Picturing the Cosmos: A Visual History of Early Soviet Space Endeavor

by Iina Kohonen

Overview

Space is the ultimate canvas for the imagination, and in the 1950s and ’60s, as part of the space race with the United States, the solar system was the blank page upon which the Soviet Union etched a narrative of exploration and conquest. In Picturing the Cosmos, drawing on a comprehensive corpus of rarely seen photographs and other visual phenomena, Iina Kohonen maps the complex relationship between visual propaganda and censorship during the Cold War.

Kohonen ably examines each image, elucidating how visual media helped to anchor otherwise abstract political and intellectual concepts of the future and modernization within the Soviet Union. The USSR mapped and named the cosmos, using new media to stake a claim to this new territory and incorporating it into the daily lives of its citizens. Soviet cosmonauts, meanwhile, were depicted as prototypes of the perfect Communist man, representing modernity, good taste, and the aesthetics of the everyday. Across five heavily illustrated chapters, Picturing the Cosmos navigates and critically examines these utopian narratives, highlighting the rhetorical tension between propaganda, censorship, art, and politics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781783207428
Publisher:	Intellect, Limited
Publication date:	12/15/2017
Pages:	132
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Iina Kohonen is a scholar specializing in space-related visual propaganda and photojournalism in the Soviet Union.

Table of Contents

Foreword 7

Acknowledgments 11

1 Introduction 15

"The Current Generation of Soviet People Will Live Under Communism" 17

Secrecy and Spotlight 19

Material Used in the Book 20

The Structure of the Book 24

2 A Slash Across the Heavens 27

Racing into Space 29

To Conquer - or to Explore? 31

The System of Secrecy 33

Scouts of the Heavenly Depths 39

To the Moon and Around 44

A Map of the Moon 49

3 Travelers in the Void 57

The Gaze of Apollo 58

Cosmic Landscapes 61

Alexei Leonov, an Artist on a Journey 64

Horror Vacui: On Infinity and Congestion 70

Photograph Versus Painting 73

4 Story of the Heroic Conquest of Space 77

Cosmonauts and the Regime of Secrecy 80

Visual Narratives of Space Heroes 83

The Hero's Homecoming 86

The Tomb 89

The Jubilant Crowd 92

A Call from the Secretary General 96

5 A Completely Ordinary Hero 101

Devil in the Detail? 102

The Hero as an Everyman 106

6 The Housebroken Hero 111

Mothers and Sons 113

A Modern Space Heroine - and a Cosmic Love Story 115

Fathers and Husbands 117

Modern Homes for Ideal Citizens 120

7 The Tormented Hero 129

Hero on the Threshold 132

Man - Machine 135

The Death of the Hero 143

8 Conclusions 149

The Tamed Infinity 150

Cosmonauts as Examples of the Good Life 152

Imagery as a Modern Space Narrative 154

The Last Journeying Men 158

The Descended Hero 161

Endnotes 165

Sources and Literature 175

List of Figures 200

Editorial Reviews

"One of the first comprehensive studies of the imagery produced on the space exploration and its coverage in Soviet media. . . . An important visual-historical study of the representation of space in the Soviet Union, and significant in its attempt to decipher political messages of conquering nature with science and technology tools, designed and operated by Soviet citizens. . . . Picturing the Cosmos provides a useful introduction to understanding the media representations of space exploration in the Soviet Union and is an important staging-post on the route for understanding the highly relevant topic of ‘out of sight’ experiences entering the material world and every day life of common citizens. The book is an easy read and visual-historical approach allows for some fascinating insights."

Visual Studies

"The book examines how visual media served to construct an overarching heroic mythos of the conquering Soviet man, bravely exploring the depths of space, for the glory of the USSR and all mankind, and how that narrative was crafted to emphasize the values that Soviet leaders wanted to instill in their citizenry — while hiding uncomfortable realities and preventing attitudes at odds with the official line."

Undark

"An interesting and insightful book about Soviet culture in the early Space Age of the late 1950s and 1960s. . . . Pictures do matter, and the contradictions of Soviet politics and ideology are made clear in Picturing the Cosmos. It is a good book, offering a different look at Soviet policy in the USSR’s Golden Age of space achievement."

Isis: a Journal of the History of Science Society

"A fascinating journey into the visual history of the early years of Soviet space travel. Based on a thorough analysis of illustrated stories published in the popular magazine Ogonek, paintings by cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov and other artists, films as well as archival material, the book examines in detail the various visualization strategies of the kosmicheskaya era."

Slavic Review

"This beautifully illustrated book provides compelling insight into the construction of the cosmonauts as idealised heroes of the Soviet Union...and shows the role that cosmic images played in the making of modernity." 

LSE Review of Books

"The radical political and even metaphysical ambitions of the Soviet space effort generated contentious debates in Soviet visual culture between the 1950s and 80s, as is documented by Iina Kohonen in close and loving detail."

Times Literary Supplement