You are offered one seat on the Maksim Gorki - who do you send?

A convicted designer boards the Maksim Gorki to test a colossal state plane-who would you send when one seat decides a nation's pride?

You are offered one seat on the Maksim Gorki - who do you send?

In this episode, we follow the life and work that put Andrei Tupolev at the center of Soviet aviation and political contradiction. It covers his arrests, inventions, and the Maksim Gorki project, asking what choices people make when survival and state ambition collide.

Person: Andrei Nikolaevich Tupolev Date: born 10 November 1888; arrested October 1937; built Maksim Gorki 1934 Location: Bolshevo (Tupolevka); Moscow; Pustomazovo (birth village) Event: construction and testing of the Maksim Gorki, an eight-engine, 63-meter wingspan flying exhibition Institution: TsAGI (Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute)

- Tupolev built a wind tunnel and flew his first glider while a student under Nikolay Zhukovsky. - He was arrested in 1911 for revolutionary activity and exiled to his native village for three years. - By 1925 he designed the TB-1, an all-metal twin-engine bomber that defied skeptics. - In 1929 he led TsAGI and became the Soviet Union’s leading aeronautical designer by age forty. - The Maksim Gorki, completed in 1934, was a state-built, eight-engine, 63-meter wingspan aircraft intended as a flying propaganda exhibition.

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