of solid rocket fuel, which would allow the new weapon competing with artillery. By 1933, nine types of ground- air- and sea-based rockets are tested in GDL. By that time, the personnel of the lab grows from original 10 to 200 people. In 1929, the separate department of GDL headed by Valentin Glushko had started experimenting with electrical and liquid-fueled rocket engines.

In the meantime, back in Moscow at the beginning of 1930s several enthusiasts of aviation and interplanetary travel including Sergei Korolev started a new organization known as GIRD, from Russian abbreviation of Group of Research in Jet Propulsion. The government-sponsored Society for the Advancement of Defense, Aviation and Chemical Development, Osaviakhim, supported GIRD, whose members concentrated on the development of a rocket-powered glider. Since 1932, the Soviet government directly sponsored GIRD. On August 17, 1933, GIRD test-launched the rocket equipped with hybrid engine. The first Soviet rocket equipped with liquid-fuel engine (GIRD-10) was launched on November 25, 1933.

On September 21, 1933, GIRD and GDL officially merged to create Jet Propulsion Scientific Research Institute, or RNII. I. Klemenov was appointed the chief of the institute. For the short time Korolev was the deputy chief of RNII but then replaced by Langemak, which undoubtely saved earlier and doomed the latter during upcoming Stalin terror.

RNII continued the development of solid-fuled missiles initiated in GDL as well as absorbed the research in the field of liquid-fueled rocketry inherited from GIRD, including the development of the rocket-powered glider and winged missiles.

By 1937, the reign of terror unleashed by Stalin and his associates in their compaign to consolidate power in the Soviet Union reached its apogee. Although there wasn't a single individual in the nation who could feel safe from repressions, the Soviet intelligentsia with any apparent or assumed links to the old revolutionary Bolshevik elite became the primary target of Stalin's purges. Not surprisingly, this made RNII leadership, a perfect victim of Stalin's henchmen.

At the beginning of 1937, the Soviet citizens were stunned by the announcement that Marshall Tukhachevskiy, a towering figure in the Bolshevik party and an old patron of NII-3 was arrested and soon executed as an "enemy of the people." The arrests within NII-3 followed. By 1938, the institute director and his deputy were executed, while leading engineers Valentin Glushko and Sergei Korolev imprisoned and tortured.

Andrei Kostikov, who according to Russian historians might have inspired the arrests in NII-3, took over the directorship at the institute. Under Kostikov's watch NII-3 finalized the development of unguided short-range missiles, which became known during the World War II as Katyusha rockets.