posted 12-22-2009 01:59 PM               

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has expressed regret over the fact that space exploration history is often distorted and falsified.

"Some facts are distorted deliberately and some are hushed up," Putin said at the opening meeting of the committee tasked to organize events to mark the 50th anniversary of Yury Gagarin‘s first ever human space flight in 2011.

"Even in Russian shops you can buy books and educational computer programs that do not say a word either about the first satellite from Earth or Gagarin‘s flight," Putin said.

"But you can find any details and facts about Mr. [Wernher] von Braun, who created the V-2 [rocket], and about the flight to the Moon, which is also one of humankind‘s most important achievements," Putin said.

"The 50th anniversary of Gagarin‘s flight is an opportunity once again to remind the international community about Russia‘s key role in space exploration and significance of domestic exploration programs for all of humankind," he said.

"To this end, I think we need to employ the Russian informational resources, such as printed media, the Internet, and television, as much as possible. And, of course, we need to carefully analyze the quality of textbooks used in our schools," he said.

posted 01-01-2010 05:15 PM               

I know I have beat this horse to death already, but the solution is fairly simple.
Put real materials online. Bring the real history alive beyond the TASS reports, the same old still photos, and the occasional first hand memory filtered by a journalist.

Bring out the videotapes, transcripts, engineering documentation, and flight reports. Stop teasing the interested parties with little bits and pieces of information that demonstrate that the material exists.

posted 01-02-2010 02:05 AM               

Then came the fall of the Soviet Union followed by the chaos where many materials might have been lost forever or moved somewhere without the proper cataloguisation or are still put in some ministry's dusty cellar waiting for some enthusiast to be re-discovered.

Some good materials are owned by the Russian Videocosmos company listed on the Ivan Safronov's page spacevideo.ru. You can find there for example very good Ministry of Defense movies on the flights of all six Vostoks, many films from the N1, Buran, Salyut and Mir programmes, unmanned lunar and planetary missions, etc. Trouble is, it's nearly all in Russian. Some are complete, some are only partial films, the rest maybe lost.

Then there is another view - the propaganda and the propaganda pathos. Let's take the Vostok movies as an example. They are excellent, I did not see anything better yet, but you will hear several times how everything is achieved only thanks to the Communist Party and its clever leadership. But it belongs to that particular period and circumstances, you have to "swallow" it or to ignore it, there's probably nothing better yet. You will see the complete preparation and assembly of both the launcher and the capsule, cosmonaut training, suiting and walkout, the launch pad ceremony with many kisses, interior inflight TV footage. What you will not hear are the problems with the Vostok modules' troubled separations, on the other hand it's clearly said that cosmonauts ejected before landing, which fact was kept in secrecy from the rest of the world. And these movies are from the period 1961-1963, while the launcher and the Vostok capsule were revealed to the world in 1967 in Paris the first time.

And what about Voskhod? I haven't seen any complete material covering the whole flights similar to the Vostok films. Were they not produced? I doubt it, more probably they are forgotten or in the worse case lost.

So to finish this longer post all I want to say is that if Mr. Putin wants better coverage of the early Soviet spaceflight era he needs to establish an official group of experts with full powers to dig everywhere without any limits and to find and restore that what still exists - something similar to the Spacecraft Films for the video part and Apogee Books for the printed materials.

posted 01-03-2010 04:43 PM               

Here are the issues:

1. They keep very short restricted hours.
   
2. They pre-approve whom they consider to be a researcher, and ask in advance what specific topic they will research
   
3. A request for a specific item does not mean they will bring it to the front desk. Unavailabilty can be for many "reasons" at discretion of the staff.
   
4. They have strict rules about what, where why and how any copied material is used.

They do put up a website that advertises the wealth of material they have. But don't expect the staff will even acknowledge any e-mail sent to them. They put up web pages with mostly low resolution material that is rarely useful for any serious research purpose.

posted 01-04-2010 04:51 AM               

The basic framework of early Soviet space history is fairly well documented and accepted by serious historians, but there are still many gaps in the detail and some figures who's roles have been understated.

As someone who has tried to uncover fresh information and material on the Vostok era, and especially the Tereshkova female group for years, the gaps and omissions in the information which has been released down the years are obvious.

The same old tired images, photos and quotes are endlessly recycled such that the true stories and facts have become swamped in the distortions and rhetoric of the 1960's and the true facts are in danger of being lost forever.

Sadly, Tereshkova, for example, as one of the few surviving principle players, refuses to divulge any fresh material or perspectives, just repeating her carefully rehearsed 1960's soundbites.

From time to time a different photograph or interview does emerge which only serves to evidence the existence of such 'new material' hidden in some unseen, hidden archive and to cast doubt on previously accepted truths, but this process is so painfully slow that all the key players will be long gone, before the full and true picture emerges.

If the committee tasked with celebrating Gagarin's flight wish to create some lasting and enduring memorial to his achievement, then an open, accessible and comprehensive archive, of the history of Soviet manned spaceflight, available to all students, historians and researchers would be a very fitting legacy.

To be fair, Putin's words do seem to allude to creating something along these lines:

"To this end, I think we need to employ the Russian informational resources, such as printed media, the Internet, and television, as much as possible..." he has said.

posted 01-06-2010 12:56 AM               

It was something of a crash program as well to fly three men and as such, the Soviets weren't exactly keen on letting slip too many details about it.

posted 01-06-2010 02:21 AM               

Assembly, training, pre-launch preparations, launches and post-landing activiies were always covered substantially. Even in Voskhod 2 heavily overshot taiga landing case the first group of rescuers contained of the forest guide, doctor and the cameraman (according to the "Two Sides of the Moon" memoire by A. Leonov and D. Scott).

Voskhod 1 parachute descent has been observed by the rescue plane crew and the helicopter rescue party must have had a cameraman who covered the landing site activities.

The Russian TV First Channel brings very interesting programmes on spaceflight from time to time. Last year I saw a document on the Lake Tengiz emergency landing of Soyuz 23 with a few never before seen photos showing the towing of the spaceship by the helicopter to the shore and maybe 100-200 observers on the shore, both rescuers and bystanders. But no film footage. It's hard to believe there was no film camera there.

This bits recovery will be very difficult and let's just hope that - with Mr.Putin's official "blessing" - this will happen and the result will be very interesting.