Into the Cosmos Read online

  130. Pelevin, “Code of the World.”

  8. She Orbits over the Sex Barrier

  Funding for this research has been provided by the Spencer Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, and DePaul University. The title phrase, “She Orbits over the Sex Barrier,” is borrowed from a headline in Life Magazine 54, no. 26 (June 1963): 28.

  1. There have been a number of popular biographies of Tereshkova but few schol-

  arly investigations of her moment in Soviet history. Recent work by historians has begun to fill the gap. This scholarship includes Cathleen Susan Lewis, “The Red Stuff: A History of the Public and Material Culture of Early Human Space Flight in the U.S.S.R.

  (PhD diss., George Washington University, 2008); Sue Bridger, “The Cold War and the Cosmos: Valentina Tereshkova and the First Woman’s Space Flight,” in Women in the Khrushchev Era, edited by Melanie Ilic et al. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 222–37; and Erica L. Fraser, “Masculinities in the Motherland: Gender and Authority in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, 1945–1968” (PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009). Historians interested in female participation in the American and Soviet space programs and the Cold War “space race” more generally also mention Tereshkova. See Bettyann Holtzmann Kevles, Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space (New York: Basic Books, 2003); Margaret A. Weitekamp, Right Stuff, Wrong Sex: America’s First Women in Space Program (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004); and others.

  2. This language was ubiquitous in the press coverage of Tereshkova. See, for example, the extensive coverage of Tereshkova’s flight in Literaturnaia gazeta, June 18, 1963.

  3. See, for example, the letter attributed to the famous French scientist and popular science writer Albert Ducrocq in Literaturnaia gazeta, June 19, 1963.

  4. Tereshkova was frequently referred to as “our Valia.” See, for example, Pionerskaia pravda, June 25, 1963, 1. Although she does not mention Tereshkova, the historian Svetlana Boym has discussed Soviet children’s dreams of space travel and the enthusiasm generated among them by the flights of Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin; see Svetlana Boym,

  “Kosmos: Remembrances of the Future,” in Kosmos: A Portrait of the Russian Space Age (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Architectural Press, 2001), 83.

  5. There are still relatively few historical studies of Soviet childhood. The most comprehensive in terms of scope is Catriona Kelly, Children’s World: Growing Up in Russia 1890–

  1991 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007). Specialized studies of particular eras include Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, Small Comrades: Revolutionizing Childhood in Soviet Russia, 1917–1932 (New York: Routledge Falmer, 2001); Ann Livschiz, “Growing Up Soviet:

  Notes to pages 196–199  303

  Childhood in the Soviet Union, 1918–1958” (PhD diss., Stanford University, 2007), and her article, “De-Stalinizing Soviet Childhood: The Quest for Moral Rebirth, 1953–1958,” in The Dilemmas of De-Stalinization: Negotiating Cultural and Social Change in the Khrushchev Era, edited by Polly Jones (New York: Routledge, 2006). Literary scholars have also begun to investigate various aspects of Russian children’s culture. Anindita Banerjee’s work is particularly relevant; see Anindita Banerjee, “Between Sputnik and Gagarin: Space Flight, Children’s Periodicals, and the Circle of Imagination,” in Russian Children’s Literature and Culture, edited by Marina Balina and Larissa Rudova (New York: Routledge, 2008), 67–89.

  Also notable is Margaret Peacock, “Contested Innocence: Images of the Child in the Cold War” (PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 2008).

  6. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, children in middle childhood (from ages six to twelve) become increasingly aware of the world and their place in it, demonstrating enhanced self-awareness through their emerging ability to articulate thoughts and feelings and describe life experiences. They also begin to think more about the future and seek to be more independent from their parents and families. At the same time, though, children’s desire to be accepted and liked by their peers gains intensity. The years of middle childhood are thus critically important in the development of self-esteem, as children gain or lose confidence in their abilities to successfully navigate the worlds of home, school, and society. See “Developmental Stages,” American Association of Pediatrics, available online at http://aap.org/healthtopics/stages.cfm. See also “Child Development,” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Center for Disease Control, online at http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/child/default.htm.

  7. See Lewis, “Red Stuff “; Bridger, “Cold War and the Cosmos”; Fraser, “Masculinities in the Motherland”; Kevles, Almost Heaven; Weitekamp, Right Stuff, Wrong Sex; and others.

  8. See especially Fraser, “Masculinities in the Motherland,” 155–71. Slava Gerovitch talks about Tereshkova’s futile efforts to remain active in the cosmonaut corps. See Slava Gerovitch, “‘New Soviet Man’ inside Machine: Human Engineering, Spacecraft Design, and the Construction of Communism,” Osiris (2007): 22, 152.

  9. “Devushka iz Iaroslavlia,” Pionerskaia pravda, June 18, 1963, 2. For more on the female cosmonaut corps, see Lewis, “Red Stuff,” 143–58.

  10. The findings discussed in this paragraph are in keeping with those presented in Kelly, Children’s World.

  11. Even a cursory inspection of Pionerskaia pravda for the years 1963 through 1965

  shows that representations of boys outnumbered those of girls by at least five to one.

  12. For a sampling of photos of girls engaging in these activities, see Pionerskaia pravda on the following dates: May 21, 1963; May 28, 1963; September 3, 1963.

  13. Such images were ubiquitous. See, for example, photos in Pionerskaia pravda on January 25, 1963; March 17, 1963; March 26, 1963; May 14, 1963; August 13, 1963; February 11, 1964; March 10, 1964; March 17, 1964; March 20, 1964; April 24, 1964; April 28, 1964; May 29, 1964; and many others.

  14. For examples on sewing, knitting, fashion, and hair styling, see Pionerskaia pravda on January 4, 1963; January 15, 1963; February 8, 1963; April 5, 1963; and October 22, 1963. Examples of arts and crafts, music, drama, and dancing can be found in Pionerskaia pravda on January 25, 1963; February 1, 1963; February 26, 1963; March 1, 1963; May 15, 1963; July 2, 1963; July 19, 1963; August 27, 1963; February 11, 1964; February 14, 1964; March 3, 1964; and March 10, 1964.

  15. Images of girls engaged in sports and recreational activities typically appeared several times a month in Pionerskaia pravda. See January 4, 1963; January 18, 1963; January

  304  Notes to pages 199–203

  25, 1963; February 22, 1963; March 5, 1963; May 17, 1963; May 21, 1963; June 4, 1963; June 11, 1963; July 23, 1963; August 9, 1963; August 16, 1963; November 15, 1963; January 3, 1963; January 17, 1964; February 4, 1964; and March 13, 1964.

  16. For examples of stories about mothers as role models, see especially the International Women’s Day issues of Pionerskaia pravda: March 8, 1963; March 3, 1964; and March 6, 1964. For an illustrative piece about teachers, see “Moia uchitel’nitsa,” Pionerskaia pravda, May 12, 1964. For World War II–era heroines, see June 14, 1963; September 24, 1963; January 24, 1964; and January 31, 1964. For stories about female political and party figures as role models, see February 8, 1963; February 19, 1963; and February 25, 1964.

  17. See Pionerskaia pravda, February 19, 1963; March 9, 1963; April 9, 1963; July 9, 1963; February 11, 1964; March 17, 1964; and April 28, 1964

  18. See, for example, Pionerskaia pravda on March 5, 1963; March 26, 1963; May 7, 1963; May 24, 1963; November 19, 1963; December 10, 1963; February 11, 1964; and April 3, 1964.

  19. Compare “Kogda stroikh mashinu sam” with drawings of girls collecting grain in a field and watering a house plant, in Pionerskaia pravda, February 12, 1963, 2–3.

  20. Pionerskaia pravda was full of references to space and space exploration, both in the context of nonfiction references to Soviet accomplishments and plans for the future and in science fiction stories, which a
ppeared with great frequency. In the months before Tereshkova’s flight, space-themed items appeared on January 4, 1963; January 11, 1963; January 15, 1963; February 5, 1963; February 12, 1963; March 1, 1963; March 24, 1963; April 5, 1963; April 9, 1963; April 12, 1963; April 16, 1963; May 10, 1963; May 28, 1963; and May 31, 1963.

  21. In this, my interpretation differs somewhat from that of the historian Erica Fraser, who has argued against the notion that media representations of Tereshkova associated her in a robust way with scientific and technological competence. See Fraser, “Masculinities in the Motherland,” 156, and below.

  22. For more on girls’ enthusiasm, see Roshanna P. Sylvester, “‘Let’s Find out Where the Cosmonaut School Is’: Soviet Girls and Cosmic Enthusiasm in the Aftermath of Tereshkova,” in Soviet Space Culture: Cosmic Enthusiasm in Socialist Societies, edited by Eva Maurer, Julia Richers, Monica Rüthers, and Carmen Scheide (London: Palgrave, 2011).

  23. Moscow News, June 18, 1963.

  24. Quoted in Pionerskaia pravda, June 18, 1963.

  25. Boym, Kosmos, 83.

  26. Quoted in Ogonek, no. 15 (April 1963): 17.

  27. “Sbudetsia, Sveta, tvoia mechta!,” Pionerskaia pravda, June 18, 1963, 1.

  28. Pionerskaia pravda, June 21, 1963.

  29. Krokodil, June 30, 1963.

  30. Ogonek, no. 26 (June 1963).

  31. K. Iur’ev, “Devchonki sogodnia imenninitsy,” Ogonek, no. 26 (June 1963): 30–31.

  32. Tereshkova’s Red Square speech as well as speeches by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, official state and Communist Party decrees, and transcripts of official conversations associated with her accomplishments were widely reprinted in the Soviet Union’s major newspapers. Here, and below, I quote the officially approved English-language translations in Moscow News, June 23, 1963, 6.

  33. Moscow News, June 22, 1963.

  34. Ibid.

  35. Izvestiia, June 18, 1963.

  36. Moscow News, June 18, 1963.

  Notes to pages 203–209  305

  37. Moscow News, June 23, 1963.

  38. Izvestiia, June 17, 1963.

  39. Literaturnaia gazeta, June 20, 1963.

  40. Literaturnaia gazeta, June 25, 1963.

  41. Moscow News, June 23, 1963.

  42. Pionerskaia pravda, June 25, 1963.

  43. Ibid.

  44. For evidence of this see, for example, the article by V. Parin in Izvestiia, June 18, 1963, 3.

  45. This line of thinking has been evolving in large part thanks to the pioneering work of Susan E. Reid. Her article “Cold War in the Kitchen” did much to inspire scholarly investigation of Soviet consumerism and gender in the Khrushchev and Brezhnev eras; see Susan E. Reid, “Cold War in the Kitchen: Gender and the De-Stalinization of Consumer Taste in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev,” Slavic Review 61, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 211–52. Some of the work she inspired is collected in Susan E. Reid and David Crowley, eds., Socialist Spaces: Sites of Everyday Life in the Eastern Bloc (New York: Berg, 2002). Larissa Zakharova’s work on the Soviet fashion industry and its connections to Paris is also a fascinating addition to the literature; see Larissa Zakharova, “S’habiller à la soviétique: La mode sous Khrouchtchev: Transferts, production, consommation” (thesis, Centre d’etudes des mondes russe, caucasien et centre-europeen, 2006), and her articles, including “Dior in Moscow: A Taste for Luxury in Soviet Fashion Under Khrushchev,” in Pleasures in Socialism: Leisure and Luxury in the Eastern Bloc, edited by David Crowley and Susan E. Reid (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2010).

  46. “Ia ‘Chaika,’” Ogonek, June 23, 1963, 6–7.

  47. Kelly, Children’s World, 132–34, discusses the continued influence of Stalin-era and particularly World War II–era role models in children’s periodical literature of the 1950s and 1960s and their conflation with narratives about cosmonauts.

  48. Literaturnyaia gazeta, June 23, 1963.

  49. Lewis, “Red Stuff,” 143–58, provides a summary of Russian women’s accomplishments in the realms of aviation and space technology.

  50. “Ee predshestvennitsy,” Znanie—Sila, no. 7 (July 1963): 5.

  51. Nikolai Denisov, “Kosmicheskaia nedelia: Iz zhurnalistskogo dnevnika,” Ogonek, June 23, 1963, 12–13.

  52. The transcript of the phone conversation was widely published in Soviet newspapers on June 18, 1963. See, for example, Izvestiia, Literaturnaia gazeta, and Komsomolskaia pravda. Here I am quoting from Moscow News, June 18, 1963, a special issue that featured on its cover a smiling Tereshkova in her space helmet under the headline “The First Woman Astronaut in the World.”

  53. For an example of this, see Literaturnaia gazeta, June 20, 1963.

  54. As the scholar Erica L. Fraser has argued, Tereshkova “epitomized a particular postwar and Cold War version of the female celebrity, which was limited to the gendered realm of the family. Her celebrity was highly contingent on the political elite’s insistence on fashioning her as a wife and mother, first and foremost, in contrast to the masculine embodiments of military might, science, technological progress, and diplomatic skill as-cribed to her male colleagues”; see Fraser, “Masculinities in the Motherland,” 156.

  55. Reported in T. A. Babushkina and V. N. Shubkin, “The Statistics and Dynamics of Occupational Prestige: From the Findings of the Comparative International Research Project ‘The Life-Paths of Young People in Socialist Society,’” translated in The Social

  306  Notes to pages 209–213

  Structure of the USSR: Recent Soviet Studies, edited by Murray Yanowitch (New York: M. E.

  Sharpe, 1986), 132–35.

  56. V. N. Shubkin, “Youth Starts out in Life,” in Sociology in the USSR: A Collection of Readings from Soviet Sources, edited by Stephen P. Dunn (White Plains, N.Y.: International Arts and Sciences Press, 1969), 28. Originally published in Voprosy filosofii, no. 5 (1965).

  57. Norton T. Dodge, “Women in the Professions,” in Women in Russia, edited by Doro-thy Atkinson et al. (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1977), 212–13.

  58. See the statistics compiled by the American Institute of Physics Statistical Research Center from NSF data, available online at http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/highlite

  /women05/figure7.htm.

  59. Dodge, “Women in the Professions,” 212–13.

  60. For a recent example, see Organization for Economic Co-operation and Devel-

  opment Global Science Forum, “Evolution of Student Interest in Science and Technology Studies: Policy Report,” May 2006, available online at http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd

  /16/30/36645825.pdf.

  61. From first through ninth grade, pupils studied mathematics for six hours a week.

  Children in second, third, and fourth grades spent two additional hours on the natural sciences. By fifth grade Soviet pupils added two hours a week of biology. Physics and chemistry entered the curricula in sixth and seventh grades, becoming a still more substantive part of the science program in higher grades. In tenth grade Soviet sixteen-year-olds had five hours of math, five hours of physics, three hours of chemistry, two hours of biology, and one hour of astronomy every week. This meant that sixteen of thirty of their compul-sory lesson hours were in math and science. Sarah White, ed., Guide to Science and Technology in the USSR (Guernsey, U.K.: Francis Hodgson, 1971), 64.

  62. M. Ia. Sonin, “Equal Rights, Unequal Burdens,” Ekonomika i organizatsiia pro-myshlennovo proizvodstva, no. 3 (May–June 1977): 5–18; and M. Pankratova, “The Soviet Woman—A Social Portrait,” Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia, no. 1, 1978. Both are available in translation online at Seventeen Moments in Soviet History, available at http://www

  .soviethistory.org.

  63. Svein Sjoberg and Camilla Schreiner, “How Do Learners in Different Cultures Relate to Science and Technology?” Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching 6, no. 2 (December 2005): 10–13, available online at http://www.ied.edu.hk/apfslt/.

  64. Bridger, “Cold War and
the Cosmos,” 234–35. Cathleen Lewis, “Red Stuff,” 151–52, has argued that at least part of the explanation for the decline in the female cosmonaut program was that, in the latter half of the 1960s, the Soviet space program as a whole lost its most powerful patrons with the premature death of the chief designer, Sergei Korolev, and the removal of Nikita Khrushchev as general secretary of the Communist Party.

  65. Quoted in Ron Laytner and Donald Mclachlan, “Ride, Sally Ride: Her Place in Space,” Chicago Tribune, April 24, 1983.

  66. NASA reports that as of May 2009, forty-nine women have flown to space, “including cosmonauts, astronauts, payload specialists, and foreign nationals.” Of those, forty-three participated on NASA flights, but only five on Soviet/Russian space expeditions.

  For more, see the NASA History Division Web site at http://history.nasa.gov/women.

  html.

  9. From the Kitchen into Orbit

  1. Walter H. Waggoner, “Brussels Invites the World to Its Fair,” New York Times, March 2, 1958, XX: 6.

  Notes to pages 213–217  307

  2. “U.S. and Soviet Agree to Exchange of Exhibits,” Washington Post and Times Herald, December 30, 1958, A5.

  3. The U.S. Vanguard TV-3 launch attempt, two months after the Soviet’s successful Sputnik, failed on December 6, 1957. The United States successfully launched Pioneer 1

  on January 31, 1958, before the spring opening of the Brussels World’s Fair but too late for inclusion in the exhibition.

  4. Susan E. Reid, “Cold War in the Kitchen: Gender and the De-Stalinization of Consumer Taste in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev,” Slavic Review 61, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 211–52.

  5. Jeffrey Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), xvii–xviii.

  6. Susan E. Reid and David Crowley, eds., Style and Socialism: Modernity and Material Culture in Post-war Europe (Oxford: Berg, 2000).

  7. Iurii Gerchuk, “The Aesthetics of Everyday Life in the Khrushchev Thaw in the USSR (1954–64),” in Reid and Crowley, Style and Socialism, 81–100.