Much has been in the USSR polygons: Plesetsk and Sary-Shagan, Baikonur and Kapustin Yar Semipalatinsk and Novaya Zemlya. All and will not list. By and large – the whole vast country under the name of the Soviet Union was one single – Polygon.
Polygon – it is almost always developing and testing new things… to move forward.
To all those who were on the Polygon
Instead of preface…
There were a lot of secrets in the USSR, even the things which did not require any secrecy at first glance…
As the country collapsed, many of such secrets were revealed to those from whom they were concealed. The newest technologies, whose development took decades and tens of billions of dollars, and sometimes the most precious thing – human lives, were sometimes sold at a million or two, and sometimes given out practically for free.
Anyway, there were more secrets than one could sell, steal or learn for free. There were some mysteries which died along with the huge country.
One of them is the project “MS – 88”
There were just 9 people who knew about the real aim of this project in the whole of the USSR with the population of almost 280 million. General Secretary of CPSU Central Committee Andropov, minister of defense, general designer and… And of all the mighty General Secretaries, Andropov was the last one who knew about the project and, the main thing, understood its essence. Chernenko had other troubles – why should a gravely ill person be bothered about some deeply scientific things? Moreover, he died very quickly – maybe there was just no time to inform him.
The extremely talkative Gorbachev was not informed about it due to his excessive talkativeness. Moreover, the project was practically completed – it was just a matter of waiting for the results…
After that, there was nobody to inform – the minister of defense died, too. The general designer reported directly to him and preferred not to skip over the authority of his boss, even though he was deceased…
In the huge and mysterious taiga of Arkhangelsk, the most active and just as secret cosmodrome of the Soviet Union covered several thousand square kilometers. The nature itself protected such a large territory of the secret object.
Swamps, small rivers and lakes side by side with impassable wilderness. Nobody took care of the forest, and thousands of trees that had their day fell down and broke, creating natural barriers between new trees that our ancestors used about 700 years ago or maybe even earlier.
The taiga stretched on all sides beyond the horizon and really reminded of an endless green ocean. Just a few railroad lines bifurcated from the Northern track Moscow – Arkhangelsk and disappeared in this green silence.
