Key institutions

PARTY, GOVERNMENT AND MILITARY

In the Soviet Union there were three separate organizations that ran the country – the Communist Party, the government and the military. The Party was in overall charge through its Central Committee and the executive Politburo. The Party business was managed by a Secretariat that included a Secretary of Defense Industry and Space, and a Department of Sciences. The Soviet Academy of Sciences, while claiming to be independent, was implicitly part of the Department of Sciences and hence a Party organization. It ran the Inter-Department Scientific and Technical Council on Space Exploration (MNTS KI; Mezliduvedomstvennyi Nauchno- Tckhnichcskii Soviet po Kosmicheskim Isslcdovaniyam) which was nominally responsible for specifying the national policy and strategy for the space program.

The Soviet government comprised the Council of Ministers and its executive the Presidium. The Presidium had a Commission for Military Industry (VPK; Voenno- Promyshlennaya Komissiya) which included the various ministers controlling ihe defense industries. The Ministry of General Machine Building (MOM; Ministerstvo Obshchego Mashinostroenija) controlled the planning and budget for the Soviet space program. MOM was the closest equivalent to NASA in the USSR but it had a much wider remit, including the design and production of rockets and space systems for the military. It established, controlled and funded the various design bureaus (OKBs) that developed the rocket and space systems, and the scientific research institutes (Nils) that provided the science and technical support required for space projects. There was no separation of civilian and military space programs. MOM was the focal point of the powerful Soviet military industrial complex. It controlled a massive industrial system, providing funding enormous in scale, and operating in complete secrecy.

How this dual system functioned between Party and government, sitting atop a large and convoluted system of industry, design bureaus and research institutes, is somewhat mystical. It was complicated even more by the third force in the Soviet system, the military. The Armed Service’s Strategic Missile Forces was the

W. T. Huntress and M. Y. Marov, Soviet Robots in the Solar System: Mission Technologies 23

and Discoveries, Springer Praxis Books 1, DOl 10.1007/978-1-4419-7898-1_3,

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 heavyweight competing for funding from MOM. and the military controlled the launch pads, the launch ranges, and the і гаек in g stations. In reality, the personal power and political influence of the Chief Designers of the design bureaus such as Korolev, Glushko. Chelomey. Yangel and Babakin were most influential for planning and execution, especially in the early years. These powerful men competed mightily with one another for influence and funding, sometimes bitterly, as between Korolev and Glushko or between Korolev and Chelomey.