4 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: Tuesday Trivia | History's Greatest Betrayals
From about the same period, Sergei Korolev's treatment was even more brutal. He nearly died in the late thirty's for what amounted to doing a good job. After being freed from prison he goes on to become the mastermind behind the whole Soviet space program.
The thing that makes the story amazing to me isn't that he recovered, but that he went back to the same people, the same system, that nearly killed him.
Comment by Georgy_K_Zhukov at 02/06/2015 at 20:59 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Really no end to stories like that. Rokossovsky was a victim of the purges in the 1930s. Imprisoned, he faced beatings, torture, and mock executions, and then suddenly was released, rehabilitated and found himself a Colonel commanding a Red Army Corps during the invasion of Bessarabia three months after release. He had to wear a set of false, metal teeth to replace the nine he lost.