Cosmonaut

How the public image of the Soviet cosmonaut was

designed and reimagined over time

In

this book, Cathleen Lewis discusses how the public image of the Soviet

cosmonaut developed beginning in the 1950s and the ways this icon has been

reinterpreted throughout the years and in contemporary Russia. Compiling

material and cultural representations of the cosmonaut program, Lewis provides

a new perspective on the story of Soviet spaceflight, highlighting how the government

has celebrated figures such as Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova through newspapers,

radio, parades, monuments, museums, films, and even postage stamps and lapel

pins.



Lewis's analysis shows that during the Space

Race, Nikita Khrushchev mobilized cosmonaut stories and images to symbolize the

forward-looking Soviet state and distract from the costs of the Cold War. Public

perceptions shifted after the first Soviet spaceflight fatality and failure to

reach the Moon, yet cosmonaut imagery was still effective propaganda, evolving

through the USSR's collapse in 1991 and seen today in Vladimir Putin's government

cooperation for a film on the 1985 rescue of the Salyut 7 space station. Looking

closely at the process through which Russians continue to reexamine their past,

Lewis argues that the cultural memory of spaceflight remains especially potent among

other collective Soviet memories.