A word about my father

February 7 marked the 120th anniversary of the birth of Chief Designer Oleh Antonov, after whom our museum is named. The vast majority of publications about him focus on his biography, outstanding achievements in aircraft construction, and scientific work, while his human qualities are left aside. But Oleg Konstantinovich was an extraordinary, multi-talented personality with a deep understanding of the world. To get a closer look at this legendary man, we offer the wonderful memories of his daughter, Kyiv Aviation Institute Professor Anna Antonova.

A word about my father

I was born in the summer of 1948 in Novosibirsk, less than a year after the first flight of the An-2. My mother, Yelizaveta Avetivna Shakhatuni, was a leading specialist at the research design bureau headed by my father, and for obvious reasons she worked from morning till night. Two noblewomen came to help: Alexandra Konstantinovna, my father's aunt, and Astkhik Tigranovna, my mother's aunt, who had recently been released after ten years in the camps. An elderly German exile, Karolina Lyudvigovna, helped my mother with the household. With such a “criminal international” around, my parents were not afraid to live during Stalin's time.

In 1952, we moved to Kyiv and settled in Svyatoshyn, in a village near an aircraft factory, which at that time resembled a dacha. Everyone loved ancient Kyiv – the city itself, its beautiful surroundings, and its favorable climate. My father's father, Konstantin Konstantinovna, and Alexandra Konstantinovna lived with us.

My father's colleagues from the Design Bureau and other related organizations visited him at home on business. I remember well the pilots I. Mazuruk, Ya. Vernikov, and the designers O. Eskin, E. Senchuk, M. Smirnov, O. Borin, and O. Manotskov. I especially remember Mikhail Nikolayevich Kaminsky for his wonderful stories about flying in the Arctic. We also had visits from chief designer Alexander Georgievich Ivchenko, an energetic and cheerful man who once brought a watermelon the size of me from Zaporizhia.

I'm afraid that these names mean little to the younger generation. But I have very vivid memories of these people as inspiring, cheerful individuals and friends of my parents.

My dad had a car, and we used it to explore the surroundings of Kyiv. We were often joined by Vasyl Oleksiyovych Stepanchenko, director of the Kyiv Aviation Plant, and his family. Our favorite place to relax was a forest ten kilometers from Kyiv. My father taught me to appreciate the beauty of nature, to admire the forest road, the forest edge, and the autumn cobwebs. He knew how to explain all this simply and clearly to me, a five-year-old girl.

He often took his easel and sketchbook to the forest. In the silence, I watched with interest as he moved his charcoal or brush. In the evening at home, in his study, he taught me to draw. I remember how surprised I was to see that my father had chosen blue for the forest on the horizon — after all, leaves are green, aren't they? And so I received my first lesson in the perception of color and light.

From the late 1950s, my father's life changed dramatically: he began to participate in international aviation exhibitions, travel abroad as part of government delegations, received high awards, and was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. His articles and interviews began to appear in newspapers and magazines. Every year, the awards increased, but he did not evaluate his work by awards; he had his own scale. My father refused the second Star of the Hero of Socialist Labor without much regret (he told me that one can only be a hero of labor once), which was rare for the USSR. On the contrary, he was proud of the A.M. Tupolev Gold Medal for outstanding work in the field of aviation science and technology, his last award. He did not praise the wisdom of the party and the government, as was customary at the time, but instead criticized the inept solutions to some economic problems in the Soviet Union.

His parents' house, known as Antonov's house, was located on Ogareva Street (now Oleksandra Oksanchenko Street). The bright hall was decorated with paintings and model airplanes. The spacious study on the second floor had an open, sunny terrace covered with vines and bookcases around the perimeter. There was a small, light-colored desk and a carpenter's workbench near the south window. An easel with an unfinished painting often stood in the study. The house was surrounded by trees, lilac bushes, and hazel trees.

My father loved “the beauty of practicality” and tried to incorporate it into everyday life. Functionality and maximum simplicity were his main criteria. The furniture made according to his sketches is still quite modern even today.

We talked in the garden, in his study, or by the fireplace. He was my “mentor.” I owe him my love of painting, subtle humor, and literary language. I began to understand what it means to think outside the box. That life is constant work, first and foremost on oneself.

Listening to my father was very interesting, but it is impossible to retell it. The best way to get to know Antonov is to read his books and articles. He also invented funny fairy tales for children and wrote parables with philosophical undertones that were more aimed at adults. Here is one of Antonov's mini-fairy tales from 1966.

"Once upon a time, there were three educated old men living by the mill: Eco, No, and Mist. They walked together, even though they did not get along.

Eco believed that water must fall from above.

The second old man, No, agreed that it should fall from above, but it must hit the blade of the mill wheel.

Mist added that the water should not fall past the wheel if possible.

In addition, the old men were keenly interested in the influence of tadpoles and water spiders on the operation of the mill. Only their curiosity about these inhabitants of the pond allowed them to agree.

Time passed.

Eco defended his dissertation on the topic: “Where does the water flow after the mill?”

But he intended to defend his topic: “Water as an element of splash formation.”

Most collected materials for a work that had not yet been written: “Water then and now.”

Be that as it may, despite their different creative aspirations, water was the basis of their deep research.

Three old men endlessly paced around the mill on their favorite paths and argued so heatedly about whether water was simply useful or very useful for grinding grain that they did not notice how a significant part of this most useful element began to flow through a hole in the dam directly into the river, past the mill wheel.

The more the old men argued about water, the more it leaked out. And the pond began to dry up...".

1965 was a triumphant year for O.K. Antonov – the Antei surprised the whole world at the Le Bourget Air Show. I found an interesting fact in one of the articles by the famous journalist Yaroslav Golovanov:

"The Le Bourget Air Show. It was raining. Antonov was sitting on a folding iron bench in his huge Antei, the belly of which was constantly swallowing crowds of people, and talking in French with a man who looked like a hard worker. I sat down. We reminisced about Korolev. Antonov said that here, in Le Bourget, he had met Paul Richard's grandfather, with whom they, as young men, had worked together with Korolev (they were the same age) in Moscow in 1928. We went over our mutual acquaintances, and Richard asked:

“What happened to Sergei Korolev? He disappeared somewhere, and we haven't heard anything about him.”

This was after the satellites, the Lunar missions, Mars, Venus, and Gagarin's triumph.

“I don't know,” Antonov replied evasively. “I've lost track of him too...”

This response was due to the heightened secrecy surrounding S.P. Korolev at the time. Even in his book “On Wings of Wood and Canvas,” published in 1962, my father described the glider pilot Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, the future creator of spaceships, under the pseudonym Sergei Pavlovich Tsarev.

Dad told us many interesting things about the salon and Paris. He felt like a Frenchman in France, knew French culture well, spoke fluently, and read newspapers and books in that language. He loved the works of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Jules Roy, and Paul Éluard, and quoted passages from The Little Prince and Night Flight from memory. He was fascinated by the architecture of Le Corbusier (he especially liked the Notre-Dame-du-Haut chapel in Ronchamp) and loved the paintings of the Impressionists, Matisse, Gauguin... Once, he and his mother attended a concert by Yves Montand and were captivated by his charm. His father liked the song “Les Grands Boulevards” so much that he hummed it himself.

J'aime flâner sur les grands boulevards

Y a tant de choses, tant de choses

Tant de choses â voir…

In Paris, he tried to wander around the city longer, visit his favorite Orsay, and go to exhibitions of contemporary artists. He brought many photographs and albums of reproductions to Kyiv, talked about everything in a very interesting way, and it seemed to me that I was walking around Paris with my father. When I later had the opportunity to visit France, I tried to follow his routes, and I could hear my father's voice...

Rostyslav Maraev

Photos

1. O.K. Antonov and E.A. Shakhatuni. Husband and wife and colleagues. 1940s

2. First drawing lessons for daughter Anna. 1951

3. O.K. Antonov painting a landscape while relaxing in nature

4. O.K. Antonov and his daughter Anna watching glider flights. Gostomel Airfield, 1961

5. O.K. Antonov loved to work in the garden near his house.

6. Chief Designer O.K. Antonov working at a drawing board in one of the departments of his Design Bureau. Second half of the 1970s