Nikolai Vasilievich Nikitin is a renowned Soviet architect and civil engineer, a specialist in reinforced concrete structures. He lived only 65 years and has long been no longer with us, but the outstanding architectural structures designed by him "live" and benefit people: the Ostankino TV tower, the building of the Moscow University, the Luzhniki stadium, the sculpture "The Motherland Calls!" in Volgograd - the list is truly impressive.
Childhood and youth
The Nikitin family has long lived in the Siberian city of Tobolsk in the Tyumen region. The father of the future architect, Vasily Vasilyevich Nikitin, was an active and enterprising person: in the early 1900s he left for Chita, where he worked as a typesetter in a printing house for several years; in 1905 he participated in the revolutionary movement, was arrested and deported back to Tobolsk. Together with him came his young wife Olga Nikolaevna Nikitina (Borozdina). Vasily Vasilyevich found a job in another specialty: he became a secretary and clerk in the Tobolsk provincial court. On December 2 (15 old style), 1907, a son, Nikolai, was born to the Nikitins, and two years later, a daughter, Valentina, was born.
But the head of the family did not sit still: in 1911, together with the whole family, he moved to the city of Ishim and opened a private law practice. Olga Nikolaevna, who previously worked as a retoucher and helped her father, a photographer, opened her own photo studio. In addition, she paid attention to children, studied grammar, reading, arithmetic and drawing with them, therefore, when in 1915 8-year-old Kolya came to enter the parish school, he already knew how to read and write fluently. Two years later, the boy graduated with honors from two classes of this school, and he was immediately admitted to the men's gymnasium. But Nikolai did not study there for long - he finished only the 1st grade: the prosperous life of the family was interrupted by the civil war. The Reds advanced, and in the fall of 1919, together with Kolchak's detachments, Nikitins left for the city of Novo-Nikolaevsk (Novosibirsk).
Hard times came: they could not find a job, they had to live in the damp basements of the beggar and the criminal district "Nakhalovka". Nikolai had to take on household chores: haul water from the river, chop wood, and even cook molasses on the stove, which he himself had made of old bricks. The young man was strong built and very strong physically - he could, for example, swim across the Ob. But one day a misfortune happened to him: in the summer of 1924, Nikolai was picking berries in the taiga, and he was bitten by a viper, on which he stepped with his bare foot. For six months he was in the hospital, it was even about the amputation of his leg, but then everything worked out. For another six months Nikitin walked on crutches, then he learned to walk on his own, but the limp remained for life.
Secondary and higher education
In Novo-Nikolaevsk Nikitin graduated with honors from the Timiryazev Soviet School No. 12. His favorite subject was mathematics, and he wanted to enter a university to study mechanics and mathematics. However, when he came to enter Tomsk at the Dzerzhinsky Siberian Technological Institute, vacancies were only at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, of which Nikolai Nikitin became a student in 1925. He studied at the architectural department, and here the drawing skills that he received as a child came in handy. It was here, under the leadership of an outstanding civil engineer, Professor Nikolai Ivanovich Molotilov, student Nikolai Nikitin first became interested, and then literally fell ill with reinforced concrete structures, designing buildings and structures made of this material. The talent and dedication of the young man did not go unnoticed: he was appointed head of the design bureau, cooperating with the Kuznetsk Metallurgical Plant and developing for him a method for calculating reinforced concrete standard structures.
Career and creativity
In 1930, Nikolai Vasilyevich received a diploma from the Siberian Institute of Technology (now Tomsk Polytechnic University) about higher education and left for Novosibirsk, where, as an architect, Nikitin designed city buildings, and then, together with Moscow architects, participated in the construction of the Novosibirsk city station, made amendments and improvements in the project, in particular, he developed arched reinforced concrete floors, for which he would later become a famous specialist.
In the same period, Yuri Vasilyevich Kondratyuk (Alexander Ignatievich Shargei), an outstanding civil engineer, and also the author of the calculation of the optimal trajectory of a space flight to the Moon, lived and worked in Novosibirsk. Nikitin and Kondratyuk met and became true friends and like-minded people. In 1932, Kondratyuk applied for a competition for projects of a wind power plant in the Crimea, on Mount Ai-Petri, and invited Nikitin to cooperate. Nikitin developed a unique reinforced concrete structure, from the side resembling an airplane with two motors, standing on a wing: it is a 150-meter pole rotating under the influence of the wind, on which wind wheels are fixed, each with a diameter of 80 meters. Such a power plant would be able to provide electricity to a significant part of the Crimean peninsula. The project of Kondratyuk and Nikitin won the competition, construction began, but, unfortunately, it was not completed due to political reasons. However, the calculations that Nikolai Nikolayevich made at this construction site were later useful to him during the construction of the Ostankino TV tower: the construction of high-rise reinforced concrete structures using the sliding formwork method, the effect of wind load, etc.
In 1937, Nikolai Vasilyevich was invited to Moscow to work in a design workshop - a grandiose project was being prepared for the construction of the Palace of Soviets on the site of the destroyed Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Since the building was supposed to be of an impressive height - 420 meters with a statue of Lenin at the top, Nikitin, as a specialist in high-rise reinforced concrete structures and wind load on them, performed the calculations of the foundation and frame. At the beginning of World War II, construction was stopped, and then completely closed.
The Great Patriotic War
The sore leg did not allow Nikolai Nikitin to go to the front. And he worked with the obsession of a workaholic in Moscow: he developed projects for the rapid construction of industrial and military plants and factories, which were massively evacuated to the rear. Since 1942, Nikitin began working at the Moscow Promstroyproekt.
The war brought a lot of grief to all people, and Nikitin was not spared either. In 1942, his friend and colleague Yuri Kondratyuk, who volunteered to fight, was killed at the front. In the same year, Nikitin's father Vasily Vasilyevich was repressed and shot (rehabilitated in 1989).
Architectural masterpieces by Nikitin
Nikolai Nikitin created his main architectural masterpieces after the war. In 1949, construction began on the building of the Moscow State University - one of the famous Moscow "skyscrapers". The initial conditions were rather difficult: unstable ground, wind load, etc. Nikitin proposed such technical solutions that made it possible to build a building "for centuries", resistant to all kinds of external and internal influences and loads.
Another grandiose structure, in the construction of which Nikolai Nikitin took part, was the monument "The Motherland Calls!" - a monument to the heroes of the Battle of Stalingrad in Volgograd. Together with the sculptor Yevgeny Viktorovich Vuchetich, Nikitin designed a complex multi-chamber reinforced concrete structure, hollow inside, 85 meters high. At the time of its construction in 1959, this statue was the tallest in the world.
During these years Nikitin worked as the Chief Designer of the Research Institute for Experimental Design. He was also involved in projects such as the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow, the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw, a 4-kilometer-high skyscraper for Japanese customers (not completed), developed industrial types of residential new buildings, etc. In 1966, Nikolai Vasilievich received his doctorate in technical sciences.
Ostankino Tower
The Ostankino Tower is the main creation of the design engineer Nikolai Vasilyevich Nikitin. He conceived the project back in 1958, and on September 27, 1960, construction began. It is an incredibly daring design for a 540-meter-high tower supported from the inside by steel cables.
Disputes over the strength of the structure lasted for a long time, Nikitin was constantly tormented by claims, criticism, objections and prohibitions. But one way or another, on November 5, 1967, the building of the Ostankino television tower was put into operation, and for more than half a century it has been serving people. Even a fire in August 2000 could not destroy the structure created by Nikitin: the tower withstood the colossal temperature load, was repaired and worked again at full strength. Chief Designer Nikitin in 1970 was awarded the Lenin Prize, as well as the title of Honored Builder of the RSFSR.
The nervous tension during the construction of the Ostankino tower did not pass without leaving a trace for its creator. In addition, the children's leg injury began to progress - an ulcer formed in place of the old scars, which grew rapidly. A year before the completion of the construction of the Ostankino tower, Nikitin underwent an operation to amputate his leg, but he could not defeat the disease. On March 3, 1973, Nikolai Vasilyevich Nikitin passed away. They buried him at the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow, next to the grave of the famous S. P. Queen. A plaque with a laconic inscription: "Engineer Nikolai Vasilyevich Nikitin" is attached to the monument on the grave of an outstanding person.
Personal life
Nikolai Nikolaevich Nikitin was married, his wife's name was Ekaterina Mikhailovna, it is known that she suffered from a mental illness and was often treated in psychiatric clinics, she died in 1978. The spouses Nikitins had a son named after his father Nikolai. As a child, he was a sickly boy - neurodermatitis and other skin diseases forced his parents to take their son to mud and hydrogen sulfide resorts in Pyatigorsk or Crimea. Father read a lot to little Kolya - the works of Stevenson, Jules Verne, subscribed for him the magazine "Young Technician" and "Technique for Youth". Nikitin Jr. studied excellently, graduated from the Landau School with a silver medal, then graduated from the Moscow Power Engineering Institute, defended his Ph. D. and began working on his doctoral dissertation. But all this was interrupted by the death of Nikolai Nikolaevich at the age of 40 from cancer. His widow Natalia Evgenievna and son Igor - the grandson of Nikolai Vasilyevich Nikitin - live in Moscow.
