Into the Cosmos Page 23
To offset the narrowly individualistic motivations of “bourgeois” pet
keeping, postwar dog care manuals cited dogs’ long-standing collabora-
tion with humans and their “service” to the Soviet state as evidence of
canine loyalty and devotion.61 The celebrity of individual dogs and the
contributions of dogs to military endeavors and Soviet science validated
the status and reinforced perceptions of the ideal pet. Dogs’ service dur-
ing the war as messengers and bomb detectors, as well as in first aid and
search-and-rescue was particularly important, serving as a starting point
for many postwar commentaries on the place of dogs in contemporary
urban life.62
Ironically, the heroism of the canine veterans was grounded both in
their contribution to the decidedly human enterprise of the Soviet war ef-
fort and the fact that the dogs’ nonhuman status and distinctively canine
qualities made these contributions possible. They were used as mine
detectors and messengers because they had physical attributes humans
lacked (such as a keen sense of smell). They were deployed in missions
deemed too dangerous for people (such as taking medical supplies to
besieged troops). With the space dogs this appreciation of canine achieve-
ment precisely for its incalculable service to human causes was even
more pronounced. When the National Canine Defence League protested
on Laika’s behalf in front of the Soviet embassy in London, the Soviet
spokesman passionately insisted that “Russians love dogs too,” but as-
serted that sacrifices had to be made. He claimed that his own family
had donated its German shepherd to the army during the war.63 After
150 Amy Nelson
1957, Soviet dog-care books invariably paid homage to the space dogs,
especially Laika. Using the quintessentially Russian concept of the podvig
(feat) to characterize the space dogs’ exploits, these books extended the
recognition of the extraordinary courage and self-sacrifice displayed by
saints and military heroes to dogs. 64 Official canine heroism and sacrifice
for the greater Soviet cause reinforced and mirrored the personal loyalty
and devotion of the family dog.
Companion Species in Cold War Science
Cold War enmity provided ample fuel for Western outrage over the
use of dogs in space research, and the Soviets were quick to confront the
hypocrisy of Western concerns about Laika.65 After all, the United States
was using animals to develop its own manned space program, and bio-
medical research was undergoing massive expansion in the industrial-
ized West. Yet the outcry over Laika arose precisely at the moment when
an ongoing struggle between researchers and animal welfare groups over
the use of dogs, especially stolen pets in medical and pharmaceutical re-
search, was entering an acute phase.66 In an effort to counter activists’
criticisms of the cruelties sustained by “man’s best friend” in the labora-
tory, the National Society for Medical Research had recently inaugurated
the Research Hero Dog program to recognize dogs who had made impor-
tant contributions to scientific research. At the same time journals such
as the Journal of Experimental Medicine were adopting editorial guide-
lines intended to make published material about laboratory procedures
and experimental animals more innocuous and generic.67
Domestically, the Soviets did not face the same constraints that re-
searchers in the West were working so diligently to neutralize. Oppo-
sition to vivisection had been effectively eliminated by the Bolsheviks,
and in the 1950s such movements were scorned as sentimental bourgeois
impediments to the advance of scientific knowledge. Nonetheless, public-
ity about the dogs was sometimes ambivalent, reflecting the unique con-
tours of a rich scientific tradition founded by Ivan Pavlov, whose research
on conditional reflexes, digestion, and the nervous system was largely
based on experiments on dogs. Indeed, dogs were chosen for space re-
search in part because, thanks to Pavlov, so much was known about their
physiology and their suitability to “chronic” experiments.68
Cold War Celebrity and the Courageous Canine Scout 151
Researchers’ treatment of the space dogs and discussions of the
dogs in the Soviet press perpetuated one of the most distinctive quali-
ties of Pavlov’s own practices—namely, the tension between his stance
as a neutral scientist investigating indifferent, natural material and his
involved even sentimental attachment to experimental subjects.69 Rather
than deny that the lives or treatment of the dogs mattered (because they
were not human), publicity about the space dogs reflected a recognition
of canine-human interdependence, and the unique capacities of dogs as
“friends” of humanity and “servants” of science.
In response to Western criticism, Soviet journalists claimed that sci-
entists had taken great care to ensure that Laika would not suffer, citing
one of Pavlov’s well-known sayings inscribed on the memorial to his labo-
ratory dogs at the Institute of Experimental Medicine in Leningrad: “Let
the dog, man’s helper and friend since prehistoric times, be sacrificed
for science. But our dignity obligates us to do this only when necessary
and always without unnecessary torment.”70 Others lauded the “trust”
humans had invested in the dogs chosen to perform this “service to hu-
manity” by citing Pavlov’s claim that “the dog, thanks to its long attrac-
tion to humans, and its quick-witted patience and obedience, serves the
experimenter with a certain joy . . . sometimes for its whole life.”71 This
tension between regarding dogs as helpmates, servants, and friends and
the compulsion to “sacrifice” them for science had complex and often
contradictory implications. On the one hand, the dogs were treated and
represented as unique individuals. Detailed records were kept of their
individual preferences and responses to experimental conditions. They
were given names and interacted with in ways that enabled the people
who worked with them to describe their “personality.” Yazdovsky remem-
bered Laika as a “delightful, calm, sweet dog.”72 Scientists described Bel-
ka as “happy” and “gentle,” while Strelka was “sharp-witted.”73
On the other hand, in keeping with Pavlovian tradition, contempo-
rary practice turned an assortment of unrelated stray dogs into an ar-
ray of collaboratively manufactured biotechnologies designed to generate
correct ( pravil’nye) scientific data. Dogs selected for orbital flights underwent surgery to have the carotid artery rerouted to the outside of the neck
inside a fold of skin. Once the wound had healed, the dogs were trained to
tolerate the attachment of a blood pressure cuff to the fold. They also had
monitors implanted to enable researchers to assess pulse, respiration,
152 Amy Nelson
and heart function before, during, and after flights. The “space suits”
they wore for press conferences concealed the monitoring wires and scars
associated with these implants. Underpi
nning discourses about the indi-
viduality of these exceptional but “ordinary” dogs, then, was a powerful
impetus to use them as a “technology.”74
Published information about the dogs’ “training program” often
made them sound like athletes or circus animals, and Gazenko did enlist
the aid of an experienced trainer from the legendary Durov circus to work
with the dogs.75 But the experimental regimen of the institute’s laboratory
could be brutal and often had devastating consequences. To accustom the
dogs to the cramped quarters of the space capsule, they were confined
in increasingly smaller cages, for up to twenty days at a time, usually in
complete isolation and silence. They were “conditioned” to withstand the
stresses of rocket launches in centrifuges, catapults, and on vibrostands.76
Television monitors of Belka and Strelka in flight revealed terrified, help-
less animals, who tried to bite through their shackles, twitched convul-
sively, and vomited, prompting Yazdovsky to limit the first human flight
to a single orbit. Very few of the many deaths and injuries sustained by
the dogs were acknowledged in the press.
Privately, recognition of the “sacrifices” made by the dogs and the
emotional bonds that developed between test animals and researchers
became evident at multiple levels, beginning with the first vertical flights
in 1951, when Anatoly Blagonravov, who chaired the state commission
overseeing the biological launches, decided to adopt Tsygan as a pet rath-
er than subject the dog to more rocket launches.77 The rocket designer
Boris Chertok recalled the tenderness with which the normally gruff
Korolev caressed his “favorite” dog, Lisichka, just before her disastrous
launch in July 1960.78 Before Laika’s journey Yazdovsky took her home to
play with his children because he “wanted to do something nice for the
dog. She had only a very short time to live, you see.”79 On the morning
of the launch, after Laika already had been confined to the space capsule
for three full days, technicians scrambled to pet the dog and ordered her
a “last supper” from the cosmodrome’s cafeteria, consisting of soup, a
main course, and dessert.80
Although everyone knew that Laika was doomed, the details of her
fate remained a secret until 2002. For decades published sources in the
Soviet Union maintained that Laika died painlessly after her oxygen sup-
ply ran out on the seventh day of her flight. But speculation about what had
Cold War Celebrity and the Courageous Canine Scout 153
“really happened” abounded. Some maintained that Laika’s final portion
of food was poisoned or that a deadly gas was injected into her capsule.81
In the 1990s Russian sources revealed that problems with the thermal-
control system had caused overheating in the dog’s capsule, causing her
to succumb to heat exhaustion after four days in orbit.82 Finally, in 2002
a researcher at the Institute for Biological Problems in Moscow revealed
new information about the design of Laika’s spacecraft, including details
of the life-support system and the monitoring of the dog’s movements,
respiration rate, maximum arterial pressure, and electrocardiogram val-
ues via telemetry to the ground. She had indeed survived the launch into
orbit, although increased pulse and respiration rates indicated that she
was stressed during the peak acceleration phase of the flight. At the start
of weightlessness, these values returned to near normal. But telemetry
also showed that the temperature and humidity inside the dog’s cabin
increased steadily. When the satellite was on its third orbit of Earth, the
transmissions from the dog ceased. She had survived for about six hours
after the launch.83 Although the value of Laika’s “sacrifice” was imme-
diately acknowledged, that recognition was qualified with a regret best
articulated in 1998 by Oleg Gazenko, one of the physicians who oversaw
the space dog program: “The more time passes the more I am sorry about
it. We did not learn enough from the mission to justify the death of a
dog.”84
A Legacy of Celebrity and Sacrifice
For nearly all of the space dogs, fame would be fleeting, as the world’s
attention quickly shifted from their exploits to the even more compelling
drama of human space travel and exploration. Laika, however, proved to
be the exception. The significance of her voyage and the fact of her death
informed an enduring celebrity and complex memory. Soviet tributes to
the canine pioneer began within a year of her journey. Soon after her
flight a brass tag was attached to her kennel with the inscription: “Here
lived the dog Laika, the first to orbit our planet on an Earth satellite, No-
vember 3, 1957.”85 In keeping with a well-established tradition of com-
memorating historic events and individuals, the Soviet mint issued an
enamel pin of “The First Passenger in Space,” showing the dog’s head
and a rocket hovering over Earth on a field of stars. Official commemora-
tions in other countries soon followed, as stamps bearing the dog’s like-
154 Amy Nelson
ness were issued in Romania (1957), Albania (1962), Sharjah/Mongolia
(1963), Poland (1964), and North Korea (1987).86 In the fall of 1958, the
Soviet Union began to market its first filtered cigarette, using Laika’s
name and image on the wrapper and initiating a now fifty-year-old pro-
cess of commodification and “branding” of the space dog.87
While pins and stamps provided fairly straightforward mementos of
a famous individual and a significant milestone, other tributes to the first
space dog support this chapter’s claim about the dog’s unique place in
human history. Laika is the only nonhuman depicted on the high-relief
at the base of the monument “To the Conquerors of Space,” which was
dedicated at the Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy in
Moscow (VDNKh) in 1964. Since the late 1980s, echoes of Laika’s im-
mediate celebrity have inspired an array of creative endeavors, including
a number of literary works, Web sites, and a diverse and expanding cor-
pus of music emanating from various points around the northern hemi-
sphere and the transnational arena of cyberspace.88
The original scholarly conception of “boundary objects” and prac-
tices of translation examined the process by which such objects funneled
conciliation from different social worlds inward to the nexus of scientific
work in a natural history museum.89 Turning this process on its head,
this chapter has shown how the space dogs’ liminal status resonated out-
ward from scientists and engineers in the laboratory and the dogs’ space
capsules in the heavens to the public sphere of politicians, concerned
citizens, and other human constituencies around the globe. As boundary
objects, the canine cosmonauts played an important role in the produc-
tion of knowledge about outer space and the quest to send humans there.
They also provided a flashpoint for debates about the use of animals, es-
pecially dogs, in biomedical research and the
mobilization of public in-
terest in the space race. Their exploits helped shape the geopolitics of the
Cold War. Foreshadowing staple features of the popular imaginary about
cosmonauts and astronauts, the media cast the space dogs as “heroes”
and “brave scouts.” Photographs, cartoons, and other representations of
the dogs consistently situated them at the nexus of the fundamental yet
contested domains of humans versus animal, natural versus technologi-
cal, and terrestrial versus outer space. Once the era of human space travel
was at hand, however, the dogs’ role as scouts and heroes quickly faded
and was replaced with images of them as experimental animals.90 The
master narrative of the space race needed to be a human drama after all.
Cold War Celebrity and the Courageous Canine Scout 155
Like other boundary objects, the space dogs were effective because
they were simultaneously concrete and abstract—specific individu-
als representing both the general category of research subject and the
even broader category of “dog” with all of its attendant resonances.91 As
dogs, they originated in and inhabited multiple social arenas, provid-
ing an intelligible interface between the conceptual worlds of scientists,
adventurers, politicians, and pet lovers. Of the many artistic tributes to
Laika that have appeared since the launch of Sputnik 2, perhaps Leonid
Vyshslavsky’s poem “In Memory of Laika” best evokes the ways in which
her contemporaries saw their dreams and destinies linked to and carried
out by a diminutive dog: “In your eyes I did not see fear / as they heeded
the human call / licked sugar from a palm one last time / and—set off
for the constellation of the Hunting Dogs!” Sketching in the evolutionary
ties binding humans to domestic canines, the poem celebrates a long
history of collaborative life and labor: “In the darkness of the ages, I—the
woodcutter and the plowman— / shared my roof and food with you /
with you I fell and rose from the ashes / for new trials and labors.” The
space dogs functioned variously and sometimes simultaneously as hu-
man stand-ins, technologies, servants, and victims, but Vyshslavsky lo-
cates Laika the dog as an essential companion to human history: “And
so today, having become a giant / I go with you, my friend into space!”92