Dare to dream. Dare to fly.

Hello there, dear readers.

This is a continuation of my story dedicated to Kyiv Polytechnic Institute or KPI, and its charming, well-maintained, beautiful area. Sonia and I came here searching for the mini sculpture of sweet beet, and I showed you the KPI park that runs from the top of the small hill where the institute is down to the highway.

The area on the other side of the long institute building is also worth a visit. It has alleys and squares, plenty of monuments, a locomotive, a helicopter, two planes, a tank and some other military shooting thing. There are no fences so everyone can walk freely here, or play with kids, or relax in the shadow of trees.

I remember the time when concerts were arranged here in their big hall, they all were called "Palace of Culture" in all Soviet republics. The price of a ticket to a concert of a famous rock band was affordable even for me, a person who came from a small town, where low prices are an advantage, and low salaries are a disadvantage.

Now Mural with protons decorates the facade of the "Palace" building. This is the first time when I see it in winter, I mean with snow. It looks different but still beautiful.

They have a decorated Christmas Tree, it just grows here. I believe this is the most ecological solution with zero waste.😉 And the snow is a natural decoration in addition to the colorful balls and garlands.

Pigeons found a warm place - a sewer hatch. It was freezing cold on that day indeed.

This is a Maneuvering tank locomotive. It is created for moving cargo over short distances, where you have to move along a trajectory with sharp turns.

The staff houses were built in the same style as the institute. Some of them have preserved their original appearance.

There are many busts, memorial plaques and monuments of all kinds here. Obviously, the institute is proud of and remembers its outstanding teachers and famous graduates. And there are many of them, believe me.

Serhii Koroliov

Or Sergei Korolov in Russian transcription, as he was Ukrainian who lived in Soviet time. If you never heard his name, this is the quote from Wiki:

the lead Soviet rocket engineer and spacecraft designer during the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union...He invented the R-7 Rocket, Sputnik 1, and was involved in the launching of Laika, Sputnik 3, the first human-made object to make contact with another celestial body, Belka and Strelka, the first human being, Yuri Gagarin, into space, Voskhod 1, and the first person, Alexei Leonov, to conduct a spacewalk.

Definitely an outstanding person, he is called the father of cosmonautics But as I read the quote the other side of this coin came to my mind.

Koroliov was born in Zhytomyr. Now, when you enter the Zhytomyr region driving on the Kyiv-Zhytomyr highway, you see the stele that informs you that you are entering the homeland of Koroliov.

Serhii was fascinated by aviation from his youth. At the age of 17, he designed his first glider! And for this, he read a lot of books, some of which he read in the original - in German. In the fall of 1924, Koroliov entered the KPI at the Faculty of Mechanics, where aviation engineers were trained. Those who did not prove their proletarian origin had to pay for their education. Since Serhiy indicated "Ukrainian" in the column of origin, he had to work hard to earn money for his education.

A few years later, he moved to Moscow to study aircraft construction. His career took off. He worked on the design of airplanes and then became interested in rocketry. At missile presentations, he especially emphasized that a missile is primarily the latest formidable weapon. He was so right though he did not know then that in 100 years missiles would fly from Russia to his native country.

And then happened what could have happened to anyone in the Soviet Union, regardless of real views and actions. He was accused of anti-Soviet activities. At that time they said "anti-Soviet element".

In 1938, Koroliov was arrested, and accused of membership in the Trotskyist party. He denied it. In prison, Chekists broke both his jaws. But he still did not take the blame. Then the investigator threatened that if he did not sign the confession, the NKVD would arrest his wife and send his three-year-old daughter to an orphanage. After that, the court sentenced him to 10 years in labor camps with deprivation of rights for 5 years and confiscation of property. The place of serving the sentence - Kolyma. This was during the reign of Stalin, to whom monuments are now being erected again in Russia.

Well-known pilots and aircraft designers begged to alleviate his fate, one of whom later ended up behind bars. Koroliov was summoned with Kolyma, and he continued his work in the Kazan prison.

Koroliov also did not put up with his situation and appealed with a request to review his case. He is staged to Moscow, where the NKVD awards him 8 years of the same correctional labor camps. After that, he again turns to the "leader of all nations." Finally, in September 1940, the so-called precautionary measures were replaced by a sentence in the Central Design Bureau 29, which was headed by another convicted aircraft engineer! Not for nothing the USSR was called the prison of nations.

In September 1945, Koroliov was sent to Germany, where he studied captured German technology, primarily rocket technology. The results of Serhii Pavlovich's activities are still under the label "completely secret".

So. Koroliov was sentenced to ten years in prison for anti-Soviet activities. Although he actually built the first rocket plane in the Soviet Union. Thousands of scientists were then shot just for being the first.

^{Sources used: [1] [2] [3]}

Not far from the mini sculptures on one of the small squares, blue spruce trees grow. Their needles are really blue.

Guess who eats ice cream in winter when it's -10 nd never get cold? It's definitely not me. It's Sonia! But you know, sometimes I look at fridges with ice cream and hesitate... And never buy. 😊 Not in winter.

I promised to show you flying machines. Here we are.

This young man who launches a paper airplane is a monument to all Ukrainian engineers who were the first and remain in the vanguard.

“Dare to dream! If you did not have the capability to make your wildest wishes come true, your mind would not have the capacity to conjure such ideas in the first place. There is no limitation on what you can potentially achieve, except for the limitation you choose to impose on your own imagination. What you believe to be possible will always come to pass - to the extent that you deem it possible. It really is as simple as that.”
― Anthon St. Maarten