Today we honor the memory of an outstanding Ukrainian aircraft designer and Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute graduate Konstantin Alekseevich Kalinin.
This brilliant engineer, famous for his innovations, spent the last years of his life in forced labor of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs. After years of bullying and interrogation, he was shot on October 27, 1938. The name of Kostiantyn Kalinin has been forgotten for decades.
It is time to restore the glory of our outstanding compatriots. We have compiled the most interesting facts from the life of an aircraft designer.
Kostiantyn Kalinin was born on February 5, 1887, in Warsaw. The boy’s childhood took place in Poland.
As a child, Kostiantyn Kalinin became an orphan because his father died in 1892, and his mother passed away eight years later.
Kostiantyn received the surname Kalinin thanks to the street nickname of his father because they called him Kalyna-Malyna in his native village.
Kalinin was arrested in 1906 for spreading revolutionary proclamations. The boy spent six months in prison. It was only at the request of his older brother, Volodymyr, who served in the Ministry of Justice, that he was released on bail.
He graduated from the Hatchyna Aviation School in 1916 and received a military pilot’s diploma.
In 1918 he went to the Polish army. Soon, as a nationally conscious Ukrainian, he joined the Central Rada of Ukraine, where he served as Commander 1st Volyn Aviation Division until 1919. He also served as Commander of the aeronautics detachment of the Army of the Ukrainian People’s Republic and the Ukrainian People’s Republic and the UGA aviation inspector and the aviation staff head of the Active Army of the Ukrainian People’s Republic.
In 1919, Kalinin had disagreements with the policy of the Directory, so he joined the Red Army and entered Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy. Unfortunately, he soon got expelled from the Academy because he fought for the Polish and Ukrainian armies.
From Moscow, Konstantin moved to Kyiv and entered the fourth year of Kyiv Polytechnic Institute. At the Institute, he designed the K-1 aircraft – one of the first domestic aircraft to transport passengers and civilian cargo.
Kalinin was the first in the world to design a unique K-3 ambulance aircraft.
The K-7 plane developed by Kalinin became the largest worldwide aircraft at the time, with a capacity of 128 passengers and 29 crew members. The plane had seven engines and weighed 40 tons.
In 1938, Kalinin was arrested on trumped-up charges of treason and espionage.
After brutal debriefings and torture, Kostiantyn Kalinin was shot dead in the basement of the Voronezh People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs prison on October 27, 1938.