Sharashka

Sharashka (sometimes Sharaga or Sharazhka, Russian: шара́шка) was an informal name for secret research and development laboratories in the Soviet Gulag labor camp system. Etymologically, the word sharashka is derived from a Russian slang expression sharashkina kontora ("Sharashka's office"), an ironic, derogative term to denote a poorly organized, impromptu, or bluffing organization.

The scientists and engineers at a sharashka were prisoners picked from other camps and given relatively better conditions in exchange for their slave-like work on scientific and technological problems for the state. The results of this research were usually published under the names of prominent Soviet scientists without credit given to the real authors, whose names frequently have been forgotten. Some sharashka inmates, brilliant scientists and engineers released during and after World War II, continued independent careers and became world-famous.

Notable sharashka inmates

• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a writer. His novel The First Circle is a vivid account of life in sharashka Mavrino.
• Lev Kopelev, a writer, another inmate of Mavrino (a prototype for Rubin from The First Circle)
• Sergey Korolev, the chief of Soviet rocket space program.
• Valentin Glushko, the chief rocket engine designer. ()
• Andrei Tupolev, the chief designer of the aircraft families Tu and ANT.
• Vladimir Petlyakov, the chief designer of the aircraft families V. M. Myasischev, an aircraft designer.
• Leonid Kerber, an aircraft designer.
• Yuri Kondratyuk, a pioneer of astronautics and spaceflight, the inventor of gravitational slingshot.
• Georgy Langemak, a co-inventor (with Korolev) of the Katyusha rocket launcher.
• Helmut Grotrupp, a German rocket scientist from Peenemunde laboratory. (Its head Wernher von Braun was acquired by the US).
• Group of physicists who produced Soviet nuclear bomb, the project supervised by Lavrenti Beria, the chief of NKVD at the time.
• Leon Theremin, a pioneer of electronic music, the inventor of theremin and electronic eavesdropping bug.
• Smithsonian History of Aviation & Spaceflight S.), Smithsonian Institution Press, (hardcover, 1996, 396p.), ISBN 1560986409.
• by Keith Dexter, The U. of Warwick.