Sharashkas (singular: Russian: шара́шка, [ʂɐˈraʂkə]; sometimes sharaga, sharazhka) were secret research and development laboratories operating from 1930 to the 1950s within the Soviet Gulag labor camp system, as well as in other facilities under the supervision of the Soviet secret service. Formally various secret R&D facilities were called "special design bureau" Russian: особое конструкторское бюро, ОКБ and similar terms. Etymologically, the word sharashka derives from a Russian slang expression sharashkina kontora, ("Sharashka's office"), an ironic, derogatory term to denote a poorly-organized, impromptu, or bluffing organization, which in its turn comes from the criminal argot term sharaga (шарага) for a band of thieves, hoodlums, etc.[1])
The scientists and engineers at a sharashka were prisoners picked by the Soviet government from various camps and prisons and assigned to work on scientific and technological problems. Living conditions were usually much better than in an average taiga camp, mostly because of the absence of hard labor.
The results of the research in sharashkas were usually published (if published at all) under the names of prominent Soviet scientists without credit given to the real researchers, whose names frequently have been forgotten.[citation needed] Some of the scientists and engineers imprisoned in sharashkas were released during and after World War II (1939–1945) to continue independent careers; some became world-renowned.
Sharashkas (singular: Russian: шара́шка, [ʂɐˈraʂkə]; sometimes sharaga, sharazhka) were secret research and development laboratories operating from 1930...
in English in 2009. The novel depicts the lives of the occupants of a sharashka (a research and development bureau made of Gulag inmates) located in the...
NKVD sharashka for aircraft designers in Bolshevo near Moscow, where many surviving ex-TsAGI people had already been sent to work. The sharashka soon...
prisons, much more comfortable than the Gulag, colloquially known as sharashkas. These prisoners continued their work in these prisons, and were later...
colleagues were executed. In 1939 he was moved from a prison to an NKVD sharashka for aircraft designers near Moscow, where many ex-TsAGI people had already...
execution were widely circulated and published, Theremin was put to work in a sharashka (a secret laboratory in the Gulag camp system), together with Andrei Tupolev...
(preceding the KGB), taken back to the Soviet Union and made to work in a sharashka laboratory prison camp at Magadan, Siberia. He reappeared 30 years later...
special category of repression. Secret research laboratories known as Sharashka (шарашка) held arrested and convicted scientists, some of them prominent...
Cybernetics in the Soviet Union Lysenkoism Science and technology in Russia Sharashka Soviet Antarctic Expedition Soviet cosmonauts Soviet explorers Soviet...
secret Gulag detention facilities for scientists and engineers, known as sharashkas. From 1945, he personally oversaw the Soviet atomic bomb project, which...
camps; the "middle phase", as he later referred to it, was spent in a sharashka (a special scientific research facility run by Ministry of State Security)...
1942 on political charges, Merzhanov continued professional work as a sharashka architect, designing numerous public buildings in the Black Sea region...
facility, and Korolev was brought here to work. During World War II, this sharashka designed both the Tupolev Tu-2 bomber and the Petlyakov Pe-2 dive bomber...
Sciences Academy of Medical Sciences Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences Sharashkas Naukograds List Society Soviet Union portal Category...
fostering "bourgeois humanism" and for "compassion towards the enemy". In the sharashka Marfino he met Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Kopelev became a prototype for...
execution circulated widely, Theremin was, in fact, put to work in a sharashka (a secret research-laboratory), together with other scientists and engineers...
ОКБ, romanized: OKB, lit. 'SDB'), a type of Soviet bureau, a form of sharashka (Russian: шара́шка) R&D lab Sukhoi Design Bureau, Soviet Union; an aircraft...
imprisonment Bartini continued his work on new aircraft designs, first at the sharashka TsKB-29, an NKVD experiment aircraft design bureau in Moscow where he...
arrested. Landau was released, but Korets and Rumer were imprisoned in sharashkas of gulag. In total, 16 UPTI employees suffered from repression. The first...
Lev Nikolayevich Gumilev (also Gumilyov; Russian: Лев Никола́евич Гумилёв; 1 October [O.S. 18 September] 1912 – 15 June 1992) was a Soviet and Russian...
instrument". In the same year he was involved in establishing one of the first sharashkas – an aircraft design bureau staffed by prisoners of Butyrka prison, including...
It was invented by the Russian Leonid Ramzin, whilst imprisoned in a sharashka. Rastrick boiler: a vertical heat-recovery boiler, typically used in ironworks...
half a century after her death. On the grounds of the prison operated a sharashka – a research and development facility called OKB-172, that used inmates...
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