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

CreatING MeMOrIeS: MYth, IDeNtItY,
aND CULtUre IN the rUSSIaN SpaCe aGe
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for far too long. “We have fallen behind the United States by two or three
years,” he wrote in the diary. “We could have been frst on the Moon.” 66
the master narrative dominated Soviet media, but during the relatively
liberal “thaw” of the Khrushchev era, newspapers occasionally gave voice
to ordinary citizens who did not join in the public expression of enthusiasm
for space. For example, in June 1960, a youth newspaper published a letter
from one alexei N., who bluntly asked about the space program, “What’s in
it for me?” “I, for example, on the eve of the launch of a rocket, received 300
rubles salary, and this is what I still receive, in spite of the successful launch.
Doesn’t is seem to you that the enthusiasm for these sputniks and the cosmos
in general is inopportune and, more precisely, premature?” he asked. “rocket,
rocket, rocket—what’s it needed for now? to hell with it now, and with the
moon, but give me something better for my table. after that, then it will really
be possible to firt with the moon.” 67 Most likely, the newspaper published
this critical letter not to generate a genuine debate but simply to provoke an
indignant reaction from space enthusiasts and thus further shore up the master
narrative. an occasional display of dissenting opinion only stressed the need for
the further strengthening of the space propaganda efort. even such carefully
controlled expressions of criticism, however, totally disappeared from public
discourse during the Brezhnev period.
the frst visible cracks in the master narrative came from those inside the
space program who wanted to reassign credit among the major protagonists,
while preserving the overall structure of the narrative. In 1974, the chief
designer of rocket engines Valentin Glushko, Korolev’s longtime opponent,
was appointed head of Korolev’s former design bureau. For 15 years, as Glushko
ruled this central asset of the Soviet space program, he made a determined
efort to rewrite Soviet space history by emphasizing his own contributions
and downplaying Korolev’s. he even ordered to remove spacecraft designed by
Korolev from the bureau’s internal museum and to replace them with rocket
engines of his own design. 68
the tensions that brewed under the lid of the master narrative over
decades eventually came to surface as the policy of glasnost during Gorbachev’s
perestroika gave voice to the suppressed counter memories.
66. Nikolai Kamanin, Skrytyi kosmos, vol. 3, 1967-1968 (Moscow: Novosti kosmonavtiki, 1999), p.
335 (diary entry of December 12, 1968).
67. Quoted in paul Josephson,“rockets, reactors and Soviet Culture,” in Science and the Soviet Social
Order, ed. Loren r. Graham (Cambridge, Ma: harvard University press, 1990), p. 185.
68. asif a. Siddiqi, “privatising Memory: the Soviet Space programme through Museums and
Memoirs,” in Showcasing Space, eds. Martin Collins and Douglas Millard (London: Science
Museum, 2005), p. 107.