Sharashka

"Sharashka" (sometimes "Sharaga" or "Sharazhka", _ru. шара́шка, IPA-ru|ʂɐˈraʂkə) was an informal name for secret research and development laboratories in the Soviet Gulag labor camp system. Etymologically, the word "sharashka" is derived from a Russian slang expression "sharashkina kontora" ("Sharashka's office", possibly from the radical meaning "to beat about"), an ironic, derogatory term to denote a poorly organized, impromptu, or bluffing organization.

The scientists and engineers at a "sharashka" were prisoners picked from various camps and prisons and assigned to work on scientific and technological problems for the state. Living conditions were usually much better than in an average "taiga" camp, especially bearing in mind the absence of hard labor.

The results of the research in "sharashkas" were usually published under the names of prominent Soviet scientists without credit given to the real authors, whose names frequently have been forgotten. Some "sharashka" inmates, brilliant scientists and engineers released during and after World War II, continued independent careers and became world-famous.

History

In 1934 Leonid Ramzin and other engineers sentenced in the Industrial Party Trial were formed into a special design bureau under State Political Directorate (GPU), which was then the Soviet secret police. In 1938, Lavrenty Beria, a senior NKVD official, created the Department of Special Design Bureaus at the NKVD USSR (Отдел особых конструкторских бюро НКВД СССР). In 1939, the unit was renamed the Special Technical Bureau at the NKVD USSR (Особое техническое бюро НКВД СССР) and placed under the leadership of General Valentin Kravchenko, under Beria's immediate supervision. In 1941 it received a secret name, the 4th Special Department of the NKVD USSR (4-й спецотдел НКВД СССР).

In 1949, the scope of "sharaskas" significantly increased. Previously the work done there was of military and defense character. The MVD Order № 001020 dated November 9 1949 decreed installation of "Special technical and design bureaus" for a wide variety of "civilian" research and development, particularly in the "remote areas of the Union".Fact|date=February 2007

The 4th Special Department was disbanded in 1953 when, shortly after Stalin's death, Nikita Khrushchev had Beria arrested for espionage and executed.

Notable sharashka inmates

*Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a writer. His novel "The First Circle" is a vivid account of life in "sharashka" "Marfino".
*Lev Kopelev, a writer, another inmate of Marfino (a prototype for Rubin from "The First Circle")
*Sergey Korolyov, an aircraft and rocket designer, later the chief designer for the Soviet space program.
*Valentin Glushko, a chief rocket engine designer. ( [http://www.mn.ru/english/issue.php?2003-34-15 His biography at MN] )
*Andrei Tupolev, the chief designer of the aircraft families "Tu" and "ANT".
*Vladimir Petlyakov, the chief designer of the aircraft families "Pe" and "VI" ( [http://www.faqs.org/docs/air/avpe2.html The Petlyakov aircraft] ).
*Vladimir Myasishchev, an aircraft designer.
*Leonid Kerber, an aircraft designer.
*Yuri Kondratyuk, a pioneer of astronautics and spaceflight, the inventor of gravitational slingshot.
*Georgy Langemak, a co-inventor (with Korolev) of the Katyusha rocket launcher.
*Helmut Gröttrup, a German rocket scientist from the Peenemünde laboratory. (Its head Wernher von Braun was acquired by the US).
*Nikolai Nikolaevich Polikarpov, an aircraft designer (arrested for a brief period).
*Léon Theremin, a pioneer of electronic music, the inventor of the theremin and an electronic eavesdropping bug.
*Nikolay Timofeev-Ressovsky, a geneticist and radiobiologist ( [http://www.genetics.org/cgi/content/full/158/3/933 His biography at genetics.org] ).
*Leonid Ramzin, the inventor of the straight-flow boiler ( [http://harikumar.brinkster.net/MLRB/MLRPB9-IndustParty.htm The Industrial Party affair] , [http://www.tstu.ru/win/tambov/imena/mih/ramzin.htm His biography in Russian] ).

References

* L.L.Kerber, Von Hardesty, Paul Mitchell, "Stalin's Aviation Gulag: Memoir of Andrei Tupolev and the Purge Era (Smithsonian History of Aviation & Spaceflight S.)", Smithsonian Institution Press, (hardcover, 1996, 396p.), ISBN 1-56098-640-9.

External links

*cite web |url=http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj00/win00/kerber.htm |title=Review of "Stalin’s Aviation Gulag" by Leonid Lvovich Kerber |accessdate=2007-06-23 |author=Maj David R. Johnson, USAF |authorlink= |coauthors= |date= |year= |month= |format= |work=Aerospace Power Journal |publisher= |pages= |language= |archiveurl= |archivedate= |quote=
* [http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/faculty/harrison/vpk/part2/ The database of research and design establishments of the Soviet defence industry, 1927–67] by Keith Dexter, The U. of Warwick.
* [http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2740/circle.html The translator's note to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The First Circle, Harper & Row (1968)]