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

FrOM the CradLe tO the GraVe:
COSMONaut NOStaLGIa IN SOVIet aNd pOSt-SOVIet FILM
261
The spacecraft Iosif Stalin waits for launch to the Moon in Kosmicheskii reis (1936) Vasili
Zhuravlev. Kosmicheskii Reis (Space Flight). S. Komarov; K. Moskalenko; V. Gaponenko;
V. Kovrigin; N. Feoktistov; Gosudarstvennoe upravlenie kinematografii i fotografii (GUKF),
1936. 70.
realistically and to produce a technical science fction flm. previously the
creator of educational scientifc flms, he called on the expertise of none other
than Konstantin tsiolkovskii for technical advice. 25 tsiolkovskii had been a
science popularizer, as well as an airship and rocket theorist. even this late in
his life, tsiolkovskii enthusiastically contributed to the project, sketching and
writing notes on his anticipation of the efects of spacefight. 26
Kosmicheskii reis is set in the futuristic year of 1946, and begins at the fctional
tsiolkovskii Institute for Interplanetary Communications. In contrast to
protazanov’s Aelita, the earth scenes are modernist, resembling the art deco
25. anatolii F. Britikov, Russkii sovetskii nauchno-fantasticheskii roman (Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo “nauka,”
1970), p. 27.
26. Ben Finney, Vladimir Lytkin, and Liudmilla alepko, “tsiolkovskii’s “album of Space
Voyages:” Visions of a Space theorist turned Film Consultant.” 1997, in Proceedings of the
Thirty-First History Symposium of the International Academy of Astronautics, Turin, Italy, 1997,
ed. donald C. elder and George S. James, vol. 26, History or Rocketry and Astronautics, aaS
history Series (San diego, Ca: univelt, 2005), pp. 3-16.