In the late 1950s, when the Cold War between the USSR and the USA was at its peak, the next step of flex­ing the power mus­cle was the space explo­ration. Since both coun­tries were try­ing really hard to outdo each other, it was only a mat­ter of time before one would take over.

The way it hap­pened, the USSR got ahead. When in April 1961 the first man went into the outer space and orbited the Earth, the world went berserk over the new, well, horizons.

But what took him so long?

All the exper­i­ments with plants, mice, rats and dogs going into the outer space had showed that a human could sur­vive a trip across the orbit. Hence since 1950s a range of pro­grammes for the train­ing of humans for such trips was being devel­oped. A team of doc­tors, physi­cians, aca­d­e­mics and avi­a­tion prac­ti­tion­ers came to a con­clu­sion that mil­i­tary pilots would have the most suit­able back­ground for the extrater­res­trial activ­i­ties. The pilots can cope well with noises, vibra­tion, speed; they have strong deci­sion mak­ing skills, they are obser­vant and assertive, as well as strong willed, dis­ci­plined, ambi­tious and focused.

Among the other cri­te­ria were:

• height – up to 175cm;
• weight – up to 75kgs;
• age – up to 35;
• edu­ca­tion – an avi­a­tion engi­neer or sim­i­lar avi­a­tion background;
• health – excel­lent;
• com­mit­ment to the USSR and the space programme – endless.

Cer­tainly this was the ini­tial list; as the time went by it was loos­ened and became more accom­mo­dat­ing. Also, the par­tic­i­pa­tion was vol­un­tary – no mat­ter how strict and reg­u­lated the other spheres of Soviet life were, it was decided to base the space explo­ration mis­sion on com­mit­ment and mutual trust. In 1959 about 500 can­di­dates were down­sized to only 6: Var­lamov, Gagarin, Kar­tashov, Niko­laev, Popovich, Titov.

Geo­graph­i­cally, the first train­ing poly­gons were on the Volga banks, until the early 1960s, when the team was moved to Moscow and later on to Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

The ini­tial train­ing was para­chute jump­ing and scuba div­ing fol­lowed by plane and heli­copter fly­ing. Con­se­quently, the exer­cise pro­grammes were pro­gress­ing from ath­letic fit­ness regimes to sim­u­la­tions of weight­less­ness (zero grav­ity), G force, as well as land and sea sur­vival training.

Along with the main train­ing scheme, an alter­na­tive train­ing pro­gramme for female astro­nauts was being devel­oped and imple­mented. A num­ber of exper­i­ments on female chim­panzees had led to believe that females are just as suit­able for space explo­ration. In 1963, when Valentina Tereshkova suc­cess­fully spent three days in outer space, this hypoth­e­sis was con­firmed.  Now the spec­u­la­tions arise that she was cho­sen from among all oth­ers due to her work­ing class back­ground. She was a seam­stress who enjoyed para­chute jump­ing as a hobby and for the Soviet author­i­ties it was impor­tant to show for the West that lit­er­ally any­body in the USSR could be sent to space — even if you are a woman; even if you are a seamstress.

As for the gear, the first ver­sions of space­suits were designed in the USSR in early 1930s. They had a fairly sim­plis­tic design — a her­metic suit with a hel­met, and it would not even allow to bend limbs. As the engi­neers were pro­gress­ing in their R & D, the space­suits were becom­ing more and more sophis­ti­cated, until just eight weeks before the Yuri Gagarin mis­sion the final model was approved as “good to go”.

After Yuri Gagarin had suc­cess­fully flew across the orbit, the Amer­i­can media had a string of state­ments about the unpre­pared­ness of the Soviet astro­nauts to such actions. In real­ity, the whole cos­mo­naut train­ing pro­gramme was rushed and quite pos­si­bly the Soviet side needed more time to pre­pare; yet the ide­ol­ogy and pro­pa­ganda of the Cold War left no time for fur­ther exper­i­ments and tri­als: it just had to be done.

This post has been inspired by the movie Paper Sol­dier (2008)  by a well-renowned Russ­ian direc­tor Alexey Ger­man Jr.  The movie shows six weeks prior to the Gagarin’s mis­sion from the med­ical, eth­i­cal and ide­o­log­i­cal points of view through the eyes of a young con­sci­en­tious doc­tor. The whole space project is some­what of a dream which not even the cos­mo­nauts dare to believe in. Paper Sol­dier has received a very warm wel­come across the globe, but, for some strange rea­son, Russ­ian reviews are less than acclaim­ing as the direc­tor is blamed for labelling the great­est accom­plish­ment of the Sovi­ets a “fluke”. Well, we have attempted at look­ing into the train­ing pro­gramme of the aus­tro­nauts, how­ever, the great deal of doc­u­ments was clas­si­fied at the time and as per usual, the truth is hard to find.

Related posts:

1. AWOL Tig­ger, or a Soviet Take on the World-Famous Car­toon Characters
2. Buran: What­ever Hap­pened to You?
3. More pic­tures of Soviet Moscow 1960s by Mark Riboud
4. A Glance at the Soviet Lifestyle, Cap­tured by Marc Riboud.
5. Cal­en­dar of 1964: Us and Them.