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The scientists and engineers at a sharashka were prisoners picked from other camps and given relatively better conditions in exchange for their slave-like work on scientific and technological problems for the state. The results of this research were usually published under the names of prominent Soviet scientists without credit given to the real authors, whose names frequently have been forgotten. Some sharashka inmates, brilliant scientists and engineers released during and after World War II, continued independent careers and became world-famous.

1 History

In 1938, Lavrenty Beria proposed to create "Department of Special Design Bureaus at the NKVD USSR" ("Отдел особых конструкторских бюро НКВД СССР"). In 1939 it was renamed into the "Special Technical Bureau at the NKVD USSR" ("Особое техническое бюро НКВД СССР"). In 1941 it received a secret name, the "4th Special Department of the NKVD USSR" ("4-й спецотдел НКВД СССР"), existed until 1953. Since 1939 the department was headed by general Valentin Kravchenko under Beria's immediate supervision.

In 1949 the scope of sharaskas significantly increased. Previously the work done there was of military and defense character. The MVD Order No 001020 dated November 9 1949 decreed installation of "Special technical and design bureaus" for a wide variety of "civilian" research and development, in particular in the "remote areas of the Union".

2 Notable sharashka inmates

• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a writer. His novel The First Circle is a vivid account of life in sharashka Mavrino.
• Lev Kopelev, a writer, another inmate of Mavrino (a prototype for Rubin from The First Circle)
• Sergey Korolev, the chief of Soviet rocket space program.
• Valentin GlushkoValentin Petrovich Glushko (born September 2, 1908 in Odessa, Ukraine, died January 10, 1989) was a Russian engineer and rocketry pioneer. Honors An asteroid number 6357, which was found in 1976 was named in his honour by Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh., the chief rocket engine designer. (His biography at MN)
• Andrei TupolevAndrei Nikolayevich Tupolev ( Russian: ; November 10, 1888 December 23, 1972) was a pioneering Russian aircraft designer. Tupolev was born in Pustomazovo, Russia. His most famous passenger designs are the Tu-134 and Tu-154. During his career, Tupolev was, the chief designer of the aircraft families Tu and ANTTupolev ( Russian: is a Russian aerospace and defence company. Officially known as PSC Tupolev it is the sucessor of the famed Tupolev OKB or Tupolev Design Bureau (design office prefix Tu headed by the renowned Soviet aerospace engineer A. The company ce.
• Vladimir PetlyakovVladimir Mikhailovich Petlyakov in Russian) (6. 1942) was a Soviet aircraft designer. In 1917- 1918, Petlyakov worked as a technician in the aerodynamics laboratory at Moscow State Technical University under the guidance of Nikolai Zhukovsky. In 1922, he, the chief designer of the aircraft families Pe and VI (The Petlyakov aircrafts).
• V. M. Myasischev , an aircraft designer.
• Leonid Kerber , an aircraft designer.
• Yuri KondratyukYuri Vasilievich Kondratyuk ( June 21 1897 1942) was the pseudonym adopted by Oleksandr Ignatyevich Shargei a pioneer of astronautics and spaceflight. He was a theoretician and a visionary who, in the early twentieth century, foresaw ways of reaching the, a pioneer of astronauticsAstronautics is the branch of engineering that deals with machines designed to work outside of Earth's atmosphere, whether manned or unmanned. In other words, The science and technology of space flight. Astronautics was coined by analogy with aeronautics. and spaceflight, the inventor of gravitational slingshot.
• Georgy Langemak , a co-inventor (with Korolev) of the Katyusha rocket launcher.
• Helmut Grotrupp , a German rocket scientist from Peenemunde laboratory. (Its head Wernher von Braun was acquired by the US).
• Group of physicists who produced Soviet nuclear bomb, the project supervised by Lavrenti Beria, the chief of NKVD at the time.
• Leon Theremin, a pioneer of electronic music, the inventor of theremin and electronic eavesdropping bug.
• Nikolay Timofeev-Ressovsky , a geneticist and radiobiologist (His biography at genetics.org).
• Leonid Ramzin , the inventor of straight-flow boiler (The Industrial Party affair, His biography in Russian).