“New Soviet Man” Inside Machine: Human Engineering, Spacecraft Design, and the Construction of Communism

Abstract

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“…The astronaut frees himself from his bodily limitations by subjecting his body to logical systems that sustain it (Bryld & Lykke 2000: 30-31, 113-15). Depicting parallel conceptions, Gerovitch (2007) relates how the image of the cosmonaut was linked to the idea of "the new Soviet man", bringing together the human and technological qualities required to form a simultaneously rationalistic, efficient and creative individual. Even though the spaceships were almost completely automated; "Soviet propaganda vividly portrayed cosmonaut heroes bravely flying their spacecraft into the unknown" (2007:136).…”

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“…By comparing the status of Soviet cosmonauts and American astronauts, the researcher pointed out a significant number of interesting similarities in terms of technical training, public etiquette etc. (Gerovitch, 2007).…”

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“…They move us beyond exceptionalist Cold War narratives of (white) settlers on the frontier, or beyond U.S. American fears of Soviets (or nowadays, China or India) out to conquer the solar system. They ask for more than critiques of “the right stuff” posturing of American cowboy astronaut individualism, of the “New Soviet Man” (Gerovich ) embodied by cosmonaut hero archetypes or, in more recent times, of corporatism (Launius ) and “capitalism in space” (Valentine ). In doing so, an encounter with the different natures of space reveals how people might model human‐machine relations in ways demanded by space, and thus foreground the creative excess of curiosity and innovation.…”

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