Council of Chief Designers

Formation

The danger of organisational fragmentation was the immediate occasion. Korolev warned his like-minded colleagues, appointed as chief designers in various ministries, that creative and business ties were at risk of being broken, and proposed creating a body to harmonise plans and take fundamental decisions jointly. From 1946 he gathered the chief designers at his own place, and the council existed from the moment large-scale work was deployed in the industry. A study by Bauman Moscow State Technical University nevertheless dates its birth and consolidation as a unique organ to the autumn of 1947.

Character and procedure

No government decree on its establishment, composition, powers and status was ever adopted, and it had no charter documents and no procedural requirements binding its members. Participation was voluntary and decisions were adopted on the basis of consensus. Its unofficial character allowed it to avoid bureaucratic delays and to speed up decision-making and implementation.

The separate 1960s council and decline

On 3 August 1960 a large joint meeting of chief designers of enterprises of the State Committee for Aviation Technology and the State Committee for Radio Electronics decided to organise a Council of Chief Designers, and its first session took place on 11 October 1960. Its head, Chelomey, strove to give the organ a minimally necessary formalised character, unlike Korolev. Because the original council had been informal since its creation, there was no formal decision dissolving it in 1961, and Chelomey secured the support of the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Khrushchev. After Khrushchev's removal in October 1964, Chelomey lost his leadership positions in the council and in Soviet rocket-building as a whole.

Significance and limits

After Korolev's death in 1966 the activity of the council in the form in which it had been created practically came to nothing, although councils modelled on it were created later. The council was also distinct in character from the military-industrial commission as a state organ. That commission was a permanently functioning special organ formed in 1957 whose decisions were binding on all ministries and agencies developing and producing military products. With the fall of Chelomey and the death of Korolev the council lost its significance and became a consultative organ aiding that commission, the Commission of the Presidium of the USSR Council of Ministers on military-industrial questions under D.F. Ustinov. The council also contained a distinct technical-policy line. Yangel defended rockets using high-boiling oxidisers while Korolev was a supporter of the liquid-oxygen fuel oxidiser, and in the end both designers proved right, though this became clear only once each of them headed his own direction.

Membership and political economy

The first council included the chief designers of the enterprises which had been engaged in the rocket-space programme in leading positions since 1946. Around 1954 the Soviet space project came close to solving the task of sending a human into space, and in connection with the expansion of the range of tasks new specialists were introduced into the council. The rivalry of the chief designers for state orders and priority financing suited the party-state top because it allowed them to be controlled: these strong personalities became dependent on the patronage of the highest party leaders.