RAUSCHENBACH(Rauschenbach) Boris Viktorovich (Boris Ivar) (January 5, 1915, Petrograd - March 27, 2001, Moscow), one of the founders Soviet cosmonautics, creator of spacecraft attitude control systems, philosopher, public figure, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (since 1991 RAS) in the Department of Mechanics and Control Processes (1984; corresponding member since 1966). Father - Viktor Yakovlevich Rauschenbach, was born in Ekaterinenstadt (now the city of Marx, Saratov region), was educated in Germany, worked as a tanner at the Skorokhod shoe factory, and after the October Revolution of 1917 became its technical director. Mother - Leontina Christina, nee Hallik, from the family Baltic Germans, who lived in Arensburg (now Kuressaare). According to the family chronicle of a distant relative of R. (Valentin Eduardovich Rauschenbach), the founder of the Rauschenbach family in Russia was Karl Friedrich Rauschenbach, who married Sophia Friederike Grunen in 1766.
R. was baptized in the Evangelical Reformed Church. After graduating from school (No. 34, former "Reformierte Schule", Leningrad), he worked for one year as a "carpenter-assembler" at Leningrad Plant No. 23 and in 1932 entered the Leningrad Institute of Civil Air Fleet Engineers. Passing early final exams as an external student, moved to Moscow and in 1937 went to work at the Rocket Research Institute (RNII, from 1938 - NII-3, from 1944 - NII-1 of the People's Commissariat / Ministry of Aviation Industry) in the group of S. P. Korolev. He worked on the problems of stability of cruise missiles in flight, and since 1938 (after Korolev’s arrest and folding in the People’s Commissariat defense industry projects that required more than three years for their implementation) - work related to the creation of field systems rocket artillery("Katyusha").
In September 1941, he managed to avoid deportation on ethnic grounds by filing an imaginary business trip to the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute. In November 1941, he followed the institute to Sverdlovsk. However, in March 1942 he was mobilized into the “Labor Army” and sent to the “Construction Squad No. 18-74” of the Tagillag NKVD of the USSR. For more than six months he worked as a QA foreman at a brick factory, then was “rented” from Tagillag (for a fee) by his institute: remaining in the camp, he performed theoretical calculations on the instructions of the institute (he worked on the self-oscillations of an anti-aircraft projectile, the lateral stability of an aircraft, the stability of combustion in liquid rocket engines) . He lived in the same barracks with future professors, historian O.N. Bader and chemist A.G. Stromberg, doctor of the University of Berlin, chemist and mineralogist P.E. Rickert, turbine specialist V.F. Rice.
In January 1946, like other “labor army members,” R. was transferred to a special settlement regime, lived in Nizhny Tagil, still worked for his institute and at the same time was a consultant to the Nizhny Tagil local history museum on Ancient Egypt. In 1948 he was sent to an aircraft plant in the city of Shcherbakov (now Rybinsk) subordinate to the Gulag. Finding himself passing through Moscow, he obtained permission to be re-enlisted in the staff of NII-1.
He defended his candidate's (1949) and doctor's theses (1958) on the processes of combustion vibrations in a rocket engine. Since 1955, he headed Laboratory No. 6 of NII-1, which for the first time in the USSR was engaged in the creation of spacecraft orientation control systems. The laboratory has published a large number of books, scientific papers and reports. The development of theoretical issues was combined directly with technical implementation. At the beginning of 1960, R., together with his laboratory, moved to S.P. OKB-1. Korolev (now Rocket and Space Corporation Energia), became the first head of the Department of Orientation Systems and Spacecraft Control. The departments headed by R. worked extremely hard. They created orientation systems for the following spacecraft: E2A (“Luna-3”), which photographed the far side of the Moon on October 4, 1959 (in 1960 R. was awarded the Lenin Prize); the first satellite returned to Earth, on the basis of which the first manned spacecraft "Vostok" was developed (1961; awarded the order Lenin) and the first Soviet space reconnaissance aircraft "Zenith" (1962); more than 10 various types automatic interplanetary stations(AMS), in particular Mars, Venus and Probe (1961-66); the first communications satellite "Molniya" (1963-66); ships "Voskhod"; lunar landing spacecraft E-2 (landing on the Moon in March 1966). For the new Soyuz spacecraft, under the leadership of R., orientation, rendezvous and docking systems were developed. Relations with the new management of OKB-1 after the death of S.P. Korolev (1966) did not work out for R. In 1973, he was removed from the leadership of the department, and in 1978 he resigned from OKB-1, citing the loss of interest in the work due to the lack of novelty of the problems as the reason for his departure. At OKB-1 R. created scientific school, whose students and followers occupy key positions in the Russian rocket and space industry.
Simultaneously with his main work, R. taught courses he developed on gas dynamics, gyroscopy, control theory, motion control and space flight dynamics at the Faculty of Physics and Technology of Moscow State University (1947-51), at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) from the moment of his education (1951). He headed the departments of MIPT "Flight Dynamics and Control" and "Theoretical Mechanics" (1978-98).
R. was surprisingly diversified (sometimes he is called “the last encyclopedist of the 20th century”). Returning from the special settlement to Moscow, he became interested in ancient Chinese literature. He was also interested in other problems. The book “Spatial Constructions in Old Russian Painting” (1975) combined his long-standing interest in icon painting and the ways he found to solve the problems of the adequacy of transferring a three-dimensional image to a flat screen, which arose during the development of a control system for the docking of spacecraft. In this and other similar works (“Spatial constructions in painting”, 1980; “Perspective systems in fine arts. General Theory of Perspective", 1986; "Picture Geometry and Visual Perception", 1994) R. showed the fundamental impossibility of adequately transferring the geometric characteristics of the depicted object onto the picture plane without any distortion.
In 1978, R. was appointed the first chairman of the USSR Academy of Sciences Commission for the development scientific heritage pioneers of space exploration. Several works in this area were published by him (his book "Hermann Oberth" was translated into German and English).
In a large article about the 1000th anniversary of the baptism of Rus' ("Communist", 1987, No. 12), R. substantiated the positive role of baptism in the history of Russia. In his work “The Logic of Trinity” (“Questions of Philosophy”, 1993, No. 3) he demonstrated the logical consistency of the dogma of the Trinity. To legalize work on church bells R. created the Bell Ringing Association under the auspices of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
In 1987, R. joined the Human Rights Commission of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Acted as a consultant on the issue of religious freedoms in the preparation of the 1990 Law “On Freedom of Conscience and Religion”, insisted on the provision complete freedom religions and equality of all faiths.
R. was co-chairman of the Soros Foundation in the USSR (Russia) from the day of its founding (1987), after the transformation of the Foundation he became chairman of the supervisory board of the Open Society Institute - Russia. In 2001, the Institute established a scholarship named after R., which is paid to students Russian universities who demonstrated extraordinary scientific abilities.
Elected Chairman of the Organizing Committee for the preparation of the Congress of Germans of the USSR (1990). During subsequent congresses, he tried to reconcile the conflicting sides of the German national movement.
Since 1997, Chairman of the RAS Scientific Council on the History of World Culture.
Awarded by the USSR Academy of Sciences the gold medal named after B. N. Petrov for a series of works on the theory and systems of automatic control and experimental research on space exploration (1986). For great services in the development of domestic science, training highly qualified specialists for National economy was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and then awarded the title of Hero Socialist Labor(1990). Laureate of the Demidov Prize (1990, section "Mechanics"). For services to Russian Germans and outstanding scientific achievements R. was awarded the Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit for the Federal Republic of Germany (February 2001).
After undergoing a serious operation in 1997, he converted to Orthodoxy.
He was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow.
Since 1941 he was married to Vera Mikhailovna, née Ivanchenko. Their daughters are Oksana and Vera.
I once believed that only the exact sciences do the real thing. But these sciences will never explain the phenomenon of man, the unwritten laws by which he lives, and the ethical concepts associated with them - justice, conscience, the ability to forgive... Illogical knowledge shapes them to a large extent. A person simply knows what is good and what is bad. It is impossible to prove this. We often see how common sense leads us to stupidity. And in the understanding of universal human values, the irrational component of human consciousness plays a large role. So it’s completely natural that people have two channels for perceiving information. Rational is science, logical reasoning, to which we are accustomed, and irrational, which is often called revelation. Revelations go beyond science. This is a very important path - in the sense that it greatly complements our usual path of knowledge. And it’s very bad when someone tries to create a purely scientific worldview. The perception of the world cannot be only scientific, it can be holistic. Just knowledge is not enough for a person; he needs high culture, spirituality, morality and, if you like, religion, because it answers questions that science cannot answer.
Academician Boris Raushenbakh
We present a conversation between a correspondent of the Vera - Eskom newspaper and academician Rauschenbach. Although many years have passed since it took place (B.V. Rauschenbach passed away to the Lord on March 17, 2001), its content can certainly arouse interest today.
Many theologians have written about the trinity of God, incomprehensible to the human mind - God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit - starting with the Apostle John. A . Just recently, many were amazed when B.V. Rauschenbach’s books were published with titles such as “Coming to the Holy Trinity”, “The Logic of the Trinity”, “The Path of Contemplation”... Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Korolev’s comrade-in-arms in space exploration, Lenin Prize laureate, Hero of Socialist Labor - and writes on church topics!? How is this possible?
Academician Rauschenbach himself explains it this way: “I was brought into theology by disputes around the Christian Trinity. As a man of science, the trinity of the Trinity was incomprehensible to me; I wanted to refute this seeming absurdity. But... the concept of the Trinity turned out to be logically flawless. So, in thinking about the Trinity, I was essentially doing math.”
The image of God - the Trinity - according to the academician, permeates all matter. And don’t we ourselves see that physical space has a triple dimension - length, width, height? That time is divided into past, present and future? If we talk about modern science, then natural processes are considered by modern scientists as a trinity - matter, energy and information. And in information (the nature of which began to be studied quite recently) three components were also discovered: quantity, meaning and value... Although, of course, all this in itself does not reveal the essence of the Holy Trinity, but only illustrates it.
“By the end of our century, the inconsistency of “arrogant” materialism became obvious,” the academician writes in his works. “And there is nothing strange that representatives of exact knowledge were almost the first to come to this idea...”
Many compare the almost 90-year-old academician Rauschenbach with the departed D.S. Likhachev. The point here, of course, is not a matter of age, but of personality. Boris Viktorovich is not only a physicist and mathematician, but also the author of books on icon painting, theology and philosophy, participates in various public organizations, saving the remains of Russian cultural heritage. Finally, he is simply an Orthodox person - in his last book, “Postscript” (M., 1999), the scientist wrote that he accepted Orthodox baptism.
In St. Petersburg, during one of the working visits of Academician Boris Viktorovich Rauschenbach, our correspondent met with the scientist and asked him several questions.
– Boris Viktorovich, you own the words that “the most Orthodox Russians are Germans”...
- This is a joke, but there is some truth in it. You see, this can be explained very simply psychologically. A Russian does not need to prove that he is Russian and Orthodox. It's more difficult with a German. And if a German becomes Orthodox, it is not formal. As for my family, my parents were Lutherans and went to the church - the German Church of the Apostle Peter on Nevsky, near the Kazan Cathedral. They taught me to pray: “Vater unser der du bist im himmel...” - this is “Our Father” in German. My father, from the Volga Germans, worked in Leningrad at Skorokhod as the technical manager of a tannery. And since the Germans, the managers of the plant, were Huguenots, all the employees went to the Huguenot church. I was also baptized in it - that’s how I became a Huguenot. Then, after the war, when I started attending services, this helped me a lot: I had a simple answer prepared for the possible indignation of the party leadership. Yes, I go to Orthodox churches, but you pester me in vain: I’m... a Huguenot! And they fell silent.
– During the times of atheism, did you give lectures about icons?
– Yes, for physics and technology students. It was a whole cycle - ten lectures for two hours. I remember then people came from Moscow to Dolgoprudny with recording devices - not because, of course, I was so smart, I just said things that could not be heard anywhere in those days. There was not a single word in these lectures that could offend a believer. And the heads of the physics and technology department later told me: “Do you know how we report to the district committee about your lectures? We classify them as “anti-religious propaganda”! And imagine, in the district committee they were praised for good production atheistic work! We were at Physics and Technology smart people, they laughed a lot when they told it.
– In one interview, you said that you have always been a “fan of the Church”...
– The fact is that I always rooted for a weak team. But the Church was precisely in the position of a weak team; it was constantly beaten, persecuted and scolded. Why scold her - she good organization! At receptions in the Kremlin Palace, party bosses sat in the main hall, and “second-class” people - bishops and the Patriarch - were sent to a smaller room. No one approached them, but foreign guests could see that everything was fine with religion in the USSR. This somehow depressed me, and I defiantly approached and talked, I was interested. Sometimes I even performed. When the Trinity-Sergius Lavra celebrated the three-hundredth anniversary of the Theological Academy, I was asked to say some words. I agreed with the Vice-President of the Academy of Sciences E.P. Velikhov that I would not only speak on my own behalf, but would congratulate the Church on behalf of the Academy of Sciences. And I said such a speech, and it was published in the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate. I had the opportunity to meet Patriarch Pimen, and I visited his cell in the Novodevichy Convent. Of course, in those years I was largely saved by the fact that I was not working in the social sciences.
– Why are you interested in icons? In Soviet times, it was believed that icons were for old women...
– About old women, this, of course, is nonsense. The point is that in Orthodox Church The icon is an essential part of the divine service. For Catholics it is different; for them the icon serves only as an illustration of Holy Scripture. Therefore, Catholic icon painters paint the Mother of God with any beautiful woman. All their Madonnas are beauties. And Orthodox icons are similar to each other, because they go back to the prototype - to Herself Mother of God. And ancient icons are valued not because they are old, but because they are closer to the original - the Prototype. At first, icon painting interested me from a mathematical point of view, and then gradually the theological line came. I started with the fact that space is depicted “incorrectly” on icons. This seemed strange to me, so I began to study ancient painting. And I realized that he was always portrayed correctly! Art historians taught that fine art developed gradually - before, they say, “they didn’t know how,” they painted naively, incorrectly, but in the Renaissance they understood everything, and well done. You can't think of anything more stupid! Icon painters, unlike Renaissance artists, were not interested in natural perception. They were little interested in space, they were interested in the saint. The image was needed for prayer, with its help they addressed the Archetype. Therefore, the saint was placed in the foreground - on the edge of the frame, as we would say now. There is no longer any space in front of him, only the person praying. In the Renaissance, space had already appeared: artists began to drag naive realism into places where it had no place at all. In fact, nothing was supposed to be written on the icons other than a golden background conveying holiness. In addition, on the icons the saint is depicted not in his state on earth, but in his state of deified flesh. After the Second Coming, we will all have deified flesh, and a saint is already deified flesh. And there really is no need for realism here. Hence all the so-called oddities of Russian icon painting.
Dormition of the Mother of God. Icon. Beginning XIII v., Novgorod. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
– You wrote a lot about the “Assumption” icons and about Rublev’s “Trinity”...
– I am really partial to the Assumption icon. This is probably my favorite icon, and if I were asked to choose one of all the icons, I would choose “The Dormition”. Of course, in the ancient Russian style, and not in the style of some Durer. His “Assumption” is a nightmare from an ecclesiastical point of view. Yes, Dürer was a first-class artist, but he was not given the ability to paint like the Russian icon painters of the school of Rublev and Theophanes the Greek... “The Dormition” is an icon whose plot requires an image of both our world and the other world. For example, “Christmas” is only our world, and “Descent into Hell” is only the other world. And to have both on one icon is the “Assumption”. And look how wonderfully the icon painters solved this problem! They, great masters, showed, I would say, incredible learning and, without knowing modern mathematics, intuitively they did everything absolutely correctly.
As for Rublev, he is a most brilliant icon painter, and his “Trinity” is the pinnacle of icon painting. I specifically looked at all the pre-Rubble icons for this plot and found that there was no gradual increase - it was a leap, something explosive. After Rublev, everyone began to repeat his “Trinity”. Since this was the limit of perfection, all subsequent repetitions became worse. On his icon, Rublev brilliantly embodied the dogma of the Church about the consubstantial and indivisible Trinity. The three angels are depicted in exactly the same type, which conveys their consubstantiality, and the sacrificial bowl on the throne symbolizes inseparability. On the icon we also see a mountain, a tree and a building, which convey, respectively, Holiness, Life-Giving and God's Economy.
– Why could a mathematician be interested in the dogma of the Trinity?
– Are you talking about the article “The Logic of Trinity”? I was interested in a purely theoretical question: can formal logic allow the existence of the Trinity. It seems to be absurd: one object - and suddenly three objects. But, to my joy, I discovered that there is something similar in mathematics. Vector! It has three components, but it is one. And if someone is surprised by the trinitarian dogma, it is only because he does not know mathematics. Three and one are the same thing! I still cannot understand how Father Pavel Florensky, our wonderful theologian, who also graduated from the Faculty of Mathematics, did not notice this. He writes that the idea of the Trinity is incomprehensible. No, God is incomprehensible, but the idea of the Trinity is comprehensible, trinity is a property of nature, it literally permeates nature. I repeat again that I did not go into theology, but I managed once again to show that the Fathers of the Church were right when they condemned heresies. And there was also a case when one of our famous mathematicians said something disrespectful about theology: they say, what nonsense, that three are one thing. “What about the vector?” – I asked. He was simply amazed: “Lord, I didn’t think about that!”
– At one time, your article in “Kommunist” was very sensational - an article that broke the veil of silence surrounding the Church...
– Yes, it was in 1987. They called me and asked me to respond to Reagan's SDI program. It was fashionable then. I said: nonsense, you’re thinking about the wrong thing. The celebration of the millennium of the Baptism of Rus' is coming - this is what we need to write about! At the other end of the line they were silent and said: “Can you seriously write?” - "Can". The fact is that our atheists offered them their articles, but Kommunist no longer wanted to publish this nonsense. And just two years before that I read a lot about Ancient Rus'. So I came and told them what I was going to write. They said: it's good! I sat down and wrote it literally in a few days, by hand, with blots. They reprinted it, combed it and let it out of line. It was a terrible scandal! The first non-atheistic publication, and where – in “Kommunist”! There was outrage, there were calls: how could you, and the like. And the magazine answered them: “If you don’t agree, write, we will publish.” But no one wrote anything... On the contrary, after that article, sympathetic publications about the Church began to appear. And somehow I immediately became a specialist in Baptism. I even had a chance to read a report on the Baptism of Rus' at the UNESCO session in Paris.
– But you not only wrote about Epiphany, but also built spacecraft. Did one interest interfere with the other?
- Why did he have to interfere? It was in stupid books that they wrote that “our cosmonauts flew there and did not see any God.” This way of posing the question shows the downright illiteracy of our atheist writers. Newton was a believer, but pay attention when he built solar system, he didn't place God anywhere. God resides in mystical space, not in ours, and people like Newton understood this very well. The astronauts did not meet Him, but they were not supposed to meet Him. When they say “like you are in Heaven,” this does not mean that God is 126 km from the surface of the Earth.
- In his last book you wrote that you accepted Orthodox baptism, but you do not consider this a betrayal of God, because God is one...
– In 1997, I was actually baptized. This was after an unsuccessful operation, when I was already completely ready for the next world. The priest who came to me spent a long time finding out who I was. For some reason he thought that I was a Catholic, then it would have been easier, but when he found out that I was a Huguenot, he grabbed his head. And I was baptized in full rank, as a pagan. Yet I think that I was a Christian and remained a Christian. Only I became Orthodox. Religion is irrational in nature, but I believe that if you want to take any part in religious life, you need to belong to the dominant denomination in the country. It seems to me that since I live in Russia, I cannot be cut off from the Orthodox Church. And baptized in the German way, I was involuntarily cut off from her.
– You also wrote that you experienced clinical death...
– Yes, it was on Kashirka in February 1997, after the operation. The doctors said: I won’t survive this night. The daughters and son-in-law all came together, although before that they had taken turns on duty. I was really dying... Was I convinced of the existence of the soul? In a sense, yes, but, you see, I didn’t doubt it before. The first thing I established, so to speak experimentally, is that dying is not scary, and even, I would say... pleasant. Later I read Moody's book. There was one case very similar to mine. I saw the corridor, I saw the light at the end. And I moved along this corridor, it was unpleasant - you know, like it happens at the stadium when you walk in a crowd. Then I walked alone along a vaulted corridor, and this corridor opened onto a meadow. I knew that if I went out into this beautiful meadow, that was all, I would die, there was another world there. I had a choice - a meadow or a dirty, lousy and spit-stained side corridor. And so I stood and chose. There is silence and sunshine ahead. It's nice and good there. But I chose the slums, that is, the corridor. And gradually returned to life. And I was left with the feeling that I had walked through the other world and returned to this one - to finish the game.
– Do you go to church now?
“After the operation it became more difficult, and now, when I attend services and receive communion, I sit in church. I used to always stand, but now I can’t. However, I don’t think it’s that important whether to sit or stand. Saint Philaret, when asked whether it is possible for a person with sick legs to sit, answered this: “It is better for him to sit, but think about God, than to stand and think about his legs.” In my life I have been to both Protestant and Catholic churches. Orthodox worship is, of course, the most impressive. No wonder the ambassadors of St. Vladimir, visiting the Byzantine temple for the first time, “were as if in heaven.” The Orthodox religion is higher, huge, solemn, gilded. Protestantism is different, it was formed as a protest against the shortcomings of Catholicism. At a time of anti-papal protests, the movement for simplicity in worship probably made sense. But in general, there should be beauty in worship. It is present in the Orthodox Church like no other.
– Nowadays it’s not easy for the Orthodox Church, the problem of sects has appeared...
– You see, there have always been sects. Now the bad thing is that the Law of God is not taught in schools. When did kids get the basics before? Orthodox faith at school, sectarians needed to destroy in order to push through their teachings. And now it’s easy for them to work, they don’t need to destroy anything. So they come up with some crappy idea and it starts to grow. Faith must be nurtured from childhood, because only 15 percent of people are religiously gifted. The rest need to be taught. And if these people grow up in a state where faith is considered a worthy matter, where everyone goes to church, they also go.
– In times of democracy, this seems to have become easier?
- Maybe. But you see, I don’t really like democracy at all. All the biggest crimes were committed by Democrats. For example, Socrates was sentenced to death according to the most democratic scheme - after a popular discussion through a plebiscite. What could be more democratic? If you look at the most heinous murders in world history, then, I think, in most cases, the blame for them lies not with despots, but with democrats. It is the quality of democracy to respond to cries. Everything is very democratic, people gather and start yelling. And then it turns out: what were they shouting? why did they shout? Democratic vandalism was also present in our revolution, when sailors gathered and solved world problems. I don't know the perfect one government structure, but for a number of reasons the monarchy is best. The monarch cares about the country because he plans to pass it on to his heir. He can't ruin her. But the president doesn't care. He thinks: the next one will come for me, so let him sort it out...
– What else worries you about modern life?
- Theft. We have a kingdom of thieves. Bosses and subordinates steal. When I go abroad and ask about impressions of our country, I am told that such theft does not exist anywhere, even in Latin America. You can buy any official, the only thing is that they are twice as expensive as in Europe. This is an opinion about our God-saved Fatherland. In modern life there are generally many distortions: for example, the fact that the Idea with capital letters the “idea” came to make money. Reading newspapers and paying increased attention to television news are also skewed. The fact is that worthwhile news takes up a very small percentage of news in general. It would be better if we read fewer newspapers and read more serious literature– not necessarily scientific, even artistic. And also computers, which children are now interested in. On the one hand, this seems to be good, they get used to our computerized reality faster. On the other hand, instead of ideas about decency and decent behavior, numerical assessments are introduced. But a person lives not only with one rational part of his head! When everyone is replacing computers, it can be bad and even dangerous.
– Which of the Russian saints is closest to you?
- St. Sergius of Radonezh, who established the holiday of Trinity in Rus'. From my point of view, he is the greatest Russian saint. And I think so not because he, one might say, is my “home saint” (from my house you can walk to the monastery). Sergius is simply a rare coincidence of holiness and clear practical work in politics. Another similar example I don't know. Holiness requires renunciation of everything, and Sergius began with this - he settled in the forest alone, made friends with a bear... And then, he actually became the ideological leader and unofficial head of Rus'. How he managed to do this is incomprehensible, but it is a fact. This can be seen from the fact that all the princes obeyed him. Sergius of Radonezh reconciled the princes when strife began: he came and tamed them. He became an unquestioned authority, a person whom everyone trusted equally. But this was almost impossible in the Middle Ages. Just think, all the warring princely parties listened to him! Sergius was a man of amazing will and possessed complete, ideal holiness.
– Boris Viktorovich, now many in Russia believe in various occult doctrines, in “God in general.” Do you think we have a chance to return to our fathers' faith?
– Of course, there is no good in the fact that people believe in just about anything. But what happened here is quite understandable. It’s the same with a glass of water - if you shake it, shake it, the dirt from the bottom will rise to the top. Then the dirt will settle and the water will clear! I think some time must pass - maybe a generation must change. Much, of course, depends on the Church. But, in the end, we have had Orthodoxy for a thousand years, and such things do not change in a year, two, or even seventy. We have a certain extra-logical quantity that remains constant. And this gives me reason to believe that not all is lost. I think Russian people will return to Orthodoxy. Now we really need Sergius... I have long said that Russia needs Venerable Sergius, a man of his caliber. It's a pity that history doesn't repeat itself...
Recorded by D. Basov
Hero of Socialist Labor, Lenin Prize laureate, academician Russian Academy sciences
"A.S. Pushkin wrote: “And reading my life with disgust, I tremble and curse...” I do not tremble and do not curse, but I testify that my life is not a very simple picture, everything in it is terribly complicated. However, it is still interesting to look back! There are things that now seem unreal to me, as if they didn’t happen to me. But everything was with me..."
This is Boris Viktorovich Rauschenbach’s statement about himself in his recently published book of memoirs “Postscript”. The author warns readers that the title of the book does not at all speak of farewell to life: on the contrary, he is full of all sorts of plans, is working on another book, very broad in scope, speaks a lot on television and in the press, and meets with different people.
R Rauschenbach was born on January 18, 1915 in Petrograd. The family lived in one of the buildings of a large shoe factory of “German capital” - Skorokhod. This name survived even Soviet power, it is still alive in present-day St. Petersburg; enterprises of French and German capital were built thoroughly, for many centuries. The windows of the house in which the boy began his life, who received the double name Boris-Ivar at baptism according to German custom, faced the Moscow Gate, where particularly large unrest and a shootout took place in February 1917. The two-year-old child remembered this for the rest of his life.
The history of the Rauschenbach family goes back to the distant past, during the reign of Catherine II in Russia, and even deeper - in Germany: Boris Viktorovich’s ancestor, Karl Friedrich Rauschenbach (translated into Russian as “murmuring stream”), moved to the Volga region in 1766. invitation Russian empress already a married man, about which his great-great-great-great... grandson carefully keeps the corresponding document.
Rauschenbach's mother, Leontina Fridrikhovna, nee Gallik, came from Baltic Germans, from Estonia, received the education generally accepted at that time for girls, spoke, in addition to Russian, German, French and Estonian, played the piano; like many of her peers, she moved to Russia and got a job as a freelancer in a wealthy family.
The father, Viktor Yakovlevich (the paternal grandfather’s name was Jacob, which means in the Russian way - Yakov; the mother, too, over time became not Friedrichovna, but Fedorovna), was from the Saratov province, from the Volga region, where a large German colony. He received his education by leaving for Germany, and then returned to his homeland, Russia, and for more than twenty years he held a fairly high position of technical manager at Skorokhod. leather production– when producing branded shoes, the factory preferred to have its own raw material base.
The father earned money, the mother managed the house, raised Boris-Ivar and his younger sister Karin-Elena. Since the children were born into a Huguenot family, as Boris Viktorovich, who relatively recently converted to the Orthodox denomination, jokes, Boris was sent to the school of the denomination to which he formally belonged, Reformirte-shule, known throughout Petrograd along with Peter-shule and Annen-shule. By that time, the family had moved to St. Isaac's Square, and young Rauschenbach went to school along the embankment of the Moika River, paying little attention to the beauty of the city's architecture.
“I was born in this city, and it seemed to me that it could not be any other. Beautiful city, but dear, familiar to me, I believed that this is how he should be. I wasn't delighted. Delight is when something is unexpected, and in Petrograd everything was familiar to me down to the smallest detail.
The main language in our family was Russian, and my mother often spoke Russian to me. I didn’t realize that we were taught German in our family; it entered my consciousness quite naturally, both languages were intertwined in our house. Later they taught me French; it was believed that in a decent family a child should speak French and be able to play the piano.”
Sh Boris graduated from Cola too early, having entered there at the age of seven and immediately into the second grade - such was the level of his knowledge - and, firstly, he was not old enough for the institute, and secondly, they were accepted there only with work experience, preferably five years. And the boy went to work at the Leningrad Aviation Plant N23, then located on the Black River, not far from the site of Pushkin’s duel.
“I knew from the age of eight that I would work in aviation when I grew up. It was not a fashion, but a serious decision, made to some extent thanks to my friend Boris Ivanov, my father’s godson. One day he showed me in the Niva magazine, published during wartime, in 1914-15, a photograph of English ships taken from an English plane. They filmed from a low altitude, so large ships were clearly visible. “Look,” Boris told me, “it was photographed from an airplane, but it’s not scary to look at.” It amazed me so much that it stuck with me for the rest of my life – just fly, just fly!
The only thing that I finally realized is that it’s not interesting to just fly, but it’s interesting to build airplanes. That's how I came to aviation. Completely by accident, basically. But this is the first love, the most ardent and eternal.”
N Rauschenbach, a carpenter-assembler, worked at the plant for about a year; the planes then were wooden and covered with fabric, the tools were appropriate - a hammer, nails, a screwdriver, a drill, a drill. And hands. From serial, rather boring production, the “carpenter-assembler” managed to switch to assembling experimental aircraft, where every day something new happened and tests were carried out at the airfield.
By chance, ahead of schedule, in 1932, Rauschenbach entered the paramilitary educational institution– Leningrad Institute of Civil Air Fleet Engineers, he studies with passion and is interested in gliding.
“Classes at the institute went on as usual, and in addition to literal studies, I had creative studies, which required both experience and considerations. When building gliders, it was necessary to make strength calculations; it was necessary to have the knowledge that we received not in the first, but in the third year. And we not only built, but tested our gliders, went to Crimea, real pilots flew them there, and we watched and wondered.
The traditional place for testing gliders was Koktebel, where there are suitable hills from which to glide; Designers, pilots, and glider pilots gathered there, and this joyful circus lasted for a whole month.”
AND It was there, on the Koktebel hills, that Boris Rauschenbach and Sergei Korolev first met, passionate about one thing - gliding. Only much later would a chance acquaintance become a long-term collaboration in rocket and space technology.
The construction of gliders and their testing allowed Rauschenbach to write and publish the first science articles on the longitudinal stability of tailless aircraft. And although the author himself considered these articles elementary (they were written without using higher mathematics), at that time they turned out to be the only ones in Russian on the topic chosen by the author. The extraordinary nature of these articles is evidenced by the fact that the team publishing textbooks for aviation institutes under the leadership of the famous scientist V.S. Pyshnov, in a book on the stability of aircraft, he referred to the articles of student B. Rauschenbach.
“A year and a half before graduating from the institute, I realized that it was pointless for me to stay in Leningrad, there was no aviation industry there, I would have nowhere to work, and I moved to Moscow without even defending my diploma project - then they hired me, even for engineering positions, with unfinished higher education. Having found a position in Moscow, I worked while doing my graduation project. A year later he returned to Leningrad, defended himself with his group and received a diploma from the institute.
In Leningrad they would definitely have imprisoned me, because everyone knew me there; in 1937 many were imprisoned, why not me, a German, too? And in Moscow there was no one to write denunciations against me, because I had just arrived there, at the beginning of 1937. Dissolved and disappeared. Higher power took care of me and sent me to Moscow so that I wouldn’t be captured that time with my nationality, with my expressive surname: German, and even penetrated into the aviation industry! Of course, for the purpose of sabotage, nothing less.”
H Through acquaintances from glider meetings in the Crimea, Rauschenbach learns that Korolev needs a person who understands the problem of flight stability. So Boris Viktorovich ends up in the Khovrinsky Institute N3, RNII, as it was also called, in Korolev’s department, which was then involved in cruise missiles and was very few in number. Korolev quickly realized that a new employee who could accurately understand the vagaries of technology was needed in the department as a leading designer. Such a position did not exist then, but the future grandiose picture of the work of the space design bureau was already visible.
The 212 cruise missile, the largest liquid-propellant rocket created by Korolev before the war, was a frontier aircraft, beyond which manned missile technology had already begun. This rocket was the future. BV, as Boris Viktorovich’s fellow rocket officers began to call him and still do, managed to figure out the rocket’s automation by 1938, when Sergei Pavlovich Korolev was imprisoned. Rauschenbach was removed from the secret post of leading designer, work on liquid-propellant rockets was gradually curtailed, and BV took up a new business for himself - the theory of combustion in air-breathing engines.
War was approaching. A month before the Great Patriotic War, Boris Rauschenbach married Vera Ivanchenko, who at that time was studying at the history department of Moscow State University. She had her friends, Boris had his. They looked closely at each other for a long time before joining their destinies on May 24, 1941. And in the fall, Institute N3 was evacuated to Sverdlovsk, and from November forty-one to March forty-second BV in full force worked at his own numbered enterprise, for which they were allocated one of the buildings of the Ural Industrial Institute in Sverdlovsk. When Rauschenbach received a summons ordering him to appear with his belongings at the military registration and enlistment office, he suspected nothing, believing that he was being drafted into the army. A few days after the training, they were put on a train and, after two hours of travel, unloaded in Nizhny Tagil.
“Already in Sverdlovsk we began to guess something. When I showed up with my things, I saw Moscow University professor Otto Nikolaevich Bader in the crowd, and the wife who accompanied me to the army said: “Now, pay attention, Bader is a terrible mug, and if you don’t help him where you are going, he will inevitably die." She understood everything!
Actually, there was nothing to understand, there were Germans around us, only Germans - everything became clear. There were many German peasants from the Volga region, semi-literate workers, there was an intelligent public: Loy, director of the Dnepropetrovsk plant, chemist professor Stromberg, Berliner Pavel Emilievich Rickert, who defended his doctoral dissertation at the University of Berlin, a communist whose head fascist Germany They valued us very dearly, and he had to run away from there... They dropped us off in Nizhny Tagil, took us to the zone in a truck, and that’s it. There is no article, there is nothing. Germans. And this meant an indefinite sentence: a person’s nationality does not undergo any changes over the years.
Formally, I was considered mobilized into the labor army, into the “construction detachment 18-74”, but in fact the labor army was worse than the camps, we were fed more poorly than prisoners, and we were sitting in the same zones, behind the same barbed wire, with the same convoy and everything else. . At the very beginning, those who were included in the detachment lived under a canopy without walls, and the frost in the northern Urals was 30-40 degrees! On another day, 10 people died.
They worked at a brick factory. I was lucky that I didn’t end up in a logging camp or a coal mine, but nevertheless, half of our people at the brick factory died from hunger and overwork. I survived by chance, like everything in this world by chance.”
IN In 1942, while still working in the evacuated RNII, BV was engaged in calculations for a homing anti-aircraft projectile. He was hired when he had already completed two-thirds of the work and knew in which direction to move next. At the transit point, on bunks, on scraps of paper, and in the camp, Rauschenbach continued his calculations. I solved the problem about two weeks after arriving at the camp and sent it to my former company: after all, my colleagues were waiting! He was embarrassed that he promised to do the work and did not finish it. When I sent it, I didn’t think that anything would come of it, but one person drew attention to his calculations technical general, Viktor Fedorovich Bolkhovitinov, and agreed with the NKVD to use the prisoner as a kind of calculation force. And the NKVD “rented out” the future academician.
"I generally a strange man with strange fate, it feels like someone is clearly caring about me. That’s when Bolkhovitinov saw that I could do something, and we worked well together, with his company. At the same time, in the process of calculations, I learned well pure mathematics, which I did not know; Therefore, I consider myself doubly lucky. After leaving the camp, I knew mathematics quite well.
In the barracks there was one table for everyone, and I worked at it while the others went to work. When they returned, I vacated the table, and they ate, played cards, dominoes, and read. But I had enough time during the day to work productively, and I managed to get a lot done. Wrote reports on different topics, several at once: one work was devoted to flight stability, the other to the evaporation of droplets: what happens to them when the fuel evaporates. There were other jobs, but mostly I worked on these damned drops and flight stability.”
RNII returned to Moscow, becoming scientific supervisor Mstislav Vsevolodovich Keldysh managed to summon the BV to the capital, and the exile made a report at the Scientific and Technical Council of the Defense Institute. People's Commissariat state security gave him security clearance, but the police still considered his arrival an escape from custody! Rauschenbach was forced to return to Nizhny Tagil. Officially, he left places not so remote in 1948 and immediately fell under the wing of the Chief Theorist, as M.V. Keldysh was mysteriously called then. Life began to take on normal shape. In 1950, B.V. and V.M. Rauschenbach gave birth to twin girls.
“I was often asked: you have been married for so many years, why don’t you have children? And I answered jokingly that everything was going according to plan, that in 1950 we would have twin girls. And when it all happened, people at work didn’t believe it - it all looked too much like a prank. When the girls were born, Oksana was my copy, and Vera was my mother’s copy. At about eight years old they switched places, and Oksana became a copy of her mother, and Vera became my copy; The characters have also changed: Oksana is calm and self-possessed, like me, and Vera is impetuous, just like her mother.
Theoretically, we wanted another child, a son, but there was no material possibility, we lived very modestly, and this lasted for many years.”
Z Looking ahead, we note that in the coming years Vera Mikhailovna Rauschenbach defended candidate's thesis in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, became director of scientific affairs Historical Museum; Oksana graduated from the Institute of Physics and Technology and works as a statistics programmer at the Semashko Research Institute; Vera graduated from the Faculty of Biology of Moscow State University and remained there as a teacher. Both daughters defended their Ph.D. theses. The younger generation of Rauschenbachs has also grown up: granddaughter Verochka and grandson Boris.
In 1949, Boris Viktorovich defended his candidate's dissertation, and in 1958, his doctorate. At Keldysh he studied the theory of vibrational combustion and acoustic vibrations in direct-flow engines. He had a quiet but strong scientific name.
“Already being a professor, already having the opportunity to “grow a belly,” I... gave up everything and started over. I took up a then new topic - the theory of spacecraft control. There was no trace of a satellite yet, but I knew that it was promising direction, I started with it before the war, it always interested me, and Keldysh supported me, although my work had nothing to do with the themes of the institute. The system we developed then made it possible to photograph the far side of the Moon, new orders came in, the institute could no longer cope with them, and the decision was made to move to Korolev.
This was not a break with Keldysh. It’s just that the work that I carried out went beyond the scope of his institute, and Keldysh himself agreed with Korolev that I and my “team” - a hundred people - would go over to him. Moreover, many new spacecraft control systems were already needed at that time, and it turned out that our group was the only one in the country seriously dealing with such problems.”
WITH Sergey Pavlovich Korolev, who went through Butyrki, the Novocherkassk transfer, the Kolyma Maldyak mine, Tupolev’s “sharashka”, aircraft factories in Omsk and Kazan, the Kapustin Yar training ground and the Baikonur cosmodrome, has already launched the first three artificial Earth satellites in history. When Rauschenbach arrived in Podlipki, Korolev met him as if they had never parted. Not a word about the Maldyak mine or about the “construction team 18-74” - the joint venture (as Sergei Pavlovich was called) immediately started talking about the matter: we need a system that would allow space object maintain a strictly defined position relative to the Earth and other celestial bodies. Rauschenbach undertook to solve this problem.
The years 1955-1959 were perhaps the most innovative for Rauschenbach at that stage of development rocket technology and astronautics. After all, no one has ever studied the orientation of spacecraft and their movement in a world devoid of gravity.
"My job was to manage spacecraft during the flight, it was necessary to turn it so that the camera lenses looked at the Moon, and not at anything else, and took what was necessary. That is, I did a small piece of work, although Mark Gallay claims that I speak too restrainedly about my participation in this matter and that in fact I made, without exaggeration, a decisive contribution to the creation of control systems for rockets and spacecraft - “in less than ten years under his (my!) management implemented photographing systems reverse side Moon, orientation and flight correction systems of interplanetary automatic stations “Mars”, “Venera”, “Zond”, communication satellites “Molniya”, automatic and manual control human-piloted spacecraft. The significance of these systems does not require proof - the flight of an uncontrolled or not properly oriented spacecraft aircraft completely loses all meaning.” I give this quote as an outside view and a compliment that my old friend and colleague, not to brag about how smart I am.
Although in a sense it was unique work. We were ahead of the Americans and received the Lenin Prize in 1960. Back in the 19th century, astronomers dreamed of seeing the far side of the Moon, but argued that no one would see it. We saw her first."
IN At the beginning of 1960, the first – “Gagarinsky”, as it is now called – group of cosmonauts was organized, and Rauschenbach, together with Korolev’s deputies Tikhonravov and Bushuev, as well as with young but already experienced OKB engineers who themselves were eager to go into space - Konstantin Feoktistov, Oleg Makarov, Vitaly Sevastyanov, Alexey Eliseev took an active part in preparing the first manned space flight. BV read to the pilots special course on rocketry, flight dynamics and individual systems ship. In particular, he told them how manual and automatic control was carried out.
Korolev always wanted to launch living organisms into space and launched dogs, turtles, and others. After successful unmanned launches, the moment finally came when we could take a human risk. It was difficult moment. Korolev had a natural desire for everything to happen as quickly as possible, so that it would happen during his lifetime, and not after death. Moreover, the Americans were also preparing to launch a man, and we had to get ahead of them. On this occasion, normal, rushed work was going on.
“Gagarin really became the first, no one was launched before him, all the rumors about this are nonsense. There were no hiccups, “bobs” or “bobbies” in our language with Gagarin; the flight went as planned, and, in fact, was no different from an ordinary flight with a living organism. It was too simple and well worked out for anything to happen. Gagarin did not interfere in control; his task was radio communications and medical experiments. I used to joke that Gagarin’s flight instructions consisted of four words: “Don’t touch anything with your hands.”
The first and such striking successes in space immediately attracted many people who wanted to work in this field, “grab” an order, receive a high rank, and have the opportunity to advance. The large, powerful figure of Sergei Pavlovich Korolev was not to the liking of many, in last years his life was clearly “squeezed”, so the team led by him especially tried to demonstrate their successes, the precise implementation of the plans of the Chief Designer, otherwise - and this is now no secret to anyone - these plans could have been intercepted.
At one time I thought for a long time about Korolev and von Braun, who really made major discoveries, I would say, discoveries of global significance, and I thought about how to call them in one word: a great scientist, a great engineer? This is all nonsense. There are many great scientists, many great engineers, and these people were unique phenomena. And I didn't come up with it better word than a commander. If I, a person of a completely different type, can imagine myself as a chief of staff, but not a commander, then Sergei Pavlovich was precisely a commander in the development of space technology, in my opinion, this is the most precise definition; I can, for example, imagine the Queen in marshal's uniform, front commander. And he dreamed, of course, of more than launching a man into space; he dreamed of conquering space in the broad sense of the word. Send not just one person, but many people, create several bases on the Moon, fly a manned flight to Mars... You never know what you can think of. All this interested him very much, he tried to do as much as possible and as quickly as possible, which is why he told me: you and I don’t have much left. That is, nothing can be postponed for a century. I didn’t feel death, but I understood that everything had to be done very quickly; compared to the tasks at hand, there wasn’t much time allotted.
At the end of December 1965, Sergei Pavlovich Korolev briefly went to the hospital for a minor operation. He planned meetings that he would hold after discharge, colleagues went to see him before the operation and discussed current issues; he gave instructions with deadlines. During the operation, it turned out that he had advanced cancer, the most terrible type of it, sarcoma...
His death was a blow to us all, because he left literally on the fly. It is impossible to imagine what would have happened if he had remained alive. His departure was a heavy loss for rocket and space technology. If he had lived, we would have done more.
The commander left, and the army became less combat-ready.”
P After the death of S.P. Korolev, the situation in his company began to change quickly. BV still continued to work there, but the novelty disappeared, the excitement dried up, and Rauschenbach’s interests moved to another area. By this time, Boris Viktorovich’s “academic path” had begun: in 1966 he was elected a corresponding member, and in 1986 - full member Academy of Sciences of the USSR.
“Even during Sergei Pavlovich’s lifetime, I began teaching at the Physics and Technology Department of Moscow State University, and then at Dolgoprudnaya, when the faculty was separated into a special institute. About two years after Korolev’s death, I left the company and began only teaching. The end of the sporty-romantic era in space has come; For myself, at one time I divided all space activities into the flight of dreams and imagination, the sports-romantic era, the normal engineering activities. When the routine engineering work began, I became bored, and I took off and ran away. After all, without romance, hardly anything makes sense to me. But romance dies slowly, does not end immediately, a certain space is formed, something else creeps into this space, which I begin to do in parallel with the previous business, and this has always happened to me.
I started making art while still actively working in the field of rocketry. Art at first seemed like an interesting little thing in my life - I mean professional life, in everyday life Every person is always interested in art great place, – but gradually this little thing began to increase, grow and “ate up” my interest in space. But here’s what’s funny: everything I started doing in art was connected with space, which I was sick of like I don’t know what. The initial impetus was given by thoughts about docking spacecraft using manual control. In the design of our spacecraft, the astronaut can see what is happening in front of him only on a special screen. And I asked myself: how correctly does the image on the screen convey the actual situation (is it possible to control it?)? This led me to perspective theory and then to art. And I delved into the jungle of art painlessly and naturally, without feeling any depression or discomfort during this transition. Simply losing interest in one and showing interest in another is a gentle transformation. This never has the nature of decisions: so I sat, thought for a long time and decided that from tomorrow I would study art history, something that fascinated me after space. But, I repeat, I received a push in this direction thanks to space, and what I was doing for more than ten years captured me completely and held me tightly, maybe it still does. There was no sport or romance in this, because art and art history, faith and religion exist forever, and some kind of anxiety always lives and will live in a person, a desire to penetrate as deeply as possible into the essence of all this. Therefore, I did not enter into competition with anyone when I sat down to read books on the theory of perspective in the visual arts or articles on the meaning of the trinity in religion.”
P B.V. Rauschenbach’s first work, “Spatial Constructions in Old Russian Painting,” was published in 1975, the second, including examples from world painting, “Spatial Constructions in Painting,” was published in 1980. Rigorous mathematical analysis revealed that it never existed and could not be developed scientific system perspective that adequately conveys the geometric characteristics of the depicted space on the picture plane without any conventions or distortions. This received a final mathematical justification in the third book - “Perspective systems in the fine arts. General theory of perspective" 1986 edition, which gives the general theory of the problem. The fourth, “Picture Geometry and Visual Perception,” was published in 1994.
What does our eye see and what does our brain see? Rauschenbach came to the conclusion that these are not the same thing. The conclusion, in turn, required mathematical description brain function, which was supplemented psychological evidence. Studying the laws visual perception, Academician Rauschenbach comes to the conclusion that these laws are different in relation to the interior and the landscape; and a real master, without knowing it, will certainly introduce elements into the picture that contradict his own visual perception.
“I was not attracted to painting by problems of light and shade or color; that is, of course, I am interested in this, but not as a specialist, I simply do not have the necessary data for this, and I do not recognize amateurism. Everything is very clear: for perception work of art it is necessary to have a certain talent, which is possessed by artists and people who have a keen sense of art. This talent is of an extra-logical nature; you can’t get anything from it with logic. I have a developed logical part brain, and the one that deals with extra-logical perception of the world is clearly “lag behind”. Therefore, let's say, a good art critic, an art critic from God, looks and sees what I do not see. He can distinguish good picture from bad, but I can’t. This ability to receive information in a non-logical way is sometimes called taste.
Eat different ways perception of the world. Leonardo da Vinci could do both, he felt both art and exact sciences equally, he was a mathematician and mechanic, and, in addition, a major artist. Or Goethe with his natural history treatises “An Essay on the Metamorphosis of Plants”, “The Doctrine of Color” - many believe that if he had not created anything as a poet, he would have remained in history as a scientist. Few people know that he was a great naturalist; they usually remember that he wrote Faust.
So there are people who can do both, and in this sense I’m clearly not up to it. Maybe I would prefer the second, but I am forced to deal with logical constructions in painting, because I simply am not able to do anything else. It's nothing you can do."
N calling himself a dualist, i.e., a person who recognizes both spirit and matter as equally primary, Rauschenbach strives to look at this as if from the outside, to be not “inside”, but “outside” the process. This is the only way to maintain objectivity when studying any phenomenon. public life- to be a believer and an atheist at the same time.
“I felt a craving for religion at a certain stage of my life. Why this feeling arose is a separate story, I think that I have not written anything about religion yet, it is possible that my next book will be dedicated to it. But I took up icon painting and icon veneration at the end of my work at the Korolev company, and the new “sideways” development is indirectly, not directly, perhaps, connected with my main profession. My childhood also had an impact, when I was taken to the city and received the Holy Mysteries, and childhood impressions are not the kind of thing that is forgotten and disappears without a trace. At all times of my life, anti-religious propaganda was very unpleasant to me; I always considered it nonsense and supported religion.
In theology, I am interested in the logical side, and I was able to prove one point that was not known until now. The concept of the Trinity has always been considered illogical - three Gods make up one God, how can it be three and one at the same time? When we talk about the holiness of the Trinity, we have nothing Everyday life to compare it, holiness is characteristic only of the divine. But when it comes to the trinity, the human mind involuntarily looks for analogies in everyday life and wants to link this concept with formal logic. I said to myself: we will look for an object in mathematics that has all the logical properties of the Trinity, and if such an object is discovered, then the possibility of logical consistency of the structure of the Trinity will be proven even in the case when each Person is God. And having clearly formulated the logical properties of the Trinity, grouping them and clarifying them, I came up with a mathematical object that fully corresponds to the listed properties - this is the most ordinary vector with its three orthogonal components.
One can only be amazed that the Church Fathers were able to formulate the totality of the properties of the Trinity without being able to rely on mathematics. They quite rightly called any deviations from this totality heresies, as if sensing with their inner vision their destructive harmfulness. Only now does the greatness of the Church Fathers become clear in the sense of the intuitive creation of the impeccable logic of the trinity. Today, the formulation of the dogma of the Trinity is completely reasonable, which exactly follows the Creed: “The Persons of the Trinity constitute one Deity, in which each Person in turn is God.”
Russian applied mathematician, worked in calculations at a space company S.P. Queen.
He is German by nationality, so in 1942 he was arrested and imprisoned in a camp.
“... I was constantly haunted by the thought that I Not I finished the work I started at Institute No. 1. Naturally, no one expected anything from me, but I had to finish it for myself, I simply couldn’t do otherwise psychologically. In 1942, I was engaged in calculating the movement of a homing anti-aircraft projectile. They took me when I had already completed two thirds of the work and knew in which direction to move next. I was tormented by incompleteness, I couldn’t find a place for myself. I made calculations both at the transit point on bunks, on scraps of paper, and in the camp. I solved the problem about two weeks after arriving in the zone, the solution turned out to be unexpectedly elegant, and I liked it myself. I wrote a short report, attached it to the decision and sent it to my former company: after all, people are waiting! You see, it was inconvenient for me: I started the work, promised to finish it, and didn’t finish it. I sent it without thinking that anything would come of it. But one technical general, aircraft designer Viktor Fedorovich Bolkhovitinov, delved into this matter, and agreed with the NKVD to use me as a kind of design force. And the NKVD “leased” me to him. I was no longer driven to work like everyone else, I was fed, although no better, even worse, because my fellow prisoners received all sorts of premium meals at their place of work, but I did not receive any, sitting at the lowest level of nutrition, without additives. I was, like everyone else, in the zone, in a barracks, the only difference was that I was working according to instructions mysterious people from the Ministry of Aviation Industry, as we would say now. This saved me to some extent, since I only worked at the brick factory at first - and I was lucky that I didn’t end up in a logging camp or a coal mine. Then the institute gave me the position of senior engineer, purely formally - after all, there was no article on me, I was considered sent to “work”, “mobilized into the labor army”, I had to be paid a salary, but that was all. There was nothing more they could do: they petitioned the NKVD so that I could work on their instructions; The NKVD allowed it, I worked hard for the aviation industry, but I no longer worked for the NKVD, and they stopped paying me. The aviation industry paid me a meager amount, and the NKVD took some percentage from it for renting me out: the NKVD can’t rent me out for free!”
Rauschenbach B.V., Postscript, M., “Agraf”, 2002, pp. 71-73.
Later B.V. Rauschenbach recalled: “You won’t believe it, but I acquired all my knowledge in mathematics not at the institute, but in the barracks; I worked very hard then. He arranged exams for himself, wrote out tickets, took them and answered them for himself. If I could not answer, I gave myself a bad mark and assigned myself a re-exam... I was then keen on self-oscillations and I myself “discovered” the method of harmonic balance, which had already been discovered by Bogolyubov and Krylov, which, due to my ignorance, I did not know about. For Bolkhovitinov, I calculated the lateral stability of the aircraft. I was enrolled in the design bureau as a senior engineer, but I lived in a camp. I was paid a pretty decent salary, which was sent to the camp, but I couldn’t buy anything and sent the money to my wife.”
Golovanov Y.K., Korolev: facts and myths, Volume 2, M., “Russian Knights”, 2007, p. 375.
The scientist’s approach to the selection of promising scientific topics is interesting:
“I […] work in areas that employ no more than five to ten people in the whole world, no more. When they ask me why, I answer: because there is no literature there and there is no need to read it. This is not a joke at all. Let's say I have to work in a field in which by this time hundreds of scientists around the world have already worked for twenty years - relatively speaking, this is some kind of developed area in physics. I can also get involved and start digging, but at the same time I must know what they did before me and what others are doing now. So as not to look like a fool. This means I have to sit down to do other people’s work, which I can’t stand, because I find out what they already know. It’s easier for me to invent my own than to read a pile of already written and evaporated material, it’s easier for me to choose an area where they don’t work, let it be secondary, I fit in there and feel great there: there are no books, you don’t need to read anything, just sit and suck it out . And you always find something! Another thing is that this find does not lie on the main highway of development of the field of this science, where all those who are thirsty are pushing, well, them! I hate it, I've always tried to stay away from it. Our famous Lomonosov, when at some palace reception a socialite flew up to him and asked: “Who were your ancestors?”, he replied: “I myself am an ancestor.” Here's a decent answer. And I really like this position.”
Rauschenbach B.V., Postscript, M., “Agraf”, 2002, p. 165.
"Academician Boris Viktorovich Rauschenbach – brother my grandmother. In fact, he replaced my grandfather. A brilliant scientist, he already became a leading designer at the age of twenty-three. Queen. Rauschenbach participated in the creation of the Katyusha, figured out how to photograph the far side of the Moon, it was he who created the control systems on spacecraft - the very ones that allowed Yuri Gagarin return safely to Earth. Boris Viktorovich also became famous for his revolutionary discoveries in a variety of fields of knowledge - from mathematics to art history and theology. He was a German and a Huguenot by birth, but all his life he went to an Orthodox church. He was a patriot of Russia and a staunch opponent of democracy. It was he who once explained to me that Russia would either return to the monarchy or perish.” […] The monarch does not care which country he leaves to his son...”
Dmitry Orekhov: “I am a monarchist in the fourth generation,” in Sat.: Zakhar Prilepin, Name Day of the Heart: Conversations with Russian Literature, M., “Ast”, 2009, p. 303-304 and 309.
Rauschenbakh Boris Viktorovich – head of the department theoretical mechanics Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
Born on January 5 (18), 1915 in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) in the family of tanner Viktor Yakovlevich Raushenbach (1870-1930) and teacher German language Leontina Fedorovna Hallik (1886-1951). German. Member of the CPSU since 1959. After graduating from school, he worked as a carpenter-assembler at aircraft factory No. 32. In 1932 he entered the Leningrad Institute of Civil Air Fleet Engineers, became interested in designing gliders, mastered strength calculations and participated in tests in Koktebel, where he met S. .P.Korolev.
In 1937, he moved to Moscow and at the S.P. Korolev Rocket Research Institute, he took up problems of flight stability of cruise missiles. In 1938, S.P. Korolev was arrested, work on cruise missiles was closed, and Rauschenbach took up the theory of combustion in air-breathing engines.
In the fall of 1941, the RNII was evacuated to the city of Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg). In March 1942, Rauschenbach was summoned to the military registration and enlistment office, but was sent not to the army, but, like other Germans, to a labor camp in the city of Nizhny Tagil. Worked as part of construction team 18-74 of the so-called Trudarmiya at a local brick factory. According to the conditions of detention, it was an ordinary prison camp; the mortality rate among Labor Army soldiers was very high. He was released from the camp only at the end of 1945, but left in Nizhny Tagil as a special settler. Rauschenbach was “lucky”: the famous aircraft designer General V.F. Bolkhovitinov drew attention to him and agreed with the NKVD to use the prisoner as a payroll. work force». New leader RNII M.V. Keldysh achieved the return of Rauschenbach.
In 1948, Rauschenbach's exile ended, he returned to Moscow and began working for M.V. Keldysh as the head of a department at Research Institute-1 of the Ministry of Aviation Industry of the USSR (since 1960 - OKB-1, since 1967 - Central Design Bureau of Experimental Mechanical Engineering (TsKBEM) ). In 1974-1978 - deputy head of the TsKBEM complex. In 1949 he defended his candidate's dissertation, and in 1958 - his doctoral dissertation.
In the mid-1950s, Rauschenbach became involved in the theory of spacecraft control. Developed by him under the leadership of S.P. Korolev (passed to him with his team in 1955), spacecraft orientation systems made it possible to take the first photographs of the far side of the Moon. In 1960, Rauschenbach took an active part in preparing the first manned space flight. An outstanding scientist created the theory of spacecraft control from scratch, and then put it into practice.
Continuing to work in the field of rocket technology, Rauschenbach began to study the theory of perspective in the visual arts and theology. In 1997, his book “Addiction” was published, in which considerable space is devoted to both the problems of science and the problems of religion. In 1999, the book “Postscript” was published, the range of which, with small volume, is very wide: from the mass of events of the outgoing 20th century - everyday, everyday impressions, biographical events, which included love, and “money”, and prison, and work for space - to philosophical generalizations, reflections on our society and the world order, about Peter I and his reforms, about the ancient and modern East, about the problems of education in Russia and beyond, about the fate of Russian science, about Nazism and nationalism.
Another long-term and fruitful “passion” of Rauschenbach is teaching. Immediately upon returning from Nizhny Tagil exile, he began to lecture at the Faculty of Physics and Technology of the Moscow state university named after M.V. Lomonosov, which later became the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. In 1959 he became a professor, and from 1978 until the end of his life he headed the department of theoretical mechanics. Rauschenbach attached great importance to the quality of teaching, believed that for successful development Talent requires a certain “critical mass” of professionally close people with whom one could discuss the results obtained and emerging problems. He was deeply wounded by the state of Russian science in recent years, the “brain drain”, and the mass emigration of capable youth.
On December 26, 1984, he was elected a full member (academician) of the USSR Academy of Sciences (since 1991 - the Russian Academy of Sciences).
By Decree of the President of the USSR of October 9, 1990, for great services in the development of domestic science, training of highly qualified specialists for the national economy Rauschenbach Boris Viktorovich awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor with the Order of Lenin and the Hammer and Sickle gold medal.
Since 1997, Chairman of the Scientific Council of the Russian Academy of Sciences on the complex problem “History of World Culture”. He was a member of the national committee on mechanics and deputy editor-in-chief of the magazine " Space research" He headed the bureau of the Scientific Council on the History of World Culture, a member of the Presidium of the All-Russian Society for the Protection of Monuments and the Scientific Council on the History of Religion, and is co-chairman of the Cultural Initiative Foundation (Soros Foundation). Elected to the International Academy of Astronautics.
Lived and worked in Moscow. Died on March 27, 2001. He was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow (section 10).
Awarded 2 Orders of Lenin (06/17/1961; 10/09/1990), the Order of the Badge of Honor (09/17/1975), and medals.
Academician International Academy Astronautics (1974). Laureate of the Lenin Prize (1960), Demidov Prize. Awarded the Gold Medal named after B.N. Petrov (1986).
On the house where the Hero lived (Akademika Korolev St., 9, building 1), there is a Memorial plaque(2016). Several films have been made about Rauschenbach, including: “Another Sky” (2003; directors A. Kuprin and V. Koshkin), “The Fourth Dimension” (2004; director V. Koshkin).