Into the Cosmos Page 40

  24. For an early sociological and theoretical analysis of the process of self-fashioning, see Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Pen-guin, 1971). See also Andrews’s analysis of Tsiolkovskii’s attempts to fashion his own autobiography relative to the Soviet state in his Red Cosmos.

  25. Fitzpatrick’s work is particularly valuable for elucidating the rituals and practices that were a normative aspect of Soviet citizens’ lives as they “worked the system” to fashion their identities. See Sheila Fitzpatrick, Tear off the Masks: Identity and Imposture in Twentieth-century Russia (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005).

  26. Jochen Hellbeck, Revolution on My Mind: Writing a Diary under Stalin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006).

  27. See Natalia Kozlova, “The Diary as Initiation and Rebirth: Reading Everyday Documents of the Early Soviet Era,” in Everyday Life in Early Soviet Russia: Taking the Revolution Inside, edited by Christina Kiaer and Eric Naiman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006).

  28. Alexander Etkind has taken on the recent Soviet subjectivity school by arguing that, although sincere, some of these edited and resurrected “Soviet life-stories” fail to fully highlight the limited alternatives available to these authors; see Alexander Etkind, “Soviet Subjectivity: Torture for the Sake of Salvation?” Kritika 6, no. 1 (Winter 2005): 171–86.

  29. Susan Reid, “Toward a New (Socialist) Realism: The Re-engagement with Western Modernism in the Khrushchev Thaw,” in Russian Art and the West: A Century of Dialogue in Painting, Architecture, and the Decorative Arts, edited by Rosalind P. Blakesley and Susan E. Reid (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2007).

  1. The Cultural Spaces of the Soviet Cosmos

  1. “Forget the pen, pencil it in,” newspaper clipping; the publication title and the exact date are unknown.

  2. Aleksandr L. Chizhevskii, Na beregu vselennoi: Gody druzhby s Tsiolkovskim. Vospominaniia (Moscow: Mysl’, 1995), 96.

  3. Konstantin E. Tsiolkovskii, “Zhizn’ vselennoi,” in Shchit nauchnoi very (Moscow: Samoobrazovanie, 2007), 207–48.

  Notes to pages 17–24  267

  4. Aleksandr L. Chizhevskii, Fizicheskie factory istoricheskogo protsessa (Kaluga: 1-ia Gospolitografiia, 1924).

  5. James T. Andrews, Red Cosmos: K. E. Tsiolkovskii, Grandfather of Soviet Rocketry (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 2009); and James T. Andrews, Science for the Masses: The Bolshevik State, Public Science, and the Popular Imagination in Soviet Russia, 1917–1934 (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 2003).

  6. Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Visions and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).

  7. Thus the first Soviet science-fiction film, Aelita (1924), based on a 1923 novel by Aleksei Tolstoi, combined the ideals of space travel and a social revolution on Mars. The mentality of the revolutionary Soviet youth in the 1920s and their fascination with technology are vividly recalled in B. E. Chertok, Rakety i liudi: Fili, Podlipki, Tiuratam, 3rd edition (Moscow: Mashinostroenie, 2002).

  8. On the first amateur groups of rocket engineers, see Yaroslav Golovanov, Korolev: Fakty i mify (Moscow: Nauka, 1994), 113–63.

  9. It has been estimated that there were fewer direct casualties from the V2 launches than among prisoners of war and forced laborers who died while manufacturing those missiles. See Michael Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996).

  10. The ultimate (if impractical) example of a synthesis of the highly advanced and primitive technologies was arguably achieved in the design that had a pair of small rockets mounted on and launched from horses.

  11. Golovanov, Korolev, 223–329.

  12. For the most comprehensive account of the Soviet ballistic missile development and space programs, see Asif Siddiqi, Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge (Washington, D.C.: NASA, 2003); and Asif Siddiqi, The Soviet Space Race with Apollo (Washington, D.C.: NASA, 2003).

  13. Andrei Sakharov, Memoirs (New York: Knopf, 1990), 180–81.

  14. For works on the R7 and its testing, see B. E. Chertok, Rakety i liudi: Fili, Podlipki, Tiuratam (Moscow: Mashinostroenie, 2002), 142–201.

  15. Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev: Krizisy i rakety. Vzgliad iznutri (Moscow: Novosti, 1994), 1: 97–114.

  16. Golovanov, Korolev, 532.

  17. On political and media reactions to the first sputnik in the United States, see Walter A. McDougall, . . . The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 141–56; and also Paul Dickson, Sputnik: The Shock of the Century (New York: Walker Publishing, 2001).

  18. Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964: The Secret History of the Cuban Missile Crises (New York: W. W.

  Norton, 1998).

  19. David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939–

  1956 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994), 337–45.

  20. Siddiqi, Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge, 212–19.

  21. The official TASS (the news agency of the Soviet Union) announcement of the first-in-the-world human flight into the cosmic space (April 12, 1961), reprinted in Bor’ba SSSR

  za mirnoe ispol’zovanie kosmosa, 1957–1985: Dokumenty i materialy (Moscow: Politicheskaia Literatura, 1985), 1: 42–43. On Kennedy’s reaction, see McDougall, Heavens and the Earth, 317–19.

  268  Notes to pages 24–30

  22. The titles of the movies in their original Russian are Kosmos kak predchuvstvie (2005) and Bumazhnyi soldat (2008).

  23. Donald J. Raleigh, Russia’s Sputnik Generation: Soviet Baby Boomers Talk about Their Lives (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006). This generational issue, and the entire decade of the 1960s, has only recently become the focus of a growing number of detailed investigations by professional historians of the Soviet period.

  24. The best existing account of the Soviet cultural 1960s (which actually started around the mid-1950s and ended by the middle of the following decade) is a journalistic and somewhat impressionistic book by Petr’ Vail and Aleksandr Genis, 60-e: Mir sovetskogo cheloveka (Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 1996).

  25. In their turn away from glorification of the righteous violence, the shestidesiatniki generation appears to radically differ from the youth that had been similarly traumatized by memories after World War I.

  26. After 1954 the public cult of science and computers profited enormously from their association with truth-telling, see Vail and Genis, 60-e: Mir sovetskogo cheloveka, 100. Also see Slava Gerovitch, From Newspeak to Cyberspeak (Boston: MIT Press, 2002), chapter 4.

  27. Alexei Kojevnikov, “Russian Science: The Little Ball Made Science Bigger,” Nature 449 (2007): 542; and “The Phenomenon of Soviet Science,” in Osiris (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), vol. 23, Intelligentsia Science: The Russian Century, 1860–1960, 115–35.

  2. Getting Ready for Khrushchev’s Sputnik

  1. For an overview of Russian utopian thought and the popular cultural crazes of the 1920s, see Richard Stites’s monumental study, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 167–89. For a look at aeronautics and its role in popular culture within the context of Soviet exploration of the north, see John McCannon, Red Arctic: Polar Exploration and the Myth of the North in the Soviet Union, 1932–1939 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

  Also see Scott Palmer, Dictatorship of Air: Aviation Culture and the Fate of Modern Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

  2. See I. A. Slukhai, Russian Rocketry: A Historical Survey (Moscow: Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1965).

  3. See V. N. Sokolsky, Russian Solid-fuel Rockets (Moscow: Academy of Sciences, 1961).

  4. Ibid. Sokolsky has argu
ed that these celebratory events were problematic before firework technology was better perfected in the nineteenth century.

  5. Michael Stoiko, Soviet Rocketry: Past, Present, and Future (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970), 6–7.

  6. Evgeny Riabchikov, Russians in Space (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, 1971), 115–16.

  7. For his collected lectures and information on his rocket designs and interests, see K.

  I. Konstantinov, O boevykh raketakh (St. Petersburg, 1864).

  8. For an example of his analysis of rocketry and warfare, see K. I. Konstantinov, “Boevykh rakety v Rossii v 1867,” Artilleriiskii zhurnal, no. 5 (1867): 6–8.

  9. For an elaboration of Gerasimov’s design, see A. A. Blagonravov, Soviet Rocketry: Some Contributions to Its History (Moscow: Academy of Sciences, 1964).

  10. For his classic analysis of dynamics and rocket projectiles in motion, see I. V. Meshchersky, Dinamika tochki peremennoi massy (St. Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1897).

  Notes to pages 31–34  269

  11. See Richard Stites, “Fantasy and Revolution: Alexander Bogdanov and the Origins of Bolshevik Science Fiction,” in Alexander Bogdanov, Red Star: The First Bolshevik Utopia, edited by Loren R. Graham and Richard Stites (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984).

  12. See V. N. Chikolev, Ne byl, no i ne vydumka—elektricheskii raskaz (St. Petersburg, 1895).

  13. For an analysis of these journals and their message, see James T. Andrews, Science for the Masses: The Bolshevik State, Public Science, and the Popular Imagination, 1917–1934

  (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 2003), 89–91. For an example of the type of articles on exploration published in Vokrug sveta, see, for instance, the article cited below on an expedition in 1864 across the Caucasus mountain range by an anthropological team from Russia: “Pereezd’ cherez kavkaz,” Vokrug sveta (1864): 70–77.

  14. See his volume of collected science-fiction works: K. E. Tsiolkovskii, “Na Lune” (On the moon), in Put’ k zvezdam (Moscow: Nauka, 1954).

  15. The archival holdings for the Russian Amateur Astronomy Society are located in the Russian State Archival Administration. For an overview of the topics covered in its public meetings and editorial minutes of its journal, see “Otcheti, russkoe obshchestvo liubitelei mirovedeniia 1909–1917,” in Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv rossiiskoi federatsii (hereafter cited as GARF), f. 2307, op. 2, d. 365, ll. 1–26.

  16. For an analysis of utopianism, cosmonautics, and Russian popular culture, see Asif A. Siddiqi, “Imagining the Cosmos: Utopians, Mystics, and the Popular Culture of Spaceflight in Revolutionary Russia,” in Osiris (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), vol. 23, 260–88. For a look at the Soviet public’s infatuation with flight in air and space in the early period of the twentieth century, also see James T. Andrews “In Search of a Red Cosmos: Space Exploration, Public Culture, and Soviet Society,” in Societal Impact of Spaceflight, edited by Steven J. Dick and Roger D. Launius (Washington, D.C.: NASA /

  Smithsonian Institution Press, 2007).

  17. See “Otchet M.O.L.A. na pervoe polugodie 1921 i 1922 godax,” GARF, f. 2307, op.

  2, d. 371, l. 69.

  18. For an analysis of cosmic mysticism, the philosopher Nikolai Fedorov, and issues of immortality in Russian philosophy, see Peter Wiles, “On Physical Immortality,” Survey, nos. 56–57 (1965): 131–34.

  19. See Kendall Bailes, Science and Russian Culture in an Age of Revolutions: V. I. Vernadskii and His Scientific School, 1863–1945 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990).

  For a discussion of the biocosmists in the broader context of mystical utopianism in the revolutionary era, see Stites, Revolutionary Dreams, 168–70.

  20. See N. A. Rynin, Mechty, legendy, i pervye fantasii (Leningrad: Nauka, 1930).

  21. See N. A. Rynin, Interplanetary Flight and Communication (A Multi-volume Encyclopedia) (Jerusalem: Israeli Program of Scientific Translation, published for NASA, 1970).

  For an overview of the life of N. A. Rynin, see Frank H. Winter, “Nikolai Alexeyevich Rynin (1877–1942), Soviet Astronautical Pioneer: An American Appreciation,” Earth-oriented Applied Space Technology 2, no. 1 (1982): 69–80.

  22. For an example of these types of articles, particularly those explaining the basis of rocketry and overcoming Earth’s gravitational forces, see Ia. I. Perel’man, “Za predely atmosfery,” V masterskoi prirody, nos. 5–6 (1919): 32–33.

  23. See Sanktpeterburgskii filial Arkhiva RAN (SF ARAN), f. 796, op. 2, d. 2, l. 60.

  24. See Ia. I. Perel’man, Mezhplanetnoe puteshestvie (Leningrad: Nauka, 1923).

  25. See the editor’s biographical entry on Perel’man in V masterskoi prirody, nos. 5–6

  (1919).

  270  Notes to pages 34–38

  26. For a superb and detailed comparative overview of the early rocket and space societies in America and Europe, see Frank H. Winter, Prelude to the Space Age: The Rocket Societies, 1924–40 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1983). For an overview of a variety of public exhibitions and lectures, in Leningrad and Moscow in the 1920s, on popular science in the early Soviet period, see Andrews, Science for the Masses.

  27. Gosudarstvennyi muzei kosmonavtiki im. K. E. Tsiolkovskogo (GMKT), Kaluga,

  Russia, f. 1, op. 1, d. 40, ll. 4–12.

  28. GMKT, f. 1, op. 1, d. 38, ll. 1–2.

  29. GMKT, f. 1, op. 1, d. 15, l. 1.

  30. Vladimir Maiakovskii, “Letter from Paris to Comrade Kostrov on the Nature of Love,” found in V. Maiakovskii, The Bedbug and Selected Poetry, edited by Patricia Blake (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), 215.

  31. GMKT, f. 1, op. 1, d. 38, ll. 15–18.

  32. For an analysis of Protazanov’s work in the 1920s, especially on Aelita, see Peter Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society, 1917–1953 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 46–47. For Soviet criticisms of the film, see a Pravda editorial dated October 1, 1924. For the best work on this period regarding film and the Soviet public, see Denise Youngblood, Movies for the Masses (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

  33. See Alexander Bogdanov, Red Star: The First Bolshevik Utopia, translated from the Russian by Charles Rougle (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984).

  34. See Nicholas Timasheff, The Great Retreat: The Growth and Decline of Communism in Russia (New York: Vintage, 1946). For a more current analysis of cultural practices during the Stalinist 1930s, see Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times, Soviet Russia in the 1930s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

  One can also refer to the work of the historian David Brandenberger for an analysis of the turn toward national themes under Stalin’s regime; see David Brandenberger, National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931–1956 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002).

  35. See David L. Hoffman, Stalinist Values: The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity, 1917–1941 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003).

  36. In the popular journals the 1930s were characterized as years of “Stakhanovite Socialist Aviation.” In the summer of 1936, Chkalov, Baidukov, and Beliakov flew their historic nonstop flight in a Soviet ANT-35. In 1936, Levanovskii and Levchenko flew from Los Angeles to Moscow, and Molokov flew along the arctic seaboard of the USSR. See L.

  Khvat, Besprimernyi perelet (Moscow: Nauka, 1936). Also see “po stalinskomu marshrutu,”

  Chto chitat’, no. 2 (1936): 45–47.

  37. See Anatolii Glebov, “Na shturm stratosferi,” Tekhnika 31 (March 1932).

  38. For a comprehensive analysis of the Stalinist campaigns against nature preservations, see Douglas R. Weiner, A Little Corner of Freedom: Russian Nature Protection from Stalin to Gorbachev (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).

  39. See Malte Rolf, “A Hall of Mirrors: Sovietizing Culture under Stalin,” Slavic Review 68, no. 3 (Fall 2009): 601, 604–5.
<
br />   40. K. E. Tsiolkovskii, “Osyshchestvliaetsia mechta chelovechestva, Pervomaiskoe prevetstvie K. E. Tsiolkovskogo na plenke,” speech taped in his office/laboratory Kaluga, Russia, last week in April 1935; the speech is transcribed in K. E. Tsiolkovskii, Sbornik pos-viashchennyi pamiati znamenitogo deiatelia nauki (Kaluga: N.p., 1935).

  41. See Neya Zorkaya, The Illustrated History of Soviet Cinema (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1989), 97–98, 127.

  42. See Kosmicheskii reis, Mosfilm Studios, Moscow, USSR, 1935, director V. Zhuravlev.

  Notes to pages 39–43  271

  43. See I. Golovanov, Sergei Korolev: The Apprentice of a Space Pioneer (Moscow: Nauka, 1975). Also see I. Golovanov, Korolev: Fakty i mify (Moscow: Mashinostroenie, 1994). Also see S. A. Shlykova, “K. E. Tsilokovskii Correspondence with the Jet Scientific Research Institutes,” in Soviet Rocketry: Some Contributions to Its History, edited by A. A. Blagonravov (Moscow: Nauka, 1964).

  44. See David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939–1956 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994).

  45. For work on Korolev’s team, as well as Khrushchev and the R7s, see Golovanov, Korolev; also see Khrushchev’s son Sergei’s reflections on this because he was a missile guidance systems engineer during his father’s time in office. See Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev: Krizisy I rakety: Vzgliad iznutri (Moskva: Mashinostroenie, 1994).

  46. For a reflective analysis of this communicative discourse done in secrecy between N. Khrushchev and his rocket team of specialists, see Sergei Khrushchev, Khrushchev on Khrushchev (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1990).

  47. See the litany of articles in the Soviet press on this topic, such as those in Pravda, November 1957. One article, on November 8, 1957, was entitled “O nabliudenii iskusstvennykh sputnikov zemli.” Also see Amy Nelson’s chapter in this volume, “Cold War Celebrity and Courageous Canine Scout: The Life and Times of Soviet Space Dogs.”