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

FrOM the CradLe tO the GraVe:
COSMONaut NOStaLGIa IN SOVIet aNd pOSt-SOVIet FILM
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mockumentary, this flm fabricates the existence of a secret Cheka flm archive
of a Stalinist program to send men to the Moon during the 1930s. Where Space
as Premonition parodies the unfulflled potential of spacefight weighed-down
by a corrupt system, First on the Moon, portrays the cosmonauts as tragic victims
of the state. the events of this flm take place during the late 1930s and present
footage of the selection and training of cosmonauts for a secret fight to the
Moon. the purported documentary reports on the uncovered mission and the
search for the survivor—cosmonaut Ivan Sergeevich Kharlamov—his journey
from his crash site in Chile, and ultimate return to the Soviet union. although
this is a parody, partly of the Stalinist Falcon’s fights of the 1930s and partly
of the space program of the 1960s, the treatment of the cosmonauts is deeply
afectionate. they, too, are hapless and blameless in their eforts.
Ivan Sergeeivch Kharlamov started his career as an aviation pioneer along
with Chkalov and Baidukov, aviators who were the frst heroes of the Soviet
union. at some point in his career, he joins a team of Soviets and Germans
who were cooperating on rocket development under the conditions of the 1922
German-Soviet treaty of rapallo. among the fnalists for the mission are four
people: Kharlamov; a girl known as the Komsomol princess, Nadia; a central
asian, Kharif Ivanovich Fattakhov; and a midget. all endure the fnal testing,
and the chief designer makes the fnal selection of Kharlamov for a launch in
1938. after the launch, the ground control loses all contact with the spacecraft,
throwing the entire program into turmoil. the chief designer commits suicide.
Mysterious men sedate and kidnap the remaining cosmonaut-candidates from
their barracks and destroy all evidence of the mission, saving only a scale model
of the spacecraft.
What could have been a complete coverup of the program’s existence was,
however, imperfect. In March 1938, Chilean peasants report seeing a freball in
the sky. this episode refers to a real event in history of a meteor landing in the
country. In Fedorchenko’s flm, it is not a rock, but Kharlamov’s spacecraft that
lands in Chile. he has survived his mission. however, without ofcial status,
Kharlamov has no resources with which to return home and has to become
personally resourceful to do so. the Cheka interviews trace his steps in the
return home. he travels through Mongolia during the russo-Japanese War,
after crossing the pacifc Ocean via boat and through China. Speaking only
gibberish upon his return to the u.S.S.r., Kharlamov ends up spending time
in a psychiatric hospital. It was this time that the people’s Commissariat for
Internal afairs (NKVd) takes notice of his return to the u.S.S.r. always not
close enough on his trail, 30 NKVd agents gather information on his life as
they follow him.
corrupt Soviet system that stages a mock-fight to the Moon. When Omon discovers the
true level of deception about the program, and implicitly, the Soviet system, he fees. Viktor
pelevin, Omon ra (Moscow, russia: Vagrius, 2001).