Andrei Tupolev and Joseph Stalin
Associate Professor of European and Modern Russian History Steven E. Harris penned an editorial on Communist dictator Joseph Stalin and and Soviet aircraft engineer Andrei Tupolev in advance of his Great Lives lecture on Thursday Jan. 28, at 7:30 pm on Zoom, as part of UMW’s “Great Lives” series. It can be accessed at umw.edu/greatlives.
THE UNITED States had William Boeing. Germany, Hugo Junkers. And Great Britain, Geoffrey de Havilland. From travel to warfare, the airplanes these designers produced transformed the world and made them household names.
In the Soviet Union, the most famous aviation designer was Andrei Nikolaevich Tupolev (1888-1972), whose aircraft also made him a household name. From gliders to strategic bombers and a supersonic passenger plane, Tupolev and his design bureau helped make the Soviet Union an aviation superpower.
His incredible career spanned Russia’s tumultuous 20th century, from the reign of its last tsar, Nicholas II, and Stalin’s regime to the twilight of the Soviet experiment under Leonid Brezhnev. Read more.