Into the Cosmos: Space Exploration and Soviet Culture

Contents

Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Space Exploration in the Soviet Context 1 James T. Andrews and Asif A. Siddiqi Part I. The Space Project: Cultural Context and Historical Background 1. The Cultural Spaces of the Soviet Cosmos 15 Alexei Kojevnikov 2. Getting Ready for Khrushchev’s Sputnik: Russian Popular Culture and National Markers at the Dawn of the Space Age 28 James T. Andrews Part II. Myth and Reality in the Soviet Space Program 3. Cosmic Contradictions: Popular Enthusiasm and Secrecy in the Soviet Space Program 47 Asif A. Siddiqi Contents 4. The Human inside a Propaganda Machine: The Public Image and Professional Identity of Soviet Cosmonauts 77 Slava Gerovitch 5. The Sincere Deceiver: Yuri Gagarin and the Search for a Higher Truth 107 Andrew Jenks 6. Cold War Celebrity and the Courageous Canine Scout: The Life and Times of Soviet Space Dogs 133 Amy Nelson Part III. The Soviet Space Program and the Cultural Front 7. Cosmic Enlightenment: Scientific Atheism and the Soviet Conquest of Space 159 Victoria Smolkin-Rothrock 8. She Orbits over the Sex Barrier: Soviet Girls and the Tereshkova Moment 195 Roshanna P. Sylvester 9. From the Kitchen into Orbit: The Convergence of Human Spaceflight and Khrushchev’s Nascent Consumerism 213 Cathleen S. Lewis 10. Cold War Theaters: Cosmonaut Titov at the Berlin Wall 240 Heather L. Gumbert Notes 263 Contributors 317 Index 321 viii  Contents ...