Warm heart words, uttered by M.I. Kalinin at the time of handing over the order of the Red Banner of Labor, Tsiolkovsky was deeply excited. The award testified to his recognition of his moral support from the party and the government. But V.I.’s particularly great and decisive influence on the whole spiritual life of Tsiolkovsky was exerted. Lenin. By the way, in the text of Tsiolkovsky’s will, his name is mentioned.

For all the time of my close acquaintance with Tsiolkovsky (1926-1935) in sincere, frank conversations, he spoke a lot about Vladimir Ilyich.

Once, going to the Crimea, I visited Konstantin Eduardovich:

• Just imagine! The fourth dozen almost leavelessly live in Kaluga, - he spoke. - I was attracted from my youth to the Black Sea, in the steppe and to Karelia. And the Volga is beckoning today. I’d take a steamer and go from Rybinsk to Astrakhan! And certainly would make a stop in Simbirsk, in Ulyanovsk in the present. I only saw this city in pictures and photos. I fell in absentia love him. They say that there is apparently invisible cherry orchards and in spring everything is white from flowering. There I would certainly visit the house where Lenin was born and lived.

After pausing, he spoke about the monuments:

Now they put many monuments to Lenin, a granite mausoleum and marble busts, and bronze statues. But my heart is more told by such a monument as a house in Simbirsk or Ilyich’s office in the Kremlin. Lenin, although he is both a leader and a philosopher, cannot be separated from the people, as if he was arguing with someone, Tsiolkovsky said.

“If I were a sculptor, I would not have sculpted it alone with my hand, but necessarily with people, in conversation with walkers or accompanying the Red Army…

In the thirties I had to write more than once about Tsiolkovsky and for Kaluga newspapers and for Moscow publications. Before preparing an article or essay, I certainly went to Tsiolkovsky to talk, to check the facts, learn something new. When I wrote an essay for the Young Guard magazine, I went to Konstantin Eduardovich. He asked:

Do you have any statement about Lenin? I would like to quote it in the essay.

Tsiolkovsky smiled.

I am alive and sitting in front of you. Write down my words and quote them for health.

I wrote in the notebook the following words of the scientist:

Marx and Lenin are the true leaders of mankind. The world is fermented by injustice. Society has developed ugly because there is social inequality. There is a lower category of pests - bandits. They are caught, isolated, or exterminated. There is a higher category of pests - capitalists. This is also in the position of his bandits, bandits are all-planet and international. The fight against them is conceivable on an international scale. Marx and Lenin led this struggle with the bandits of the planet. The international created by Lenin is all the powerful that it calls for the struggle of the proletarians of all countries. I’ve been deaf since I was a kid. I am devoid of the joy of fighting. I give my strength to the workers against the drones, as I can do.

For loyalty, I read to Konstantin Eduardovich the words I have written and asked permission to take them into quotes, as it is done with quotes. Tsiolkovsky took my notebook and put quotes himself. So in quotes this record and printed in the “Young Guard”.

In the essay “Pioneer of Starship”, published in the magazine “30 days”, the following words of Konstantin Eduardovich are placed:

“It is with the greatest delight and satisfaction that I have accepted the news of Lenin’s victory and his party. I believed that a new era would begin for science and educators. And I was not wrong."

Tsiolkovsky had a large archive and in it expensive records, documents, letters. But the most expensive he considered one cherished document.

Here he is:

“The resolution of the Council of People’s Commissars in the meeting of November 9, 1921, having considered the question of the appointment of you. Tsiolkovsky for life-long increased pension, decided:

In view of the special merits of the scientist-inventor, an aviation specialist, to appoint K. Evgeny Tsiolkovsky a life pension of 500 (five hundred) thousand rubles per month with the extension of all subsequent increases in tariff rates for this salary.

The original of this document was signed by V.I. Lenin. In it, the scientist saw the assessment of his works and merits to the people, given by Lenin himself!

From the first days of meeting with Tsiolkovsky, I set myself the goal of writing from the words of Konstantin Eduardovich a story about his life. But for various reasons, he was constantly refused.

In June 1928, I met with A.M. Gorky and had a long conversation with him about Tsiolkovsky. Bitterly advised me to write about him. Konstantin Eduardovich listened with great attention to my story about the meeting with Alexei Maksimovich, but this did not change his decision.

“What will we sit and pour from empty people?”

In the spring of 1930, I received a letter from Sorrento from Alexei Maksimovich Gorky:

“It would be good,” wrote Alexei Maksimovich, “if you gave an essay about K.E. Tsiolkovsky, i.e. about all his works, no more than a sheet and 40 thousand characters. This is for “our achievements”. And then it’s time, long time! - write a book of sheets of 6, 10, write a lot, tell in detail about his works and the conditions in which he worked. What do you think of that? I would probably help you to publish this book.”

Having captured this letter, I went to Tsiolkovsky. He met me well. Talked. I asked him again to record stories about his life, and when he began to deny, he silently handed him a letter of bitterness. Konstantin Eduardovich carefully read it, looked at the Italian brand and, sighing, said:

• I give up! I can’t say anything to bitter. Come with paper and pencil tomorrow. I’ll start to tell. And what I remember, Varvara Evgrafovna will tell. We’ll practice an hour a day.

For more than a month, I went to the wooden house at Oka and recorded stories about the life of this brilliant man, who has extraordinary modesty. Varvara Evgrafovna took a lively part in this case. She had a note-close memory.

Taking advantage of my right to question, I once asked Konstantin Eduardovich the question:

Who do you respect most of all?

One could expect that the scientist would call Lomonosov, Copernicus, Mendeleev, Kibalcic. But Tsiolkovsky, having removed his glasses and without hesitation, replied:

Lenin. - Lenin.

• You must have noticed, I am not respectable enough to authority: it happened not to agree and mentally argue with Shakespeare, Einstein, Newton. But Lenin’s authority is unshakable to me. There was time, I did not know Lenin, but having recognized him once and for all recognized him as a genius of the human race. You know? A great man.

You call Lenin the great. What is his greatness?, I asked.

When I was young, I thought a lot about great people. I remembered the names of the greats known to me from the books.

And then he told me about the following.

Alexander the Great man forcibly drove many people into the legions, armed them with swords and spears and led to conquer other people’s kingdoms. Shed a sea of blood. That’s why they call him great. This is a misunderstood greatness. The same can be said about Julius Caesar, Kira, Tamerlane. Often great are called the rulers of states: Frederick the Great, Charlemagne, Catherine the Great. And after them, the nations lived out of hand badly. But they were given these undeserved titles. But I deeply revere Lenin and respect as a person who was the first in the centuries-old history of the Earth to enter into battle and overthrow the unjust order on one-sixth of the globe. Proceeding from the theory of Marx and Engels, Lenin found with unparalletily courage and gathered like-minded people into an organization that merged scientific theory and revolutionary practice together. Lenin’s holy work is clear to all people of any language, nationality, color without exception. Everyone is small to big! Lenin put the theory into action. He was able to arm the masses of the people with revolutionary theory.

I see the greatness of Lenin in the fact that he was a man of the future, for him science is a living, transforming the world a force that is not at all the impediment or limit. He led the people and won.

Lenin began a matter that would eventually embrace the whole Earth, its entire population. The further, the greater the greatness of Lenin will grow, because, as he himself prophetically predicted, democracy, socialism, and then communism will embrace an increasing number of people until all of humanity rises on this path. No one believed in the creative forces of the masses, and no one so faithfully and wholely expressed the cherished thoughts and aspirations of the people. He is pure with his heart, deepen with his mind, boundlessly just and clairvoyant. He saw not for decades, but for centuries to come. He was a great humanist, gently and fervently loved people – ordinary workers, whom the capitalists put lower than animals.

Lenin is the greatest of all mankind who ever lived and I call it great without any reservation. It is impossible without excitement to read the words about his attitude to his mother and sisters, how much love and care are in them. He was the same to his friends - responsive, sensitive, ready to sacrifice himself. At the same time, Lenin was a passionate and ruthless fighter against the imperialists, who today form detachments of robbery fascism.

• I knew about his modesty, simplicity and accessibility, heard about his enormous efficiency, about the breadth of interests, about his incomparable erudition. I have always believed, I think and I will consider him the greatest of the people. I can’t forgive myself alone. I had to meet him at least once and shake his hand tightly. Then I would, I think, respect myself more and believe in my own strength.

Tsiolkovsky’s statements about Lenin are extremely sincere, there is no propression, rhetoric or profanity in them with a phrase.

K. Altai. Pioneer of Starvation. - “30 days”, 1932, No. 9, p. 57