Back in the late 1980s, the Communist nation under the red banner of the U.S.S.R. began to undertake tremendous change. Mikhail Gorbachev’s << Glasnost >> (“Publicity”, or the more colorful and figurative “tipping a vase to show it’s contents if not it’s bottom”) was well under way and despite idealogical differences and tensions between the East and the West, international exploration of space seemed possible. The notion of using space together, internationally and in peace, seemed plausible. Even as Nikita Khrushchev’s dream that their Communist ideology (”…we will bury you”) failed and Communism was gasping it’s dying breath, it is certain that the heroes of space exploration will without a doubt include peoples of Russian descent.

There will be a “Mr. Chekhov” in space.

The ‘Used-to-be S.S.R.’ as I like to refer to it now became separate nation-states striving for autonomous rule with something a little bit more democratic and capitalist instead of proletarian, their ambitious dreams of space exploration was plainly evident with Soviet pride in their Postage Stamps. I used to collect Soviet Postage stamps, new and un-postmarked / un-canceled issues and, if possible, in ‘blocks’ as issued by their Postal System. I had several pen pals in several nations of the USSR for whom I would return unused new U.S. Postage stamps in exchange for their offers.

What We Can Achieve Together

One of my favorite late Soviet-era postage stamps is this one, depicting the International Space Project “Phobos”

Phobos is one of the moons of the planet Mars, being the larger of the two and the closest to the planet. Apparently what can be gleaned from this image is that the spacecraft is either deploying a robotic ‘scoop arm’ to collect a sample of Phobos dust, or this might be a ‘lead slug’ fired at the moon to stir-up the dust for spectrograph analysis, or a laser which would be quite effective to vaporize moon-soil and make the spectrographic data available.

I asked my Soviet pen pal at the time if he knew or understood what was being depicted here. I never received a clear answer other than ‘exploration of Mars moon, prediction’ or something to this effect.

-We both had difficulties communicating effectively in the common language English. I could write a few words in Russian and can understand/speak a little bit more; but I am limited to more-or-less simple requests, directions, greetings & salutations, and the reading of signs/headlines. I could neither ask nor understand complicated questions and one question I did ask regarding the Soviet Space Shuttle “Booran” got an interesting reply; basically, ‘don’t ask me such questions.’ Opps! (I’ll speak more on this, later in the article.)

Space: A Final Frontier

One of the ‘blocks’ of stamps that I received was this next offer, a collage of space events both past and future. The upper left stamp is I believe, is of an unmanned lunar landing by a Soviet spacecraft (1970 September 12 – Luna 16) that successfully returned a small sample of lunar dust from the surface of the moon! I don’t recall ever being taught about this in school; -that the Russians successfully retrieved a sample (albeit, very small) of lunar soil! Many attempts were made to reach the moon. The failure rate for the Luna series was abnormally high by our standards. It was a learning curve and they were learning it all from scratch too.

The Luna 16 mission retrieved about 100 grams of lunar soil, and two subsequent Luna series soil retrieval missions (Luna 20, and Luna 24) were also successful. The ‘little plaque’ shown in the stamp is typical of Soviet landing missions, which attempted to deposit insignia of the USSR upon the surface. Several failed moon landings are said to have contains one or more of these plaques.

The Luna 24 mission, which landed on the moon Aug. 18^th, 1976, returned to Earth on August 22, 1976 with a more impressive 170 grams of lunar soil samples. It was the Bicentennial Year for the United States and we were celebrating our nation, and ourselves, but a mention of this event would have not diminished our jubilations. We should have honored and qualified this historic event for the Luna series of unmanned craft were the first in several key categories. The first manmade craft to achieve Earth escape velocity, first to achieve lunar orbit, first to crash-land on the moon, the first to photograph the dark/far side of the moon, the first to soft-land upon the moon AND the first unmanned craft to actually return lunar soil samples to Earth. There were three successful returns of lunar samples by the Luna series. The Luna series also had a successful deposition of a ‘lunar rover’ upon the moon’s surface, which is just visible on the right-hand edge of that first stamp.

My wife whom grew up in Soviet-oppressed Poland in the 1970s however, said that THEY (Polish citizens, students, etc.) were made quite aware of these tremendously important space successes by the Soviet Union. She did however mention that concurrent content by the State-run television also told in detail about ‘…yet another flood, another drought, another weather calamity in the United States’ with predictions of ‘…more crop shortages, inflation and rationing’ for the Americans again this year, so on and so forth. Hmm… No comment. Back to the stamps.

The upper-right hand stamp is of course, a duly mention of Neil Armstrong and the first successful landing of an Earthman upon the moon. The Soviet Union seemed to have quite openly accepted and welcomed this event. They even prepared the Soviet Press and citizenry just prior to the successful lunar landing, caveat being also stating that they ‘won’t risk peoples’ lives’ on manned missions while ‘unmanned missions’ can return as much information.

They would also state that ‘…no race to the moon ever existed. ‘

The bottom-left stamp shows a proposed joint mission to Mars, with a Soviet Cosmonaut and an American Astronaut exploring the planet, together. The bottom right-hand stamp shows some ideology and possible mission patches, predicting this future event. Ambitious dreams worthy of striving for!

Interkosmos

A Soviet/East Germany program that among other ambitions, allowed a number of non-Cosmonauts from participating Warsaw Pact nations to participate in space exploration, and included trips to the MIR space station. The Interkosmos project included both manned and unmanned missions and events (satellite launches, etc.)

Now, regarding asking about the Soviet Space Shuttle; I used to have a pen pal in Volgograd, near Kapustin Yar, where I believe the Soviet Space Shuttle << Booran >> (“Blizzard”) was launched. Once, I casually asked my pen pal about this in a letter and received a rather timid reply to the effect of “…with care to write about such matters as mail to me received in open state…’ etc. -He was warning me to avoid discussing the military/scientific aspects of these things. Clearly, mail was still being ‘inspected’ even if delivered intact and uncensored. Talking/writing about the Cosmodrome even in Glasnost-times might make one the subject of unwanted scrutiny. “Glasnost”, -what we called “openess,” is really more interpeted as ‘tipping a vase towards someone to partially reveal it’s contents’ or, in terms of playing cards, ‘tipping one’s hand’ would be a good ‘western’ equivelent.

Interesting enough, Kapustin Yar (”Yar” means “valley” or “rille” I believe) is also known as the “Russian Roswell” due to a number of Soviet-era UFO sightings…

Heroes of Space Science

Many Soviet scientists spent their lives acquiring the knowledge for mankind that may one day take us to the planets. This last stamp in my Soviet space stamps is of Konstantin Eduadovish (K.E.) Tsiolkovsky.

He theorized many aspects of what humans must endure in space travel, and of rocket propulsion. His role in the development of the Soviet and Russian space programs is great. Like many great Russians, his life was one of hardships. Son of a Polish farmer and just one of 17 brothers and sisters, and he became deaf at the age of 10 years due to a bout with Scarlet Fever. Due to his deafness, he was unable to attend school and held no formal education, but he schooled himself. He yearned to be better than his position, to be better than his handicap. Books were his teachers.

One of his famous quotes from a letter was this:

“The Earth is the cradle of the mind, but we cannot live forever in a cradle”.

My collection of Soviet era stamps is modest, dealing mostly with nature and other historical events. This includes mostly places, animal/plants and a few featuring people, both Soviet nationals and international figures like William Shakespeare.

But it is my few and highly treasured collection of Soviet/Russian Space Exploration Stamps that thrill me the most, created during a time when it really seemed possible that space would be explored, together. We need to recapture this and make it reality. We can explore and use space, together, and in peace.

(All images are scanned from actual stamps, by me. -thestickman.)