You Can’t Fight City Hall, Can You?

My father was a pretty reserved guy, he didn’t express a lot of emotion.  But he had a thing about the American flag.  He always smiled when he looked at it.  Sometimes he would burst into laughter.  I knew he was proud to have become an American citizen.  He’d told us the story about the flags Bertina made during the war.  It wasn’t until years later that he told me the real reason seeing the flag made him so happy.

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When Sergei saw the look in Artur’s eyes, he got an idea.  He’d always thought of the mathematician as brilliant, but scatterbrained.  Standing in the broad expanse of desert that was Baikonur, Sergei realized, Artur could accomplish anything he put his mind to.  The rules were simple.  It had to be something he was passionate about.

Sergei knew Artur wanted to see massive rockets pushing men into outer space as much as he did.  He needed dedicated people overseeing the planning and construction of the Cosmodrome.  He couldn’t be there all the time.

The Chief Designer didn’t expect Artur to become a construction foreman or an architect.  But he knew he could count on him as a pair of feet on the ground and a set of eyes.

And, Sergei saw it as a chance to put some space between Popovich and Artur.  There was an uneasy truce between the two, but Sergei knew the Party man was constantly watching Artur, waiting for an opportunity to cause trouble. 

“So, Arti, I’m going to throw something out there.  You don’t need to say anything now, just think about this and talk to me later.  I’d like you to move to Baikonur and be on the advance team.  Of course, Ekaterina will come with you.  I’ll always need your skills as a mathematician, but right now, more than anything, I need a right hand man here, someone I trust, looking after things.  And, for a while at least, there will be no Popovich.”

Sergei was a student of human nature and knew his employee well.  If he had ordered Artur to do this, he might have rebelled.  By leaving the decision up to Artur, Sergei knew he wouldn’t be able to resist.

As Artur and his wife carried their suitcases into the construction trailer that would be their new home, his first thought was, “What the hell did I get us into?  This is no place for a math guy.”

Fortunately for Artur, Ekaterina knew how to read his mind.  She was ready when he got that look on his face.  She said, “You know how you always carry around a notebook so you can write down your ideas?  Now you’ll do the same thing.  Half the notebook will be for math.  The other half is where you’ll keep track of what is happening at Baikonur.  Sergei knows you’ve never done anything like this.  Give it some time.  You’ll figure it out.”

That was all it took to get Artur started.  Within a week, the new part of his notebook was divided into seven sections.  He developed a routine that he would go through twice a day, to keep up with the various aspects of construction.  Soon, there would be buildings large enough to hold skyscraper sized rockets.  Launch pads and gantries and a rail system specifically designed to move massive rocket parts.  Office buildings and laboratories.  An entire city.  Apartments, stores, and roads, built from bare ground up, to house the workers.  

Keeping up with it all was an overwhelming task.  The more Artur wrote down, the less stress he felt.  

A chunk of desert larger than the state of Delaware had been allocated for the Cosmodrome.  The vast majority of that was nothing more than a buffer zone between the inevitable catastrophes and the few residents of this barren, forbidding place.

Baikonur quickly grew to over 10,000 people.  Artur and Ekaterina had arrived with the first set of construction engineers.  Now, new people were arriving as fast as living quarters could be set up.  Which was no easy task.  

They were 800 kilometers from the nearest city of any size.  The road from Tashkent to Baikonur was nothing more than a path carved through the desert by bulldozers.  Carburetors constantly choked on the relentless dust.  Rain was infrequent, but even short storms cut gashes through the road, as water ran down the slopes and made its way to the Syr Darya river.

Progress was slow, but it was more than enough to keep Artur busy.  His favorite part of the facility was the R-7 launch pad.  A deep, triangle shaped pit was being dug, to contain the fiery blast the rocket engines would expel.  Next to the blast pit was the launch pad.  The gantries would reach as far into the sky as far as the blast pit was deep.  Artur marveled at the size of the structure.

In June 1956, the first permanent apartment building was completed.  Artur and Ekaterina moved into a tiny, sparsely furnished, one bedroom unit.  After the bunk bed he had at Peenemünde, and the primitive facilities at Gorodomlya, it felt like the penthouse in a Manhattan highrise.

By then, the entire length of the road had been paved or gravelled.  People and materials were arriving at an accelerated pace.  The first laboratory opened, and the research teams set up the equipment they had carefully packed back at the island.

When the rest of the staff had been moved out of Gorodomlya, it was closed down, and Korolev moved to Baikonur full time.  He relieved Artur of his project management duties, and sent him back to his familiar place in the laboratory.

Things were going great for Artur since he moved to Baikonur.  Until the Communist Party showed up.

When Artur was called into a meeting with Mr. Dobrynin, he knew he was not dealing with a lightweight like Popovich.  The man spoke in a soft voice, but the look in his eyes was piercing.  “Mr. Wlodarski, I will not waste any more of your time than I have to.  I’ve reviewed your file and I’ve spoken to Mr. Popovich and Mr. Korolev.”

“I will make it simple.  You are essential to this project.  Your wife is not.  If you do not sign a Party membership form before you leave this office, Mrs. Wlodarski will be reassigned to a job in a oil refinery in Vladivostok.”

Dobrynin set a form and a pen in front of Artur.  “I can have your wife on an airplane in 10 minutes.  You will never see her again.”

Artur studied the man for a moment.  He had not raised his voice.  There were no veins bulging from his forehead.  His face was expressionless.  Artur picked up the pen and signed the form.

When he walked out of the building, a rage was welling up inside him.  For more than half of his life, bullies hiding behind an army or a government had been manipulating him.  He was tired of being a pawn.  Artur thought, “There has to be a way to fight back.”

It was late in the day and the honor guard was lowering the Soviet flag in front of the new Communist party building in Baikonur.  Artur looked at the flag as the men were folding it, then at the flagpole.  His anger dissolved in an instant and he began chuckling under his breath.  He knew what he would do next.