Academician Boris Viktorovich Raushenbakh is a Soviet and Russian scientist of world renown, one of the founders of cosmonautics in the USSR. Being a mechanical physicist, he was not limited to this specialization. Boris Viktorovich owns scientific works in the field of art criticism, the history of religion, as well as journalistic works on many contemporary issues that have gained great fame throughout the world. He led the movement of Germans in Russia for the revival of nationality.
Biography of a scientist
Boris Raushenbakh was born in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) on January 18, 1905 in a family of Russian Germans.
After school, the young man got a job at an aviation plant in Leningrad. The specifics of the plant played a role in its future fate: in 1932, he became a student at the Leningrad Institute of Civil Fleet Engineers, and began to get involved in gliding. Passion led to an acquaintance with Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, and in the future to cooperation with him in the rocket and space field of Soviet science.
In 1937, Raushenbakh moved to the capital to work in the team of the Rocket Research Institute, led by Sergei Korolev. So Boris Viktorovich Raushenbakh, whose photo and name later remained a taboo for the public for a long time, joined the ranks of the founders of Soviet cosmonautics.
Then there was work at a defense plant in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg), where the Rocket Research Institute (RNII) was evacuated in November 1941.
In the spring of 1942, Rauschenbach was arrested and sent to a camp just because he was a German. In the labor camp, Boris Viktorovich continues to work on a homing anti-aircraft projectile, calculations of its flight. This was noticed by the famous aircraft designer Viktor Bolkhovitinov. Thanks to him, in 1945, Raushenbakh was transferred to Nizhny Tagil to the position of a special settler.
In 1948, with the help of the new head of the RNII Mstislav Keldysh, Raushenbakh received the position of head of department at the Research Institute-1 of the Ministry of the Aviation Industry.
In 1955, Raushenbach moved to Sergei Korolev, where he was the first in the world to engage in orientation and movement in space vehicles.
The Rauschenbach family and its origins
As Boris Viktorovich Raushenbakh said, his family appeared in Russia in the 18th century. In 1766, Empress Catherine II organized a campaign to resettle Germans in Russia. Thanks to this policy, the ancestor of the scientist Karl-Friedrich Rauschenbach and his wife appeared in the Volga region.
The father of the scientist, Viktor Yakovlevich (patronymic came from the name of his grandfather Jacob), was from the Volga region, a region whereat that time a colony was formed for the German settlers. Educated in Germany, after which he worked as a technical manager at the Skorokhod tannery.
According to the memoirs of Boris Viktorovich, his father was a very kind, forgiving person. When the boy grew up, Viktor Yakovlevich in every possible way brought up in him a sense of pride in his German origin. At the same time, he did it excellently.
Raushenbach's mother, Leontina Fridrikhovna (in the Russian way - Fedorovna) Gallik, was from Estonia (Saaremaa island), her origin was a B altic German. She knew four languages - Russian, German, French and Estonian, which further contributed to her employment in Russia in a we althy Bonn family. After marriage, she becomes a housewife.
Mother was a very strict but fair teacher, although by nature she was a cheerful, energetic and cheerful person. It was she who brought up in her children (Boris had a sister Karin-Elena) the ability not to lose heart in difficult everyday situations, which helped them in the future. Boris Raushenbakh, whose biography was full of such situations, was able to live his bright life with dignity.
Boris Raushenbach loses his father at the age of fifteen: he dies at the age of sixty from heart failure.
Mother died after the war. Boris experienced the loss of his mother very hard, evidence of this is his letters to his sister, which she kept.
Private life
Boris Viktorovich Raushenbakh met his fate, Vera Mikhailovna, in Moscow, where he moved in 1937, as a shipbuilding and marineindustry in Leningrad did not interest him. At this time, a wave of arrests was rolling across the country, and Rauschenbach the German could easily end up in the camps. These factors prompted the young scientist to move to the capital, where no one knew him.
Soon, a girl, Vera, was placed in Boris' apartment where he lived with his comrades. Vera Mikhailovna was born in Kramatorsk (Ukraine). I came to Moscow to study. Before moving in, she lived with her uncle, who held a high position. However, on May 19, he was arrested, then shot, and the girl was evicted. So Vera ended up in the apartment where Rauschenbach lived.
Young people got married on the eve of the war, May 24, 1941. According to the memoirs of Rauschenbach himself, their registration was exactly described in Ilf and Petrov's "12 Chairs". It was funny… From that time on, they did not part, even when Boris Viktorovich ended up in a labor camp (his wife often visited him).
As Boris Viktorovich Raushenbakh believed, his personal life was successful, despite life's troubles. They have wonderful children and grandchildren. Some were surprised that for so many years he had Vera Mikhailovna - the only wife.
The path to space
As a scientist, Raushenbakh Boris Viktorovich proved himself at the Leningrad Aviation Plant No. 23, where he was engaged in the construction and testing of gliders. The work contributed to the writing of the first scientific articles, the topic of which was the longitudinal stability of tailless aircraft. Boris Raushenbakh also worked on the same topic at the RNII Korolev, only now this work related to cruise missiles.
In 1938, the project was closed due to the arrest of Korolev, and Rauschenbach was redirected to air-jet engines, the theory of their combustion.
GULAG did not become an obstacle for the scientist: in the camp he works on a homing anti-aircraft projectile, which in the future helped him leave the camp, become a special settler and continue his work for the RNII.
In 1948, thanks to the new head of the Rocket Research Institute, Mstislav Keldysh, Raushenbakh returned to Moscow, where he worked at NII-1 with direct-flow engines, namely, vibration combustion and acoustic vibrations in this type of engines.
In 1955, Boris Viktorovich went to work for Korolev, where he, as a scientist, had a unique opportunity - for the first time in the world, to carry out work related to the orientation and movement of vehicles in space. Subsequently, thanks to his work, the far side of the Moon was photographed by the Soviet Luna-3 spacecraft. In 1960, Rauschenbach's merit was awarded the Lenin Prize.
In 1958, Boris Viktorovich defended his doctoral dissertation (Ph. D. was defended in 1948).
It took the scientist less than ten years to bring to life the flight orientation systems of the interplanetary stations "Venus", "Mars", "Zond", spacecraft in automatic and manual mode.
Raushenbakh Boris Viktorovich, whose biography was firmly connected with space, also took an active part in the preparation and implementation of the flight of the first cosmonaut of the planet Yuri Gagarin.
In 1966, Boris Viktorovich was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences (AN) of the USSR, and twenty years later he became a full member of the Academy of Sciences.
Iconography and Rauschenbach
Scientist once said jokingly that he can't work on a scientific topic if more than a dozen other scientists are already working on it. And in parallel with his work in space, he began to be interested in everything that was fraught with something new, not yet explored, for example, art, iconography.
Boris Raushenbach, whose passion for history manifested itself in childhood, loved to travel a lot, especially to cities with ancient history. Gradually, but thoroughly, interest in icons began to appear in the scientist. The fact is that he was embarrassed by the way of conveying space in them, called "reverse perspective", illogical and contrary to the known rules of photography.
Interest in the reverse perspective was also associated with solving problems of docking vehicles in space.
The scientist began to investigate this phenomenon. At the same time, he took into account the work of the eyes, the brain. To do this, he had to make a mathematical description of the activity of the brain. As a result, Rauschenbach came to the conclusion that all these oddities of icons are natural and inevitable.
According to Boris Viktorovich Raushenbakh, iconography represents a different reality than the one that a person sees due to a certain arrangement of the eyes. As a result, the icon makes you believe that in reality the world is much more perfect and better.
Rauschenbach was sure thatIt is impossible to understand icons without knowing theology. And he began to study theology, even wrote something in this area, in particular about the Trinity (“The Logic of the Trinity”).
Road to Orthodoxy
Boris Raushenbach was baptized in 1915 according to his father's faith as a Reformed. About 20% of Russian Germans belonged to this faith at that time.
It should be noted that the Reformed, unlike the Lutherans, do not recognize icons, do not use the sign of the cross. But later, by decrees of Emperors Alexander I and Nicholas I, the Reformed and Lutherans were united into one church, and Boris went with his mother to the Lutheran church, although there was also a Reformed church in the city. However, for unknown reasons, Rauschenbach did not become a member of the Reformed Church, although he retained respect for her, her image.
Boris Viktorovich felt a craving for religion after the camp. He began to visit an Orthodox church, took out the relevant literature, began to follow the services in the church, but he was baptized only shortly before his death.
Rauschenbach recalled that when he successfully worked out his system during the launch of the next spacecraft, he always got up and made the sign of the cross.
During the receptions in the Kremlin on the occasion of the launches of the first spacecraft, Boris Viktorovich was the only person present who approached the invited representatives of the Orthodox Church, which, of course, did not fit into the protocol of the event.
Raushenbakh Boris Viktorovich, whose books and articles were widelydistribution, did not share in them the existing systems of knowledge of the world - religious and scientific. He believed that their synthesis was ripe.
In 1987, Academician Raushenbakh published an article in the Kommunist magazine dedicated to the 1000th anniversary of the Baptism of Russia. In it, the scientist pointed out the significance of this event for the Russian state. The August issue of Kommunist was instantly sold out, even in the kiosk of the Central Committee of the CPSU.
Several years later, another work of the academician comes out - "The Logic of Trinity". The article caused a certain reaction, the echoes of which are still heard.
Rauschenbach on the Trinity
Boris Raushenbakh about the Trinity had his own judgment, which he cites in the book "The Logic of the Trinity". In his opinion, the Church in her teaching gave an impeccably correct solution to the problem she faced - the expression of God at the same time in the form of both a triad and a monad.
The scientist draws attention to the fact that the modern presentation of the foundations of the Orthodox faith looks like a departure from the creed, since it says that in the Trinity every person is God. Prayers also speak of this.
Boris Raushenbakh, whose “Logic of the Trinity” is an attempt to understand the discussion between Father Florensky and E. N. Trubetskoy about the trinity of God, approaches this from the position of science. It should be noted that even under Soviet rule, the scientist began to be interested in theological topics, despite the militant atheism that prevailed in those years.
He is interested in whether it is possible to directly accept the concepts of the creed given by Father Florensky, but tie them to a certain logical model. If this is possible, then the person willto believe in God, and not in existing absurdities, although not without some logic.
Surprisingly, Rauschenbach found a mathematical model that explains the logic of the creed, its trinitarian dogma. This model turned out to be a vector and its three components in a three-dimensional coordinate system.
The problem was solved: the doctrine of the trinity (Trinity) began to correspond to formal logic. This event can be compared to a bomb explosion. Of course, the "Logic of the Trinity" is fundamental, but it did not put an end to the knowledge of God, since the knowledge of God is inherently infinite.
Citizen of your country
Raushenbakh Boris Viktorovich, whose books were often filled with anxiety for the fate of his country and the whole world, could not calmly observe what was happening around him. Today's poverty of the Russian people, the poverty of science caused him pain and inner indignation. He did not understand the lack of funds from the state to finance education, science, while in the country there was an overt enrichment of a certain category of people.
Gaidar's "shock therapy" for Boris Viktorovich, the highest professional in science, art, economics, has become an example of the lack of professionalism in the country's leadership. Rauschenbach believed that Russia should look for a way out of the impasse that would be minimally painful for Russians.
Rauschenbach's Dark Thoughts
In his last article "Gloomy Thoughts", Boris Raushenbakh reflects on the future of all mankind, showing himself as not only a citizen of Russia, but also a citizen of the entire planet Earth.
The very title of the article speaks of the nature of these reflections. In it, Rauschenbach separates the concept of democracy from the democratic chatter that reigns in the modern world. And he makes no exception for Russia.
The author draws attention to the fact that all the greatest crimes were committed under democratic slogans, while democratic talkers often did not understand, due to their stupidity, that they represent the interests of forces far from the people.
In his work, the academician proposes to return to traditional human values, namely the family, the community. He believes that the duties of people should be higher than their rights. Raushenbach believed that only this path would save humanity from destruction. No other is given. In addition, the scientist believes that a government of the entire planet should be created, the policy of which will be tough, but highly professional.
Throughout the past century, according to Rauschenbach, humanity has been moving in the opposite direction, remaking itself and nature. And, unfortunately, there are very few individuals left who can open people's eyes to the mistakes of the past and the present, for which there is no end in sight.
Conclusion
Boris Raushenbakh passed away on March 27, 2001. His grave is at the Novodevichy Cemetery.
The scientist died on the Day of the Feodorovskaya Icon of the Mother of God. The funeral service was held in the Nikolo-Kuznetsk Church. Such was the will of the outstanding Soviet and Russian scientist.
In his person, humanity has lost one of its geniuses, a citizen of the planetEarth.
The value of the scientist's contribution to the science and culture of Russia is evidenced by his titles and awards. Rauschenbach was a full member of three academies (RAS, International Academy of Astronautics and Tsiolkovsky Academy of Cosmonautics). He was awarded the Lenin and Demidov Prizes, as well as the title of Hero of Socialist Labor. Led the Scientific Council "History of World Culture" RAS.
