Remembering the Space Age. - Black Vault Radio Network (BVRN)

CreatING MeMOrIeS: MYth, IDeNtItY,
aND CULtUre IN the rUSSIaN SpaCe aGe
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Soviet poster commemorating the centennial of Tsiolkovskii’s birth, 1957. (Courtesy
of the Russian Academy of Sciences Archives)
tsiolkovskii’s visit to Moscow, the story later became embellished to the point
of Korolev’s vivid recollection of a visit to tsiolkovskii’s house in Kaluga—a
visit that evidently never happened. 35 privately, Korolev admitted that he
barely remembered tsiolkovskii and that the main source of his recollections
was his own “fantasy.” 36 Yet the ofcial canonization of tsiolkovskii and the
resurrection of his legacy played a crucial role in legitimizing the idea of space
exploration in the postwar Soviet Union. By turning a government-sponsored
myth into a personal memory, Korolev managed to present his space projects
35. See Iaroslav Golovanov,“Korolev i tsiolkovskii,” unpublished manuscript; rGaNtD, f. 211, op.
4, d. 150 (available at http://rgantd.ru/vzal/korolev/pics/006_008.pdf); Georgii Vetrov, S.P. Korolev
i kosmonavtika: Pervye shagi (Moscow: Nauka, 1994), chaps. 20, 21.
36. Iaroslav Golovanov, Korolev: Fakty i mify (Moscow: Nauka, 1994), p. 110.