People of the Revolution and the USSR

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1902–1973 ○ Died

A Polish-born Soviet general who commanded the suppression of the Poznań uprising

On 28 June 1956, arriving in Poznań around 2 p.m., he at once ordered troops to take control of the situation before the security headquarters.

Born into a Polish peasant family in Podolia, Ukraine, and illiterate until eighteen, he was drafted into the Red Army and rose to become a Soviet general. At the end of the Second World War he commanded the Polish First Army in the battle for Berlin and was made a Hero of the Soviet Union. After the war he stayed on in the high command of the Polish army as a Soviet overseer, and in June 1956, as deputy defence minister, directed the military suppression of the Poznań workers' protest on the ground.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1912–2011 ○ Natural causes

Korolev's deputy who designed the brains of Sputnik and then wrote the history of the Soviet space program

On May 2, 1945, Major Boris Chertok scrawled his name on the walls of the fallen Reichstag — the moment he would forever call 'the happiest achievement of my life.' Three months later he was knee-deep in V-2 wreckage, opening the first page of the Soviet space program.

Korolev's closest deputy, he designed the guidance and control systems that steered Soviet rocketry for half a century — from the R-7 ICBM through Sputnik, Vostok, Soyuz, and Mir. A Hero of Socialist Labor (1961) and full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, he published his four-volume memoir 'Rockets and People,' the definitive insider history of the Soviet space program, and kept writing until age 99.

Soviet Union state institutions Soviet communism 1914–1984 ○ Natural causes

The missile designer who overtook Korolev under Khrushchev's patronage, then faded when his patron fell

On March 8, 1958, Chelomey hired Nikita Khrushchev's son Sergei as an engineer at OKB-52. With that single hire, he gained a direct line to the Soviet leader — and over the next six years, backed by Khrushchev's patronage, he rose to the pinnacle of the Soviet space program, surpassing even Korolev.

A leading Soviet rocket and spacecraft designer, he headed OKB-52 (later NPO Mashinostroyeniya) and created the Proton launch vehicle, the UR-100 ICBM, the Almaz military space stations, and the TKS spacecraft. He chaired the Council of Chief Designers from 1961, succeeding Korolev (aided by Khrushchev's patronage, since Khrushchev's son Sergei worked under him). After Khrushchev's ouster, Ustinov sidelined him, and by 1981 his space programs were shut down. The Proton rocket still flies today; the UR-100 was the most mass-deployed ICBM in Soviet history.