Last surviving GKChP member who led the Soviet space industry
In 1991 I stood up for the defense of our state.
A technocrat who rose from mounter at the Kharkov instrument plant to Minister of General Machine-Building, overseeing the entire Soviet rocket and space industry, and led the Energia–Buran reusable spacecraft programme, the last great project of Soviet spaceflight. In 1988 he became CC CPSU Secretary for Defence Industry, directing the Party's military-industrial policy, and in August 1991 he joined the eight-member State Committee on the State of Emergency (GKChP) in a failed attempt to prevent the USSR's dissolution, for which he was imprisoned for a year and a half. At his death in 2021 he was the GKChP's last survivor.
Career Timeline
- 1950–1962Mounter and radio-equipment tuner at Kharkov Instrument-Engineering Plant
- 1963–1972Chief engineer, Kharkov Instrument-Engineering Plant
- 1972–1975Director, Kharkov Instrument-Engineering Plant
- 1975–1976General director, Monolit Production Association
- 1976–1981Deputy Minister of General Machine-Building, USSR
- 1981–1983First Deputy Minister of General Machine-Building, USSR
- 1983–1988Minister of General Machine-Building, USSR
- 1988–1991CC Secretary for Defence Industry, CPSU
Related historical events
- 1985–1991Perestroika and Glasnostspace industry minister and GKChP member
- 1991The Novo-Ogaryovo Process and the New Union TreatyHead of the Foros delegationAs first deputy chairman of the Defense Council, led the five-man delegation that flew to Foros on 18 August to demand Gorbachev declare a state of emergency. After being refused, became a founding GKChP member.
- 1991The August Coup and the Collapse of the USSRGKChP member, Foros emissaryOn 18 August 1991 he flew to Foros with Boldin, Shenin, and Varennikov to demand that Gorbachev declare a state of emergency. Arrested on 23 August after the coup failed, he was held in Matrosskaya Tishina prison and amnestied in 1994.
The Energia–Buran Programme
The defining project of the Soviet space industry in the 1980s was the Energia–Buran reusable space transport system, built to counter the US Space Shuttle. Viewed in Moscow as a military threat, capable of orbital nuclear strikes and satellite capture, the Shuttle made strategic parity dependent on an equivalent response. After the USSR Council of Ministers approved the programme in 1976, an unprecedented mobilisation drew in 1,260 enterprises across 85 ministries and agencies. Baklanov entered the effort as First Deputy Minister of General Machine-Building in 1981 and, as Minister from 1983, chaired the Interdepartmental Coordination Council (MVKS), assuming direct responsibility for the entire project.
Baklanov personally chaired the State Commission for the maiden launch of the Energia rocket from Baikonur on 15 May 1987, and oversaw the historic flight of the Buran orbiter on 15 November 1988: after three hours in orbit, the unpiloted craft made the world's first fully automatic runway landing. He overruled a plan to launch a dummy payload on the first Energia, insisting that a "mere blank" would be "undignified for such a space power," and personally worked out proposals, which the Americans had not achieved, to double Energia's payload capacity (100→200 tonnes) and to decouple the Buran orbiter for independent operation. The programme drove the creation of 90 new materials and the operation of 100 experimental rigs and 7 full-scale integrated test stands. Even after moving to the CC CPSU as Secretary for Defence Industry in 1988, Baklanov continued to sponsor the programme from the Party side. The thread running through his entire career was the organisation of Soviet technical parity at the front line of the superpower contest for military space dominance.