Grigori Tokaty

Who is Grigori Tokaty?

Grigori Aleksandrovich Tokaev was a rocket scientist and long-standing critic of Stalin's USSR. During World War II he served as Head of Aeronautics Laboratory, Zhukovsky Academy 1938-41. After receiving his doctorate in technical sciences in 1941, he continued to lecture at the Zhukovsky Academy while simultaneously working as Acting Head of the Department of Aviation at the Moscow Engineering Institute. One of his tasks was to study the possibility of developing a medium-range winged rocket, but when Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa in 1941 and rapidly overran the Soviet front-line forces, the Academy's staff was evacuated to Sverdlovsk in the Urals.