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"Gerovitch, Slava"
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Soviet space mythologies : public images, private memories, and the making of a cultural identity
\"From the start, the Soviet human space program had an identity crisis. Were cosmonauts heroic pilots steering their craft through the dangers of space, or were they mere passengers riding safely aboard fully automated machines? Tensions between Soviet cosmonauts and space engineers were reflected not only in the internal development of the space program but also in Soviet propaganda that wavered between praising daring heroes and flawless technologies. Soviet Space Mythologies explores the history of the Soviet human space program within a political and cultural context, giving particular attention to the two professional groups--space engineers and cosmonauts--who secretly built and publicly represented the program. Drawing on recent scholarship on memory and identity formation, this book shows how both the myths of Soviet official history and privately circulating counter-myths have served as instruments of collective memory and professional identity. These practices shaped the evolving cultural image of the space age in popular Soviet imagination. Soviet Space Mythologies provides a valuable resource for scholars and students of space history, history of technology, and Soviet (and post-Soviet) history\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
The Kitchen and the Dacha: Productive Spaces of Soviet Mathematics
In the late 1960s and 70s, due to the Soviet regime’s crackdown on dissident activities and rising anti-Semitic policies, many mathematicians from “undesirable” groups faced discrimination and serious administrative restrictions on work and study at top-ranking official institutions. To overcome such barriers, the mathematical community built extensive social networks around informal or semi-formal study groups and seminars, which formed a parallel social infrastructure for learning and research.As result, mathematical activity began shifting from public educational and research institutions into private or semi-private settings – family apartments, summer dachas, and countryside walks. For many Soviet mathematicians, instead of being a refuge from work, their home apartments and dachas became their primary working spaces – places where they did their research, met with students, and exchanged ideas with colleagues. At the intersection of work and private life, a tightly knit mathematical community emerged, whose commitment to scholarship went beyond formal duty or required curriculum, a community practicing mathematics as a “way of life.” The parallel social infrastructure functioned in tense interdependency with formal institutions and borrowed some characteristics of the official system it opposed.
Journal Article
\Why Are We Telling Lies?\ The Creation of Soviet Space History Myths
Myth-making was part of a venerable tradition of Soviet propaganda. Soviet leaders sought legitimacy of their power and validation of current policies in the construction of historical breaks and continuities, in the overthrow of former idols, and in the creation of new ones. The promotion of state-sponsored myths of the October Revolution and the Great Patriotic War was accompanied by a systematic suppression of contradictory private memories, which often gave rise to counter-myths, such as the Great Tenor and the Thaw. Here, Gerovitch discusses the creation of Soviet space history myths.
Journal Article
“New Soviet Man” Inside Machine: Human Engineering, Spacecraft Design, and the Construction of Communism
Soviet propaganda often used the Soviet space program as a symbol of a much larger and more ambitious political/engineering project—the construction of communism. Both projects involved the construction of a new self, and the cosmonaut was often regarded as a model for the “new Soviet man.” The Soviet cosmonauts publicly represented a communist ideal, an active human agency of sociopolitical and economic change. At the same time, space engineers and psychologists viewed human operators as integral parts of a complex technological system and assigned the cosmonauts a very limited role in spacecraft control. This article examines how the cosmonaut self became the subject of “human engineering,” explores the tension between the public image of the cosmonauts and their professional identity, and draws parallels between the iconic roles of the cosmonaut and the astronaut in the cold war context.
Journal Article
Stalin’s Rocket Designers’ Leap into Space: The Technical Intelligentsia Faces the Thaw
This article explores the impact of the professional culture of rocket engineering in Stalin’s Soviet Union on the engineering and organizational practices of the space program during the Khrushchev era. The Stalinist legacy and the dual military / civilian character of rocket engineers’ work profoundly affected the identity of this elite part of Soviet technical intelligentsia. Focusing on such notions as control, authority, and responsibility, this article examines the role of engineering culture in shaping the Soviet approach to the automation of piloted spacecraft control. Through patronage and networking, rocket engineers were able to overcome the inefficiency of Soviet industrial management and to advance their agenda of space exploration.
Journal Article
Ruling the World. Cybernetics in the Cold War
The history of cybernetics is the history of a misunderstanding in the Cold War. Because the United States was fascinated by cybernetics in the 1950s, the Soviet Union rejected the subject. When Soviet scientists extolled the new possibilities for management, the CIA sensed danger. In the United States, cybernetics were now rejected rhetorically, but in reality developed further in narrowly defined research projects. In the Soviet Union, the opposite happened: Cybernetic visions of society flowed into official doctrine, but concrete technical projects failed due to the hierarchical apparatus of power. Adapted from the source document.
Journal Article