Chris Davenport has an in-depth story on the coming age of American human spaceflight. I’d note that in the future, one will not need to learn to speak Russian to go into space. That will be a relic of a happily bygone era.
5 thoughts on “The New Astronauts”
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Huh, I didn’t know about the giant statue of Lenin that still looms at the cosmodrome. And the article shows the picture of that stature without a hint of irony or criticism, “The cosmodrome includes a statue of Soviet Union leader Vladimir Lenin.”
Imagine if, before lifting off on a foreign launch vehicle in a foreign land, you had to pass under the gaze of a heroically portrayed statue of Adolf Hitler, a statue which was lovingly preserved by those foreigners? And if the press of your homeland thought that statue was fairly unremarkable.
That NASA has to play nice and polite with the foreigners is understandable, if regrettable. That our own Press, who preen themselves as “vanguards of freedom”, do the same is execrable.
The Bolsheviks were all thugs, but Lenin is still remembered fondly in post-Communist Russia whereas the blame for the Soviet Revolution running off the rails is largely placed on Stalin. Even Stalin evokes fond memories inasmuch as facing off against Hitler, even if you look at the historical record, the Non-Aggression pact between the two did a lot to bring disaster upon the Soviets.
Hitler, still, was regarded as the existential foe, for Churchill to say that he would put in a good word for the Devil on the floor of the House of Commons were he to stand up to Hitler. Some argue that Churchill himself allied himself with the Devil in some of the things the British and their Allies did in WW-II or in allying with Stalin.
Still, it is not a giant statue of Stalin, which would be like the U.S. having a giant monument to the Klan, or maybe, Woodrow Wilson. It is more on the level were, dunno, the town of Huntsville having a statue of Robert E Lee? The MFC having a statue of Von Braun?
… CNN having a statue of Kim Jong Un’s sister?
The KKK equals Stalin? But since Lenin only equals Robert E Lee, his statue isn’t so bad? Really?
No and No and No.
Contemporary Russian nostalgia for Stalin goes way beyond feelings about the so-called “Great Patriotic War” (which always starts in June 1941, instead of with the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939!). Russian favor for despotic rule is centuries old tradition.
But Lenin and his Bolsheviks were something beyond mere “thugs” and despots, and as the vanguard of a vile anti-human ideology (masked as revolutionary utopianism), the evil that they unleashed lived on way beyond the end of their own blood-soaked lives and beyond the borders of their own blood-soaked nation. Which is why it always galls me whenever anyone downplays the evil of Communists in comparison to Nazis.
What a world.
Actually if you asked Putin, I think he would prefer Stalin to Lenin. Lenin was basically dropped on Russia by the German Imperial Secret Services to ignite a civil war and overthrow the government. That civil war led to the loss of significant parts of what used to be the Russian Empire and millions dead (it was popular to use scorched earth tactics in the civil war by both sides). Stalin basically reversed most of those losses including turning Finland and Poland into protectorates after WWII.
There’s a reason they still celebrate their victory in WWII and they don’t celebrate the October revolution anymore.