Loss of Power in The Soviet Union
After Khruschev's removal from office in late 1964, the ageing Tupolev gradually lost positions at the centres of power to rivals. Though the prestige Tu-144 programme enjoyed top level support until 1973, as did the important Tu-154 airliner, the favored position the Tupolev Design Bureau enjoyed through Tupolev’s personal political connections was largely eclipsed by Ilyushin.
To his contemporaries, Tupolev was known as a witty but crude master of mat (a rapid-fire Russian male-speak infused with obscenity) who invariably and energetically insisted on fast and adequate technical fixes at the expense of scholastic ideal solutions. A hallmark of his was to get an aeroplane into service very rapidly; then began an often interminable process of improving the shortcomings of the "quick and dirty" initial design. To his competitors among the Soviet aircraft design community, he was known above all as politically astute; a shrewd and unforgiving rival.
Tupolev was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.
Read more about this topic: Andrei Tupolev
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