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EDITORIAL INFORMATION

Much has been written in the West on the history of the Soviet space program, but few Westerners have read direct first-hand accounts of the men and women who were behind the many Russian accomplishments in exploring space. The memoir of academician Boris Chertok, translated from the original Russian, fills that gap.

Chertok began his career as an electrician in 1930 at an aviation factory near Moscow. Thirty years later, he was deputy to the founding figure of the Soviet space program, the mysterious "Chief Designer" Sergey Korolev. Chertok's 60-year-long career and the many successes and failures of the Soviet space program constitute the core of his memoirs, Rockets and People. In these writings, spread over four volumes (volumes two through four are forthcoming), academician Chertok not only describes and remembers, but also elicits and extracts profound insights from an epic story about a society's quest to explore the cosmos.

This book was edited by Asif Siddiqi, a historian of Russian space exploration, and General Tom Stafford contributed a foreword touching upon his significant work with the Russians on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. Overall, this book is an engaging read while also contributing much new material to the literature about the Soviet space program.

(Extracted from the press release).

GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

-Contents.
-Series Introduction by Asif A. Siddiqi
-Foreword by Lt. Gen.Thomas P. Stafford, USAF (Ret.)
-Preface to the English Language Edition
-A Few Notes about Transliteration and Translation
-List of Abbreviations
-1 Introduction: A Debt to My Generation
-2 On the Times and My Contemporaries
-3 Between Two Aerodromes
-4 School in the Twenties
-5 Factory No. 22
-6 In the Bolkhovitinov Design Bureau and KOSTR
-7 Arctic Triumphs and Tragedies
-8 “Everything Real Is Rational...”
-9 Return to Bolkhovitinov
-10 On the Eve of War
-11 At the Beginning of the War
-12 In the Urals
-13 15 May 1942
-14 Back in Moscow
-15 Moscow—Poznan—Berlin
-16 May Days in Berlin
-17 What Is Peenemünde?
-18 To Thuringia
-19 Nordhausen—City of Missiles and Death
-20 Birth of the Institute RABE
-21 Operation “Ost”
-22 Special Incidents
-23 In Search of a Real Boss
-24 Korolev, Glushko, and Our First Encounters in Germany
-25 Engine Specialists
-26 The Institute Nordhausen
-Index.