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

264 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe
route to the planet Venus.the crews of the surviving spacecraft,“Vega”and “Serius,”
had to make a decision about exploring the planet while waiting for a third craft to
join them.they decided jointly that in the name of the party and the Soviet union,
they would go ahead with the risky exploration, leaving a lone crewmate and the
only woman, Masha, in orbit (see illustration).With them, the men took the robot
and its designer, an american, to the surface. In this movie, the cosmonauts found
themselves separated from their spacecraft on the planet Venus, fghting prehistoric
animals and surviving erupting volcanoes en route back to their spacecraft. the
men survived the mission by maintaining Komsomol discipline. the robot was
not capable of sacrifcing himself for the good of the collective; therefore, the
cosmonauts abandoned the robot in a river of molten lava. Meanwhile, onboard the
sole remaining spacecraft orbiting the planet,Masha struggled to maintain discipline
and remain in orbit over her desire to commit a pointless act of heroism. In the end
Masha overcame her emotions, obeyed orders, and aborted her rescue attempt to
the planet’s surface, thus leaving open the possibility of salvaging the mission.
even though they were made a generation apart, Planeta bur’ resembled
Kosmicheskii reis in content and values. Both flms relied heavily on the principles
of science education for content, although the latter used wild fantasy in the
Venus segments of the movie. the former presented an image of cosmonauts
that announced the new age of human spacefight to the world. Planeta bur’
demonstrated that cosmonauts took the values of party discipline with them as
they explored the solar system. the flm also began Klushantsev’s 1960s trilogy
that included the movies The Moon and Mars. all three flms combined science
education with realistic portrayals of science fction, even though the later two
were hybrids of documentary and theatrical flm, switching from scientifc
lectures and interviews to dramatic demonstrations of scientifc principles. this
new genre reinforced the cosmonaut message during the 1960s. through party
discipline, the Soviet union was leading the way into space.
although popular cinema never achieved the propaganda efect that
Lenin and Lunacharsky had predicted during the revolution, it did remain a
popular diversion from everyday life. In spite of ideological mandates and the
international popularity of Modernist flm directors such as eisenshtein and
Vertov, russian audiences preferred a comprehensible story line and rational
adventure. as a result, the earliest Soviet science fction movies subordinated
the ideological aspects of space travel to the fantasies about the appearance of
other worlds. Subsequent flms attributed a nation’s ability to fy in space to
personal loyalty and party discipline. this trend continued in the new Soviet
science fction flms at the dawn of the Space age. this style would continue in
flms and the portrayal of cosmonauts through the collapse of the u.S.S.r.