Into the Cosmos Read online

  Soviet delegation immediately stirred public interest by announcing the

  visit route in local newspapers and thus attracted big crowds.109

  The propaganda work load on the cosmonauts was enormous. Dur-

  ing the years 1961–70, the cosmonauts made two hundred trips abroad;

  Tereshkova alone made forty-two foreign trips.110 She received by far the

  most invitations among the cosmonauts.111 Kamanin noted that “nobody

  could match her ability to evoke warm sympathy of the people.”112 As a

  result of overwork, Tereshkova’s postflight propaganda activities tired her

  out much more than preflight training and the mission itself, and she

  was growing increasingly irritable and losing her self-control.113 She was

  able to escape the political speech circuit only temporarily when she be-

  came pregnant. Doctors forbade her to travel after February 15, 1964.114

  Tereshkova was forced to do her propaganda job full-time almost to the

  last day: she returned from her trip to Africa on February 9.115 Her daugh-

  ter was barely two months old, when Kamanin urged Tereshkova to at-

  tend a ceremony commemorating Aviation Day, arguing that it was “time

  for her to show up in public.”116

  Because of the shroud of secrecy that surrounded Soviet rocketry,

  the leading designers of spacecraft remained anonymous, and the media

  often presented human spaceflights as cosmonauts’ personal achieve-

  ments. Some cosmonauts felt it was not fair to focus the spotlight on

  them at the expense of all other participants in the space program. A

  few weeks after his flight, Gagarin wrote a confidential letter to the chief

  marshal of aviation, Aleksandr Novikov: “There is a lot being said and

  written around the world about this event [Gagarin’s flight—S.G.]. I do

  not feel that I can or have the right to accept all this on my own account.

  If my contribution amounted even to one percent of everything that is

  being said, this already would have been the greatest reward for my deed.

  I know what our pilots had to endure during the Great Patriotic War.

  Their service and their hardships were so much greater than mine. I sim-

  ply happened to be in the epicenter of events.”117 The more public praise

  Gagarin received, the more uncomfortable he became with his public im-

  age. “It is awkward to be seen as a super-ideal person,” he later confessed.

  The Human inside a Propaganda Machine  95

  “It’s as if I always did everything right. But, like anybody else, I make

  many mistakes. I have my weaknesses. One shouldn’t idealize a person.

  One should take him just as he is in real life. It’s annoying when I’m por-

  trayed as a ‘sugar boy,’ who is so sweet that it’s nauseating.”118

  More than anyone, Gagarin felt the pressure of the propaganda

  windmill that crushed his dreams for another flight and turned him into

  a calcified symbol. “Gagarin is still hoping that one day he would fly into

  space again. It is unlikely that this will ever happen; he is too valuable for

  humanity to risk his life for an ordinary spaceflight,” reasoned Kama-

  nin.119 “I must try to convince him to give up flying and to prepare him-

  self for the position of one of the leaders of the Soviet space program.”120

  A leading space engineer who had many encounters with Gagarin re-

  marked: “Gagarin understood full well that he would no longer be able

  to serve as an active cosmonaut, that he became a symbol. It was painful,

  and it made him depressed, and he could not restrain himself from long-

  ing for another flight. Just imagine a young, daring, venturesome Gaga-

  rin, who says happily ‘Off we go!’ and flies the first into space, and then,

  in a little while, he sees himself as a wax figure in Madame Tussauds

  museum. This is an abomination. A normal man, full of life, cannot live

  like that; he would look for compensation.”121 And cosmonauts did look

  for compensation.

  The Human Side of a Public Icon

  The cosmonauts faced an impossible task—to fit into their assigned

  image of “an ideal citizen of an ideal state.”122 Even though they were

  specifically selected to have qualities best matching their future public

  mission, the challenge of coping with the burden of fame proved too dif-

  ficult for some. In 1961, Gagarin and Titov were elected delegates to the

  Twenty-second Congress of the Communist Party. The congress would

  adopt a new party program, which set a triple goal of creating a material

  and technical basis of Communism, forming the new communist social

  relations, and bringing up the New Soviet Man. Gagarin and Titov were

  supposed to sit in the presidium of the Congress and to showcase the

  tangible achievements of the regime both in high technology and in the

  upbringing of the New Man. They were to illustrate the new “Moral Code

  of the Builder of Communism,” with its calls for honesty, sincerity, moral

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  purity, and modesty. A few days before the Congress, however, the plans

  went awry: Gagarin broke a facial bone when jumping out of the window

  after what looked like a womanizing incident. Gagarin missed the open-

  ing of the Congress, and he and Titov were dropped from the Presidi-

  um list. Khrushchev was furious when he learned about the behavior of

  Gagarin, next to whom he had stood on top of Lenin’s mausoleum during

  the May Day celebrations just a few months earlier.123

  Once cosmonauts had flown their missions, they became celebrities

  and their lifestyle completely changed. Kamanin was showered with re-

  ports of their excessive drinking, drunken driving, and angry encounters

  with the police. The KGB submitted reports on cosmonauts’ misbehavior

  directly to the Party Central Committee, which set up a commission to

  investigate the failure of the Cosmonaut Training Center’s leadership to

  enforce discipline.124 The irony of the situation was that party and gov-

  ernment leaders themselves often invited cosmonauts to their private

  parties, where cosmonauts “got accustomed to drinking and became cor-

  rupted,” as Kamanin put it.125 Kamanin found himself in a double bind:

  he was reprimanded if cosmonauts misbehaved in public, but when he

  tried to limit cosmonauts’ private contacts with the political elites to con-

  tain their “corrupting” influence, he also got into trouble. “The leader-

  ship of the country fusses over the cosmonauts like a child over a new

  toy and showers praise, promotions and invitations on them out of the

  horn of plenty,” he remarked bitterly in his diary, while he was expected

  “to keep the cosmonauts in check and to be held responsible if they drink

  too much at an official reception and say or do something inappropriate

  under the influence.”126

  The cosmonauts received substantial material rewards and privi-

  leges, which placed them in the same bracket with the country’s elite.

  Lieutenant General Kamanin’s salary was only 15 percent higher than

  Major Gagarin’s.127 In addition to formal honors, the cosmonauts received

  handsome remuneration for completed spaceflights: a furnished luxury

  apartment, a luxury car, a
two-year salary bonus, and a long list of gifts

  for their families—from vacuum cleaners to handkerchiefs.128 A year of

  training in the cosmonaut group counted as three years of military ser-

  vice, and cosmonauts received accelerated promotions in rank.129 They re-

  ceived access to goods that were not available to ordinary Soviet citizens—

  for example, baby formula imported from Czechoslovakia and paid for in

  hard currency by special permission from the Ministry of Finance.130 The

  The Human inside a Propaganda Machine  97

  top brass of the Air Force and the Ministry of Defense grumbled about

  the cosmonauts’ perks, which were decided at a higher political level.131

  Kamanin privately suggested that the government’s provisions gave the

  members of the cosmonaut group “so much material wealth and so many

  privileges that there is no motivation for them to fly into space, especially

  to fly the second time.”132 He believed that an accelerated rise through the

  ranks could also be detrimental: “The character of most cosmonauts has

  not quite solidified, and this may damage it by planting the dubious no-

  tion that for them everything is permitted.”133

  As the popularity of the cosmonauts grew, it was becoming more

  and more difficult for Kamanin to control their behavior. He bitterly

  complained in his private diary that “the cosmonauts overestimate the

  significance of their personal accomplishments and take at face value ev-

  erything that is being written, said, and shown about every human space-

  flight in the media.”134 “Reinventing” themselves to fit their iconic image,

  the cosmonauts seemed to gradually internalize their public persona, just

  as an ordinary Soviet citizen in the 1930s who had to hide undesirable

  social origins and, in his words, “began to feel that I was the man I had

  pretended to be.”135 The newly acquired celebrity image did not square

  well with the daily routine of spaceflight training and strict military dis-

  cipline. The tension often resolved in violent outbursts.

  Excessive drinking and regime violations plagued the cosmonaut

  corps. When a spree of drinking parties and auto accidents involving

  Titov culminated in the death of Titov’s passenger, Kamanin ran out of

  patience. He called a meeting of the cosmonaut group and told Titov in

  front of the whole gathering: “With your own misdeeds, you have put

  yourself outside the party and outside the cosmonaut group. There is a

  strong basis for expelling you from the party and depriving you of all your

  titles: a deputy, a Hero, a cosmonaut pilot, and a lieutenant colonel.” But

  taking into account Titov’s world fame, reasoned Kamanin, “Titov’s dis-

  grace would be a disgrace for all the cosmonauts, for all Soviet people. We

  cannot afford that.”136 Titov received a strict reprimand, a demotion, and

  a temporary ban on public appearances, attending receptions, and driv-

  ing a car, but his transgressions were kept under wraps, and he contin-

  ued to represent the New Soviet Man in public. The cosmonaut Leonov’s

  drunken driving led to two serious traffic accidents in four months, and

  Kamanin personally imposed a six-month ban on his driving.137 The cos-

  monaut Popovich also got into trouble for drinking and brawling. He got

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  a black eye and had to miss a session of the Twenty-third Party Congress.

  Kamanin fired him from the position of deputy head of the cosmonaut

  team and suspended his training but did not object to electing Popovich

  a member of the Supreme Soviet.138

  The attempts to make the cosmonauts into exemplary Communists

  proceeded with considerable difficulty. Cosmonauts privately exchanged

  political jokes, such as the double-entendre slogan, “Officers of the Mis-

  sile Forces, our target is Communism!” Even some of their supervisors

  laughed at ideological clichés. One cosmonaut recalled that the deputy

  director of the Cosmonaut Training Center in charge of political edu-

  cation “understood everything, believed that the cosmonauts would not

  give him away, and did not make pretenses with us. . . . When asked ‘How

  are things?’ he invariably replied, ‘Our country is on the rise.’ If we mock-

  ingly asked ‘And how is the party?’ he replied with an equal measure of

  irony, ‘The party teaches us that heated gases expand.’”139

  Although cosmonauts were allowed some license in private jokes,

  any hint at serious political dissent was quickly suppressed. For example,

  at a political education session in early 1964 the cosmonaut candidate

  Eduard Kugno raised some controversial questions, such as “Why do we

  have only one political party?” and “Why do we send assistance to other

  countries, while there are shortages inside the country?” This was im-

  mediately reported to his superiors.140 Furthermore, when asked why

  he did not join the Communist Party, Kugno replied, “I will not join a

  party of swindlers and sycophants!” Kamanin quickly judged that Kug-

  no was “ideologically and morally unsteady” and expelled him from the

  cosmonaut corps.141 Kamanin privately used even stronger expressions

  condemning the incompetence and corruption of the Soviet leadership,

  but he was outraged by Kugno’s unwillingness to play by the rules and to

  restrict his remarks to the private sphere.

  The cosmonaut supervisors’ greatest fear was to see a flown cosmo-

  naut use his or her celebrity status for a public expression of political dis-

  sent. When the deputy chief of the Air Force heard that two cosmonaut

  trainees had raised some criticism at a meeting at the Cosmonaut Train-

  ing Center, he reacted at once: “Expel both. If they give such speeches

  while still on training, what will they say after returning from space?”142

  These fears were not entirely groundless. After returning from space,

  cosmonauts did use their newly acquired popularity in the ways that did

  not always please their superiors.

  The Human inside a Propaganda Machine  99

  Cosmonauts Speak Out

  The cosmonauts found it difficult to reconcile their professional

  selves with the ideal public image assigned to them. Many of them felt

  uncomfortable about the unrestrained public praise and the monuments

  erected in their honor. The cosmonaut Leonov, for example, defied a

  government decree and objected to the installation of his bust, which

  remained in the sculptor’s studio for twenty-eight years.143 The role of

  a public figure giving incessant speeches did not appeal to the cosmo-

  nauts originally trained as fighter pilots. When meeting with American

  astronauts, the cosmonauts often forgot about their ideological mission

  and engaged in purely professional talk. Having met the astronaut John

  Glenn during his visit to the United States in 1962, Titov particularly

  remarked about Glenn’s “tenacious professional gaze of the pilot” and ad-

  mitted that when the cosmonaut and the astronaut met, they were “con-

  nected by everything they had experienced and lived through in space.”144

  Most cosmonauts preferred training for new spaceflights to public


  appearances. Gagarin, losing patience, once flatly refused to meet with

  TV correspondents from East Germany, for which he was reprimanded

  by Kamanin.145 Tereshkova long resisted Kamanin’s attempts to turn her

  into a professional politician and even enrolled in the Air Force Engineer-

  ing Academy, hoping to retain her qualifications for another spaceflight.

  Kamanin was convinced, however, that “Tereshkova as the head of a So-

  viet women’s organization and of international women’s organizations

  would do for our country and for our party a thousand times more than

  she can do in space.”146 Eventually he prevailed, and Tereshkova left the

  cosmonaut corps and served as the head of the Soviet Women’s Commit-

  tee for more than twenty years. Tirelessly rehearsing with cosmonauts

  their speeches, editing their memoirs, monitoring their private lives, and

  guiding their careers, Kamanin was more than anyone responsible for

  shaping the cosmonauts’ self. He was quite justified in his confession in

  a private dairy that “it was I who created Tereshkova as the most famous

  woman in the world.”147

  Cosmonauts gradually developed an independent voice. They started

  by criticizing the harsh disciplinary regime at the Cosmonaut Training

  Center. In February 1963 they staged a “battle” (as Kamanin termed it)

  against the recently appointed head of the Center, Lieutenant General

  100  Slava Gerovitch

  Mikhail Odintsov. A group of cosmonauts led by Gagarin organized a

  party meeting, at which they complained about work overload and Od-

  intsov’s heavy-handed management style.148 Kamanin eventually took the

  cosmonauts’ side and, when Odintsov continued to ignore cosmonauts’

  critique, replaced him.

  Soon cosmonauts moved on to more ambitious attempts to influence

  space policy on the government level. Mingling with the political elite

  at high-level receptions, cosmonauts enjoyed unique access to the Soviet

  leaders, which even their military superiors did not possess. In August

  1965, after the successful completion of an impressive eight-day mission

  of Gemini V, Kamanin decided to petition the Soviet leadership for a fundamental change in the organization of the space program to catch up

  with the Americans.149 He realized that this proposal would be much

  more effective if it came not from him, but from the well-known flown