Less than a week after Leonov’s remarkable feat, the Americans launched their first manned Gemini mission. Gus Grissom and John Young flew in Gemini 3, which was half as big again as the original Mercury capsule and much more advanced, with larger thruster rockets and enough fuel to test many more manoeuvres in space. This was swiftly followed on 3 June 1965 with Gemini 4, in which Edward White successfully undertook a twenty-minute space walk. Within two months, Gordon Cooper and Pete Conrad set a new endurance record with an eight-day mission in which they tested new fuel cells and radar equipment to guide rendezvous in space. They suffered no adverse health effects and successfully developed a routine of sleeping and exercising in space: an eight-day flight to the moon was beginning to look like a real possibility. The Americans announced plans later in the year for a two-week stay in space. They were catching up.
Despite his go-ahead to develop the N-1 for a lunar mission, Sergei Korolev had no immediate means of outshining the Americans until the Soyuz came on stream, and he felt the disappointment keenly. ‘He spreads himself too thin and tries to keep everything under his control,’ observed Nikolai Kamanin. For almost two years he had attempted to investigate the moon with unmanned probes. The Luna series of probes aimed to take measurements of the near-moon environment and ultimately to land on the moon’s surface, record data and even bring back soil samples. But the first probes, designed to enter lunar orbit, were failures and this was fuel for attacks from Glushko who endlessly criticized him behind his back; still spitting venom, he was still advocating the complete redesign of the N-1 and lobbying for support among other chief designers whose betrayal Korolev felt acutely. Glushko teamed up with Chelomei and continued to promote his massive UR-700 as the lunar launch vehicle. Korolev was beside himself at the thought of funds being redirected yet again. He was already suffering enough production difficulties and delays. For Korolev, the constant pressure of work and his physical wellbeing seemed irrevocably entwined. The heavier his workload became, the more he buckled under it.
With low blood pressure and heart problems, he went to the clinic at Baikonur. The nurse thought he looked ill. ‘You smell of Validol,’ she said. He had been dosing himself with quite large doses because of chest pains. ‘Oh, these country doctors,’ he replied, asking her to keep quiet about it. From Baikonur he admitted to Nina that he was ‘unusually, deeply tired’, but tried to reassure her, ‘the fatigue is in my nervous system’. He told her that he was trying to take rest. ‘I am in a constant state of exhaustion and stress, but I can under no condition show that these things are getting to me. So I am trying to hold on with all the strength at my command …’
His symptoms had already led to him having to spend a few days in hospital for tests in mid-1965. Nina Ivanovna had stayed with him. While he was there, like a breath of fresh air Gagarin and Nikolayev visited, coming from Star City with the latest news and gossip. Before leaving, in a typically generous gesture Gagarin gave Korolev his watch when Korolev complained that his had stopped. This touched Korolev. He hardly knew what to say and tried to give it back. Gagarin insisted. It was a gift. To recuperate, Korolev and Nina Ivanovna had a holiday in the Crimea. It had been full of memories of other summers as he had flown paragliders there as a young man.
Korolev’s workload remained undiminished, all the more so because people came to him for every conceivable decision. Golovanov relates one apocryphal story: Korolev was trying to work out the nature of the moon’s surface. He wanted to know if it was hard, or whether it was covered in a thick layer of dust, which could ruin any attempt at landing. After hours of debate it was clear the specialists could not resolve the matter. ‘So, comrades, suppose we assume the Moon has a hard surface,’ Korolev concluded, rising to leave. There was an immediate outcry. Who could possibly guarantee such a critical and unknowable decision? ‘Who will take responsibility? Oh, this is what you are talking about.’ Korolev grabbed some paper and a pen, his face screwed up in concentration. ‘I will take it.’ He wrote in large letters: ‘The Moon is hard’ and signed it ‘S. Korolev’.
The American-planned two-week stay in orbit could not be allowed to pass unchallenged. The Soviet Union would make the Americans look amateur. If they were orbiting in space for two weeks, Korolev would send two men into space for three weeks using an elliptical orbit that would ensure they also collected an altitude record. The Voskhod had to be modified for the more complex trip but the life-support system particularly was causing delays. All this conflicted with what Korolev considered more important work on the Soyuz space capsule. Another disappointment was that the Voskhod programme for women was falling behind. No one could be found to design their space suits. As the year passed with the Americans notching up one success after another with Gemini missions almost every two months, the pressure on Korolev grew. He was asked to conjure up a landmark event for the following March to coincide with the next Communist Party Congress. A new wonder had to be produced, involving two Voskhods.
Weighed down by the continuing demands, Korolev continued to push himself. Kamanin was concerned at how old and tired he was looking. Nina quietly observed how tetchy he had become. He came home from work utterly depleted, exasperated by unimportant details, fussing if his slippers were in the wrong place or if she had inadvertently overstocked the fridge. His characteristic largesse of spirit was succumbing to anxiety. He hated it if Nina was not at home.
One Saturday she visited her sister. Korolev said he was tired and would relax. She must go, but ‘put the phone near me,’ he said. When she arrived, her sister passed on the message that Sergei had called. She rang him back.
‘Why did you leave me all alone?’ he asked.
‘Do you want me to come back?’ she replied.
‘No, don’t, I’m going to sleep.’
Twenty minutes later he called again. ‘It’s me. What are you doing there?’ he asked. She returned home to find him asleep.
That autumn, Nina Ivanovna recalled that he would come home from work so drained that he would often say: ‘I can’t continue to work like this, you understand. I’m not going to continue working like this. I’m leaving!’ Yet each day he pushed himself on, chasing that elusive goal when the Soviets could regain their lead. He confided in another colleague: ‘I’ll just reach sixty and that’s all. I’ll not stay a day longer. I’ll go out and plant flowers.’
Work on the Soyuz expanded rapidly with more than three hundred different research organizations involved in its development. As soon as he had a full-scale model of the new ship, in the autumn of 1965, Korolev invited the leading cosmonauts and engineers to OKB-1 to see it. Korolev himself was late for the meeting, and when he arrived he looked harassed. Someone eagerly asked him to tell them all about it, but Gagarin was quick to silence him, worried at all the pressure on Korolev. ‘We’ll have time for that later,’ he told his friend. But Korolev protested, ‘I have twenty-five minutes.’
He proceeded to give a detailed explanation and soon warmed to his favourite theme. The Soyuz represented the culmination of a vision for which he had fought for years. It was a complex craft that would weigh 7 tons and comprised three modules. The capsule itself would hold crews of two or three and carried equipment to sustain flights of about two weeks. An important new feature was the solar panels that would give more power and therefore more time in space. The cosmonauts marvelled at the size of the craft. ‘It must be larger than two Vostoks,’ said Gagarin appreciatively. Komarov asked about the docking unit. Korolev explained how this would facilitate space exploration and conjured up a vision of a craft which would make flights from earth to space and back again to earth routine. The questions came in quick succession and Korolev, although clearly tired, responded to their enthusiasm. It was only when he had left the cosmonauts and returned alone to his office that he felt severe chest pains.
Ignoring his own wellbeing, in the coming weeks Korolev continued to supervise progress, sometimes travelling out to Star City to check up on the cosmonauts’ work in the Soyuz simulator. According to Romanov, Korolev’s biographer, once he arrived to find Vladimir Komarov in training. He took over from the instructor at the microphone.
‘I am Dawn [Zarya]. Can you hear me?’
Komarov was surprised to hear Korolev’s voice at the controls. There was a brief moment of silence before he replied with his usual professionalism: ‘Good morning, Sergei Pavlovich. I feel great. Everything goes according to plan.’
The instructors were full of praise for Komarov. They told Korolev it was a pleasure to work with him: ‘He was first and foremost an engineer.’ Komarov was rapidly acquiring a reputation as one of their most talented cosmonauts.
In December the Americans claimed their two-week endurance record in Gemini 7, unchallenged by the Soviets. They also continued to perfect manoeuvres for orbital space docking as Gemini 6 met up with Gemini 7 – the craft just a few yards apart for several hours. Apart from facing up to the growing challenge from America, Glushko’s criticism was also an endless source of irritation to Korolev. Making no allowances for his ailing colleague, Glushko seized every opportunity to put him down in public meetings. ‘He thinks that he is the chief successor and descendant of Tsiolkovsky,’ Korolev would say angrily, ‘and that we are only making tin cans!’
Korolev started intestinal bleeding again and was forced to consult a doctor for reassurance. Yes, he had a problem but it was not serious. He had a polyp, a small growth in the rectum. He would need an operation. Korolev explained that he was too busy, half jokingly saying that he just needed another ten years, at least. The doctor persisted. It was not serious, but the problem must be tackled. After the operation he would be a new man. The minor operation was booked for January.
At last there was a reason to explain his tiredness, but it was not an excuse to slow down. Over New Year’s Eve, Korolev could not see quite why, just because it was a holiday, he was obliged to stop work. Nina reminded him he had been invited to a party. Important officials such as Mstislav Keldysh would be there. Korolev confided to him, ‘You know, I am going to hospital again and I have a bad feeling about it. I don’t know whether I will leave it ever again.’ Keldysh had drunk a little too much and afterwards he reflected with regret that he had not allayed Korolev’s fears sufficiently.
In the New Year, Nina invited some of Korolev’s colleagues in for a party. When the guests finally departed, Korolev urged Gagarin and Leonov to stay. He felt the need to talk. The conversation continued for hours as they mulled over all aspects of their lives. It was four in the morning when Korolev finally began to unburden himself of the shock of his arrest in the 1930s, his mock trial and his experiences in Kolyma. He had not discussed this with the cosmonauts before. In fact he had never spoken of those years to anyone, but now he suddenly felt the need to re-examine what had happened.
Through the night over a bottle of cognac the two men listened as Korolev described what he had survived. He had been unconcerned with politics, happily wrapped up in his work and his young family when he had become drawn into the purges at the height of Stalin’s terror. Once arrested, he had lived in fear of death, knowing full well that what was happening to him could easily be inflicted on his family. His torturers had a way of taking more than his life. He was beaten, yes, but after a brief respite, when broken bones were knitting and a sliver of hope appeared, they would begin again, taking him almost to the point of death. His mock trial was a travesty of justice. When Korolev had explained that he had committed no crime, the reply cut short any possible investigation: ‘None of you swine have committed any crime! Ten years’ hard labour. Go! Next!’ Korolev was speaking of events that had happened twenty-five years earlier but his memory made it feel as if it were yesterday. His words made a deep impression on Gagarin and Leonov.
It was hard for the young cosmonauts to understand how Korolev had served the state so well when he had lived through such betrayal. No one was more truly Russian, more loyal to the state, more patriotic than Korolev. This was the man who had written to Nina Ivanovna from Kapustin Yar almost immediately after their marriage: ‘Being apart is the battle order of our Motherland. We are going to go through it cheerfully and firmly. I miss you and I think about you.’ All this when the state had taken years of his life in pointless imprisonment.
It was late on 4 January before Korolev was able to extricate himself from his office and even then he couldn’t quite bring himself to leave. The door suddenly opened, recalled Chertok. ‘He did not come into the room. He stopped at the door. He was wearing his overcoat and fur hat and looking at everyone with a sad, soft smile.’ They began to wish him the very best of health. Chertok was struck with how strange it was not to see the ‘powerful and authoritative army commander’ but a ‘tired, sad, dear SP’. He looked at everyone for a minute and then turned around and left, without closing the door.
The next morning he and Nina Ivanovna made their way to the Kremlin hospital where he was to undergo some tests. Almost absurdly for a distinguished man of science, he was fussing because he was unable to find his ‘good luck’ coins – two kopecks – by which he set store. Nina Ivanovna stayed all day, delaying the time when that air of authority prevalent in hospitals would reduce her husband to that anonymous creature ‘the patient’.
While in hospital, he dealt constantly with the office. There was a crisis almost immediately. He had left his deputy, Vasily Mishin, in charge but Mishin was unused to dealing with all the different responsibilities that Korolev had juggled almost effortlessly. Quite apart from negotiating his way through the political bureaucracy and keeping abreast of the engineering challenges, the administrative task was formidable. The production of the N-1 alone involved more than five hundred different organizations, each committed to a different delivery schedule of key components. Within a matter of days, Mishin had had enough. He decided to resign. As soon as Korolev heard the news he called Mishin and urged him to stay. Korolev reminded him that ministers came and went with the seasons, but rocket scientists were there for the duration. Mishin tore up his resignation letter.
On 12 January it was Korolev’s birthday but he expressly asked friends not to call. It would be too depressing. The previous year Nina had had to remind him it was his birthday and on the spur of the moment he had invited everyone he knew to celebrate it with him. All the guests had worn their ‘Gold Stars’. Colours of red and gold, music and laughter, the warmth of his many friends: that memory could not be rekindled in the silent whiteness of a hospital room. Besides, he was bleeding quite badly. The surgeon who would perform the operation had removed a small sample of the polyp for tests and the bleeding would not stop.
The operation was set for 14 January. Korolev and Nina had said their goodbyes the evening before. They had agreed that she would not come to the hospital before the operation, which would be early in the morning. She would be there when he woke up.
In the morning, however, Korolev felt the need to hear Nina’s voice. At 7.55 he rang her. The housekeeper answered the telephone. He wanted to speak to Nina. She wasn’t in.
‘Where is she?’ he wanted to know.
‘She left to go over to you,’ the housekeeper explained.
He was reassured by this news, but there was a catch in his voice.
Nina Ivanovna had had a feeling that her husband needed her but she arrived too late. Korolev was being taken into the theatre on a stretcher. Something about the fact that he was taken in feet first struck her as wrong. A group of doctors followed. The doors were closed. The operation was due to last about three hours. She would wait.
Korolev’s high status ensured an eminent surgeon would operate and it was the Minister of Health himself, Dr Boris Petrovsky, who was to remove the polyp endoscopically. When this was accomplished, Korolev haemorrhaged so severely that the flow could not be staunched. To allay the bleeding, Petrovsky cut the abdomen and discovered a tumour the size of a fist. In his memoirs he noted ‘the presence of an immovable malignant tumour which had grown into the rectum and the pelvic wall. Using an electronic scalpel, we were able to extract this tumour with great difficulty and conducted a biopsy which confirmed the presence of a malignant tumour.’
All the while, Korolev was bleeding profusely. Alarmed, Petrovsky summoned a cancer specialist, Dr Aleksandr Vishnevskiy. There were now, said Golovanov, the two most famous surgeons in the country in the operating room. The size of the tumour was unexpected and tension was rising. They had to remove parts of his rectum in order to take out the entire pervasive tumour; still the bleeding would not stop.
Nina Ivanovna was desperate with worry. A three-hour operation had turned into eight hours. Someone was trying to calm her when the surgeons came towards her assuring her of success. Suddenly their names were called and they rushed back to the theatre.
For eight hours Korolev had been kept under general anaesthetic. For such a lengthy operation, he should have had a tube in his lungs, but he had omitted to tell his doctors that his jaw had been broken several times as a young man in Kolyma Gulag, and he could not open his mouth wide enough to allow a tube to be inserted. The doctors wondered about doing a tracheotomy. Instead it was decided simply to use a breathing mask. When this was removed his breathing was laboured. He was clearly in difficulty. Hurriedly, a tracheotomy was performed. His breathing returned to normal but his heart was weak, too weak – and it stopped beating half an hour after surgery. The doctors tried hard to revive him. They gave him adrenalin injections. They tried everything they knew. It was no use.
Nina Ivanovna was now in a state of shock, fearing the worst, not knowing what that could be. Petrovsky came out to speak to her: ‘Be courageous,’ he said. And then she knew. Her husband was dead. The news was difficult to understand. She heard the surgeon saying: ‘I don’t know how he lived or walked with that heart.’
The news struck like lightening. Korolev was dead. His friends and colleagues – Mishin, Chertok and so many who had worked with him for decades – heard the news and, like Nina Ivanovna, were dumbfounded. Suddenly a vacuum had been left by this man whose generous spirit had touched them all. Many could not adjust to the news. ‘It has been three days since he died and I still don’t want to believe that he is no longer amongst the living,’ wrote Kamanin in his diary. ‘He left us when his talent was in bloom.’ Only Glushko received the news without charity. He was at a meeting when the Kremlin telephoned. ‘Sergei Pavlovich is no longer with us,’ he informed his colleagues. ‘Now, where did we leave off …?’
In the Kremlin, Brezhnev made a decision: to draw Korolev out of the shadows and bring him into the light. The Soviet Union had a hero. Mother Russia had produced a true son whose grandeur of vision must be known. It was time to reveal the Chief Designer’s name. It would live forever in Russian history.
On 17 January, Russians learned the identity of Sergei Pavlovich Korolev and they took him to their hearts. They waited in the bitter cold to file past and steal a glimpse of this legend, lying so still, as though asleep among the massed flowers. All the chief designers and Korolev’s deputies acted as guards of honour as he lay in state in the Hall of Columns in the House of Unions. So many people had volunteered for this honour that they could not all be accommodated. The whole of Russia, it seemed, had sent flowers: Korolev’s factory workers, delegations from Kapustin Yar and Baikonur, Politburo members, ministers, generals, marshals and admirals. The scent hung in the air as hundreds of thousands paid their respects. Finally people ‘had been shown a morsel of truth,’ wrote Chertok, and learned ‘to whom they had to pay respect for the greatest victory of mankind’. Everyone who filed passed his coffin felt they ‘touched his historic achievement in some way’. At 8 p.m. the doors were due to close, but the queue of people had no end.
Everyone had seen Korolev’s picture in Pravda, a strong, smiling, yet unfamiliar face, proudly wearing his medals. And they had read that ‘he was warmly loved and respected by the many, many people who worked with him’; and that ‘S. P. Korolev had lived giving all of his creative energy to the concern of the people and to progress’. And as they looked at the coffin draped in red, with wreaths from the highest in the land at his feet, the great white marble columns in the hall beribboned in black in the dull light of the shaded chandeliers, they understood that this must indeed have been a noble fellow Russian, whose passing should be marked and honoured.
The state funeral was on a massive scale: a huge drama with a cast of thousands laid out against the backdrop of the winter city under grey skies and falling snow. The serried ranks of sombre uniforms and crowds of people filled the scene. The urn with Korolev’s ashes was carried by Gagarin, Keldysh and other leading officials to Red Square. Speeches for the twentieth century’s practical visionary echoed across the square for the man who, since boyhood, had always gazed at the moon with wonder, dreaming of the stars.
There was one aspect to the ceremony that did not impress Kamanin. ‘Korolev occupies a place in the Kremlin wall next to S. V. Kurashov [the Minister for Heath]. I was irritated by the fact that they were neighbours,’ he wrote:
It unnecessarily reminded me of the great guilt of our medicine in the premature death of Sergei Pavlovich. All of the orators at the funeral gathering thought that Korolev was a great scientist, but not the Chief Director of space studies. This is not true … He was the Chief Designer of the spacecraft and not only in that post, but in essence as well. I will always place unlimited value on Korolev’s talent.
Following her husband’s death, Nina Ivanovna was swept along on the tide of interest and concern. She was the great man’s wife and a certain dignity was expected. Private grieving would have to wait. Boris Chertok describes how she had to bear all the toasts and speeches teary eyed although she was ‘in such a bad state … she could hardly make it’. Then suddenly all the noise and fuss was over. The silence of separation descended. There was no familiar voice with a touch of bemused petulance to telephone and say, ‘why did you leave me all alone? When are you coming home?’ She had no reason now to be at home.
His daughter, Natasha, was also trying to come to terms with her loss when Mishin came to see her with a small box which he had found in her father’s desk. She opened it to find her school exercise books, photographs and letters from years before, treasured tokens from her missed childhood that he had kept with him at all times.