Chief Designer
수석설계자
An anonymous title used by the Soviet Union in public communications to refer to the chief engineers of sensitive military and space programs while concealing their identities as a state secret. The real names of individuals so designated were typically revealed only after their deaths. The most famous case is Sergei Korolev, whom the Soviet press referred to exclusively as 'the Chief Designer' during his lifetime; even some cosmonauts who worked with him did not know his name.
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- Wikipedia (EN) "During his lifetime, Korolev was publicly identified only as glavny konstruktor (главный конструктор; lit. 'chief designer'), partly to protect him from possible assassination attempts during the Cold War. Even some cosmonauts who worked with him did not know his name."
- Wikipedia (RU) "В официальных документах СССР его называли просто «Главный конструктор»."
- scienceblog.com "For nine years, the most consequential engineer of the 20th century was known to the world by a single anonymous title: the Chief Designer. … The secrecy was deliberate. Soviet leadership, still shaped by Stalinist habits of concealment, worried that a named chief designer would become a target for Western intelligence."
- spbran.ru "Главный конструктор ракетно-космической техники СССР. … человек, чьё имя десятилетиями оставалось засекреченным."