As an English boy in the 1960s I was quite thrilled by the record-breaking heroics of the early Soviet cosmonauts. I suppose I might have taken a different view if I'd been born an all-American kid.
Yuri Gagarin (aboard Vostok 1) was the first man ever to go into space, a feat he achieved in April 1961 nearly a year ahead of his US counterparts. A hero of the Soviet Union (and a man with a serious drink problem), Gagarin died in a terrestrial test-flying accident later in the decade. Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman ever to go into space (aboard Vostok 6) in June 1963. In fact she remains the only woman to have undertaken a solo space flight. A heroine of the Soviet Union, she is still alive and in 2013 (aged 76) volunteered to go on a one-way mission to Mars should it happen in her lifetime. What a girl. What an ambassador for gender equality.
When I was working in Russia a few years ago I tried to visit Star City (Zvyozdny Gorodok), home of the Yuri Gagarin Training Centre for aspiring cosmonauts (recently demilitarised though still not on many maps); as it turned out, a bit of a bleak adventure into a retro-Soviet hinterland, at odds - not unsurprisingly - both with all the romanticising propaganda that surrounded the space race of the 1960s and also with the emerging post-glasnost/ perestroika Russia.
As we race headlong into another festive season of Christmas and New Year I thought I'd illustrate today's blog with a couple of classic retro Russian seasonal greetings cards. I particularly like this one of Santa with Christmas tree in a spaceship (note his magical qualities mean he doesn't need a helmet). To nativity and beyond...
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| Soviet-style 1960s Santa |
"War is over if you want it!" (Lennon/Ono, Christmas 1971).
It was on this day (8th December) in 1980 that we woke to the sad and shocking news that John Lennon had been shot dead in New York City. Crazy, crazy - animals with guns. I watched a documentary about him and the making of his 'Imagine' album on tv the other week and it feels only appropriate to borrow one of his lines as the title to this strange new poem, informed by my weekly musings.
Above Us Only Sky
You shall boldly go, or so the legend read.
Aside from that, what festive cheer?
There's no good news from earth today:
it's grown nor kinder nor lovelier
in five decades
since we blasted off from Baikonur
in the grey October of our borning.
Wars rage, bombs away,
cold-eyed career politicians plot and lie,
fat cats dynastically toy their prey,
all manner of plunder (gold, oil, gas) is fair play,
a struggling underclass still slaves for fags and beer,
the spark of idealism faded from their eyes
and apparently state-sponsored snow-dropping
and the gassing of babies is okay.
We float in this sophisticated can
around the unrighteous planet we call home,
growing tired of watching it all go awry,
wondering what's it all for?
I've re-read my much thumbed Thunderpussy
for the umpteenth time -
the hero still saves the world and gets his girl
but the words hold no magic anymore.
All thought of returning down to earth
fills us with mighty dread.
We've discussed it for days and nights
(not that they quite exist up here)
and we've decided to go rogue,
break out of orbit
and just drift away into space,
come what may.
Merry Christmas Mister Putin.
We're switching off all comms,
there's nothing more to be said.
Let's toast our decision
with one last serious anaesthetising vodka
and smiling wave the earth goodbye.
Fire one, fire two, and we're spinning free,
above us only sky,
as the crumbs of fortune's last cookie
drift around our heads.
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| Happy New Year from the Grandchildren Of The Revolution |
Okay, I hope you've enjoyed the trip. Thanks for reading, Earth people. Merry Festives! S ;-)
61 comments:
Brilliant Steve!
I'm loving the poem.
I enjoyed your cosmonaut-inspired piece, which reminded me that my sister wrote to Yuri in 1961 - and received a signed photo from the great man. If she still has it, it's probably worth a few bob...
Thought-provoking (as ever).
That's another fine space you've got me into :-D
TBH not sure what to make of this. It's interesting and beautifully written but a bit negative? Or is it ironic that your cosmonauts just decide to pull the plug? Confused of Terra Firma!
An interesting blog. I love the retro space art and thought your poem was intriguing.
Steve your blogs are always a treat to read. This was no exception. I loved the illustrations and I thought the poem was clever and neatly done.Merry festives to you too.
That's a fine poem. Have you seen the movie Dark Star? Great black humor.
Informative and entertaining, cool illustrations and a thought-provoking poem - especially like the ring of "We float in our sophisticated can/ around the unrighteous planet we call home". Well done :-)
This was fun.
Love the blog Steve. Merry Christmas to you.
Yay. Very good. I'm sure John would have approved.
I remember we had a trendy student-teacher for one term back in the mid sixties and we were allowed to do project-based learning, a real breath of fresh air. I was in a group researching the Space Race, reading about it, writing about it, making model space ships out of loo rolls, tin foil and the like, painting pictures, writing poems and such. Your blog has brought it all back to me. Nice one Steve.
There was more mystique and romanticism attached to those Soviet space exploits and it looked like they led the way for a while - probably a lot of stage-dressing as it turned out. I enjoyed the concept and composition of your poem - very good. Merry Christmas to you.
Really like the new poem. Its strangeness is its charm.
And I always thought Santa Claus was the first man in space! Enjoyed this, very well written.
Great blog. Merry Festives reciprocated.
I'm pleased this post and poem is being quite well-received. To answer a few of the points/questions raised above:
- the 'going rogue' concept is just an imagined response taken to the extreme; wouldn't those cosmonauts sometimes be tempted to think 'f*ck it, let's just leave Earth to it'?
- Santa Claus was never the first man in space, definitely only sub-orbital. He only ever flies at a few hundred feet. He and the reindeer (which are colour-blind incidentally) need their oxygen.
- coindidentally Peterborough, where I went to primary/junior school in the 1960s was unusually cosmopolitan - as I've blogged elsewhere - and there were both Americans and Russians living in my neighbourhood (the former families linked to the US airbase at Alconbury, the latter asylum-seekers from post-war USSR). In fact my dancing partner at junior school was Tamara Shevchenko and that's the first time I've thought about her in fifty years.
There they were - gone! Terrific poem. Peace and Love at Christmas.
Most entertaining.
"...much thumbed Thunderpussy"? What's that? :-@
Top seasonal blog. Merry Festives back to you.
What a great blog - love it. Thank you and Merry Christmas.
Enjoyable and entertaining as ever Steve. I really likes the poem. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and keep writing.
Anon: 'Thunderpussy' is an imagined Spy novel - a shameless amalgam of Ian Fleming's 'Thunderball' and 'Octopussy' ;-)
God I love these Saturday blogs - great writing. Coincidentally we've all just sat through Apollo 13 on TV - what a gripping movie about NASA's "most successful failure". It just brings it home to you how brave the astronauts and cosmonauts are to risk all in their endeavours. Merry Christmas to you and let's wish for Peace on Earth, however elusive it appears.
This blog is very timely because at Christmas exactly 50 years ago Apollo 8 became the first manned mission to leave earth orbit and to fly around the moon and back (December 21st to 27th). It was the first launch of Saturn V and astronauts Anders, Borman and Lovell helped put the US ahead of the Soviets for the first time in the space race.
That was a cool read. Thank you.
Great blog and poem. Loved the graphics as well. Cool.
That's a fascinating blog and one hell of a good poem. Terrific, thank you.
Christmas/New Year seems to be a popular time to go visiting. I hear the Chinese have just landed an unmanned explorer on the 'dark' side of the moon.
Fascinating, informative and wonderfully inventive. (Gold star!)
Top blog. Lucky you having had the chance to work in 'mother Russia'; must have been interesting. I thought your poem was very powerful and such a great conceit - imagine just cutting loose. A nice tribute to the great John Winston Lennon as well. Thank you.
Grandchildren of the Revolution had me laughing out loud :-)
"Well you can terraplane in the fallin' rain
But you won't fool the (Grand)children of the Revolution" - ain't no disPutin' Mr Bolan.
A most intriguing blog: affection and disaffection in equal measure.
Inspired.
I agree with the first commentator - brilliant. Such a pleasure to read.
Great blog, entertainingly written, beautifully illustrated and I loved the quirky poem. A nice touch to remember John Lennon's anniversary. Well done.
Deliciously retro! Super poem.
I thoroughly enjoyed this. I envy you your imagination and way with words.
Wow. What a great read and a genius poem.
Thanks for the link. Enjoyed your rendition at Montagues last night. Agree, your blog is a blast.
Masterful prose and poetry! :)
Genius! I love this.
I totally agree. A great blog and a quirky, thought-provoking poem.
Really very good. One to follow for sure.
Well that was a real treat, a fascinating blog, beautifully illustrated, and a great gently satirical poem. Thunderpussy as a Bond spoof is priceless; ditto the grandchildren of the revolution caption. A nice touch, too, to dedicate it to the memory of the silver Beatle. All round top effort.
State-sponsored snow-dropping? I've no idea...but I love the poetry of it.
I should perhaps explain snow-dropping. What I learned from my time in Moscow is that city (like London and many others) has an acute housing crisis. Hundreds of thousands of mostly elderly people live in apartments allocated to them in Soviet times, homes for life it was said. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of younger people, professionals and the like, who now work in Moscow as the thriving hub of post-Soviet mother Russia struggle to find places to live. Mayor Sobyanin proposed to build "old peoples' villages" outside the capital and forcibly move many of Moscow's pensioners to the new satellites. Meanwhile, dark forces have taken the matter into their own hands and have been murdering old inhabitants in winter, appropriating their apartments and dumping their bodies in public places where they are soon buried under the city's deep winter snows. Months later, with the Spring thaw, the corpses emerge like snowdrops. The practice is consequently known as snow-dropping and many suggest it is tacitly condoned by the authorities.
What a fabulous blog, so well-written. The images are great and the poem is touching as well as witty. I look forward to reading more.
I absolutely love this!
Fantastic. Well done.
That's a hell of a good read and a great poem. 👍👍👍
There's a bit in Private Eye ridiculing what the UK government has just hailed as "the first UL sovreign space capability". It's spent £800m to buy the bankrupt satellite company OneWeb which plans to launch British satellites (now we've brexited from the EU's Galileo programme). To get them off the ground we're going to pay Russia for rockets and launching services apparently. What a joke.
Valentina Tereshkova was a big hero for girls growing up in Soviet Union.
Yes fuck off Mister Putin. You stink of genocide.
Yeah. Fuck Putin! 😡
Fascinating.
A super blog and poem. How did I miss this back in December 2018? (Grandchildren of the Revolution... brilliant caption!)
Do you remember the Space Project we did with that student teacher at St Mark's Juniors? Great blog and poetry Steve.
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