Into the Cosmos Page 36
competitors in the market, had no reason to attempt innovative designs
but conceded public interest through their attention to the new space age
subject matter.
The existence and widespread numbers of pins were an indication
that the collecting and possession of material goods not only became ac-
ceptable in the 1960s Soviet Union; it was also encouraged through of-
ficial channels. The government encouraged the creation of znachki as
a currency for international youth exchanges. Public demand created a
domestic market that outstripped official plans. The pin designs hear-
kened back to a more optimistic time when constructivism and modern-
ism reigned supreme in Soviet art and architecture. Znachki reflected
From the Kitchen into Orbit 239
Figure 9.3. The first znachki to represent Leonov’s mission used more abstract images to illustrate the flight than had previous ones. The pins illustrated a crisp image of a human flying through space, untethered and symmetrical. Source: The Smithsonian Institution.
this style. In that previous era artists had offered alternative political
approaches to those that the Bolshevik politicians had offered. Under
Khrushchev, the renewed modernism had no independent implications
and reinforced the state’s message.
In the absence of systematic exhibits to promote the space program,
znachki took on the role of telling the tale of Soviet spaceflight. Children
and students learned the lessons of Soviet spaceflight through Pioneer
and youth organizations that encouraged collecting through routine ar-
ticles and columns that announced new issues. Znachki are also signifi-
cant because they represent a significant departure from previous public
culture movements. They shifted public commemoration of national ac-
complishments from solely mass events to a personal scale. Their man-
ufacture was decentralized with no authority dictating the content and
message on all pins. However, as there remained only a single source of
information on the space program, pin makers shared the same content
as other memorabilia makers. The sole opportunity for innovation was
through design. That was the basis of distinction among znachki manu-
facturers. Finally, the pins are significant for their endurance. Large col-
lections remain intact and, much like modern American baseball cards,
they have taken on a following of their own beyond the subject that they
illustrated.
10
Cold War Theaters
Cosmonaut Titov at the Berlin Wal
Heather L. Gumbert
On August 6, 1961, the Soviet cosmonaut German Titov became
only the second person to orbit Earth. With this accomplishment Titov
became a global figure in the race to explore the “final frontier.” Less than
a month after his spaceflight, Titov visited a frontier of a different kind:
the newly built Berlin Wall, on the front line of the Cold War. On an of-
ficial state visit to the German Democratic Republic (GDR), he met with
state officials, received the Karl Marx Medal, appeared at rallies in Berlin,
Leipzig, and Magdeburg, and met with East German citizens. Standing
at the wall, Titov praised state authorities on their efforts to strengthen
socialism. The GDR state media, including the print press, radio, and
television, as well as media organizations from around the world, clam-
ored to report on this historic figure.
Titov’s appearance in the GDR would have been notable enough un-
der normal circumstances, but it took on a whole new dimension and
meaning because it took place in September 1961, just three weeks after
the construction of the Berlin Wall. The wall closed the border between
East and West Germany, restricting travel to and, to some extent, com-
munication with the West. With the construction of the Berlin Wall, East
240
Cold War Theaters 241
Germans’ worlds had, for all practical purposes, just gotten smaller: even
if they had never been to places like Baden or Bavaria, or writ large Paris,
London, or New York, it was unlikely that they now could go. Yet Titov’s
visit created a new narrative space that allowed East Germans to under-
stand themselves not as hemmed in or excluded, but rather as part of a
larger socialist project, one that had made human space travel possible.
Why focus on the lost opportunity of “one Germany”—a reunified Ger-
man state in Central Europe—when the achievements of the commu-
nity of socialist states pointed toward a brighter future? Titov, a socialist
hero par excellence, embodied the superiority of the Soviet Union over
the West. And he arrived just as GDR authorities had stepped up their
campaign to cultivate a new political consciousness in East Germans—a
campaign that situated the GDR firmly in the socialist camp, allied with
other socialist bloc countries against the corruption of the West.
GDR media reports on television and in the print press wasted no
time locating Titov in the wider vision of Western corruption and social-
ist achievement. The media drew close connections between Titov and
his trip to space on the one hand and the decision to cut off the border in
Berlin on the other. Titov was a soldier and comrade in the battle against
the West. His trip to space represented an important blow against the
West, just as the border closure had been and would continue to be a
kind of victory over the expansionist ambitions of the West. Indeed, in
this narrative Titov became a symbol of the world saved by the construc-
tion of the wall. This is important because what we understand as the
“Cold War” was not just a series of incidents and events; rather, it was
also comprised by the media narratives created and disseminated about
those events.
The goal of this chapter is not to illuminate the Soviet space program,
its goals, or its scientific merits per se, but rather to discuss the way in
which this revolutionary step into space opened up a whole new world to
Soviet citizens as well as to people living in the GDR, at a time when the
state faced a potentially explosive crisis of legitimacy. Titov’s appearance
in the GDR allowed the government to redefine the geopolitical place of
East Germans in the Cold War. This was different from their response
to the domestic crises of the 1950s—the workers’ uprising of 1953, the
challenge of de-Stalinization in 1956, and even the early period of the
Second Berlin Crisis after 1958. At those moments the regime sought
to better educate East Germans about the principles of socialism, train-
242 Heather L. Gumbert
ing them to be better, more ideologically committed socialists. By 1961,
though, the government was using increasingly sophisticated means to
deal with domestic crisis. Scholars often focus on the importance of Sovi-
et strength—military strength—in shoring up the legitimacy of Eastern
European regimes, especially in the 1950s and 1960s. Yet here is an ex-
ample where military strength was perhaps not as important as cultural
strength. In 1961 the Soviets sent men into space and accomplished that
/>
which no one else had yet achieved. For the governing Socialist Unity
Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschland, or SED), this could
not have come at a better time. Although the leader of the SED, Walter
Ulbricht, pressed Khrushchev to close the border between the German
states, the party had also intensified their ongoing campaign to win ideo-
logical adherence to the program of socialism. They prepared to weather
this crisis just as they had done over the course of the 1950s: meeting
economic and geopolitical crises with political weapons.
Yet this time Titov was the figure at the center of a confluence of
events that served to defuse the potentially explosive political upheaval
caused by the border closure of August 13; that offered the state a mea-
sure of legitimacy that played a part in stabilizing the domestic situa-
tion. Titov’s visit was a media spectacle that occurred at a moment when
one vision of East German socialism began to give way to another, and
it became defined in part by the figure of Titov. After the border closure,
a political campaign under way for several years aimed at transforming
the values and expectations of Germans living in the GDR began to give
way to a more conservative vision of socialism. This new socialism was
inward-looking, insular, and nationalist and did not require ideological
transformation or idealistic fervor. No longer did the government have
to fear the economic or ideological repercussions of the relative perme-
ability of the sector border in Berlin, because the possibility of choosing
a life in the West had just become more difficult. If during the preceding
decade the problem of transforming these Germans into Communists
had proven too difficult, it now became enough simply to turn them into
East Germans.
The political event that was Titov’s visit contributed to this new vi-
sion in two ways. First, it was a potent visual demonstration of the alli-
ance between the East German state with what could be understood to
be the most powerful nation in the world. It shifted the focus away from
Cold War Theaters 243
the GDR’s geopolitical relationship with West Germany (that had defined
geopolitical rhetoric in the 1950s) and toward their alliance with the so-
cialist world. Second, it allowed East German citizens and government
officials to meet one another on neutral ground at the rallies for Titov, giv-
ing the regime an opportunity to “stage” a significant visual demonstra-
tion of solidarity between the state and the people, even if East Germans
were not there for the reasons the state might have hoped.1
Crisis Management in the GDR in the 1950s
The foundation of the German Democratic Republic in 1949 was
only the first step in the creation of a German socialist state. Through-
out the 1950s the authorities faced several challenges to their legitimacy,
both from within the party and without. A Stalinist-style party, Ulbricht’s
SED brooked little internal opposition and had in the late 1940s and early
1950s imprisoned and otherwise disciplined dissenters within the party.
At the same time, unrest among the wider population catalyzed primar-
ily around economic problems. During the 1950s authorities increasingly
dealt with intractable economic problems through political means: in
particular, by campaigning to transform the consciousness of East Ger-
mans—turn them into card-carrying socialists who better understood
economic issues and no longer adhered to “bourgeois” economic expecta-
tions. After a period of relative calm in the mid-1950s, this pattern be-
came clear by the late 1950s, when the SED once again faced economic
crises. During the period of the Second Berlin Crisis (1958–62), the
SED ramped up the campaign to develop ideological clarity among the
people.2 Titov’s visit to the GDR coincided with and contributed to this
renewed campaign. Increasingly, though, ideological clarity focused less
on understanding of and belief in the tenets of socialism and more on
Parteilichkeit (partisanship)—adherence to and loyalty for the GDR and
the Eastern bloc.
In 1953 problems of economic mismanagement came home to roost
in the GDR’s first major crisis—and only mass uprising against the East
German state. A year earlier the SED had decided that enough of a so-
cialist consciousness had developed among the working class that it was
time to systematically develop the foundations of socialism.3 The gov-
ernment’s plan of action included the transition from private to public
244 Heather L. Gumbert
ownership of property and labor. By year’s end the government hoped to
nationalize 81 percent of all enterprises in the GDR (to become People’s
Own Enterprises and cooperatives) and collectivize the land. This was an
expensive endeavor, which the state sought to pay for through a variety of
economic measures from the judicious to the punitive. The SED raised
income taxes, restricted access to health and social insurance from the
self-employed, and denied ration cards to East Germans who were self-
employed, working in freelance occupations in East Germany, or holding
jobs in West Berlin. Prices rose on foodstuffs and other common goods,
such as textiles. The government increased taxation of spirits.4 It expro-
priated private owners of real estate and commercial interests, such as
hotels, pensions, and small businesses, first charging them with crimes
like “illegal income” and political unreliability before taking over their
property. Legislation for the protection of “socialist” property set off an
“avalanche of trials” between October 1952 and March 1953, when more
than ten thousand individuals were charged and imprisoned for stealing
or diverting supplies from the state economy. The state charged and im-
prisoned East Germans for crimes as minor as “privatizing” Pfannkuchen
(pancakes) or stealing 750 grams of sauerkraut.5 The state also sought to
centralize control over decision making across the republic by dissolving
the former German states in favor of fifteen new administrative districts.
It also targeted potential centers of oppositional authority, most notably
the churches, which still appealed to more than 90 percent of the East
German population.6
Such measures transformed the relationship of East Germans to the
state and shook the foundations of their daily lives. When these measures
failed to raise the requisite funds for the transition to socialism, the gov-
ernment resorted to increasing production quotas in certain industries
by 10 percent. These measures caused concern among Soviet authori-
ties, who worried about the internal stability of the republic, particularly
when in March 1953 the numbers of people fleeing for the West reached
fifty-eight thousand, its highest point yet.7 After the new production quo-
tas came into force in June 1953, Soviet authorities’ fears seemed to be
realized when rising unrest gave way to mass demonstrations.8 Workers
paraded down Stalinallee in East Berlin demanding reductions in the
production quotas, a demonstration that grew from three hundred to
more than ten thousand people over the course of the day.9 The follow-
Cold War Theaters 245
ing day an estimated three hundred thousand to four hundred thousand
people—younger workers, small farmers, and the rank-and-file of the
SED—participated in strikes in 270 towns across the GDR.10 The strikes
brought Berlin to a standstill.11 Although the East German government
managed to suppress the demonstrations, the uprising set the SED on a
“new course” that rolled back some aspects of the drive for Stalinization,
especially the economic reforms that had sparked the riots.
By 1955 the economic basis and social makeup of the GDR had been
transformed. The porous border in Berlin allowed many Germans living
in the East to leave the republic at will.12 This Cold War permeability had
effected a transformation of the social order. With the departure of so
many, especially young, educated males—many of whom were profes-
sionals (technicians, engineers, doctors, dentists, lawyers, judges, univer-
sity teachers, and the like)—it was now workers (agricultural but primar-
ily industrial workers) that comprised the bulk of the population.13 There
were still shortages of necessary goods, and foodstuffs such as meat, sug-
ar, eggs, and oils (including butter) were subject to rationing until 1958.14
But production from the collective farms showed improvement, and the
SED increasingly allowed a consumer-oriented economy to emerge.15 De-
spite this, Ulbricht did not enjoy the overwhelming support of his “natu-
ral” constituency and still had to work through the economic problems
associated with trying to raise East Germans’ standards of living.
In 1956 Khrushchev’s “secret speech” upset this delicate balance.
Ulbricht’s government had built a Stalinist-style regime, and Khrush-
chev’s decision to denounce Stalin threw the government and the party
into disarray. The possibility of greater openness and the potential for
the development of a more organic, German-centered socialism empow-
ered opponents of Ulbricht from within the party. There was a certain
“thaw” in domestic politics, during which the government released and,
in some cases, rehabilitated dissenters who had been imprisoned in the