Slava Gerovitch. Soviet Space Mythologies: Public Images, Private Memories, and the Making of a Cultural Identity. xviii + 232 pp., illus., bibl., index. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015.Slava Gerovitch. Voices of the Soviet Space Program: Cosmonauts, Soldiers, and Engineers Who Took the USSR into Space. xiv + 305 pp., illus., bibl., index. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.Doug Millard (Editor). Cosmonauts: Birth of the Space Age. 256 pp., illus., bibl., index. London: Science Museum, 2015.

Isis ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 107 (2) ◽  
pp. 440-442
Author(s):  
Jonathan Coopersmith
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Science Museum ◽  
Space Program ◽  
University Of Pittsburgh ◽  
Soviet Space ◽  
Space Age

The Soviet Space Program

Science News ◽  
1971 ◽  
Vol 99 (18) ◽  
pp. 303
Author(s):  
Everly Driscoll
Keyword(s):  
Space Program ◽  
Soviet Space

scholarly journals Cosmonaut Gossip

Aspasia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-80
Author(s):  
Erica L. Fraser ◽  
Kateryna Tonkykh
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Space Program ◽  
Soviet Space

The diaries of Nikolai P. Kamanin, a well-placed official in the early Soviet space program in charge of cosmonaut selection and chaperoning, have been an important source for historians since their publication in the 1990s. This article reevaluates the diary entries from 1961 to 1965, using the framework of gossip. The diaries’ salacious tales of infidelity, drinking, and other violations of communist morality provide cultural historians with as much insightful material as the parallel technological entries have done for historians of science and space engineering. The cosmonaut gossip that Kamanin records comprised a mix of knowledge production and moralizing that built and reinforced his self-fashioning among the Soviet elite. Furthermore, reading the diaries (a private text) through the lens of gossip (a public act) helps us see how socialist masculinity was forged in part through the specific hybridized private-public performances required of elite men.

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