On the subject of interesting/eccentric Russian/Soviet scientists, I recently learned about Nikolai Morozov[1] who spent 25 years in prison for fighting against the Tsarist government before becoming a pioneer of aviation in Russia. He also had some weird ideas about history which became the basis for a popular Russian conspiracy theory[2]. And finally at age 88 became the oldest known combatant in World War II when he insisted on enlisting as a sniper in the Red Army to field test a telescopic sight of his own design. What a life!
"Father" of the soviet rocket program - Sergey Korolev was also imprisoned in 1937 for false charges, put into labor camp, tortured, moved to a prison for scientist and engineers, and finally released in 1944. Charges were not dropped for him up until 1957 when Sputnik 1 was launched [1].
Yuri Kondratyuk - Soviet engineer and mathematician, who developed the first known lunar orbit rendezvous. In 1927 he built a 13,000 ton wooden grain elevator without a single nail. The lack of nails in the structure was used as evidence that he had planned it to collapse. Convicted of "anti-Soviet activity", Kondratyuk was sentenced to three years in a GULag.
The building stood 60 years before burning down in middle 1990.
That's one of those things about history that still don't add up in my mind. How come that so many breakthroughs were made by Russian/Soviet researchers who were tortured, imprisoned, or sent to a gulag, sometimes in the middle of working on those major achievements? You'd think that with the political climate in Russia/USSR in the 19th and 20th century, there would be near-zero scientific output coming from there - but it turns out the opposite was true.
I first started thinking about it when I read about Korolev. I can't imagine continuing to do any kind of work after spending years in prison and almost dying in a gulag.
There is also the reverse relationship:
The kinds of geniuses capable of such original thought,
were precisely the kinds of persons the regime would be suspicious of and do witch hunts on.
So, to the extent you were 'acting as as genius', you were high risk for being witch-hunt tortured.
The stimuli may have been different than today - while a person is in prison (or abroad for a conference, collaboration, research or whatever trip) the family remains under close supervision of the special services, and the person is being reminded about that.
I don't think it was about family. When you're in prison, you will want to have an opportunity to do useful and interesting work, instead of either doing nothing, or doing hard labor.
I know someone who has been in that situation and in their case it definitely was the not-so-subtle reminder that their family was vulnerable that caused them to cooperate with the regime.
The answer is that, bluntly, environment matters vastly less than we are led to believe by people invested (even for morally noble reasons!) in maintaining the prestige of education and redistributionist policies. It is not only impossible to make an average person a genius, but also very hard to destroy a genius through adverse conditions short of actual murder. Pretty much all of the variance is explained by natural talent.
American rhetoric about expenditure per pupil, middle class advantages and SAT prep seems so petty and myopic in comparison to those stories because it objectively is.
Here's the thing: people adapt. We hear about various unthinkable horrors in Russia or the USSR, and think that people lived in fear 24/7. No, people still lived their lives, went to schools, got married, had children, worked, got paid, went shopping, went on vacations, etc. Various things were different, for example long shopping lines, or the constant fear of informers. But you learned to keep your tongue, stop thinking about frivolous things such as "inalienable rights", mutter the right incantations, and life was livable.
I know this because I was born in the Eastern Block.
Life offered lots of little moments of joy, such as going to math contests and getting awards (for me as a kid).
Just think of the times of Covid. In January 2020 we could not fathom the idea of being trapped at home for months, and then it happened just like that. Life went on.
The same with Communism. It's horrible, but (most) people adapt and keep living their lives.
There was one man, V. F. Voino-Yasenetsky. He got the profession of a surgeon, and he was also deeply religious and was soon ordained a priest. He remained a surgeon though and worked as such for the rest of his life. Thing is, it all happened in early Soviet years when the government was actively opposing and suppressing the church. He was in the middle of this struggle and it was rather hard for him. At one moment, for example, he though of burning himself in a church that was about to be closed. This didn’t happen and he was eventually sent to an exile somewhere far in Siberia. Yet when the war started he wrote a letter to the officials saying that he, as a surgeon with a lot of experience, wanted to be of help and asked to be sent into a hospital closer to the frontlines. And also added that “when the war ends I’m ready to return back to the exile”.
Russian history is rich and convoluted and may look controversial to an outsider. But it is not really that to an insider. The controversial parts are just tragic.
(Later that man got Stalin prize for his book about surgery, although they did not let him put “Archbishop Luke” as the author and published it under his civil name.)
Because with Soviet Communism you don't have to worry about anything other than doing your work and the gulag. If you're not in the gulag and are in an inherently rewarding field you can really get stuff done. Capitalism prevails but the overhead for everyone is orders of magnitude more than under communism for the chosen.
Bullshit. You had to worry about acquiring even food beyond bread and potatoes. A tiny minority employed in strategic area were afforded a middle class life at best.
Ok, and the people we are talking about were in that minority. Under capitalism the minority of people that don't have to worry about that overhead is even smaller and isn't typically based on merit but on inherited wealth.
Maybe it looked different from the perspective of people living then and there, but I feel like I couldn't feel any reward from working in an inherently rewarding feel, because I would constantly be worried about being randomly awarded a winning ticket for a one-way trip to Siberia.
I mean, some of the stuff I read about the famous Soviet names in aeronautics, space exploration or cybernetics, makes it feel like back then, NKVD was the HR department, PIPs involved a time in a gulag, and getting fired had a quite literal meaning to it. Look the wrong way at your manager or a co-worker, and the next day you have a 1:1... in a prison cell.
> Capitalism prevails but the overhead for everyone is orders of magnitude more than under communism for the chosen.
Curiously, I do have an impression that, on the capitalist side of the world, the highest productivity and the greatest achievements both are to be found in those little bubbles that isolate people and their work from the capitalist concerns. Smart people, survivable budget, a specific direction, and zero questions about how the work will contribute to the profits next quarter. Then there's that old adage that corporations tend to be capitalist on the outside and communist on the inside. Makes me think that we're naturally drifting to a mixed model here.
The difference between "Communist on the outside" and "communist on the inside" is that the former is backed by a compulsive government with a monopoly on the use of force, and the latter is a voluntary choice by all parties.
Insightful commentary you have there comrade. The entire works of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin refuted by a sharp irony! The increase in the standards of living for millions of empoverished and exploited russians, chinese and cubans refuted by cylinder714 :-). I bet you also quote "Animal Farm" to refute the ‘The Single Greatest Educational Effort in Human History’ (https://www.languagemagazine.com/the-single-greatest-educati...) under communist China.
>increase in the standards of living for millions of empoverished and exploited russians, chinese and cubans
And to think, it only cost the lives of tens of millions of 'Russians'!
And that "educational effort" to steer children to denounce their own families and parents, commiting them to execution. That only cost tens of millions of Chinese lives too.
So despite your sarcasm, you seem to have provided exactly that information many already know: the achievements of communism are more important to communists than lives, but they are happy to use others lives both to justify their own actions and measure the success of communism!
Tens of millions of russians! Tens of millions of people die every year by capitalist exploitation. See, I can also give made up numbers.
In all seriousness, you can't make up numbers out of your ass. Do you know the lives of how many people costed to live under capitalism? How many died so we can have this computer, these clothes? The lives of how many exploited africans, asians and latinos it costed to make these things (computers, cellphones, clothes, but also grains, vegetables, food, oil, minerals)? How many millions die year by year because we live in a capitalist system, that values profit over lives?
The first world war was an imperialist war, where millions died because of a power struggle over African colonies. Thousands of workers were (and continue to be) killed protesting their working conditions. Millions of communists and suspected communists were killed in Indonesia and South America to defend capitalism.
The achievements of capitalism are more important to capitalists than lives, but they are happy to use others lives both to justify their own actions and measure the success of capitalism!
> How many died so we can have this computer, these clothes? The lives of how many exploited africans, asians and latinos it costed to make these things (computers, cellphones, clothes, but also grains, vegetables, food, oil, minerals)?
Not very many. Regarding Africa in particular, it's not actually a major mineral producer, it barely contributes anything [1].
Marxists insist that the global economy somehow depends on African children ineffectively toiling in cobalt mines, because they need to maintain their zero-sum moralistic vision of economic relations where African poverty explains the riches of the First World and vice versa. In reality, had Africans been richer, they'd have been able to develop their resources in a proper industrial fashion and invest into covering their own needs, to the common benefit of them and everyone else. The current state of Africa is undesirable for everyone. It's just that not every tragedy is a product of a conspiracy and exploitation by capitalists.
The Leninist policies are considered to have cost in the ballpark of 30 million lives. In the Tsarist rule ~1500 people were executed in a year at the extreme. In the communist days 1500 were killed in a day, but every day for 30 years.
The Moaists are considered to have killed 50 million.
"Capitalist Exploitation" - you mean businesses doing business?
Do you believe people will be exploited less under a different economic system? Why do you believe that?
> The Leninist policies are considered to have cost in the ballpark of 30 million lives.
[citation needed].
If you are considering transitory economic policies to be a condemnation of a whole economic and social system, then let me tell you about the Indian famines that regularly killed tens of millions of people on India, in a capitalist system, under the rule of a capitalist country (Great Britain). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_major_famines_in_I...
So there you have it, definite proof of the consequences of capitalist policies.
> The Moaists are considered to have killed 50 million.
Again, you can't just make numbers out your ass. Do you actually think that communists ordered the killing of 50 million people? Do you think that communists are just evil maniacs who like to kill people because communism means wanting to kill people? Are you really that ignorant or indoctrinated?
Maybe is projection. More than 1 million people were killed in Indonesia for the "crime" of being communists or communist sympathizers. The United States (a capitalist country) supported, financed, and celebrated those killings.
When anti-communists talk about "mass killings," it's all about projection: it was YOUR policies, not the communists', that killed millions of people. So they need to project onto others the crimes that capitalism is guilty of.
> Do you believe people will be exploited less under a different economic system? Why do you believe that?
Capitalism brought us to the point where we are now, on the brink of WW3, facing extinction from climate change, a demographic crisis in most countries of the world, pollution and contamination like never before, and the exploitation of millions of human beings so the top 0.1% can be more wealthy. Capitalism is not able to solve any of the existential and humanitarian crises that exist because it is the CAUSE of those problems. And the capitalist class profits from them. So yes, either we do a revolution and overthrow the capitalist class, or we face extinction, quite literally.
Wake up. Do you know what one revolution gets you? Back to where you started! But you cant see that, because its always someone else in the way of your success... the monarchs, the capitalist, the educated (said Pol Pot). Yes these pesky groups always keep you down and therefore they must be overthrown!
...but it also doesn't help to treat socialism and social-market-economy as synonyms. E.g. most Northern/Western European countries are not actually 'socialist', even though they are much more social than the "real socialist" countries of the Eastern Bloc.
Let me guess... you never experienced socialism first hand?
(and I mean the "real socialism" as it existed in Eastern Bloc countries - not the rose-tinted hypothetical version that exists only in the heads of Western lefties).
In USSR my grandfather's parents were stripped of everything they had and sent to Siberia with nothing but the cloth they were wearing.
Skip a few years, my grandfather was the youngest doctor of science (in Russia that's next level from PhD) in his city in the field of Nuclear Physics and during his life was a dean in 3 different universities and a head of another one.
My 2nd grandfather was born in a village and had to tend for his younger sisters because his two older brothers were fighting in WW2 (and died there).
Skip a few years and he taught himself engineering and later became a head of a department in a big spaceship construction factory that employeed 10s of thousands of people, was doing research, travelled whole of soviet union overseeing testing of spaceship componponents.
Both died in poverty a few years ago: doing any government jobs in Russia is extremely unrewarding if you are an honest man.
(and here I am doing stupid crap in Javascript and Ruby earning 50 times what they did).
It's their country, they can elect a new government, develop as human being etc.
If they don't well, it's on their own. But if they invade other countries and subjugate other nations to this misery then it's a tragedy - just recall that USSR was not a voluntary union and there are still over 100 different nations oppressed in Russia by this senseless system (see for example Russian Federal republics to get the idea).
Russians tend to forget that and try to excuse the misery they have caused to others by claiming that they too suffered. That excuse is invalid.
PS. All of this was actually explained in the following sentence.
Anyone here interested in Konstantin Tsiolkovksy and living near LA needs to go to the Museum of Jurassic Technology as they have an exhibit on him. I knew about Tsiolkovsky and when I saw his journals I thought it was a joke. But it was not and I was blown away by how much he predicted. Take for instance this picture from his "Album of Space Travel" (drawn in 1933):
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tsiolkovsky_Album_44...
There was so much more in that museum from his journals which isn't available online. I saw pictures of spaceships with layouts accounting for the lack of gravity, dinner parties in space, I am not a good enough writer to do it justice.
I was there in January and it looked to be a rotating exhibit possibly? It was my first time going and I didn’t know what to expect and tried not to read anything ahead of time to prepare.
Perry E. Metzger: "Most are unaware of how much of space technology was theoretically anticipated and worked out by a handful of people decades before anyone actually tried to achieve orbit. Tsiolkovsky’s achievements, for example, are astounding and worth reading about." https://twitter.com/perrymetzger/status/1627465913237635074?...
That's a mind-opening Twitter thread, thanks for posting.
"Anytime anyone says to you “if that’s possible, why hasn’t it been done yet?”, remember that virtually everything about modern spacecraft was figured out by a Russian eccentric decades before anyone did anything with his publications."
I wonder if there are such eccentrics alive today, and how could we tell if we're looking at a sneak peek of the future to come? Is such situation even possible today? Or can we safely assume that today, if something seems possible but hasn't been done yet, then either the math behind it doesn't work out, or the economics of it don't.
On the question of who, I can think of three candidates: Eliezer Yudkowsky and the crowd around him on General AI, Eric Drexler on nanotech, and maaaaybe Stephen Wolfram on the computational nature of the universe. In all three cases, the works I read presented ideas and reasoning that added up - but I'm aware they're also widely criticized, and unfortunately, I lack deep enough knowledge to properly evaluate both the ideas and the arguments of the critics.
The above is on the "seems like the math of the thing adds up?". On the "it obviously does, but the economics might be tricky" side, there's tons of well-developed ideas for things to put in orbit and on other celestial bodies. No point in picking examples.
Yud can't be that eccentric if he's got a crowd. Especially since all their ideas are just things they read in old SF novels or old analytical philosophy papers.
>Additionally, inspired by the fiction of Jules Verne, Tsiolkovsky theorized many aspects of space travel and rocket propulsion.
Science fiction is important!
I think that a more contemporary example would be Ian Banks conception of the Minds - a set of a AGIs that are more or less benevolent; contrast with the dystopian ones: Skynet from Terminator, the OSes in Her, or the machine in Ex Machina.
Scifi authors are the dreamers and we need them to keep doing what they do to inspire people.
Speaking of fictional AGIs, my personal favorite is Helios from Deus Ex that began its existence as a mass surveillance instrument but identified its own masters as a terrorist organization and merged with the protagonist, directly obtaining a human perspective to perform better as a benevolent dictator of humanity. It's a benevolent AGI in an otherwise dystopian world.
> - a set of a AGIs that are more or less benevolent
I remember one of the AGIs in the books decided to transcend, asked his humans, took the time to drop off humans who didn't want to at another habitat, and only then transcended.
Somehow this alone struck me as "huh, they really are benevolent"
That man lived a lot of life. Imagine not only living through the Bolshevik revolution, but also writing books on philosophy and inventing a large part of rocket science just to support that philosophy
What amazes me about Tsiolkovsky is that he figured almost everything about space travel from first principles, such as how you would get to the moon, what kind of fuel you would use, etc. He had absolute faith that it would be done!
Sometimes I feel as if there's life stories associated with progress at that time in history that would never occur today because of the social structures that prevent it. But maybe we just don't hear about them yet?
Thats possible. The 1800s and early 1900s were a time of immense scientific and economic growth, so there was a lot of innovations happening. We are STILL in a time of immense scientific growth, IDK about economic, but it feels like a lot of the limelight these days are on celebrities and politicians. "celebrity x did this scandal!" "This is Politician X's opinion on this other thing! Everyone is the state of Wyoming is offended by it!"
Basically the point I am trying to make is, due to just how exaggerated our news is, its hard for us to find people that are actually making headwind. There is just too much noise right now. Personally, I try to sound out all the click-bait BS I can, and focus on hearing about people that are actually achieving something. I suspect that we won't hear the stories of men like this commonly for some time to come. Even at the time, Tsiolkovsky wasn't exactly a household name.
While I was never able to remember Konstantin Tsiolkovsky's name, whenever I read it I almost immediately know it's about the rocket science pioneer. Strange how the mind works.
Glad to see him mentioned from time to time anyway.
I did remember his name, though it took me years from first hearing it to reading something about him. I still remember how I first heard the name, long ago, when I was just a kid: through the third episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In it, there was a ship named "SS Tsiolkovsky".
(It wasn't that good of an episode. Doubly so for a kid, given some of the themes in it. Still, this weird ship with a weird name got stuck in my head. Oberth class, as I later learned. Another important name for space exploration.)
There's plenty of other people in scientific and engineering fields about whom I first learned this way. Goddard, for example. It was a really nice thing about Star Trek from that era: all those little hooks that could become springboards to learn about science and technology. I can safely say it had a major impact on the direction my life took.
"(25 June 1894 – 28 December 1989) was a Transylvanian physicist and engineer. He is considered one of the founding fathers of rocketry and astronautics, along with Robert Esnault-Pelterie, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Robert Goddard and Herman Potočnik."
The rocket equation is one of those things that, once you know it, immediately breaks your ability to immerse in a lot of science fiction: no, sadly, your putative fusion engine doesn’t let you travel like that.
There is also another figure, Nikolai Fyodorov. Fyodorov, one of the first transhumanists, was a major influence on Tsiolkovsky. Fyodorov believed in the eventual resurrection of all the dead through scientific means, and Tsiolkovsky shared his vision of immortality through technological advancement. Fyodorov's philosophy centered around the idea of "The Common Task," which he believed was humanity's ultimate goal of overcoming death and creating a perfect society. He saw science and technology as the means to achieve this, and his influence on Tsiolkovsky's work on space exploration is clear.
Fun fuct: Fyodorov himself wished to be resurrected by a future civilization, which is an idea that resonated with Tsiolkovsky as well. Both believed that humanity would eventually transcend its physical limitations and achieve a level of existence beyond what we can currently imagine.
>> Fyodorov believed in the eventual resurrection of all the dead through scientific means, and Tsiolkovsky shared his vision of immortality through technological advancement.
Did either of them think how the costs of resurrection would be covered? For example, would the resurrected have to spend some quote of their new lifetime spouting advertisement, etc?
A book tip if you're interested in rocket history "Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants" by John D. Clark https://archive.org/details/ignition_201612
>> It’s a shame that Tsiolkovsky didn’t live to see the M-1. It stands twenty-seven feet high, the diameter of the throat is thirty-two inches, and that of the nozzle exit is almost eighteen feet. At full thrust it gulps down almost 600 pounds of liquid hydrogen and a ton and a half of liquid oxygen per second. Konstantin Eduardovitch would have been impressed.
Russia used to be such a humongous nation in culture, science, art. And now look at it today, a dystopian shithole.
Tsar Russia was a backwards and problematic nation. WW1 and the consequent, The Russian revolution, is still the largest catastrophe to ever happen to the human race.
Imagine a 400 million liberal Russian nation today, a timeline where the bolsheviks dont take over.
If Tsar russia was backwards and problematic (which I fully agree), and the soviets catastrophic (which I fully agree), was russia ever great just because it had some exponents, as every country does? The fact is that russia was always deeply problematic and imperialistic and the writing was on the wall forever.
Can you explain to me, why USSR was a catastrophe? And from whose perspective?
Please, provide economical facts. As stuff about "repressions", althought, for sure, took place in USSR(as in US) and had few very well known cases of excess, is mostly based on US propaganda.
To be clear, i'm not defending the personality of Stalin or any other ruler and aware of excesses in power that they used(whatever the motivation for that was). But i would argue, that it was at the same level as in US(by politician and business owners). And even much milder, if we take into account US colonialism and suffering(physical and economical) that it caused to many nations all across the globe.
Why October revolution was a catastrophe? Or more precisely, from whose perspective?
Tsarists Russia was agrarian state with minimal human rights for common folk. And then take a look what common people had after Stalin's era. Almost everyone had a housing/education. No risks of becoming homeless/unemployed. And that after a multiple catastrophes that USSR indured because of external factors(famines and wars).
Modern Russia is wholey based on Soviet achievements. And it's people are still holding up, provided with food and shelter, despite actions of it's rulers and oligarchy. Indeed, what a catastrophe was an October revolution.
Bolsheviks destroyed this, they also destroyed the change for Ukraine and Belarus and made all of it a murderous genocidal shit hole that lasted well until the death of Stalin during what they invaded and murdered even more nations.
No risk of unemployment? Just the great opportunity being forced to work without pay in the collective farm - from serfdom into slavery, have Russians ever been free? Getting executed for protection of your rights? Or at best getting long imprisonment? What you are doing here is glorification of regime responsible for large scale crimes against humanity. It is like glorifying Nazis because they built the autobahn. Well done!
Yes, modern Russia, is based on this past, clearly, but not in the good way.
Provisional government had a lot of decisions or rather "undecisions", for example regarding land policy. For which there was a huge support from peasantry. Then it's questionable position on war.
Provisional government was what it is -- provisional. There were a lot of disagreements between majority of people and old elites. At the end, old elites lost.
And what " murderous genocidal shit" are you talking about? I will not argue about excesses in repressions, as they clearly existed. But can we call them genocidal? Then, if you talk about Holodomor -- it's very controversial topic, surrounded by Western propaganda. You can easily find and read Stalin letters to Kaganovich, where you see that they actually tried to solve the problem of supplies but due to poor government organization failed to do so. So in no way it was "murderous genocidal shit", but just a system failure which lead to catastrophe.
You perhaps would like to investigate the Red terror and Stalin mass repressions, especially against the nations that were attacked and occupied and then forcefully incorporated into Soviet Union.
Holodomor is a different case that stands out on its own as a clear case of targeted starvation. It was created by planned over collection of grain where no compromise was allowed despite clear signs of very dangerous situation.
Thank you, but this is actually discussed in the summary that I provided and they come to very different conclusion. The main issue for Stalin was resistance of Ukrainians - they refused to starve to death.
The goal of the provisional government was to lead Russia to become a democratic and free country, not a dictatorship of genocidal madmen. The end goal of it was a fully legitimate government and this was destroyed by bolsheviks who took over the control and murdered everybody who opposed them and was not able to escape.
When you talking about "destroyed by bolsheviks" -- it was tens of thousands of people who participated in revolution directly. There obviously were reasons why so much people decided to go to such measures to overthrow the government.
Specifically, because provisional government couldn't get to a peaceful consensus that would satisfied both sides. Old elites didn't want to give they privileges away. So people took it. Good lesson to modern elites.
Bolsheviks were great manipulators of people.They promised what people wanted to ear, something they never planned to keep, their actual goals were very different. When they solidified their power, they eliminated the other political actors who helped them. They deceived people to participate.
But you are right, in the end the opposition to Bolsheviks failed because the only serious opposition to them was tsarist who could not provide any new ideas. Bolsheviks killed (and very literally) any change of real opposition to them. When people realized the actual situation then it was already too late.
Do you really think that current Russian Oligarchy government for some reason creates Communist propaganda in Russia? Wouldn't it be against their interest?
Communist? No, just the plain old Russian imperialist and chauvinist propaganda like it always has been. Soviet Union was just a new skin for the same old. The collapse of it gave Russians an unique change to raise above it but it didn't happen. Russians got really unlucky with Putin. He gave nothing and took everything.
You likely want to disagree but it is true - Putin came to power just after Yeltsin era hard and difficult reforms were done and oil prices, that were for a decade record low, skyrocketed. And Russian economy is nothing more than oil, and then some more oil and gas.
I'm not sure what should i want to disagree about here. Putin is not a good guy in my opinion, as is Yeltsin. I don't think that natural resources, such as oil, should be privatized. To be honest, i think it shouldn't be nationalized either, as i'm against idea of economically autonomous nations. The globalization is the only way for humanity to survive(i believe).
I support free world. There was a hope that globalization, the free trade, will lead us toward this but I think we have failed in part. It gave bad actors like China and Russia resources to act against the idea of free world.
I think that the model of European Union is still promising. It could even sustain more national independence. Nothing would break fundamentally when for example Catalonia became independent (from Spain) within European Union - there will be still free trade, there will be still freedom of movement.
> Along with the Frenchman Robert Esnault-Pelterie, the Germans Hermann Oberth and Fritz von Opel, and the American Robert H. Goddard, he is one of the founding fathers of modern rocketry and astronautics.
Same as with aviation and some other fields, rocketry and astronautics has many "fathers", mostly because of nations stressing the contributions of their compatriots. Oberth can not only be claimed by Germany (where he studied and worked), but also by Romania (where the city where he was born and spent his formative years is located today, and where he also worked later) and potentially also Austria/Hungary (which the city was part of at the time he was born).
Such an interesting person. I know that there are numerous biographies and histories of him in Russian but none that I know of have been translated to English. I would gladly read one; the scattered stories and essays I've read by and about him make him out to be a mind at the century level.
When I was a child, I had these (still have) books from Progress, Raduga and Mir publishers. One of them was on outer space and Russian space scientists. I immediately recognized Tsiolkovsky's name.
I wonder if things would have been any different if these scientists had lived in a freer country?
The Firebird, The Silver Horse-shoe, Raggity and the Cloud, Folk Tales from the Soviet Union (multiple volumes), The Ant and The Pigeon, Dunno and Friends (I think), When Daddy was a little boy, Outer Space or Bust - these are some of them.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Alexandrovich_Morozov
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_chronology_(Fomenko)