Red Moon Rising

9 SOMETHING FOR THE HOLIDAYS

Dwight Eisenhower wasn’t the only one caught off guard by Sputnik. Nikita Khrushchev had also initially underestimated its hefty political payload.

Before October 4, Khrushchev had been only partly paying attention to the proceedings at Tyura-Tam. “Just another Korolev launch,” he later conceded, recalling that an aide had needed to remind him that the Chief Designer, in a fit of paranoia, had moved up the date by two days. Since the R-7 had already proved itself on two successful trials, there was no longer any great sense of urgency as to the rocket’s viability. Its temporary incarnation as a space launcher, while intriguing from a scientific and competitive point of view, was not critical to the missile’s main mission as a weapon. The stakes, therefore, were not so high, at least as far as the first secretary was concerned.

Khrushchev also had some pressing earthly problems to contend with. Like Korolev, he had fallen prey to paranoia and fear of rivals, both real and imaginary. In the weeks that followed the summer’s failed hard-liner putsch, he had become increasingly convinced that another coup was in the works, and that once more dark forces were aligning to depose him. His nagging doubts festered, so that by the time Korolev rolled out the R-7 for his space shot, Khrushchev had decided to act on his suspicions. But he had to tread cautiously and spring the subtlest of traps, because his perceived challenger this time was not a party rival or a Stalinist holdover but the head of the Soviet armed forces, a soldier with the nation at his feet and the world’s largest army at his command.

Marshal Georgy Zhukov, hero of the Great Patriotic War, conqueror of Berlin, savior of Moscow, and Khrushchev’s rescuer during the June coup, had simply grown too powerful. The man whose popularity had so intimidated Joseph Stalin that the old tyrant had not dared have him killed was once more impinging on the balance of power within the Kremlin. Nor, it seemed, could he help himself; he was just too large for life, and he kept threatening to overshadow his civilian masters.

To ordinary Russians, Zhukov was a legend, a Soviet Patton and MacArthur rolled into one deliciously gruff and outsize package. Arrogant and abrasive, he had a soldier’s disdain for politicians, a seaman’s penchant for profanity, and a marine’s storm-the-beaches attitude toward bureaucracy. Like Khrushchev, he had been born poor and humble from illiterate peasant stock, and he had spent a childhood laboring in factories instead of classrooms. His real education had come on the battlefield, starting at the age of seventeen. Marked for early promotion in the new Red Army because of his proletarian roots and daring cavalry charges during the October Revolution and the civil war that followed, Zhukov had pioneered the use of tanks on his rapid rise. It was those innovative tank tactics that had first brought him to Stalin’s attention in July 1939. In one of his infamous fits of paranoia, Stalin had just butchered forty thousand officers, including most of his general staff, and Japan had exploited the resulting vacuum and disarray in the Soviet High Command to seize Mongolia, an unofficial Soviet dominion. Dispatched to repel the invaders, Zhukov routed the Japanese so soundly that they sued for peace and signed a nonaggression treaty that in time would protect the USSR from having to fight on two fronts. Impressed, Stalin summoned the young general to Moscow in 1940 to lead the German side in war games that simulated a Nazi invasion. Once more, Zhukov routed his adversary, seizing the Kremlin; an alarmed Stalin appointed him chief of the general staff, responsible for preparing for a real war with Germany, which the Soviet leader refused to believe would ever come. When it did, as Zhukov and many others had predicted, the marshal resigned rather than accept Stalin’s stubborn belief that the line had to be held at Kiev. Zhukov had wanted to fall back farther east and regroup, laying the same trap that had lured Napoleon in 1812 and forcing the enemy to stretch its supply lines in the dead of the Russian winter. When Hitler smashed through to Moscow’s outskirts in a matter of months, Stalin—in a rare and uncharacteristic moment of humility—begged his insubordinate general to return, even naming him deputy commander in chief, a de facto admission that Russia’s fate was now in his hands. Zhukov drove the invaders back all the way to Hitler’s underground bunker in Berlin. But victory came at a high cost: Zhukov lost more than one million men in the battle of Stalingrad alone, and his tactics were said to be so brutal and callous that they seemed premised on the notion that his enemies would run out of bullets before he ran out of soldiers to send to the slaughter.

Some of his officers hated him for the unnecessary carnage, but the people loved him for rescuing the nation. “Where you find Zhukov, you find Victory,” a saying was coined, and after the war, Stalin was so jealous of Zhukov’s status as the most decorated soldier in Soviet history that he had him removed from his exalted perch. Yet even the murderous Stalin was too afraid of a backlash to arrest or execute Mother Russia’s favorite son. Zhukov was merely sent to rot away in a series of meaningless posts far from the capital until Stalin’s death, when Khrushchev rehabilitated him to legitimize his coup against Beria.

Khrushchev had also invoked Zhukov’s popularity and unimpeachable reputation as a national patriot to stare down Lazar Kaganovich and the other coup plotters when they had the upper hand. And of course it was Zhukov who ferried, via long-range bomber, the Central Committee members whom Khrushchev had needed for his own survival, and it was the marshal who delivered the main charges against the conspirators at the extraordinary plenum that had been held after the putsch.

Zhukov had emerged from the failed coup as a kingmaker, arguably the second most powerful man in Russia—and probably the country’s most revered public figure, for he did not carry with him the taint of Communist Party purges. He was a product of the military, historically the nation’s most trusted institution, especially after its glorious role in the Great Patriotic War. Alas, the military was now unhappy with Khrushchev, particularly for his ruinous love affair with missiles.

Since starting work on the ICBM, Khrushchev had unilaterally slashed troop forces by a staggering 2 million men. He had canceled long-range bomber orders and converted aircraft factories to building passenger planes. Military airfields had been turned over to civilian use, under the expectation that rockets would soon arrive to protect the Soviet Union. Entire artillery divisions had been similarly scrapped, while dumbfounded admirals had helplessly watched brand-new battle cruisers—“shark fodder,” as Khrushchev derisively called them—get cut up into scrap steel before ever having a chance to leave their naval shipyards. Following the R-7’s August success, Khrushchev had announced a further round of three-hundred-thousand-troop reductions for the end of the year. Only submarines, which would carry the unproven missiles on which he was basing his entire defense doctrine, saw an increase in orders.

Not surprisingly, the wholesale cuts had roiled the Soviet armed forces. The uniformed services were not at all convinced that missiles were the panacea Khrushchev was promising, and they resented having to give up their heavy artillery, battle tanks, cruisers, and infantry units to pay for the experiment. “Some voices of dissatisfaction were heard blaming me for this policy,” Khrushchev later recalled. Resentment rippled through the ranks as entire commands were lost with the closures of bases, battalions, air wings, and naval squadrons. Thousands of careers had suddenly ground to a halt, and disgruntled murmurs could be heard at officers’ clubs from East Berlin to Sakhalin Island. The massive personnel cuts had not yet sliced too deeply into the elite officer corps, but the writing was on the wall. Without troops to command, the majors and colonels, and even some generals, would soon lose their jobs, along with the prestige and, more important, the perks—the access to better food and housing, cars and drivers—that went with their privileged positions.

The growing discontent within the middle and upper echelons of the military was all the more troubling since Khrushchev was uncertain whether he could count on the general staff’s loyalty. Foolishly, he had permitted Zhukov to pension off most of the old military leaders that the Soviet leader had known for years. “I can’t go to battle with generals who have to travel with field hospitals,” Zhukov had explained of the need for fresh blood in the geriatric High Command. Khrushchev had consented, but now he regretted his decision. He was not personally acquainted with many of the new crop of Red Army leaders that had been promoted in their place, and this younger generation of officers owed its allegiance directly to the charismatic defense chief. More ominously, after being elevated to full voting membership of the Presidium for his role in foiling the putsch, the marshal was now also free to build tactical alliances with Khrushchev’s Communist Party colleagues, further expanding his potential power base. “He assumed so much power that it began to worry the leadership” Khrushchev later observed in his memoir, though by “leadership” he of course meant himself.

Politically, Zhukov appeared to have outfoxed his insecure master, who soon became convinced that the marshal coveted “Eisenhower’s Crown”—to be both head of the military and head of state. “Father feared that Zhukov saw General Eisenhower as an example,” Sergei Khrushchev recalled. “I see what Zhukov is up to,” Khrushchev told his fellow Presidium members in late September. “We were heading for a military coup d’état.”

The clincher appeared to have been a particularly unsettling piece of intelligence that Khrushchev received a few weeks earlier. His defense chief, he was told, had secretly started “saboteur schools” outside Moscow and Kiev to train highly specialized covert operations teams. Typically, the Central Committee was informed whenever new military units were created, but Zhukov had not followed protocol and had kept his civilian overseers ignorant of his activities. Only the new head of military intelligence, a confidant whom Zhukov had recently appointed, had been kept in the loop. There could be only one explanation for the lapse, Khrushchev reasoned; the urban commandos Zhukov and his spy chief were secretly training were setting the stage for “a South American-style military takeover.”

Whether the conspiracy was real or whether it was a figment of Khrushchev’s inflamed imagination would become a matter of historical debate. (Not even Sergei, with the benefit of hindsight and a half century’s distance, would be able to unequivocally support his father’s suspicions.) That Khrushchev, after his brush with insurgency, had become more prone to seeing potential plots was perhaps understandable. That Zhukov had grown far more powerful than any other soldier in the Soviet era was also undeniable. But had he actually harbored mutinous ambitions? And had he really wanted to rule Russia? On that score, the historical jury is still out, and even Khrushchev would later wonder if he had jumped the gun.

Zhukov’s lapse in reporting the saboteur schools might have been an innocent omission, or simply a pretext for Khrushchev to launch a preemptive strike against an ally whose growing influence was becoming too dangerous. Whichever the case, by late September he had decided to remove Zhukov before the defense chief could remove him. “His unreasonable activities leave us no choice,” Khrushchev told his loyalists in hushed meetings. The only remaining question was how to do it without tipping his hand and risking a military revolt. Zhukov could not be approached head-on. He needed to be isolated, cut off from contact with his subordinates, and lulled into a false sense of security. And all this had to be accomplished so subtly that he would never see the ax coming.

The answer lay in foreign travel. Zhukov had been invited to Washington. Why not go to Yugoslavia instead, Khrushchev suggested. Andrei Gromyko, the new foreign minister, would be in Washington anyway, and the uppity Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito needed some hand-holding ahead of the big pan-Communist summit in Moscow that was coming up in a few weeks to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the October Revolution. Zhukov could take one of the brand-new battle cruisers (one of the few that had survived the scrap heap), it was further suggested, to impress the Yugoslavs, and he could visit Albania as well.

And so, on October 4, the unsuspecting defense minister was somewhere in the Adriatic, stuck on a slow boat from Tirana, his radio communications restricted, while Khrushchev hastened to Kiev to seal his fate. Ostensibly, the Ukrainian stopover was routine, a chance for the boss to meet with regional party officials, listen to their petitions for funds, and discuss economic policies. Somewhat less routinely, Khrushchev was also there to observe tank maneuvers and to meet with senior officers from the Kiev Military District, one of Zhukov’s former commands. Select members of the brass from Moscow had flown in for the impromptu talks, most notably Rodion Malinovsky, the deputy defense minister, whom Khrushchev still trusted.

Whether the timing of the visit with military commanders was purely coincidental would also become a topic of historical speculation. No record was kept of what was said during the maneuvers. A few days later, however, a small and unobtrusive squib would appear on the back page of Pravda. Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov, it would announce in the smallest of print, had been “relieved of his duties.” Rodion Malinovsky was assuming his responsibilities.

On the night of October 4, the matter of Zhukov’s removal was either not yet resolved or still a closely held secret, because Sergei Khrushchev, who had joined his father in Kiev, had no inkling of the preemptive countercoup. Sergei had seen little of his father over the past several months. He had just gotten married, was busy with his dissertation, and had hopes of soon going to work for Korolev. He was beginning to make the transition from favored son to an adult with his own independent life and family, vacationing separately for the first time that summer and no longer living at home. Apparently Nikita missed Sergei’s company, because he had called him the day before, suggesting he hop on a plane and meet him at the Marinsky Palace in Kiev, where Khrushchev would be making an unexpected detour on his way to Moscow from his seaside dacha in the Crimea.

The palace crowned Kiev’s highest hill, offering postcard views of the Dnieper River and the gilded, green domes of the one-thousand-year-old Pecherskaya Lavra Monastery on one side, and, on the other, the more foreboding sight of the new gray granite government buildings built by German prisoners of war. Inside, beneath pendulous chandeliers, pastel ceilings, and ornate millwork, Sergei sat, bored, as he waited for his father to finish his seemingly endless meetings. The evening sessions had run well past ten, in the customarily rambling fashion of official Soviet delegations, so that the air in the Marinsky Palace dining hall had grown stale with cigarette smoke, and the crystal ashtrays around the long dining table were beginning to overflow. Among the smokers were Khrushchev’s closest supporters, and it was probably also not a coincidence that he had chosen to be with the chieftains from his former power base—he had served as Stalin’s Ukrainian viceroy—on the day he was orchestrating the removal of the man he judged to be his final rival.

In the palace’s convivial atmosphere, Khrushchev could cast a reassuring and proprietary eye on men whose careers he owned: the suddenly ever-present Rodion Malinovsky; Aleksei Kirichenko, the powerful Ukrainian party boss who had accompanied Khrushchev to Korolev’s design bureau in February 1956, when the Chief Designer had requested permission to launch a satellite; Leonid Brezhnev, the dimwitted but trustworthy loyalist, who was actually neither but found it expedient to play the part. Khrushchev had just put Brezhnev in charge of missile and defense matters at the Presidium, a reward for his (literally) swooning support during the botched coup. The post seemed largely ceremonial, since the first secretary still made all the important decisions himself. But it sent a signal that the bushy-haired young political commissar from Dnipropetrovsk was on the rise; and, just as important, that loyalty paid off.

It was Khrushchev, not Brezhnev, who shortly after 11:00 PM was summoned away from the meeting on a missile-related matter. An aide, Sergei Khrushchev recalled, whispered in his father’s ear that he had a phone call. “I’ll be back,” Khrushchev announced, leaving the room. He returned a few moments later, a broad smile creasing his tired features. He said nothing, though, and for some time sat silently, staring at his fingernails in a distracted manner as he listened to reports on the beet harvest and coal stockpiles for the coming winter. After a few minutes of fidgeting, however, he could no longer restrain himself and raised his hand for silence.

“Comrades,” he said, addressing the assembled Ukrainian Central Committee members. “I can tell you some very pleasant and important news. Korolev just called.” (At this point Khrushchev acquired what his son would later describe as “a secretive look.”) “He’s one of our missile designers. Remember not to mention his name—it’s classified. So,” Khrushchev continued, “Korolev has just reported that today, a little while ago, an artificial satellite of the Earth was launched.”

The Ukrainians stared blankly, not quite sure what to make of this news. Obviously, the boss was pleased, but about what few could tell. Most people in the room had never heard of a satellite before. “Everyone smiled politely, without understanding what had just happened,” Sergei recalled. Khrushchev, perhaps sensing the perplexity of his provincial underlings, felt compelled to explain. “It is an offshoot of an intercontinental missile,” he said.

This additional intelligence did not appear to make the visibly confused local party bosses any wiser, so once more the Soviet leader elaborated. As Sergei described the scene:

Missile doctrine might have been above the pay grade of the regional party hacks but, ironically, it was Khrushchev who had missed the point. Despite his unusually prescient grasp of rocketry’s role in modern warfare, he had completely failed to recognize Sputnik’s significance as a propaganda weapon. “He had viewed the satellite primarily in military terms,” Sergei conceded. For the Soviet leader, Sputnik had been a milestone in the ICBM race, not a milestone in human history. That mankind had just broken the bounds of gravity, and made its greatest leap—to quote CBS’s Eric Sevareid—from the primordial mud, was completely lost on the missile-obsessed Khrushchev. Which may have explained why the lead story in Pravda on the morning of October 5 was incongruously titled “Preparations for Winter” and tallied food and fuel stockpiles for the coming cold season, while Sputnik was relegated to a terse two-paragraph news brief.

“We still hadn’t realized what we had done,” Sergei Khrushchev remembered. It would take the world to tell them.

For Sergei Korolev, it would also take a while for the magnitude of his accomplishment to sink in. There had been little time to celebrate after the launch: a few rounds of vodka and congratulatory speeches in the middle of the night, followed by intensive calculations and worries as the first day of the space age wore on. PS-1, as everyone at Tyura-Tam still called the satellite, was up, but how stable was its orbit? This the anxious scientists could not immediately determine, because their tracking stations were arrayed only on Soviet territory and thus could measure only a small fraction of the satellite’s elliptical orbit. Sputnik would have to make at least a dozen full revolutions before anyone could tell with certainty whether it would stay in orbit or come crashing back to earth.

Every celestial body suffers from what is known as orbital decay, a gradual loss of speed and altitude that brings the object either closer to or farther from its center of gravity. Decay can be imperceptibly slow, as in the case of the moon, which falls a few inches away from the earth every year, or catastrophically abrupt, like a meteor getting sucked in by the pull of gravity. Sputnik could thus stay in orbit for a day, a week, a month, a year, a millennium, or a million years, depending on that all-important rate of degeneration.

From Sputnik’s first few rotations, Korolev’s team had been able to ascertain the satellite’s basic parameters: its apogee, perigee, speed, inclination, and duration of each orbit. The tiny sphere was hurtling on a 25,000-kilometer-per-hour (15,625-miles-per-hour) roller-coaster ride around the planet, crossing the equator every ninety-six minutes at a sixty-five-degree angle as it climbed to apogees (peaks) of 947 kilometers (587 miles) above sea level like a surfer on a wave and then plummeted to perigees (depths) of 228 kilometers (141 miles) as it fell to the bottom of a trough before rising again. But each time Sputnik hit a trough was like slamming on the brakes, because the atmosphere, even at that height, was still thick enough to cause friction. At such relatively low points of the orbit, fluctuations in the earth’s gravity due to differences in the shape and mineral composition of the globe, which is not a perfectly round sphere, could also adversely affect decay. Sputnik’s perigee was too low because of the malfunction during liftoff, which had resulted in an early engine cutoff. The question was, How much ground was it losing? If PS-1 fell back to earth within a few days, Korolev’s triumph would be short-lived, his record tainted, his masters in Moscow unhappy. Frantically, his mathematicians ran the numbers, trying to predict Sputnik’s life span. Finally, early in the afternoon of October 5, they came up with an estimate: two to three months. (The exact number would turn out to be ninety-two days.) Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Sputnik was safe, as far as the record books and politicians stood. Korolev and his chief designers could at last relax and go home to celebrate in earnest.

Until then, there had been no time for reflection. “We were all too focused on our jobs, concentrating on the execution of the operation, to think about the meaning of the event,” recalled Vladimir Barmin, the designer of the Tulip launchpad. Boris Chertok described feeling a similar sensation of relieved exhaustion rather than euphoric wonder on finally hearing that the space barrier was broken. “It was late. We went to bed,” he wrote, with uncharacteristic brevity, of getting the news at OKB-1 headquarters in Moscow, where he had been recovering from his illness. “We thought the satellite was just a simple device,” he added, “and that the importance of the launch had been to test the R-7 again and gather data.”

Of all the engineers, physicists, chemists, mathematicians, and military personnel who had been involved with Sputnik, literally several thousand people, it seemed that only the erudite Mikhail Tikhonravov, the Latin-spouting creator of PS-1, understood that the world had changed forever on October 4, 1957. “This date,” he said, “has become one of the most glorious in the history of humanity.”

The men responsible for the satellite would begin to grasp the importance of their feat only when they boarded their special flight from Tyura-Tam to Moscow on the night following the launch. Most of the exhausted engineers had passed out shortly after takeoff, Valentin Glushko and Mstislav Keldysh slumbering in their elegant and neatly pressed suits, while Korolev, shifting uncomfortably in his trademark black leather jacket and turtleneck sweater, stared wearily at the dim cabin lights. As soon as their big Iliushin-4 prop jet had leveled off over the orange Kazakh desert, the pilot, Tolya Yesenin, came rushing out of the cockpit. “The whole world is abuzz,” he gushed, grasping the Chief Designer’s hand and pumping it furiously. Korolev sat up, startled. He had been so preoccupied during the past twenty-four hours that he had had little contact with anyone outside Tyura-Tam other than Khrushchev, and had no idea that word of the launch had spread so far, so wide, so fast. Abuzz? The whole world? Really? Korolev couldn’t contain himself. He jumped out of his seat and made straight for the flight deck to use the plane’s radio. When he returned some minutes later, he was unusually ebullient and emotional.

“Comrades,” he cried, rousing his sleepy colleagues. “You can’t imagine what’s happening. The whole world is talking about our little satellite. Apparently we have caused quite a stir.”

Much like Korolev, it was not until the night of October 5, and only once he had returned to Moscow from his maneuverings in Kiev, that Nikita Khrushchev began to realize what a tremendous victory he had just scored against the United States.

Throughout the day, Soviet embassies and KGB stations around the globe had been busy compiling foreign press clippings and political reactions to Sputnik. By the next morning, the reports had been translated, cabled to Moscow, sorted, and slotted into the thick folders Khrushchev received with breakfast every day at his government mansion in Lenin Hills. The files—green for foreign press clippings, red for decoded diplomatic traffic, blue for agency reports—must have made savory reading. “The achievement is immense,” declared Britain’s Manchester Guardian. “It demands a psychological adjustment on our part towards Soviet society, Soviet military capabilities, and perhaps—most of all—to the relationship of the world to what is beyond. The Russians can now build ballistic missiles capable of striking any chosen target anywhere in the world. Clearly they have established a great lead in missile technology.” “Myth has become reality,” crowed France’s Le Figaro, commenting gleefully on the bitter “disillusion and bitter reflections of the Americans who have little experience with humiliation in the technical domain.”

Khrushchev leafed through the stack of diplomatic dispatches with increasing relish. “A turning point in civilization,” the New York Times declared, “that could only be achieved by a country with first rate conditions in a vast area of science and engineering.” An Austrian paper opined that “in contrast with the first steps in the atomic age which began with 100,000 deaths, mankind can rejoice without destruction on the conquest of cosmos by the human spirit.” China’s main daily hailed Sputnik as a “validation of the superiority of Marxist-Leninist technology.” Radio Cairo declared that “the planetary era rings the death knell of colonialism; the American policy of encirclement of the Soviet Union has pitifully failed.”

Khrushchev was astonished by the reaction. It was as if, overnight, his nation had been vaulted to a preeminent position atop the global hierarchy. The Soviet Union, in the eyes of the world, had suddenly become a genuine superpower, not just a backward and brutish empire to be feared because of its sheer size, territorial ambitions, and aggressive ideology but a true and equal rival of the United States, a beacon of progress that deserved respect for its technological prowess and forward thinking. “With only a ball of metal,” as the historian Asif A. Siddiqi would succinctly put it, “the Soviets had managed to achieve what they were unable to convey with decades of rhetoric.”

The turnaround, the KGB reported, had profoundly shaken America’s allies in both tangible and esoteric ways. The European Assembly in Strasbourg censured the United States for falling behind the Soviet Union. In Tehran, the shah’s CIA-sponsored government “considered the satellite such a blow to U.S. prestige,” according to a diplomatic assessment, “that they displayed uneasy embarrassment in discussing it with Americans.” In Mexico, editors had begun requesting Soviet rather than U.S. scientific source material, while Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party had taken Sputnik as a cue to begin “agitating” against further deployment of U.S. conventional armed forces. As the U.S. Information Agency would itself concede, in an October 10 memo, “Public opinion in friendly countries shows decided concern over the possibility that the balance of military power has shifted or may soon shift in favor of the USSR. American prestige is viewed as having sustained a severe blow, and the American [domestic] reaction, so sharply marked by concern, discomfiture, and intense interest, has itself increased the disquiet of friendly countries and increased the impact of the satellite.”

The cold war had suddenly taken on a new and, from Khrushchev’s perspective, eminently more appealing dimension. It was now the specter of Soviet supremacy rather than American dominance that haunted the global arms race. Moscow, for once, held the high moral ground in this new phase of the contest because Sputnik, as opposed to Hiroshima, could be touted as a purely peaceful and scientific achievement. That must have been the most delicious irony for Khrushchev. He had tried, and failed, to rattle the world with his announcement in August boasting of a deadly new weapon that would raise the scale of mass destruction to unprecedented levels. People had simply shrugged. Korolev, on the other hand, had placed a tiny transmitter on top of an R-7 and managed to put the entire planet on notice with its innocuous little beeps. “It will generate myth, legend, and enduring superstition of a kind peculiarly difficult to eradicate,” the USIA memo accurately predicted, “which the USSR can exploit to its advantage.”

The Soviet leader smiled. He had read enough. He may have lacked the formal education and erudition to intuitively grasp the historic context of man’s ascent to the heavens, but he was too well grounded a politician not to recognize opportunity when it knocked. “People all over the world are pointing to the satellite,” he exclaimed, as if struck by a revelation. “They are saying the U.S. has been beaten.” Pushing aside his breakfast, and all previous thought of the dearly deposed Zhukov, Khrushchev sprang into action. Get me Korolev! he ordered.

By the time the Chief Designer arrived at Khrushchev’s Kremlin office on Thursday, October 10, the propaganda apparatus of the Communist Party of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics had been marshaled and unleashed for the benefit of its citizenry. Pravda and every other Soviet mass medium now single-mindedly pursued the glorious twin topics of space and satellites, trumpeting the proud and limitless promise of Soviet science. “World’s First Artificial Satellite of the Earth Created in Soviet Union,” Pravda’s October 6 issue hailed in a page-wide banner headline. “Russians Won the Competition,” the paper boasted the next day, in equally bold print. Western newspaper articles from publications usually reviled as corrupt capitalist organs were duly reprinted on front pages to reassure the Soviet citizenry that the world thought as much of Sputnik as the ITAR-TASS news agency claimed. Laudatory telegrams from leaders of various fraternal nations were published to show the awed reverence of the Communist bloc. Photos and footage of the racism in Little Rock were once more disseminated to drive home the stark contrast between Soviet innovation and American oppression. The campaign was relentless, and it was just as effective as the media blitz in the United States that had turned audience indifference to terror—only in reverse. Ordinary Russians, who days earlier had neither heard of nor cared about satellites, were suddenly space converts overwhelmed with national pride and a newfound sense of security and superiority.

The name Sergei Pavlovich Korolev was notably absent from the triumphant barrage of state television, radio, and print reports. Nor were the names Glushko, Pilyugin, Barmin, or any of the other top designers and engineers ever mentioned in the same breath as PS-1, which by then had also acquired the generic moniker Sputnik with Russian audiences. The public face of the Soviet space program in fact belonged to a man who had nothing to do with rockets or satellites. Leonid Sedov, a technocrat and expert in gas dynamics, was the Academy of Sciences’ representative at the IGY and various other international conferences. His chief recommendation as Soviet spokesman appeared to be a fluency in English and German, a polished delivery, and a talent for obfuscation. Sedov had become something of a celebrity since October 4, particularly in the West, where his snide remarks on America’s moral decline made all the newsreels. “The average American only cares for his car, house, and electric refrigerator,” he lectured during one speech. “He has no sense of national purpose, nor is he receptive to great ideas which do not pay off immediately.” Meeting Ernst Stuhlinger after a speech at the Eighth Congress of the International Astronomical Federation in Barcelona, Spain, on October 8, Sedov was less flip but just as smug. “We could never understand,” he lectured, according to the security memorandum Stuhlinger filed with ABMA’s counterintelligence bureau detailing his contact with the Communist official, “why your people picked such a strange design [Vanguard] for a satellite carrier. Why did you try to build something entirely new instead of using one of your excellent military engines? You would have saved so much time, not to mention troubles, and money. Why did Dr. von Braun select this other design?”

Stuhlinger appeared both puzzled and frustrated at the mistake in identity. “Dr. von Braun?” he replied to Sedov. “He did not decide this. He is not a member of the Vanguard Committee; in fact he is not even a consultant or adviser on the American Vanguard satellite.” Sedov no doubt relayed this nugget of intelligence in his own debriefing report to the KGB, along with reassurances that his German-American interlocutors had never inquired about Korolev, whose secret identity was presumably still safe. It was unlikely that Sedov himself would have inadvertently passed on any classified information. Famous as he was becoming as the spokesman for Russian rocket science, he apparently knew so little about the actual workings of missiles that on a visit to Tyura-Tam, he astounded Korolev by asking where the satellites were placed on the R-7’s central booster. (On top, Korolev had dryly replied.)

If the Chief Designer resented talking heads like Sedov stealing his limelight, he did not say so. “People in the Soviet Union did not complain during that era,” Sergei Khrushchev laughed when asked if Korolev found the enforced anonymity grating. Korelev’s daughter, Natalia, however, recalled her bitter disappointment when the Nobel committee wanted the name of the scientist responsible for Sputnik so they could award him the Nobel Prize in Physics. It is the collective achievement of Soviet science, the Swedes were told. “I remember walking in Red Square,” Natalia Koroleva recounted decades later, “and seeing all these banners, and celebrations, and I wanted to shout, ‘My father did this.’ But I couldn’t tell anyone.”

“They are well provided for,” Khrushchev said of his nameless missile experts. Their identities, he regretted, had to remain secret for national security reasons. But one day, he vowed, “we shall erect a monument in honor of those who created the rocket and Sputnik and shall inscribe their glorious names in letters of gold so that they will be known to future generations.”

For now, they would have to make do with medals they could not wear publicly. In addition to the Order of Lenin and Hero of Socialist Labor awarded to all those involved with PS-1, Korolev received an honorary doctorate and was elevated from corresponding to full member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Those accolades, however, were fairly meaningless. His chief reward came with his October 10 summons to the Kremlin—and the visit’s tacit recognition of his admission into Khrushchev’s inner circle of court favorites. “Our most brilliant missile designer,” Khrushchev raved, noting that other rocket designers “could not hold a candle to Sergei Pavlovich Korolev.” That status would confer on the Chief Designer a rare and privileged position, and the ability to cut through red tape and circumvent bureaucratic hurdles on his future ventures. Henceforth, he would have a direct line to the Soviet Union’s sole decision maker and could bypass the sort of annoying obstacles that the R-7 State Commission had thrown in his way prior to Sputnik’s launch.

While Korolev knew he could not take public credit for Sputnik, he was hardly blind to the considerable political capital he had earned with Khrushchev. The Soviet leader was making so much hay from his satellite that he would be hard-pressed to deny him any reasonable requests—and Korolev was not the sort of person to shy away from pressing his advantage. Neither, of course, was Khrushchev, which made them an ideally suited pair.

The first secretary might have been slow recognizing the propaganda value of the hand Korolev had dealt him, but once he had belatedly realized what kind of cards he held, he had wasted no time capitalizing on his windfall. He had already summoned James Reston, the New York Times bureau chief, to his Kremlin office so he could communicate directly to the American people. “When we announced the successful testing of an intercontinental rocket,” Khrushchev told Reston, “some American statesmen did not believe us.” The Soviet leader was referring to Charlie Wilson’s famously dismissive comments on the R-7, perhaps even to Eisenhower’s veiled skepticism. “The Soviet Union, they claimed, was saying it had something it did not really have,” Khrushchev went on, revealing a glimpse of his bruised ego. “Now that we have successfully launched an earth satellite, only technically ignorant people can doubt this.”

The Americans had also laughed, Khrushchev continued in this wounded vein, when the Soviet Union had announced its intention to launch a satellite. Sputnik was up, he chortled, and where was the American satellite—the one the size of a grapefruit? “If necessary, we can double the weight of the satellite,” he boasted, adding that the ICBM it rode on was “fully perfected” and could strike anywhere in the world. What’s more, Khrushchev vowed, growing overly animated as he often did when discussing sensitive subjects, the R-7 would soon go into mass production, and ICBMs would roll out of Russian factories “like sausages.”

The tirade, duly relayed in all its frightening implications to alarmed American readers, had not been just an outburst of pent-up frustration or even a manifestation of Khrushchev’s notorious inferiority complex. It had been a coldly calculated feint, a bluff designed to deflect attention away from the fact the Soviets were discovering that the R-7 had serious limitations as a so-called ultimate weapon. “Initially, Father believed the mere existence of an ICBM would deter the Americans,” his son explained. But the assumptions behind that doctrine had been shattered during the R-7 tests, when Marshal Nedelin and the military discovered how much time it took to fuel the huge rocket and how difficult it was to hide. War, it was now thought, could still break out because the missile was vulnerable to preemptive strikes and could be destroyed on the launchpad by U.S. bombers, rendering its deterrent value nil. Washington, after all, already knew Tyura-Tam’s exact geographic coordinates thanks to its spy planes, and the R-7 could be launched only from that one location because it was too big to be moved on anything other than railcars and needed a pad the size of several football fields from which to lift off. It also used the wrong kind of propellant, not to mention a staggeringly impractical 250 tons of it, requiring cumbersome fueling infrastructure and hours of wasteful preparation time because its tanks could not be prefilled with liquid oxygen that instantly evaporated. The R-7, in short, could not be hidden, moved, or fired on short notice—making it a sitting duck in the event of a surprise American attack.

As with many first-generation weapons, its principal value was in its demonstrative effect; the dream of deterrence via an invulnerable ICBM fleet was realistic, if not yet a reality. Already one of Korolev’s rival designers, Mikhail Yangel, was working on a series of successor missiles that addressed the R-7’s flaws. Yangel, a few months earlier, had successfully tested the R-12, an intermediate range missile that used storable nitric acid—Glushko’s preferred oxidizer—instead of slow-loading liquid oxygen. With Glushko’s backing, Yangel was now proposing an expanded intercontinental version of the missile, the R-16, which would be a third the size of the original R-7 and capable of silo or mobile launch on less than thirty minutes’ notice. Glushko, who could not help but envy the political accolades that the Chief Designer was garnering for what was essentially a triumph of his own engines, was lobbying Nedelin to push for the R-16. It would take three to four years for the superior weapon to go from blueprint to deployment phase, but the Americans did not know any of this. For now, at least, the R-7 was still the only ICBM in existence on either side of the ideological divide. And Nikita Khrushchev was not about to let anyone forget that he, and he alone, had exclusive domain over the power to rain destruction anywhere on the planet.

The point was not just that the Soviet Union possessed this devastating new weapon, but that Khrushchev wielded it personally. The R-7 was his creation—Korolev was merely an instrument of his will—and it was to him that the political accolades ultimately fell, a point that Pravda would hammer home whenever possible. “In his able proposals,” the paper would glowingly note, “there is evidence again and again of the great conviction in the triumph of Soviet rocket technology.” Likewise, Sputnik celebrated his glory (“he participates in the discussions of all the most vital experiments”) and validated his vision (he “directs the development of the major directions of technical progress in the country”); he would invoke the satellite in virtually every speech for months to come. For a leader still deeply insecure about his own authority, Sputnik was a boon. It was the glue that Khrushchev had been looking for to cement his grip on power. Everyone knew that it was his rocket up there causing an international sensation. Everyone would associate his name with one of the greatest technological triumphs of the twentieth century. With luck, he might even ascend to that rarefied pantheon of Russia’s Greats: Peter, Catherine, Stalin. They had been immortalized for their terrestrial conquests; Khrushchev had just expanded that empire into outer space.

For the embattled Soviet leader, October 4 had augured an astonishing reversal of political fortune: his final rival had been eliminated, forgotten in the furor over Sputnik’s success, and he alone had emerged as the prime beneficiary of the satellite’s conferred grandeur. Khrushchev could now claim credit for making the Soviet Union a genuine superpower, a true technological match for the United States. On the world stage, he was now Eisenhower’s equal. At home, he was untouchable, safe at last from intrigue, schemers, and prospective coup plotters. But still, Khrushchev wanted more. Sputnik could be squeezed for even greater political gains, and he could scale even higher political heights. Korolev, he was sure, could make it happen.

“You know,” said Khrushchev, when the Chief Designer finally arrived at his Kremlin office on the morning of October 10, “when you first proposed Sputnik we didn’t believe you. We thought, ‘Ah, that Korolev, he’s just dreaming.’ But today it’s another story.”

Khrushchev beamed at his star scientist. He was in exceptionally high spirits. The boss, as Korolev knew, had been cranky of late and easily flew off the cuff. But that morning he seemed completely relaxed, lounging in a sofa chair next to fellow Presidium member Anastas Mikoyan. The wily old Armenian, a survivor of Stalin’s inner circle who owed his political longevity to an utter lack of ambition, also struck an informal pose, nibbling at a bowl of fruit while he stretched his plump legs on an expensive central Asian rug. Tea and juice had been offered along with the easy banter, a sign that Korolev, who had dressed for the occasion in a respectful tie and jacket, was in unusually good standing.

“Sergei Pavlovich,” Khrushchev continued, “as you know, the October Revolution jubilee is approaching.” Korolev needed no reminder. He would have had to have been blind not to notice the frenzied preparations for the fortieth anniversary of the Bolshevik uprising. Moscow’s main streets were getting a makeover in anticipation of the parades and ceremonies that would mark four decades of communism, and construction crews were busy repaving roads, repainting buildings, and scrubbing soot from grimy facades. Sputnik would be a major theme of the celebration, a symbol of Soviet accomplishment; Khrushchev had commissioned poems lyricizing the “Leap Forward” and had ordered that detailed timetables be published in every major city showing exactly when Sputnik passed over different metropolitan regions. Huge Sputnik banners were erected, commemorative stamps printed—FIRST IN SPACE, they boasted—and millions of spherical, satellite-shaped pins were made for citizens to wear on their lapels. They would bear them proudly because Sputnik had tapped an unusually sensitive nerve with ordinary Russians. Most Soviet citizens knew that life was different in the West, that people in Europe and America enjoyed higher standards of living under capitalism. In that respect, Khrushchev’s inferiority complex was a national malaise. Sputnik compensated for those persistent feelings of inadequacy and inequality. Muscovites might not have color television sets, fast cars, or fashionable shoes, but Sputnik proved that they weren’t technologically backward after all. “‘Now we are ahead of America,’ I have been told countless times,” reported Tom Margerison, a British science writer on assignment in Moscow, in the London Sunday Times. “In the streets there is immense pleasure and pride in the rocket-engineer’s achievement…. In Red Square I counted no fewer than fourteen models of Sputnik circling a globe…. Their success is more important to the Russians themselves than to anyone else.”

Sputnik had given Moscow the high moral ground over the West, demonstrating how shallow consumerism should be sacrificed for the good of science and human progress. While it was presented as a monumental triumph, Sputnik in reality helped cover up and justify one of the most glaring shortcomings of communism: its inability to deliver basic material well-being to its citizens. As Margerison acidly put it, “Nowhere else would you find a people who are able to carry out a complex project like launching a satellite, involving the close cooperation of scientists and engineers from many disciplines, yet who prove quite unable to organize efficient butcher shops.” As a substitute for comfort, and as a tool to pacify the masses, now that terror had been rejected, Sputnik was thus invaluable. It exploited pride rather than fear, and it supplanted Stalin’s purges as a way of keeping people committed to wobbling socialist ideals.

All this must have flashed through Khrushchev’s head as he prodded Korolev. “It’ll be forty years of Soviet power, which is a big milestone. Wouldn’t it be nice,” the Soviet leader asked wistfully, “to have something for the holiday?”

The question, with all its implications, hung in the air momentarily. But it was obvious where Khrushchev was headed. He had invited all the leaders of world communism to Moscow for the anniversary (which because of the switch from the old Julian czarist calendar would actually take place on November 7) and wanted another feat to impress his honored guests. He was especially keen to woo China’s Mao Zedong with Korolev’s magic, since the Chinese had been growing increasingly aloof and independent ever since his secret speech at the Twentieth Party Congress. Beijing had blasted Khrushchev’s assault on Stalin as “revisionist” and had made ugly noises about no longer recognizing Russia’s role as the ideological standard-bearer for communism. But Mao was veritably smitten with missiles and had openly marveled at Sputnik. Khrushchev, eager to bring the Chinese back into Moscow’s fold, had promised Mao missile technology, starting with the R-2, which was to be transferred in 1958. (The Chinese, in turn, would transfer the technology to their client states, and in time the R-2’s DNA would figure in virtually all future generations of Asian missiles.)

Khrushchev clearly relished the prospect of Mao in Moscow, salivating at another display of Soviet missile muscle flexing. Mikoyan also seemed to have caught the gist of his boss’s loaded question. “Maybe,” he suggested, “a Sputnik that will broadcast the ‘Internationale’ from space.” The “Internationale” was the pan-Communist anthem, a hymn that reverberated for the October Revolution in much the same way as the “Marseillaise” sounded the French Revolution.

But Khrushchev didn’t think much of the idea. “What?” he snapped, cutting off a cowed Mikoyan. “You and your Internationale. Forget the Internationale. [Sputnik]’s not a damn music box.”

Glaring briefly at Mikoyan, Khrushchev once more turned to his Chief Designer, his expression immediately softening, his eyes attentive and hopeful. Korolev’s mind must also have been racing throughout the exchange. He had the parts to assemble one more rocket; otherwise the next batch of R-7s would not be ready until January 1958. So he had a launch vehicle. But what about a satellite? Nothing was ready on that front, and he couldn’t simply replicate PS-1. Whatever he came up with had to top the original Sputnik: be bigger, better, and create an even greater sensation. The bar was significantly raised, and the time frame was beyond brutal. It had taken three years to launch Sputnik. Khrushchev was giving him barely three weeks.

A wiser man might have said that it was impossible, that it couldn’t be done. But Korolev did not hesitate. “What if we launch a Sputnik with a living being?” he asked nonchalantly, as if building a spacecraft from scratch in a matter of days was the easiest thing in the world. The military, Korolev explained, had been sending dogs on high-altitude, suborbital rocket flights and parachuting them back to earth in special hermetically sealed compartments. He could borrow one of those canine chambers, outfit it with a life-support system, and cobble something together.

Khrushchev’s face lit up as he listened. “With a dog in it!” he exclaimed, as if the idea had just spontaneously come to him and Korolev was an extension of his own iron will, merely a mechanic who filled in the blanks and fussed over the details. “Can you imagine, Anastas?” Khrushchev cried triumphantly, addressing Mikoyan, who was nodding enthusiastically, as he always did whenever the first secretary looked to him for reassurance. “A dog in space.”

It would be such a coup. Not only could the USSR stake another claim to cosmic supremacy, but it would also be the first nation on the planet to prove that life could be sustained beyond earth’s boundaries. Once more, the whole world would stand in awe of Soviet science while trembling at the strength of its missiles. It was perfect.

“That’s what we need,” a clearly animated Khrushchev continued. “A dog. Give us a dog. But,” his features darkened in a vaguely ominous, finger-wagging way, “make sure you are ready for the holidays.”

It was Korolev who now nodded with forced sincerity, since he had little choice. “We will do our best, Nikita Sergeevich,” he promised, sounding somewhat less certain, being sure to use the collective we in case blame later had to be spread.

“We are agreed then, Sergei Pavlovich,” Khrushchev said, standing up to indicate that the interview was over. “You will have whatever you need. You can ask my man Kozlov”—another new Politburo appointee—“for whatever you want. Meet with him tomorrow to go over the details. But remember,” Khrushchev admonished, “we need this for the holidays.”

Twenty-six days. The number must have reverberated in Korolev’s head like an oppressive drumbeat, like the pounding of a migraine that could not be dulled. What had he gotten himself into? Twenty-six days to design, build, test, and launch a spacecraft. Scratch the testing; there would be no time for that. The design phase would also have to be severely curtailed if he had any hope of meeting his deadline. There would be no special drawings. His engineers would have to make crude sketches and give them directly to machinists, to be produced without quality control. But what about the overall concept? How big would the craft have to be to keep an animal alive? And for how long? They would have to feed their canine cosmonaut remotely, monitor its progress electronically, process its waste hydraulically, and provide it with a steady supply of fresh oxygen. That was a lot of equipment to haul into orbit. Would Glushko’s engines carry the extra weight? What about the heat? How would they shield their passenger from the forces of friction and solar rays? Would the capsule require a special shroud? And how would it separate from the launch vehicle once it had reached orbital velocity? Ejection systems were complex and prone to malfunction. They couldn’t risk one, not without extensive testing. Perhaps they could weld the satellite to the R-7’s core booster and try to blast the whole thing into space. But that solution presented its own problems.

Dilemmas and technical conundrums swirled through Korolev’s mind as his black limousine pulled out of the Kremlin gates. The Chief Designer was not particularly introspective or prone to soul-searching panic attacks. But he could not have failed to wonder whether his ambition and supreme self-confidence had exceeded his better judgment on this occasion.

Even if Mikhail Tikhonravov, his resident satellite expert—the “chief theoretician of cosmonautics,” as he would soon be called—could sketch a few rudimentary blueprints, they would have to build PS-2 on the fly, improvise virtually every step. The hardware would have to come entirely off the shelf, since there was no time for new components or anything fancy. Korolev hated cutting corners. But he hadn’t left himself a choice.

Nor would there be room for error. This time Khrushchev would be watching, and the entire Presidium would be expecting results. This launch was pure politics, and that was always dangerous ground. If Korolev was successful, he could write his own ticket. And he had ambitious plans to cash in his political chips.

The Chief Designer had not idly proposed orbiting a dog with PS-2. He had not wildly blurted out the suggestion. It had been premeditated, a prelude to his ultimate goal: to plant the seeds for a space program that would someday put human beings in orbit and ultimately a man on the moon. Officially, the Soviet Union had no such designs. Satellites, to Khrushchev, were offshoots of missiles. Korolev wanted to change that perception and make space a politically viable destination in its own right, a propaganda weapon. PS-1 had opened Khrushchev’s eyes to that possibility. This second Sputnik could seal the deal.

If he failed, though, the space option would forever be off the table. Khrushchev would not give him a second chance. His interplanetary dreams would be over, and he would spend the rest of his career working on ICBMs—if he was lucky. Everything depended on PS-2.

Korolev’s first order of business was to get his team back to Moscow OKB-1 headquarters, and that in itself was no easy task. After Sputnik’s launch, he had given all his top engineers time off to recuperate from the months of heavy exertion at Tyura-Tam. He himself could have used a break. He was exhausted, having worked himself to the point of collapse. But he’d stuck around Moscow, expecting the call from Khrushchev, knowing that the opportunity that might present itself had to be seized. Now he could only hope that his health would hold up another few weeks, and that his men could get back on time from various resorts on the Baltic and Black seas. The Chief Designer started issuing frantic recall notices. “My wife and I were in Kudespa on the Baltic when I received the telegram from Korolev to return to Moscow immediately,” Evgeny Shabarov recalled. “I went to the airport but couldn’t get any tickets.” Soviet airlines were always booked months in advance, especially from tourist destinations. “I went to see the airport administrator, and showed him the cable,” Shabarov went on. “Oh yes, I know all about you, he said, here’s your ticket.” Korolev had called the transport ministry, warning its officials that Khrushchev would have their heads if every single one of his rocket scientists was not back the next day.

“We’re returning to Tyura-Tam tomorrow,” the Chief Designer announced when all his astonished engineers had been assembled. “Be prepared to go back to work.”