The collection of the Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda museum-reserve houses items directly related to today's date — Cosmonautics Day. These are various collections of stamps, postcards, pins, posters and even handkerchiefs! Today we'll go through just a few of them.
On April 12, 1961 the world's media were ablaze with the sensational news of 'Yuri's fantastic flight.' In an instant Yuri Gagarin became famous and fashionable on Earth, and he even had to embark on a world tour like a rock star! Consider the captions on the photo postcards from the 'Yuri Gagarin' set: 'The capital of Czechoslovakia welcomes cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin', 'Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru welcomes the first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin', 'Yuri Gagarin and Italian film actress Gina Lollobrigida', etc. And 'to close the curtain' — the postcard 'Yuri Gagarin answers letters', on the back a caption (they wrote one for each photo) — 'Yuri Gagarin answers the letters he received from many countries around the world, from all corners of the Soviet Union.' And that really was the case!
No less interesting are the numerous stamps from different series with 'telling' titles: 'First in Space!', 'Glory to the Conquerors of Space!', 'Cosmonautics Day' and so on. One of them — 'Man in Space', issued in March 1964 — features the classic design of the time: Gagarin himself and the Vostok spacecraft on which he made his first flight, which lasted 1 hour 48 minutes.
'Curiously, we have a postage stamp issued in January 1961 literally a couple of months before that world-shocking event. It's called 'To Space!', and on a white background there is a purple image of a rocket with the pennant 'USSR' flying toward a planet on which the inscription 'Glory to labor and science!' is visible. The illustration is set within the orbit of the first Soviet artificial Earth satellite,' comments Elena Zhestkova, keeper of collections at the Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda museum-reserve.
By the way, our fellow countrymen also branded the space theme. In the museum's holdings there are commemorative handkerchiefs produced in the 1960s in Karabanovo at the Cotton Mill named for the Third International. The description of the handkerchiefs notes that they 'are dedicated to the flight of Soviet cosmonauts to the Moon.'
A masterpiece of Soviet 'star-era' marketing were original images with 'meaningful' slogans. 'This is, first and foremost, a color postcard from 1967 titled "From the storming of the Winter... to the storming of space". At the bottom left — red silhouettes of soldiers against the background of Sennaya Square in Petrograd; at the top right — a male silhouette holding a flag against the backdrop of a monument to cosmonauts. There is also a poster, "Socialism — the launch pad for the conquest of space!" On a blue background a rocket is depicted in glowing circles of red-yellow and red-blue. Below — a voluminous five-pointed star and crossed sickle and hammer,' adds Elena Zhilkina, chief keeper of the Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda museum-reserve.
Of course, one could say much more — about pins and about stamps featuring cosmonauts who were the first to go into open space. But that's another time. Today we are proud that Russia has simply conquered space. I'd like to finish with a line from the American news magazine Newsweek from the space boom era: 'the Russians will not miss their chance.' And let's make every possible effort to ensure that this is so in all spheres!
