Founding fathers/iconic Soviets: Public identity, Soviet mythology, and the fashioning of science heroes in Soviet times

Abstract

While Khrushchev’s regime orchestrated a myriad of celebratory public spectacles after the launching of Sputnik I in 1957, actually the publicizing of Soviet technological accomplishments began earlier in a more nascent, inchoate form in the Stalin era. This is even true of the popular reception, interest, and the resonance of space culture prior to the great feats of the Khrushchev era. In fact, one of Khrushchev’s posthumous poster-boys for Soviet glory, Konstantin E. Tsiolkovskii, was also heralded by Stalin much earlier as the great inventor of spaceflight and rocketry. So if Khrushchev’s regime propagated the myth, it was Stalin who had initiated the "founding father" (of spaceflight) concept, namely, during the beginning of competition with the West amidst the resurgence of Greater Russian nationalism in the 1930s. Indeed, in the final years of his long life, Konstantin E. Tsiolkovskii, the self-taught Russian math and physics teacher, was sanctioned by Stalin and the Central Committee of the Communist Party to give a speech from his provincial home in Kaluga where he researched and taught for the majority of his life. This was certainly no ordinary speech, because this canonized local hero would be speaking on May Day, 1935, to those in attendance in Red Square (Communist dignitaries, including Stalin himself); but his taped speech was also broadcasted throughout the former Soviet Union.