Valeriya Golubtsova

Moscow Power Engineering Institute (MPEI)

Beginning to lead the MPEI, Golubtsova knew the institute well, since she herself graduated from it, studied at its graduate school, and, during her studies, was repeatedly elected to the party bureau of the institute. She knew the teaching staff, the party, Komsomol, trade union activists, the traditions, and the material base of the institute. In turn, she was well known in the circles of the top party and state leadership of the country, as well as the leadership of the electric and thermal power industry, among which were MPEI graduates Alexei Pavlenko, Dmitry Zhimerin, and Аnatoly Petrakovsky. In the position of the director of the institute, Golubtsova did a lot to expand the institute and increase its scientific potential. Those who knew her at work noted her ability to see the future and the ability to organize people to solve tasks.

According to Boris Chertok's memoirs about Golubtsova during the Great Patriotic War:

She assumed full responsibility, removed the confused director from the leadership, and organized, as far as possible, a normal evacuation and then the continuation of the educational activities of the institute in a new place. <...> After the war, Golubtsova, as director, showed exceptional activity in the construction of new educational buildings, a pilot plant, the expansion of the laboratory and research base, the construction of a palace of culture, a hostel and residential buildings for professors and teachers. Largely thanks to her energy, combined with her proximity to the highest authorities of the country, a whole town of the Moscow Power Engineering Institute grew up in the area of Krasnokazarmennaya Street. <...> God generously endowed her with organizational talent. The sensitivity inherent in women helped her to unite the efforts of all scientists of the institute with a minimum of contradictions. In any case, the solid MPEI professorship supported the director in all her activities.

The work of Golubtsova as director was highly appreciated by her colleagues. Professor R.G. Romanov stated:

Valeria Alekseyevna's place is among the most prominent MPEI figures.

In my opinion, after the creator of the MPEI, Karl Krug, Valeria Alekseyevna Golubtsova is in second place in terms of importance, in terms of the weight of all her daily work.[4]

Professor A.N. Starostin stated: I saw in her not only a beautiful intelligent woman, a scientist, and a leader, but also a loving mother, for whom the success and happiness of children is the most important thing in life.[5]

Academician Alexander Sheindlin stated:

This woman, to be objective, really did a lot to turn the MPEI into a first-class institution of higher education.[6]

The director of the MPEI at the time of Golubtsova's application for the post, Ilya Teltelbaum, stated: Director of the MPEI V. A. Golubtsova acted exceptionally bravely and decently. After reviewing the documents and the main works of Ilya Markovich and talking with him, in the midst of the "doctors' case" and the fight against "cosmopolitanism", she ordered the head of the MPEI personnel department to take this employee under her personal responsibility.[7]

Golubtsova found an opportunity and took care of the life of students. From the memoirs of students of this time:

Valeria Alekseevna tried to do everything possible to help poor students, and literally dressed the graduate Kalina from head to toe, sending her to the disposal of the Altaienergo department after defending her diploma.

Professor A. L. Zinovev stated:

Valeria Alekseevna constantly found opportunities to provide specific targeted assistance to those in particular need of it. And always "at first there was a word", a kind word…[8]

At the same time, in the memoirs of Raisa Kuznetsova, the wife of the Director of the IIET Ivan Kunetsov, Golubtsova's pronounced antisemitism is clearly noted, in her opinion.

In 1944, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR issued a resolution on the development of the Moscow Power Engineering Institute, an all-Union training base for power engineers. Valeria Alekseevna took up the implementation of the government's decision with her characteristic energy and perseverance. In a short time, she obtained the necessary funds and materials for the construction of the main building of the MPEI — House Number 17. The construction battalion, with the active participation of students and employees, built buildings "B", "C", "G", "D" of house number 17, row buildings on the territory of a student hostel, all red brick houses on Energeticheskaya Street. Under the conditions of hostilities, such construction was practically impossible, since each builder was counted, but Valeria Alekseevna succeeded. It was she who was able to resolve the issue of transferring two buildings to MPEI: a large 8-story building No. 13, built in 1928–1930 according to the project of a team of domestic authors, and house No. 14, where until 1944 the headquarters of the partisan movement in the Great Patriotic War was located. Later, house number 14 was completed.

In the spring of 1945, Golubtsova, who had the rank of major, visited Vienna, which had just been taken, in order to obtain a test bench and measuring equipment for MPEI, which were located at the Allgemeine Electrische Gesellschaft (AEG) electrical enterprise that was to be dismantled.[9]

Golubtsova personally supervised the MPEI research department, the capital construction department, the campus, and the educational department. She took away from the people's commissars, or in her words, "grabbed captured equipment in Germany" what was needed to equip the MPEI.

With the participation and assistance of Valeria Alekseyevna, the MPEI built the only education and experimental combined heat and power plant in the USSR — the MPEI CHPP with a capacity of 12 megawatts, commissioned in 1951.[3] She achieved the allocation of territory for the construction of rest houses near Moscow and in Crimea, in Аlupka, and when the rest house in Alupka was confiscated from the MPEI and converted into a tuberculosis sanatorium of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, she insisted on compensation, and the MPEI was allocated a site for the construction of a sports camp in Crimea, in the Аlush ta region, which later became a cult place for MPEI students.

Golubtsova actively helped employees in difficult moments of their lives: for many, she "knocked out" work cards and vouchers to a sanatorium. She did not expel Boris Chertok (in the future, a prominent figure in the Soviet rocket and space industry) from the MPEI for debt, and Vladimir Kotelnikov (later a radio physicist) covered up from the Minister of State Security Viktor Kotelnikov. Among the personal nominees of Golubtsova are MPEI graduates Vladimir Kotelnikov, Boris Chertok, Vladimir Kirillin, Alexander Sheindlin, Аlexei Vogomolov, and dozens of professors.

In 1952, after a serious illness, she was forced to leave the post of director and took up scientific work. From 1953 onwards, she was deputy director of the Institute of the History of Natural Science and Technology. In 1956 she defended her doctoral dissertation on the history of the development of cable technology in the USSR,[10] at the same time she was awarded the academic title of professor in the Department of General Electrical Engineering.

V. A. Golubtsova put forward the idea of publishing and became the editor-in-chief of the capital two-volume History of Power Engineering in the USSR (1957).

After her husband, Georgy Malenkov, was removed from all party and state posts in 1957, she followed him into exile in Oskemen, and later in Ekibastuz.[11] After the death of her mother-in-law in 1968, they moved to the village of Udelnaya in the Moscow region. In 1971, she was made a political pensioner.

From 1973 onward, she lived with her husband in Moscow, on 2 Sinichkina Street, in a two-room apartment. In 1980, by the order of Yuri Andropov, they were given a two-room apartment on the Frunzenskaya Embankment, where the couple spent the last years of their lives.[12]

Golubtsova died on 1 October 1987. She was buried with her husband at the Kuntsevo Cemetery in Moscow.