HRYHORY PASHCHENKO: “HOW I GOT TO THIS HELL”

Lviv is home to a Ukrainian who took part in the first Soviet Antarctic expedition, worked with spaceship designer Serhiy Koroliov, was a stand-by astronaut, teacher in a rural elementary school, tank operator, and pilot.

IN PLACE OF EPIGRAPH

Hryhory Pashchenko recalls that when he learned to fly and started flying on his own, he came to his native village to see his grandmother after several years. When he began to tell the story of his flights, describing his takeoffs and landings, his grandmother asked him:

“Do you mean you really fly?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“High in the sky.”

“But there’s God up there.”

“No, grandmother, there is no God. Neither in the clouds, nor above them: there is no God.”

LIFE STORY

Hryhory Ivanovych Pashchenko was born on December 14, 1914 in the village of Ordynka in Kharkiv oblast. When he turned five, his mother died and he was left to run the household with his father who farmed in summer and worked as carpenter and blacksmith in winter. After finishing the local four- year school, he had to go to a seven- year school in the next village. On graduating from a teachers’ course, he went to teach in his native village. Later on he continued his education in other institutions. Finally, he majored in experimental physics in the Kharkiv Sechenov University. Then he took a doctoral course at the Central Research Institute of Aerology of the USSR located in Leningrad that trained space researchers. On finishing the Institute, Hryhory was sent to work in the Central Aerological Observatory in Dolgoprudny near Moscow. His next job was with the Odesa G eophysical O bservatory as head of its aerological center, where he had command over two planes, a lab to launch radio balloon probes, and an official car. “Going to work I used to put on a special flight-suit and two parachutes. Then I would fly up to five or seven kilometers high to gather atmospheric data. At the time I never wore oxygen mask because I was in good health.”

Hryhory Pashchenko worked there until 1939, when he was drafted into the army, in fact, three years later than the usual age of conscription. Those three years represented the deferment given by the state to researchers. “The country needs scientists” was a popular slogan of the day.

The then Soviet Union Prime Minister Kliment Voroshilov ordered conscripted into the army all teachers, medical doctors, and researchers with deferment benefits. That was how Hryhory found himself right in the trenches during the war with Finland. “I had never known anything about warfare; I had only some vague vision of fighting. It was all theory,” he says. Arriving in the unit, he was appointed head of a mine-sweeping section. “We died by the dozens, and I was first wounded and wound up in a hospital. On leaving being discharged, several of us were selected and dispatched to an unknown destination. “It’s none of your business where you’re going, it’s a secret,” he recalls.

LEMBERG, OR HOW A PILOT BECAME A TANK MAN

In secret, Hryhory Pashchenko was brought to Lemberg. No one seemed to have the foggiest idea of what Lemberg was. Only later did he learn that Lemberg is another name for Lviv, the city in Western Ukraine. Here, he was assigned to a tank unit. “They told me, ‘You were a pilot, weren’t you? That means you know how to drive tanks. Your mission is to teach soldiers to drive tanks’.” This was how a former pilot, teacher, researcher, and nuclear physicist became a tank man, although everyone in the army considered him a scientist.

LOOKING FOR SIDE WORK WHILE WAITING FOR A JOB

After he completed his army service, Hryhory was included in a group to design and test spaceships. With several months to wait before the program started, work-hungry Hryhory Pashchenko went to the Kyiv Army Headquarters personnel department where he asked for a temporary assignment. They were on the lookout for a geologist/surveyor and he was appointed head of a unit to build airstrips, not for large passenger planes as he expected, but for specific aircraft. “Once, after a day’s work we went away for the weekend”, he recalls. “On returning, a man in the same railway car compartment told that something had been bombed somewhere. When asked, ‘Who has been bombed?’ he made round eyes, saying, ‘We’ve been bombed! The war has started.”

JUST PLAIN LUCKY

The town of Dolgoprudny near Moscow was the venue of the Central Aerological Observatory, CAO. In 1934, the CAO was expanded to include a unit in charge of launching manned stratospheric balloon probes. They had a rush opening for a stand-by pilot with excellent health for Osoaviakhim- 1, a Soviet stratospheric balloon. Hryhory Pashchenko met all the requirements and was appointed a standby pilot for spaceman Ansberg in case of the latter’s illness or any other contingency. Under the terms of the project, if the first flight was successful, standby pilots would be the next to go.

The first high-altitude balloon went up. Pilots had to measure the temperatures and pressure and ten to land. The flight of that technical wonder was watched from the command station, standby pilots including. On January 1, 1934 Osoaviakhim-1 set a world altitude record, climbing to 22 kilometers. Then came an emergency, with the top of the balloon breaking, hydrogen escaping, and the balloon plunging to earth at breakneck speed. All the men died. Although Hryhory’s plight kept him from seeing the earth from above, it also kept him alive.

“SPACE IS OUR FUTURE! SPACE IS THE FUTURE OF COMMUNISM!”

This was one of the popular period slogans.

After the war ended, Hryhory Pashchenko was enrolled in a group of scientists under a well-known designer Serhiy Kovaliov. The group was designing airships. The first successful design project was titled Gird-008. The project envisaged launchings of small 240-cm long engine-propelled rockets to the altitude of 200, 300, and 400 meters, increasing height with each successive launch. The launches were carried out on the coast of Spitsbergen, an island in the Arctic. Then, one day, someone spotted a periscope. Koroliov, who was away at the time, was notified at once. An order coming from Moscow said: destroy all test models and leave Spitsbergen by a specially dispatched plane. It turned out to be a German submarine. Although the Germans surely had a lead in developing rockets, the Soviet models, which took many years to design, had to be destroyed literally before potential enemy eyes. The 14-men team of scientists, Pashchenko including, boarded the plane and left to the unknown destination. Later they learned that they were flown to the Matochkin Shar Bay in the Novaya Zemlia Archipelago in the Arctic. Having delivered the team and the equipment to the nearest town, the plane left. Scientists kicked their heels and looked for food. Later it came out that the team was flown to this godforsaken land to build up the research potential of the local nuclear testing ground. Their careers as nuclear scientists were all but short-lived. In the same secretive way they were relocated to the mainland, with some going to Moscow, Kyiv, Lviv, or Alma-Ata.

THE FIRST ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION

While based in Lviv, Hryhory Pashchenko received a very interesting and lucrative offer to go to Antarctica. Moscow was forming a team of elite experts and Pashchenko’s name was on the list of candidates as an expert aerologist, pilot, land surveyor, photographer, and physicist. He was the only choice from Ukraine, the others coming from Moscow, Leningrad, Kazan, Tashkent, Tbilisi and Kishinev. Nonetheless, researchers from Moscow and Leningrad predominated on the team.

The whole of the Soviet Union knew about this Antarctic expedition, with hundreds of people coming to say farewell to the sole representative of Lviv and Ukraine on the team.

It was the first Soviet Antarctic expedition. Before, only Russia’s Belinshausen had reached the shores of the sixth continent. Roald Amundsen and Robert Scott who did reach the pole, found their graves on the continent.

The Soviet polar scientists were the first to learn how to live (survive, to be more exact) an extended stay on this frozen land.

THEY WERE 89

In all, there were 89 members on the first Soviet Antarctic expedition. But how many of them returned is anyone’s guess even now. Nobody cared about the casualties, because the Soviet Union wanted a firm foothold in the Antarctic. According to eyewitness reports, over ten expedition members died in the first week alone. Hryhory Pashchenko tells a story when the explorers began to unload a ship with supplies and someone placed a tractor on the ice with a slightly visible crack. All of a sudden, the crack began to grow, with onlookers puzzling over what to do with the sophisticated tractor. Crying, “What are you waiting for? The equipment will be destroyed,” one young avid team member rushed to the tractor, got into the cabin and started the engine. The ice began to crack with tremendous speed and the tractor went into the sea together with the young worker named Khmara. He never had a chance to say anything. This is the way Antarctica was opened up.

Not every expedition member learned about Khmara’s death, as information on such accidents involving colleagues could spread only by hearsay. Human losses and “the heroes of Antarctica” scenario played out in the media were incompatible notions for the expedition heads. All death reports were classified information and only a few in the expedition’s central headquarters knew. Other explorers learned about Khmara’s death a month or two later. Asked by team members, “Why don’t you tell us?” the expedition leaders responded that it was none of their business.

DREADFUL PRICE

Hryhory Pashchenko recalls another sad story related to the expedition. The explorers were scattered over the continent and lived in several communities. There was a so- called aviation community, a building where pilots lived. Its roof caught on fire. As the explorers built their homes from twentieth century inventions, foam plastic (which is hard to put out when on fire), and wood, the building burned down in a moment and the explorers were left without a roof over their heads. They managed to save several instruments, some clothes, and beds.

In general, foam plastic, regarded as an excellent insulator by explorers, brought them many misfortunes.

The building of explorers buried in snow after a night’s heavy snowfall slanted under the weight of snow and one of the cables linking the electricity generator with heaters inside short-circuited, putting the building on fire. As foam plastic does not burn and merely smolders, it is almost impossible to extinguish it with water. If extinguished, it produces numerous sparks and a caustic smoky gas. The explorers who were sleeping in the building did not even have time to wake up as the gas spread to the bedrooms. Those who managed to wake up were too weak to get out of their beds. Those who managed, crept in pitch darkness looking for a way to escape. The head of this department, Oskar Hryhorovych Krychak, crept to the door and wanted to open it to get a gulp of fresh air but only broke his nails and burned his hands on the scorching foam plastic. Weakened by the struggle, he died, asphyxiated by the poisonous fumes.

ROCK NAMED AFTER LVIV ACADEMICIAN SAVED HIS LIFE

At the start of the expedition Hryhory Pashchenko was to have headed the Sovietskaya Station but since his staff perished in the first days after landing, he was reassigned to head the Oasis Station.

This station, incidentally, was not included in the original project and was set up after the accident. Oasis was operated by seven explorers. They too had their share of accidents.

Once, a hurricane destroyed two sleeping quarters and other structures, leaving just a heap of rubble. The staff found cover from winds in a cave in a rock. (Such caves, quite numerous in Antarctica, are made by strong winds and hurricanes — Author). The Oasis team named the cave Vialov’s Rock in honor of the academician from Lviv who once sailed past Antarctica on his way to Australia.

The Oasis team found shelter in the cave for almost one month, living on chocolate which was part of their daily food rations (they did not always follow the rations and this, in fact, saved them). Another savior was sweetmeats they had slipped into their pockets before the accident.

“Despite our nerves, we all had a good appetite”, Pashchenko recalls. At the start, as head of the station I allowed to eat three pieces of chocolate a day per man, then reducing the number to two. In several days we switched to only one a day. Our radio was destroyed in the hurricane, with our food, clothes and other stuff scattered by the wind. We waited until people at other stations would be alerted by our silence. After eighteen days the hurricane let up. A plane flew over, dropping some cargo by parachute, but we failed to catch it as wind continued and had to wait even longer.” Another plane came in several days, dropping a small transmitter, 5-6 loaves of bread, a little canned food, blankets, and fur coats. But if, in the earlier delivery, everything had been blown away by the wind, this time many things broke. Still, the explorers got the food and clothing they so badly needed. Soon helicopters began to deliver collapsible houses, tents, clothing, food, and instruments. It gave Oasis a new life.

In total, the first Soviet expedition members built and operated five stations, Myrny, Oasis, Pionerska, Komsomolska, and Vostok.

POLAR EXPLORERS SLEPT IN ORDINARY SLEEPING BAGS

The expedition equipment deserves special mentioning. As usual, the making of the equipment for the expedition was given broad coverage in the media: that clothing is made SPECIALLY for the first expedition, those biscuits are baked SPECIALLY for the first expedition and so on.

“In fact, in the end we suffered due to this special-made-for-the-expedition approach,” continues Hryhory. “They made hundreds of clumsy and ill-fitting suits for us. The trousers had unusually high belts, with straps and just an opening over belts — those were SPECIAL suits. They were hard to wear and gave no warmth, not to mention their giant sizes.”

The walls made from foam plastic have been already mentioned. The explorers slept, like soldiers sleep in winter barracks: in sleeping bags sandwiched between two mattresses. They wore fur coats over their overalls.

As for the equipment, the amounts shipped to Antarctica were amazing. And the amount of machinery that sank in the ocean or broke against the rocks was equally so. Can a contemporary polar explorer imagine how it was to spend two years in this white desert, without contact with one’s homeland, sleeping in cotton sleeping bags and wearing clumsy fur coats and quilted jackets instead of warm and comfortable parkas? It is hard to imagine, but they managed to pull through.

FINAL IMPRESSIONS

After so many years passed, Hryhory Pashchenko remembers Antarctica not only as the land of penguins (which, incidentally, Hryhory Ivanovych does not recommend eating), but also as the place where Vialov’s Rock is located. “When we took cover in that cave, all the men wept, although men are seldom given to tears. We asked ourselves the same question, “Why did I agree to be shipped to this hell?” We were not sure if anyone would rescue us, but we remembered very well the assurances that, whatever happens, the homeland would save us. After all, the Cheluskin icebreaker team had been saved in the Arctic and we will also be saved. I also wept, feeling sorry for my men who have their families back home, for their pitiful plight. But I had to continue to lead my team somehow.”

P.S. The Soviet Oasis polar station located on the Nox Shore was transferred to the Polish Academy of Sciences control in 1959 and was renamed Dobrovolska.

Hryhory Ivanovych Pashchenko, who turned 86 in December, has lived in Lviv since his return from Antarctica. He has recently had yet another operation. At present, he is obsessed with the idea of reviving the once popular Club of the Lovers of the Universe, repair an observatory he built in his attic, and donate it to the city.