Music and the Making of the Cosmonaut everyman
Journal of Musicology 36, no. 4 (2019)
This article positions the Space Race as a sonic phenomenon by looking at music and sounds related to the Soviet space program. Early triumphs such as the orbit of Sputnik I in 1957, Yuri Gagarin’s groundbreaking flight in 1961, and Valentina Tereshkova’s success as the first woman in space in 1963 epitomized many of the complexities of the cultural Cold War and utopian underpinnings of the Thaw. Space was the ultimate nonaligned sphere—an untouched territory ready for the planting of real and ideological flags. At the same time, these successes were key in reimagining ideals of Soviet citizenship and national identity in the post-Stalin era. Falling at a moment of great change and consequence, then, the Space Race provides an inroad to examine how music, media, and sound helped to spread these emerging values across the Soviet Union to ordinary citizens. Looking at the popular press, radio broadcasts, and variety television performances, I demonstrate how music was used to humanize the cosmonauts and promote a new personal ethics—one that prized approachability and humility alongside heroism and bravery. The divergent ways in which music was deployed alongside Gagarin and Tereshkova reveal a complex politics of gender during the Thaw. Gagarin, the conqueror, received marches extolling his great colonizing feats; Tereshkova, the homemaker, was celebrated with romances and tales of domesticity. Ultimately, by demonstrating the prevalence of new media and the power of participatory practices, this article contributes to our understanding of the cultural Cold War as a lived and performed experience.