INTRODUCTION

Flying, actual, potential, and dreamlike, has always implied more than a mechanism for overcoming gravity.

(Siukonen 2001: 11)

In an archived photograph, we can see a woman in the middle of space debris. The landing capsule has hurtled into a field; it is charred and lying slightly on its side on the ground. The woman – I know that she is Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman to just return from space – is sitting, looking confused and gathering things in an open bag. On the ground next to her is an open newspaper on top of which a bottle of milk and eggs have been placed. The spacesuit lies in a heap next to these and there is also a lot of other unidentified stuff around. A crowd surrounds the cosmonaut and the landing capsule, children with bare feet and grandmothers with scarves, looking solemnly at the miracle that has come from space (RGANTD 0-878). (FIGURE 1)

The people around Tereshkova are very close to her. How is it possible? Wasn't the landing of a cosmonaut a state secret? Yes, it was. The surrounding technology was top-secret, but still the people could approach very near, even touch their hero. How was this possible? The image is full of clues, like bits of a plot. These details are heavily loaded with meaning. However, outside of its original context, the photograph remains mute to me, a viewer from another culture and time.

In order to understand this single photograph, to be able to mine its meanings, we have to look further, to other photographs and stories, to the whole of the culture that once surrounded it. The image was born in a specific historical context and is bound with that time and place. The cultural geographer James R. Ryan (1997: 19) has used the term "visual history" to describe the research perspective that aims to examine how photographs or images function as part of a particular historical situation, as part of distinct mechanisms of power and control. The standpoint stems from the basic perspective of visual culture research, according to which images not only reflect reality but also actively produce it. As the French philosopher and cultural critic Roland Barthes put the idea, "In an initial period, photography, in order to surprise, photographs the notable; but soon, by a familiar reversal, it decrees notable whatever it photographs" (Barthes 1985: 40). What is it that this particular photograph is trying to make notable?

Taking this one shot as a starting point, this book is an analysis of images like it, which were provoked by the Space Age. The photographs that we are about to study in the following pages are both boldly heroic and, as we will see, commonplace yet romantic, strikingly picturesque and sometimes – paradoxically perhaps – very earthbound. The arguments of this book will explore these contradictions.

The research material includes photographs, illustrations, paintings, and films produced in the Soviet Union between 1957 and 1969. The main focus is on photographs found in the press, as the photos published in newspapers and magazines brought space and its conquerors into people's everyday lives. The analysis centers particularly on two interpretative contexts: the conquest of outer space, and the multiple facets of heroism connected to the cosmonauts in the Soviet Union of the late 1950s and the 1960s. (The reader should not worry: even though we will see many pictures and photographs, our space heroine will not be forgotten. Toward the end of this book, we will pick up with her again.)

"The Current Generation of Soviet People Will Live Under Communism"

The images illustrating this book were born as part of the Soviet Union's Cold War propaganda machine and, if published, they followed the official party line, as publishing could not be done legally outside of official channels. The period examined begins with the first Sputnik in 1957 and ends with the mission to the Moon by the United States in 1969. From the perspective of the Soviet Union, therefore, the story proceeds from victory to defeat. During this long decade the world lived in a Space Age, at least on the pages of glossy magazines. In Soviet Union, television had not yet replaced magazines as the primary form of visual media, and the photographs published in popular magazines played an important role in recording, illustrating, and producing the Space Age. In the words of a contemporary photographer, "As photojournalists, we write the history of our time. Our part is to do it through the method of our art; truthfully, clearly, convincingly" (Korolev 1957: 19).

The main publishing channel of the photos was the press, by means of which they circulated through an efficient, state-run publishing network. Technological advances in printing made possible an unprecedented appearance of photographs in the press. In terms of visual culture, times were in flux. In previous decades parades shown in media had been grand, paintings were full of marvels, and photos depicted the construction of a giant country into an even greater one. After the death of Stalin in March 1953, the situation changed – not with a bang, but gradually. At the 20th meeting of the Soviet Party Congress in 1956, Stalin's successor, Nikita Khrushchev, had condemned Stalin's purges and his personality cult. This "Secret Speech" by Khrushchev was followed by the so-called Thaw era, which was characterized by a partial relaxation of censorship, careful optimism and belief in a revival of the political system. Socialist realism retained its place as the official trend of the arts, but photographers observed that they had slightly more room to move.

Space grew to be the symbol of modern life and the future. Mankind seemed to be on the threshold of a new era, and belief in the possibilities of science and technology was strong. "Our country was the first to create an orbital spaceship, the first to reach outer space. Is this not a brilliant demonstration of the genuine freedom of the freest of all free people on earth, the Soviet people!" claimed Khrushchev in his speech (1961a) in Red Square two days after Yuri Gagarin's flight. Through the power of technology, everything appeared to be possible. The smiling cosmonauts were the people of the future. The central themes were modernization, "modernity" (sovremennost), a belief in man's omnipotence before nature, and the glorification of scientific and technological progress.

The optimism of that era is shown clearly in the Communist Party's new program (Programma KPSS), the so-called Third Party Program, which was formed in 1958-1961. The program was published in Pravda on July 30, 1961. The basic idea of the Party's program was to build a transition from Socialism to Communism over the next twenty years. "In the Soviet Union, the material and technical foundation of Communism will be created in two decades. That is the most important economic task of our Party,...