“Why Are We Telling Lies?” The Creation of Soviet Space History Myths

Abstract

On January 17, 1969, right after the landing of Soyuz-4, when the cosmonaut Vladimir Shatalov began climbing out of his spacecraft, someone suddenly shouted, “Where are you going?! Get back!” It turned out that a camera-man did not have time to point his camera at the scene.1 Shatalov obediently squeezed back into his capsule, and then re-emerged, properly smiling and waving. The historic moment was captured on film and preserved for posterity. By climbing out of his spacecraft Shatalov left the realm of history and entered a myth. 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 Terror and the Thaw. The term “myth” is used here without implying the truth or falsity of any particular historical claim, but merely to stress the foundational, identity-shaping character of such claims. Recent scholarship has moved beyond the examination of state policies and has increasingly focused on the interplay of official discourse and private memories and on the active role of multiple actors in political and cultural appropriations of memory.2