Boris Chertok
Korolev's deputy; chronicler of the programme
Timeline - Chertok in the record
5 entries from the Secret Dawn - Among the Stars archive, 5 of them events in Chertok's own life.
Boris Chertok is born in Łódź. An electrical engineer, he works in the aviation industry and joins Korolev's rocket team in 1946 as a specialist in guidance and control.
Chertok runs the Institute RABE in occupied Germany, gathering V-2 documentation and engineers, the raw material of the Soviet programme.
From 1951 Chertok leads control-systems design for Sputnik, Vostok, Soyuz and the stations, at the technical heart of every mission.
In his eighties and nineties Chertok writes a four-volume memoir, the indispensable insider history of the Soviet programme. The Russian volumes appear from 1994, the English NASA edition is completed in 2011.
Chertok dies just short of a century, having chronicled almost the entire arc of the Soviet space age from the inside.
The research file for this dossier holds 7 verified source entries, 7 of them distinct works. The sources page lists every one of them with what it covers, how it was reached, and the sharpest point at which this page and its sources come apart.