The Russian Religion of Spaceflight
The space programme was presented as the result of the great work of the proletariat. The Moon, a 1965 film by Pavel Pavel Klushantsev, presents a future in which Soviet people live a life of peace and progress on the colonised moon, thanks to the technological advances capable under communism. We had made it to the stars and, as the saying went, “there was no bearded old God there”. Only science. Only the Soviet system.
Space themes were woven into everyday life, into endless festivals and celebrations of stellar exploration. Children's playgrounds were designed like rockets, the walls of schools and kindergartens decorated with paper spacecraft and stars. Houses were built to look like spacecraft, lunar stations and flying saucers — to this day, experts refer to the 1960s-80s as the “cosmic period” in Soviet architecture. Legions of artists produced postcards and posters that were regularly released to commemorate anniversaries and new developments. Their images came labelled with pompous captions like “Communists pave the way to the stars”, “The country of workers and farmers conquers the stellar ocean” and “Science and communism are inseparable”.
Notes:
Folksonomies: futurism progress transhumanism propaganda
Taxonomies:
/society/unrest and war (0.444276)
/science (0.418950)
/family and parenting/children (0.385419)
Keywords:
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Entities:
Pavel Pavel Klushantsev:Person (0.835300 (neutral:0.000000))
Concepts:
Space exploration (0.977359): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Communism (0.690073): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Karl Marx (0.609511): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc | yago
Socialism (0.596826): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Marxism (0.572038): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc | yago
Spaceflight (0.551598): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Human spaceflight (0.512537): website | dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Moon (0.499304): dbpedia | freebase
Cult of the cosmic: How space travel became the unofficial religion of the USSR
