ABSTRACT
What is curious about the activities of Ministry of Armament immediately after World War II is that they had charge of the research and development of rockets with liquid propellant fuel in spite of their lack of experience, and that they started their project with the mere copying of the German rockets in spite of objections from the Soviet leading engineers. Here, using the previously classified documents of this Ministry, the author tries to make clear the business factor for the Ministry to make such choices. He concludes that because Ministry of Armament failed in the conversion to peace industries, which was needed for the economic rehabilitation, they had to discover the new resources for maintaining their own organization and making idle production capacity operational as soon as they could. His research concern consists also in clarifying a factor of the success of Soviet research and development activities in this field in a very short time and criticism against the myth of the foresighted pioneers.
