Into the Cosmos Read online

cal pronouncements tended to be tempered by attention to the obstacles

  to be overcome along the way. The Communist project, as outlined in

  Soviet ideology of the early 1960s, required nothing less than a spiri-

  tual transformation within each individual separately, and all individu-

  als collectively—a reformation of social behavior and relations, morals,

  and values, without which the collective utopia remained unattainable.

  The Soviet space program manifested almost miraculously to provide a

  platform from which such a leap could be made. Immediately, popular

  ideological discourse represented Soviet supremacy in the exploration of

  the cosmos as an almost millenarian inevitability. The series of Soviet

  space “firsts”—the first artificial satellite, the first human in space, the

  first woman in space—were credited not just to the superiority of Soviet

  science and technology, but to the very spiritual fabric of Soviet socialist

  society.126

  Soviet atheism sought to offer its own epistemological and moral po-

  sitions and, over the course of the Khrushchev decade, saw the real and

  symbolic force of Soviet space achievements as the most powerful weap-

  on in antireligious propaganda and atheist education. In the utopian uni-

  verse of Marxism-Leninism, cosmonauts—perhaps uniquely—bridged

  the distance between the scientific and the philosophical, the real and the

  ideal. Their fearlessness and positive, life-affirming attitude made them

  icons of the limitless human potential that Marxism-Leninism promised

  to all Soviet citizens. Their voyages, both in life and to space, were put

  192  Victoria Smolkin-Rothrock

  forth as a counterexample and an antidote to the fear and weakness that

  atheists claimed were cultivated by religion. This fact not only makes So-

  viet cosmic enthusiasm an important prism through which to study the

  process of ideological socialization; it reveals important insights into how

  atheists understood the nature of religion and the social function of re-

  ligiosity.

  The story of space enthusiasm in Soviet atheism highlights trans-

  formations in how religion was understood and approached over the

  course of the Khrushchev era and suggests the implications these trans-

  formations had on the future of Soviet atheist education and the fate of

  Marxism-Leninism. The Khrushchev-era atheist campaign produced two

  distinct yet related results. The trials and errors of atheist agitators initi-

  ated a reconsideration of Marxist-Leninist positions on the nature and

  future of religion. The failure of religion to “wither away”—even under

  the seemingly conclusive blow dealt to religious cosmologies by scientific

  progress in general and Soviet space exploration in particular—needed,

  on the one hand, a better explanation and, on the other hand, more effec-

  tive methodological approaches. While the beginning of the Khrushchev-

  era atheist campaign was driven by a view of religion as a set of unen-

  lightened beliefs and primitive practices that continued as a result of a

  kind of historical inertia, Soviet atheists soon realized that the very es-

  sence and dynamics of religious belief had transformed. Indeed, they

  came to suspect that it was their own theories and methods that were

  primitive and that needed to be modernized to keep pace.

  When Soviet atheists attempted to fight faith with fact, they encoun-

  tered a population that often seemed untroubled by the contradictions

  they so ardently tried to unmask and instead reconciled scientific and

  religious cosmologies in unexpected ways. The worldviews Soviet athe-

  ists found on the ground ranged from unsystematic, to eclectic, to what

  today would probably be called secular—that is, worldviews that relied on

  science for explanations of the material world and religion for explana-

  tions of the spiritual realm. Indicative in this respect are the responses of

  Ul’iana Andreevna Lukina of Ivanovo region to a sociological survey on

  the “Contemporary believer’s perception of God” (Predstavleniia sovre-

  mennogo veruiushchego o boge) conducted by the Institute of Scientif-

  ic Atheism in 1964 and 1965. When asked how she combines, in her

  mind, the idea of God with the laws of the universe, Lukina replied that

  “she never occupies herself with speculations about the universe.” When

  Cosmic Enlightenment  193

  asked what she thought about the fact that spaceships had flown to space,

  Lukina’s answer was: “So they flew, so what? There was a time when I

  barely made it from here to Ufa, and now it is possible to go twice a week.

  God has nothing to do with it. God, after all, is within us.” When asked

  for her thoughts on the subject in general, Lukina concluded: “What is

  the point of thinking about this? It’s just somehow more peaceful with

  God.”127

  New attempts to address and reconcile the paradox of modern belief

  continued to occupy Soviet ideologists until the end of the Soviet period

  as various hypotheses for the persistence of religion in the modern world

  were tried and disproved, and atheist methods tested without producing

  desired results. Moreover, throughout the 1960s novel theories about the

  nature of religion led to new methods in atheist propaganda, so that the

  main weapon in the arsenal of atheist education was increasingly seen

  to be philosophy rather than science. This shift in atheist theories and

  practices significantly transformed the landscape of Soviet belief, both

  religious and atheist. Finally, it also made Soviet atheists aware of the

  philosophical, or perhaps more accurately spiritual, vacuum that opened

  up when religious cosmologies were contested by atheist propaganda, al-

  though few at this point articulated the implications that this vacuum, if

  taken to its logical conclusion, might have for Marxism-Leninism. Never-

  theless, having reached a zenith in the early 1960s, cosmic enthusiasm

  began to wane. One important reason for the decline in enthusiasm is

  that the narratives of Soviet space achievements and of Soviet atheism,

  until this point fellow travelers, experienced a parting of ways.

  The story of the conquest of the cosmos in Soviet atheism also lays

  bare the paradox of the attempt to invest scientific materialism with a

  spiritual center. Not only did Soviet space achievements fail to produce

  mass religious disbelief, they also revealed the ideological pitfalls of the

  utopia promised by Marxism-Leninism. Cosmonauts occupied the space

  between utopia and reality, and became a vehicle for the management of

  the desire, longing, and faith generated by religious, ideological, and cos-

  mological utopias. In the broader project of scientific enlightenment, cos-

  monauts became the consecrated objects of popular devotion. Through

  their charisma, the average Soviet person could access the ideological en-

  thusiasm that was habitually required in Soviet citizens, and in effect be

  transformed, even converted, by the experience. Yet, as ideological mod-

  els, cosmonauts remained removed from the Soviet masses by an impen-

  194  Victoria Smolkin-Rothrock

&n
bsp; etrable curtain. The path to the heavens was available to the few, not to

  the many, and ultimately the vast majority of Soviet citizens remained at

  best only “half-cosmonauts.”

  As time passed, the distance between Soviet reality and Marxist-Le-

  ninist ideals grew so great that the iconography of cosmonauts and space

  exploration began to get primarily ironic treatments, indicating that Soviet space enthusiasm was coming to an end. Vladimir Voinovich’s dystopian

  novella Moscow 2042 (1982) depicts Communism as having finally been

  realized in the future, except that it is concentrated in one postapocalyptic

  city-state: Moscow. The city’s Communist leader, while revered on Earth,

  is essentially exiled to a spaceship to keep his sacred aura intact and is, in

  effect, a permanent if unwilling cosmonaut.128 The Moscow conceptualist

  Il’ia Kabakov, meanwhile, constructed an individual dystopia in his 1981–

  88 installation, “The Man Who Flew to Space from His Apartment.” His

  installation depicts a homespun contraption for space travel created by

  an impatient Soviet citizen, a person the critic Boris Groys describes as

  an “illegitimate cosmonaut.”129 Finally, returning to Pelevin’s childhood

  utopia, the contents of the mysterious suitcase that the cosmonauts

  carried with them on their journeys are finally revealed to the curious

  Pelevin to be . . . excrement—a revelation that transforms cosmic enthu-

  siasm into a parable of dystopia. “The fact that some system for waste dis-

  posal was necessary was impossible to deny. But a cosmonaut with a little

  suitcase full of shit seemed to me so unthinkable, that in that moment,

  my clean star world got a clear crack,” writes Pelevin. “From that moment

  on, whenever a new cosmonaut walked toward his new rocket, I could not

  take my eyes off that suitcase. Perhaps this was a result of the fact that

  I grew up and had long ago noticed that it was not just cosmonauts who

  carried such suitcases with them, but every Soviet person.”130

  8

  She Orbits over the Sex Barrier

  Soviet Girls and the Tereshkova Moment

  Roshanna P. Sylvester

  On June 16, 1963, Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova, a twenty-six-

  year-old Soviet “everywoman” blasted off aboard Vostok 6 to become the

  first woman in space (figure 8.1).1 Her mission was to join fellow cosmo-

  naut Valerii Fedorovich Bykovskii, who was already in orbit at the helm

  of Vostok 5. Despite the notable fact that Bykovskii was in the process of setting a new record for the longest space voyage in human history,

  it was Tereshkova, not her male comrade, who captured the attention

  and imagination of the terrestrial public. A Cold War variant of the new

  Soviet woman, Tereshkova became an instant celebrity, portrayed to the

  world as both a master of technology and a feminine flower in the gar-

  den of cosmonauts. A flurry of articles, speeches, and decrees hailed her

  as a “hero of the cosmos, a hero of the people” and “a model for Soviet

  youth.”2 Congratulatory telegrams and letters flooded in from around the

  world commending the USSR on its scientific prowess and Communist

  commitment to gender equality.3 Meanwhile, at home Soviet children,

  especially girls, were swept up in the general euphoria, enthusiastically

  cheering the successes of “our Valia,” the USSR’s newest space star.4

  195

  196  Roshanna P. Sylvester

  Figure 8.1. Valentina Tereshkova during training for her mission to space in 1963. Source: NASA.

  What did Tereshkova’s celestial journey mean to the generation of

  Soviet schoolgirls who saw her venture into the cosmos?5 This chapter

  analyzes the burst of Soviet press coverage about Tereshkova that ap-

  peared in child- and family-oriented newspapers and periodicals in 1963.

  Its findings suggest that Soviet girls in middle childhood were genuinely

  thrilled by the female cosmonaut’s triumph and were a captive and en-

  gaged audience for the messages of empowerment that engulfed them in

  the heyday of the Tereshkova moment.6 News items and feature stories

  openly encouraged girls to strive for the highest levels of achievement in

  science and technology, loudly affirming that in the USSR there were no

  limits on female aspiration. Girls of the Tereshkova generation responded

  to the euphoric rhetoric, embracing their interests and the new horizon

  of possibilities opened up for them by the advent of female space travel.

  She Orbits over the Sex Barrier  197

  They availed themselves of the considerable opportunities afforded to

  them in the USSR’s educational system, achieved near parity with their

  male counterparts in a mastery of scientific and technologically oriented

  fields, and in greater numbers than ever before moved into careers that

  put their knowledge into action.

  Despite these real achievements, however, the question of whether

  Soviet girls could in fact grow up to be cosmonauts was of course out of

  their hands. Scholars have consistently noted the distance between of-

  ficial propaganda that celebrated Tereshkova’s accomplishment and the

  tense behind-the-scenes controversies among those in the upper echelons

  of the Soviet space program and the Communist Party concerning the

  development of the female cosmonaut corps.7 Even in the first blush of

  the Tereshkova moment, press coverage revealed a marked ambivalence

  about the role girls and women should play in Cold War society, especially

  in the much-vaunted worlds of science and technology. Unfortunately for

  girls, it soon became abundantly clear that among decision makers at the

  highest levels there was no real commitment to robust female partici-

  pation in the Soviet space program. As others have shown, Tereshkova

  herself quickly faded from the headlines, definitively so after her much-

  publicized November 1963 wedding to her cosmonaut “brother” Andrian

  Nikolaev and the birth the following year of the couple’s daughter, Lena.

  Although she remained on the rolls as an inactive cosmonaut, the first

  woman in space was thus quickly recast as a wife, mother, and cultural

  ambassador—roles more in keeping with the resurgent gender tradition-

  alism that would mark the Brezhnev years.8 It would be two decades more

  before a second female cosmonaut made it into orbit.

  Although one could focus on what went wrong in the late Soviet pe-

  riod, especially with respect to the distance between ideological promises

  and women’s real experiences, my purpose is to consider instead what

  went right for Soviet girls of the Tereshkova generation. Despite subse-

  quent developments, evidence suggests that girls themselves held on to

  a more expansive view of their life possibilities at least in part because

  of Tereshkova’s accomplishments in space. Although the world’s first fe-

  male cosmonaut never again mounted a rocket, the sheer fact that she

  had done so once inspired girls to dream big. For an instant, the girls who

  saw Tereshkova fly were part of a universe in which reality and promise

  converged, with vistas of opportunity available to them that were unique

  in the world.

 
198  Roshanna P. Sylvester

  “The Girl from Iaroslavl”

  The Soviet public knew essentially nothing about Valentina Teresh-

  kova when she rocketed to celebrity in June 1963. But thanks to the ef-

  ficient work of journalists, readers were soon acquainted with the new

  cosmonaut’s exceedingly correct and very Soviet biography. Early press

  coverage stressed the virtues of Tereshkova’s family origins, childhood,

  and youth, portraying her as the politically impeccable heroine in a Com-

  munist fairy tale. Pionerskaia pravda, a twice-weekly newspaper aimed at school-aged children, introduced its young readers to Valentina, or Valia

  for short, by explaining that she was born in 1937 in the village of Maslen-

  nikov of good proletarian stock: “Her father was a tractor driver and her

  mother a worker in a textile enterprise.” The family had three children:

  Valia; her sister, Liuda; and a brother, Volodia. Tragedy of the heroic va-

  riety struck the family during the Great Patriotic War when Tereshkova’s

  father was killed “at the front.” But her brave mother soldiered on, mov-

  ing the family to nearby Iaroslavl’, where she could get better work. Valia

  herself was portrayed as a diligent student who after leaving school at sev-

  enteen became a model worker, first in a tire factory and then in a textile

  complex. She also joined the Komsomol in Iaroslavl’, serving as secretary

  of her factory committee in 1960 and 1961. Bent on self-improvement,

  Tereshkova returned to her studies in that same period, graduating from

  a technical school in 1960. Two years later she solidified her spotless

  credentials by becoming a member of the Communist Party. In her spare

  time Valentina enjoyed outdoor activities and displayed an adventurous

  side by taking up sky diving. Unbeknownst to her, these hobbies made

  her an outstanding candidate for the female cosmonaut corps.9

  As this brief sketch makes clear, press biographies meant for chil-

  dren played up Tereshkova’s image as the consummate Soviet youth:

  hardworking, studious, politically loyal, and healthy. By stressing these

  values, writers fit Tereshkova neatly into the well-established repertoire

  of ideal childhood types long emphasized in Soviet publications aimed

  at the young.10 But unlike its typical coverage, Pionerskaia pravda’s celebration of Tereshkova was aimed squarely at girls, standing in striking