Into the Cosmos Page 45
2. Ibid. On the material culture of the Soviet space program, see Cathleen Lewis, “The Red Stuff: A History of the Public and Material Culture of Early Human Spaceflight in the U.S.S.R.” (PhD diss., George Washington University, 2008).
3. I borrow the term “dreamworld” to describe utopian ideology from Susan Buck-
Morss; see Susan Buck-Morss, Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002).
4. Numerous accounts exist on the political and technological dimensions of the space race in the context of the Cold War. See Matthew Brzezinski, Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Hidden Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age (New York: Times Books, 2007); Nicholas Daniloff, The Kremlin and the Cosmos (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972); Walter A. McDougall, . . . The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age (New York: Basic Books, 1985); Asif A. Siddiqi, Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003); and Von Hardesty and Gene Eisman, Epic Rivalry: The Inside Story of the Soviet and American Space Race (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2007).
5. There are numerous hagiographic accounts of Soviet cosmonauts, and “insider” accounts, by engineers in the space program or cosmonauts themselves, were especially popular. Some examples include E. Petrov, Kosmonavty (Moscow: “Krasnaia zvezda,” 1963), and Titov’s hagiographic biography of Yuri Gagarin; see German Stepanovich Titov, Pervyi kosmonavt planety (Moscow: “Znanie,” 1971). Children’s books were also a popular genre.
On the myth of Gagarin, see Trevor Rockwell, “The Molding of the Rising Generation: Soviet Propaganda and the Hero Myth of Iurii Gagarin,” Past Imperfect 12 (2006): 1–34.
6. Jay Bergman, “Valerij Chkalov: Soviet Pilot a New Soviet Man,” Journal of Contemporary History 33, no. 1 (January 1998): 135–52; Georgii Baidukov, Russian Lindbergh: The
Notes to pages 160–161 293
Life of Valery Chkalov, translated by Peter Belov; edited by Von Hardesty (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991); Von Hardesty, Red Phoenix: The Rise of Soviet Air Power, 1941–1945 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1982); Robin Higham, John T. Greenwood, and Von Hardesty, eds., Russian Aviation and Air Power in the Twentieth Century (Portland, Ore.: Frank Cass, 1998); and Kendall E. Bailes, Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin: Origins of the Soviet Technical Intelligentsia, 1917–1941
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978).
7. XXII S’ezd KPSS (Moscow: Politizdat, 1962), 411.
8. On December 19, 1917, the Bolshevik government transferred the legal jurisdiction over changes in civil status from the church to the newly created Department for the Registration of Acts of Civil Status. On January 23, 1918, the Bolsheviks separated church and state and secularized education, thereby gaining unprecedented power over the population.
On antireligious campaigns in the early Soviet period, see Mikhail Ivanovich Odintsov, Gosudarstvo i tserkov’: Istoriia vzaimootnoshenii, 1917–1938 gg (Moscow: Znanie, 1991); Valerii Arkadevich Alekseev, “Shturm nebes” otmeniaetsia?: Kriticheskie ocherki po istorii borʼby s religiei v SSSR (Moscow: Rossiia molodaia, 1992); Glennys Young, Power and the Sacred in Revolutionary Russia: Religious Activists in the Village (University Park: Pennsyl-vania State University Press, 1997); Arto Luukkanen, The Religious Policy of the Stalinist State, A Case Study: The Central Standing Commission on Religious Questions, 1929–1938
(Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1997); Daniel Peris, Storming the Heavens: The Soviet League of the Militant Godless (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998); William B.
Husband, “Godless Communists”: Atheism and Society in Soviet Russia, 1917–1932 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000); Edward E. Roslof, Red Priests: Renovationism, Russian Orthodoxy, and Revolution, 1905–1946 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002); Heather J. Coleman, Russian Baptists and Spiritual Revolution, 1905–1929 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005); and Paul Froese, The Plot to Kill God: Findings from the Soviet Experiment in Secularization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008).
On prerevolutionary and early Soviet enlightenment efforts, see Jeffrey Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Literature, 1861–1917 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985). On the early Soviet period, see 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). Importantly, the Soviet enlightenment campaign extended beyond education and the inculcation of high culture to a broader “civilizing” agenda. The kul’turnost’ campaign emphasized personal hygiene, social propriety, and correct behavior. On kul’turnost’, see Vadim Volkov, “The Concept of Kul’turnost’: Notes on the Stalinist Civilizing Process,” in Stalinism: New Directions, edited by Sheila Fitzpatrick (New York: Routledge, 2000); and Catriona Kelly, Refining Russia: Advice Literature, Polite Culture, and Gender from Catherine to Yeltsin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
The Soviet state’s concern with the persistence of religiosity is evident in the renewed antireligious campaign during the Khrushchev era after the relative calm in church-state relations in the second half of Stalin’s reign. See Joan Delaney Grossman, “Khrushchev’s Antireligious Policy and the Campaign of 1954,” Europe-Asia Studies 24, no. 3 (January 1973): 374–86; John Anderson, Religion, State, and Politics in the Soviet Union and Successor States (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Mikhail Shkarovskii, Russkaia Pravoslavnaia Tserkov’ pri Staline i Khrushcheve: Gosudarstvenno-tserkovnye otnosheniia v SSSR
v 1939–1964 godakh (Moscow: Krutitskoe patriarshee podvor’e, 1999); Tatiana A. Chumachenko, Church and State in Soviet Russia: Russian Orthodoxy from World War II to the
294 Notes to pages 161–166
Khrushchev Years, translated and edited by Edward E. Roslof (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2002); Nathaniel Davis, A Long Walk to Church: A Contemporary History of Russian Orthodoxy (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2003); and the works of Dimitry V. Pospielovsky, especially A History of Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Antireligious Policies (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987) and Totalitarizm i veroispovedanie (Moscow: Bibleisko-bogo-slovskii in-t sv. Apostola Andreia, 2003).
9. 22nd S’ezd KPSS, 411.
10. “Piat’ let shturmu kosmosa,” Nauka i religiia, no. 10 (October 1962): 3–8.
11. Ibid.
12. “Address of the Central Committee of the KPSS, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet and the government of the Soviet Union,” Komsomol’skaia Pravda, April 13, 1961.
13. “Estafeta pokolenii,” Nauka i religiia, no. 9 (September 1962): 4.
14. “Piat’ let shturmu kosmosa,” 5.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid., 7.
17. Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, 1967), 112–13. On the classic secularization thesis and its numerous detractors, see David Martin, On Secularization: Towards a Revised General Theory (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2005); Brian Wilson, “Secularization and Its Discontents,” in his Religion in Sociological Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 148–79; and Steve Bruce, ed., Religions and Modernization: Sociologists and Historians Debate the Secularization Thesis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
18. Berger, Sacred Canopy, 112–13.
19. P. V. Liakhotskii’s Zavoevanie kosmosa i religiia (Groznyi: Checheno-Ingushskoe knizhnoe izdanie, 1964) is typical of a genre that emerged at this time depicting space conquest as a weapon in the war against religion. See also Sergei Fedorovich Anisimov, Nauka i religiia o smysle zhizni: Otvety na voprosy (Moscow: Znanie, 1964); V. N. Komarov, Kosmos, bog i vechnost’ mira (Moscow: Gozpolitizdat, 1963); E. T. Fadeev, O cheloveke, kosmose i boge (Moscow: Znanie, 1965); G. I. Naan, Chelovek, bog i kosmos (Moscow: Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1963); Zavoevanie neba i vera v boga: Sbor
nik statei, edited by K. K. Gabova (Moscow: Znanie, 1964); B. M. Marianov, Otvoevannoe nebo (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1971); Voprosy mirovozzrenia v lektsiiakh po astronomii: Sbornik (Moscow: Znanie, 1974); and “Kosmos, kosmogoniia, kosmologiia (Podborka statei i interviu),” Nauka i religiia, no.
12 (December 1968).
20. Speculation on the cosmological significance of space travel was not confined to the Soviet press but permeated religious and secular media abroad. For a thorough discussion of the range of religious responses to human space travel, see Ryan Jeffrey McMillen,
“Space Rapture: Extraterrestrial Millennialism and the Cultural Construction of Space Colonization” (PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 2004).
21. “1000 Pisem,” Nauka i religiia, no. 2 (February 1960): 8. Unless otherwise noted, all translations in this chapter are mine.
22. Editorial, “Survey of Letters: What Is God? [Two letters from former believers who have abandoned religion since Gagarin’s spaceflight],” Izvestiia, May 23, 1961, 4. In Current Digest of the Soviet Press 13, no. 21 (1961): 28.
23. C. L. Sulzberger, “Foreign Affairs: Paradise and Old Noah Khrushchev,” New York Times, September 9, 1961, 18. Quoted in McMillen, “Space Rapture,” 121.
24. “Presidential Prayer Breakfast,” New York Times, March 2, 1962, 3.
25. For a more detailed discussion of the escalation of the space theological debate between the American and Soviet sides, see McMillen, “Space Rapture,” 115–37.
Notes to pages 166–169 295
26. The widespread claims about Gagarin’s statement (about not encountering heavenly bodies in space) are never cited, and I have yet to find a direct quote from him on the subject, yet there is no doubt that it was widely propagated, especially within the USSR. In his autobiographical Moscow Stories, Loren R. Graham, one of the most prominent historians of Soviet science, mentions that a pamphlet about this supposed statement by Gagarin was sold in the antireligious bookstore in Zagorsk (Sergeev Posad); see Loren R. Graham, Moscow Stories (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 178.
27. Louis Cassels, “Religion in America,” Chicago Defender, May 26, 1962, 8; “Titov, Denying God, Puts Faith in People,” New York Times, May 7, 1962. “Gherman Titov, Soviet Cosmonaut, Comments at World’s Fair, Seattle, Washington, May 6, 1962,” Seattle Daily Times, May 7, 1962, 2.
28. G. Titov, “Vstretil li ia boga?” Nauka i religiia, no. 1 (January 1962): 10.
29. Ibid.
30. In his study of Russian popular culture, the historian Richard Stites notes that Gagarin’s brother described hundreds of letters that the cosmonaut received from former believers testifying to their atheist conversions; see Richard Stites, Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society since 1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 175.
31. The editorial cites believers who “came to the same conclusion” as Danilova—three Orthodox women (from Moscow, Odessa, and Vinnitsa) and another three Baptist women (one Nina Velikanova and her two friends). The editorial also mentions the conversion of the priest Pavel Darmanskii, whose faith was called into doubt during a scientific-atheist lecture on astronomy. “Piat’ let shturmu kosmosa,” 8.
32. Danilova’s letter is originally published in “Survey of Letters: What Is God?” Izvestiia, May 23, 1961, 4. Danilova is also cited in Liakhotskii, Zavoevanie kosmosa i religiia, 64–68; and V. Bazykin, “V nebesakh chelovek, a ne bog,” Sovetskie profsoiuzy, no. 13
(1961): 28. For other examples of “conversion” stories, see Komsomol’skaia Pravda, August 13, 1962; “Estafeta pokolenii” Nauka i religiia, no. 9 (September 1962): 5; “Piat’ let shturmu kosmosa,” 3–8; and Izvestiia, May 22, 1961.
33. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii [henceforth RGASPI], f. 599, op. 1, d. 211, ll. 116–21.
34. Ibid., 117–18.
35. On Soviet atheist depictions of religious beliefs and practices as antisocial, see Sonja Christine Luehrmann, “Forms and Methods: Teaching Atheism and Religion in the Mari Republic, Russian Federation” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2009).
36. RGASPI, f. 599, op. 1, d. 211, l. 121.
37. In my interviews with former atheist agitators, the argument that space travel proved that heaven and deities did not exist was almost unanimously invoked as an example of the “vulgar atheism” from which the subject sought to distance himself or herself. Olga Brushlinskaia, the editor-in-chief of the journal Science and Religion (Nauka i religiia), interview with author, Moscow, Russia, December 7, 2008.
38. Ernst Kolman, “Chelovek v epokhu kosmicheskikh poletov,” Voprosy filosofii, no. 11
(November 1960): 124–32.
39. Kolman came to Russia as a prisoner of war. He studied at Moscow State University, worked with Khrushchev and Kaganovich in the Moscow city government over the course of the 1930s, and was head of the Moscow Mathematical Society (from 1930 to 1932) and deputy head of the science department of the Moscow party organs. See Arnosht (Ernst) Kolman, My ne dolzhny byli tak zhit’ (New York: Chalidze Publications, 1982); and William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (New York: Norton, 2003), 91–93. I am grateful to Professor John Connelly for drawing my attention to Kolman’s biography.
296 Notes to pages 169–172
40. Kolman proposed actual space colonies as humans made their way to the moon, Mars, and Venus, then the rest of the galaxy, and finally beyond.
41. Kolman, “Chelovek v epokhu kosmicheskikh poletov,” 132.
42. For an excellent analysis of the physical and psychological preparation of Soviet cosmonauts, see Slava Gerovitch, “‘New Soviet Man’ inside Machine: Human Engineering, Spacecraft Design, and the Construction of Communism,” Osiris (2007): 22, 152.
43. Kolman, “Chelovek v epokhu kosmicheskikh poletov,” 127.
44. Ibid., 128.
45. Mark Borisovich Mitin was chairman of the “Knowledge” Society (from 1956 to 1960) and the editor of the journal Voprosy filosofii (Problems of philosophy) (from 1960
to 1968).
46. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii [henceforth GARF], f. 9547, op. 1, d.
1209, l. 287.
47. Ibid.
48. Letchik-kosmonavt A. A. Leonov i kandidat meditsinskikh nauk Lebedev, “Proni-knovenie v kosmos i otrazhenie chelovekom prostranstva na Zemle,” Voprosy filosofii, no.
1 (1966): 3.
49. Letchik-kosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and kandidat meditsinskikh nauk Lebedev, “Osvoenie Luny chelovekom,” Voprosy filosofii, no. 3 (1966): 25. (Cosmonaut) Georgii Timofee-vich Beregovoi, “Shagi po zemle, shagi v kosmose,” Ia—ateist: 25 otvetov na vopros ‘Pochemu vy ateist?’ (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1980), 17–21. (Cosmonaut) Oleg Grigorievich Makarov, “Ia-veriashchii,” Ia—ateist: 25 otvetov na vopros ‘Pochemu vy ateist?’ (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1980), 22–27. (Cosmonaut) Konstantin Feoktistov, “Neskol’ko slov o bessmertii,” Nauka i religiia, no. 4 (1966).
50. On the intellectual history of atheism in imperial Russia, see Victoria Sophia Frede,
“The Rise of Unbelief among Educated Russians in the Late Imperial Period” (PhD diss., University of California–Berkeley, 2002).
51. On antireligious propaganda and policies, see Dimitry Pospielovsky, A History of Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Antireligious Policies and The Orthodox Church in the History of Russia (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998).
52. See Husband, “Godless Communists” ; Froese, Plot to Kill God; Young, Power and the Sacred in Revolutionary Russia; Alekseev, “Shturm nebes” otmeniaetsia; and Peris, Storming the Heavens.
53. Two studies that do focus on scientific education provide insight into the broader context of atheism and enlightenment: see Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read; and Andrews, Science for the Masses, 6.
54. The historian Jeffrey Brooks has argued that for many intellectuals involved in the enlightenment project the battle was aga
inst superstition rather than religion. He points out that priests and teachers were allied with authors of popular literature in the task of enlightening the population. Superstition was “clearly not equated” with religion, “nor was atheism considered a necessary concomitant to the rational world view.” See Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read, 251. James Andrews has demonstrated that the primary goal of science popularizers was to demystify natural occurrences and explain evolutionary phenomena from a scientific perspective; see Andrews, Science for the Masses, 104–5, 172.
55. The first Soviet atheist works that strove to get beyond the political battle against religious institutions presented religion as a phenomenon with a predetermined life cycle (and therefore destined to decline and, finally, to become extinct). Because the source of religion’s vitality was the ignorance of believers, the principal weapon against it was edu-
Notes to pages 172–173 297
cation. Emblematic of this approach are the works of Emelian Iaroslavskii, the leading Soviet atheist of the prewar period and the chairman of the League of Militant Atheists.
See Emelian Iaroslavskii, Kak rodiatsia, zhivut i umiraiut bogi i bogini (Moscow: Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1959) and Bibliia dlia veruiushchikh i neveruiushchikh (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1975).
56. On utopian and mystical scientific thought, see Asif A. Siddiqi, “Imagining the Cosmos: Utopians, Mystics, and the Popular Culture of Spaceflight in Revolutionary Russia,”
Osiris 23 (2008): 260–88; 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.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, History Division, 2007); Alexander C. T. Geppert, “Flights of Fancy: Outer Space and the European Imagination, 1923–1969,” in Dick and Launius, Societal Impact of Spaceflight; Igor A. Kazus, “The Idea of Cosmic Architecture and the Russian Avant-garde of the Early Twentieth Century,” Cosmos: From Romanticism to the Avant-garde, edited by Jean Clair (Montreal, Quebec: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1999). On Fedorovism and Russian Cosmism, see Michael Hagemeister, “Russian Cosmism in the 1920s and Today,”