Into the Cosmos Page 34
represent an aesthetic effort, but it did not represent an original design
on the part of the stamp designer. The stamp merely copied the ficti-
tious illustrations of Vostok that had appeared in the national press. As Soviet officials kept the engineering details about the spacecraft secret
until 1967, there was no official representation of the craft, only artists’
speculation about what a rocket ship might look like.46
The stamps from the Voskhod (Sunrise) program differed little from
the Vostok stamps. The Ministry of Post issued a set of identical portrait stamps for each member of the 1964 Voskhod crew.47 Once again, the
stamps offered little more in innovation and information than had the
pages of the official newspapers. These four-kopek, domestic-use stamps
offered no new aesthetic enticements. Virtually identical for each of the
three cosmonauts, their only appeal was from the information about this
latest space mission that appeared to overtake the United States—name-
ly, the fact that this mission involved, for the first time, a multipassenger
crew.
Stamps that commemorated the flight of Voskhod 2 in March 1965
showed a slightly improved stylization in design.48 The six-kopek stamp,
honoring the commander Pavel Belaev, adapted his official, spacesuit-
226 Cathleen S. Lewis
Figure 9.1. Aleksei Leonov Voskhod-2 ten-kopek stamp. This stamp is dramatic, depicting a free-floating Leonov flying alongside his spacecraft with a motion-picture camera in hand while his commander, Beliaev, looks out through the open hatch in the capsule. Source: The Smithsonian Institution.
clad portrait into a slightly abstract version. The stamp that commemorat-
ed Aleksei Leonov’s spacewalk used the official and inaccurate drawings
of the spacecraft and airlock that he flew into space. Accuracy notwith-
standing, the stamp is dramatic, depicting a free-floating Leonov flying
alongside his spacecraft with a motion-picture camera in hand while his
commander, Beliaev, looks out through the open hatch in the capsule
(figure 9.1). This was the first attempt to depict action in a space stamp.
It is significant that this stamp was the highest denomination stamp that
the ministry issued during the 1960s. An airmail stand would more like-
ly find its way to the world philately market via a letter or postcard sent
from the USSR to the West.
If previous experience is a guide, the Ministry of Post and Telegraph
had designed and printed stamps honoring the flight of Soyuz 1 with
Vladimir Komarov before his launch in April 1967. They had done so in
the case of Gagarin’s Vostok flight and released the stamps almost im-
mediately after the flight.49 If the ministry staff had followed the same
procedures of preprinting stamps in advance, in 1967 they stopped the
release of any Komarov/ Soyuz 1 stamps after the disastrous end of his
flight on April 24, 1967. Nevertheless, the Soviets continued to create
and issue space-themed stamps thereafter. By one account in 1975, there
were more than a hundred space-themed Soviet stamps. These included
stamps that noted Soviet robotic missions to Venus and the moon. The
space theme came second in numbers only to World War II themes in
Soviet philately.50
Soviet human spaceflight stamps continued to receive regular atten-
tion in collecting journals and in youth publications that encouraged col-
From the Kitchen into Orbit 227
lecting.51 Every other issue of Pioner and Semena featured columns on collecting. Articles noted new stamp issues and made recommendations
for completing collections. On occasion, an article would feature a par-
ticularly prodigious young collector as an inspiration to others.
Collecting Znachki
Znachki usually run about one to two centimeters in diameter. This
is in contrast to the huge scale of space artifacts that include forty-meter-
tall launch vehicles. The small size of znachki, as well as their accessibil-
ity, transformed the experience of space exploration into one that was
palpable to all Soviet citizens through material consumerism. Compre-
hensive displays of large-scale spacecraft and engineering artifacts have
remained rare even today in the former Soviet Union. During the 1960s
the secrecy and ambiguity that surrounded the space program hardware
made access to such objects nearly impossible for the average Soviet citi-
zen. For those reasons space-themed znachki offered the most complete
public image of the Soviet space program.
The small enameled pins that commemorate Soviet space missions
are the material culture of the official historiography of the Soviet space
program. They surpassed stamps in this distinction because of their
unique conception, manufacture, and distribution that transformed an
existing object of limited use into one that symbolized mass participa-
tion. The pins are distinct from other forms of collectibles because they
have a briefer popular history. They offered the opportunity to unso-
phisticated individuals to collect items without training in other fields
and with only the guidance of the popular press. These small pins illus-
trated a miniature, idealized chronology of the scientific and technical
achievements of the space program. The illustrations presented officially
sanctioned and occasionally inaccurate images of the spacecraft. They
celebrated the firsts and anniversaries of Soviet accomplishments, and
thus through repetition and sheer force of numbers, they reinforced the
Soviet propaganda mantra of mastery of spaceflight. The pins were ubiq-
uitous throughout the former Soviet Union and reiterated official Soviet
accounts of space activities, embodying Soviet efforts to establish claims
of superiority through persistence and repetition.
Yet znachki in general, no matter what the subject matter, were
unique as consumer goods in the history of the Soviet Union. In contrast
228 Cathleen S. Lewis
to the Soviet government’s previous efforts to control and manipulate civ-
il society, znachki emerged from a middle layer of Soviet managers, met
an emerging demand for consumer goods, and created a minor source of
fundraising. It just so happened that at the same time that this was occur-
ring, the Soviet Union began to fly in space. This coincidence was quite
fortuitous for the manufacturers of znachki . They quickly recognized the new and exciting market in space pins. Their popularity quickly transcended borders. During the 1970s American NASA engineers engaged
in collecting Soviet space pins, and the jointly designed pins of the Apollo-
Soyuz Test Project of 1975 marked the beginning of NASA-inspired pins.
In the most general terms these were small, gold-colored pins, often
painted with red enamel with a small bent pin on the back to attach for
wearing on clothes or display on a wall. There is no exact English equiva-
lent of the word znachki, which is the plural of the Russian word, znachok, meaning “badge” or “small mark.” The word itself is the diminutive form
of the word for a sign, mark, or symbol.52 Anyone who has visited the So-
viet Union, or knows someone who did, immediately recognized them as
the most co
mmon collectable from that country.
There are tens of thousands of unique Soviet znachki . They symbol-
ize significant Soviet events, ranging from Lenin’s childhood to the vic-
tory in World War II and space exploration. Russian znachki experts and
collectors, who call themselves falerists, trace the origins of the pins back
to ancient Rome, when soldiers received small pins as acknowledgment
of participation in battles. In Russia the creation of znachki dates back
to 1722, when the first committee for the description and commission of
medals was formed.53 By the nineteenth century, Russian skilled workers
wore the pins as recognition for labor in industrialization projects. The
Bolsheviks continued the practice of presenting pins to workers who had
participated in construction and industrialization projects and expanded
the use to distribution among those who participated in political events,
including workers’ councils and party congresses. According to collect-
ing experts, the first Soviet-made znachok was issued on May 1, 1918, to
coincide with the first May Day (Labor Day) during which the Russian
Communist Party (Bolshevik) was in power. The design was a rendition
of the hammer and sickle, the symbol of the bond between peasant and
worker, with a red-enameled background on a round metal pin. That
was the first of many politically associated pins as party delegates took to
wearing congress pins much in the way that war veterans wore military
From the Kitchen into Orbit 229
medals. Today collectors estimate there to be more than twenty-five hun-
dred znachki dedicated to the memory of Lenin alone.54 The total count
of unique pins remains unknown, as there has been no central authority
authorizing or minting the pins and no systematic cataloging of existing
collections.
The origin of the popularity of space znachki predates the Soviet
space program. Znachki began their expanded career in association with
the youth movement of the Khrushchev era that coincided with the pub-
lic space program. They have developed into the significant objects that
they are because of social forces at work within the post-Stalinist Soviet
Union and the official government’s efforts to meet the demands of a
population that had made sacrifices for generations and now held high
expectations. The pins became a commodity in a society that was notori-
ous for the absence of consumer goods. In addition, an examination of
space-themed znachki offers a unique perspective on the transformation
of 1960s culture of the Soviet Union. The space pins combine the opti-
mism of modernism with the reassuring values of socialist realism. The
design of many of the pins hearkens back to the constructivist style of
the 1920s and 1930s, while the content bears the reassuring tale of incre-
mental Soviet achievement that characterized socialist realism. Finally,
the pins are the material remains of the Soviet effort to appeal to the
youth market and control the emerging student movements of the early
1960s. Youth organizations introduced znachki to student groups in the
late 1950s and encouraged their collection through their official organs.55
Toward the end of the next decade their popularity was so great that they
transcended the youth movement, becoming popular souvenirs among
tourists.
During the 1960s space znachki collecting gained an enormous fol-
lowing and the space program was at its zenith in popularity and success.
Many collections from that time exist today to demonstrate the peak of
its popularity. There are two primary sources for the study of collections
in this discussion: the Smithsonian Institution National Air and Space
Museum’s collection as well as virtual collection resources. The Smithso-
nian collection has grown over the years through private donations and
diplomatic gifts and a much larger private collection that has developed
through the advice and recommendations of the international znachki-
collecting community. Of the several virtual collection resources, the first
is the ever-present market of Russian space memorabilia that is for sale
230 Cathleen S. Lewis
on eBay. These listings frequently offer images of individual znachki that
might not be available in an organized collection elsewhere. They also
provide insight into the collecting ideals and strategies of Soviet youth
during the 1960s, as many of the sellers claim to have amassed their col-
lections in their youth, usually as Pioneers. In addition to the transient
exhibitions on eBay, there are a handful of more permanent, and often
more comprehensive, Web sites that attempt to catalog znachki according
to the preferences of the owners.
Soviet popular journalism dominates the written documentation on
the history of znachki. Among the magazines that focused on znachki
collecting are the popular collecting journals that announced the re-
lease of new designs and encouraged znachki collecting. For the most
part these were philatelic and numismatic journals that sought to place
znachki within the context of their own disciplines. In doing so, they
advocated collecting strategies that paralleled stamp collecting, placing
greater emphasis on the breadth of collections than on aesthetics or com-
pleteness. The official journals of the Pioneer organization, Pioner and Semena (Seed), also encouraged their readers to complete their collections, not surprisingly, as editors of collecting journals also wrote the col-
lecting columns for those youth magazines.56 Popular science journals,
such as Zemliia i vselennaia, announced newly available pins according to scientific specialization as well.57 In recent years experts have published
monographs on specific collecting areas, including space, which paid
closer attention to subject-matter grouping, completeness of cataloging,
and design sophistication.58
Throughout World War II znachki design and distribution were
modest and consistent with the earliest Soviet pins, usually a single-color
enamel (most often red) on metal with only the slightest modification to
denote an individual event or accomplishment. Until the late 1950s the
use of the pins was limited to official events, thus there was no need to
encourage people to wear them as an end in itself. It was during the post-
Stalinist period that the emphasis on the use of znachki shifted from
rewarding work done to acting as souvenirs of national celebrations and
mass participation. Innovation in design, materials, and color expanded
and increased the diversity of the pins. These changes resulted from re-
lated relaxation in Soviet society. Nevertheless, even during this period,
distribution and production were tightly controlled to limit the possibility
that independent markets might emerge and znachki exchange become
From the Kitchen into Orbit 231
unregulated. It was not until the summer of 1957, during the Sixth World
Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow, that collecting znachki as sou-
venirs became an acceptable and evidently an encouraged hobby.
Despite an occasional resemblance to other collectible
s, znachki are
unique due to their ubiquity. Since 1957, they have been subject to nei-
ther officially controlled production nor distribution. Moreover, it is not
the rarity of an individual pin but its ubiquity that enhances its value
to collectors and historians. Although this might seem counterintuitive,
znachki derive value through commonality. A single pin design owned
by many carries its message further than a rare pin owned by a few.
For space historians 1957 was a pivotal year because of the launch
of Sputnik. This year is also significant for falerists for entirely different reasons. The significance for znachki has little to do with successful testing of ballistic missiles and launching satellites into space. That was the
year in which collecting znachki began in earnest. During the sixth and
largest biennial festival of the International Union of Students (held in
Moscow), twenty thousand foreign students—and at least ten thousand
Russian students—congregated in the capital. The festival’s motto was
“For Peace and Friendship,” which was a variant of the two elements of
all previous and subsequent mottos. However, the primary mission of
this festival was to demonstrate Soviet leadership among the growing
postwar youth movements. From a political perspective the festival was a
success.59 From the perspective of the youth participants, long-term suc-
cess could be measured by long-lasting relationships among them. An
immediate measure of the outcome was the proliferation of the material
remnants of the event. By some estimates there were more than seven
hundred distinct types (largely representing Soviet cities) of znachki at
the festival, issued in runs that numbered into the thousands. The as-
sembly of tens of thousands of young people in Moscow began a flurry
of trading and exchange of znachki among youth.60 The official znachok
of the festival was notable for its six-color rendition of the official flower
symbol of the festival. The use of multiple lacquer colors was an obvious
departure from previous generations of red pins that celebrated the Bol-
shevik Revolution. A transition in themes soon followed on the heels of
the transition in color.
The first indication that space themes would take a role in the trans-
formation of collecting znachki into a long-term trend occurred a few