432 



1014 Walter A. McDou^all 



the Versailles Treaty, which encouraged promotion of science and technology as 

 an unhindered means of national growth and, incidentally, failed to ban rocket 

 research. The V-2 also stemmed from the growing interwar cooperation among 

 German science, industry, and the army, from the excellence of German 

 metallurgical, chemical, and electrical firms that pioneered private research and 

 development, from the support of a peculiarly "modernist" Third Reich and its 

 hardware-mad Fiihrer, and from the apparent wartime needs of the belea- 

 guered Nazi empire, es[)ecially after its loss of air superiority.^ The V-2 then 

 evolved into Vostok and the Jupiter-G, the first space boosters, through the 

 pressures of Gold War, the strategic needs of the Soviet Union, the military- 

 scientific establishments dating from the Second World War, and, not least, the 

 last-minute creation of the atomic bomb, without which ballistic missiles would 

 have remained nuisance weapons unworthy of large investment. 



The most telling argument against the "social movement" thesis is Soviet 

 origination of the first satellites. After Sputnik /, Americans indulged themselves 

 with the notion that Soviet space spectaculars were a fluke, the achievement of 

 captured German scientists, or the result of espionage or individual genius. 

 Deliberate scljolarship on the history of Soviet rocketry reveals nothing of the 

 sort. Rather, the first assault on the cosmos quite naturally was launched from 

 the world's first technocratic state — and spaceflight enthusiasts by no means 

 bamboozled the Kremlin in order to win its material support. The proximate 

 cause of the opening of the Space Age was the competition for better means of 

 delivering nuclear weapons after 1945. Josef Stalin accelerated his atomic bomb 

 program after Hiroshima, and as early as 1947 he ordered the rapid develop- 

 ment of intercontinental rockets. '° But, whatever their urgent need for a 

 counterthreat to American bomber bases encircling their territory, Soviet 

 leaders could not have been midwives to an IGBM in ten years but for Russian 

 rocket expertise rooted in the 1920s and the extraordinary budgetary and 

 political force- feeding of research and development dating from 1918. 



On the accomplishments ol the Peenemiinde team and its escape to ihc United States, see the magnificent 

 narranve of Frederick. I. Ordwav III and Mitchell R. Sharpc, The Rocket T.am (New York, 1979), which is based 

 on extensive research in published, manuscript, and oral history sources. 



' See G. A. Tokady (Tokaty- Fokaev) in Emme. Hutory of Roc kf I TechioUi^, 271-84. General works on the 

 Soviet space program include Martin Caidm, Red Star in Space (n.p.. Crowcll-t^ollicr Press, 1963), an alarmist 

 tract from the space race; Nicholas Daniloff. The Kremlin and the Cosmos (New York. 1972), a well-researched and 

 balanced popular history: James Oherg. Red Star m OrbiUNcw York, 1981), a bold attempt to penetrate official 

 secrecy and dismformation based on a lifetime of space "Kremlinology"; Evgeny Riabchikov, Riusiam m Spofe. 

 trans. Guy Daniels (New York. 1971), a glorified account by the Novosti Press Agency, but containing new 

 information; Charles S. Sheldon II, U.S. and Soinet Process in Space: Summary Data through 1973 and a Forward 

 Look (Washington, 1974), a source book based on the meticulous data-gathering of the (now deceased) expert of 

 the Congressional Research Service; William Shelton, Soviet Space Exploration: The First Decade (New York, 

 1968), a mission and hardware summary; G. A. Skuridin, ed.. Mastery of Outer Space m tlie USSR, 1957-1967 

 (Washington, 1975), a NSF-NASA collection of Tass releases; Peter L. Smolders, Soviets in Space, trans. Marion 

 Powell (New York, 1973). an "objective" narrative by a Dutchman; Mich.iel Stoiko. Soviet Rocketry: Pa\t, Present, 

 and Future (New York. 1970), a standard survey; and Leonid V'ladimiiov, The Rinsuin Space Bluff (London. 

 1971), an intriguing expose h\ an emigre who has claimed that carlv Soviet space spectaculars, ordered bv 

 Khrushchev for political propaganda and executed only thanks to Korolev's genius, couce.iled the true 

 inferiority of .Soviet high technology. On Soviet nuclear policy, see Arnold Kramish. Atomic Energy m the Soviet 

 Union (Stanford. 1960); and David Hollowav. "Entering the Nuclear Arms Race: The Soviet Decision to Build 

 the Atomic Bomb. 1939-45," International Security Studies Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center 

 for Scholars. July 1979. 



