Laurie Eckhart

May 7, 2004

 Russian Exploration: One American’s Journey

            This journal is my attempt to apply what we have learned about the Literature of Space and Exploration this semester to Russian texts and society. We found patterns and standards among the explorers from Britain, America and Australia. My choice of Russia arose from a desire to see how a country not colonized by Britain would hold up against the basic philosophies, desires, goals and attributes of our, primarily, English and American explorers. In an attempt to achieve a somewhat quantitative comparison I chose several class objectives to acts as boundaries. They have little relation to one another except that they all appealed to me. The following three act as a sort of unifying guide in this journal, although I did not hesitate to step outside of them whenever a subject of particular interest cropped up. Whenever possible, I tried to address questions that made frequent appearances in our classroom discussions.

Main Objectives

• 2c. “The Romance of Failure”
• 3a. How much can the drive to explore, risk danger, and court death be universalized to include all humanity, and how much is it a feature of the “western psyche?”
• 5b How satisfactory is the Romantic insistence on correspondence or correlation between individual and environment, psyche, and landscape when one attempts to comprehend the unknown?

            I don’t know what was more interesting about my foray into the world of Russian exploration—the similarities between Russian and American explorers or the fascinating differences. I encountered a few limitations. Because of cultural differences, which I address later, I was unable to find actual memoirs comparable to those that we read in the Ice anthology.  Originally, I had hoped to find corresponding genre in Russian, but was unable to do so. Production cost, cultural differences, political red tape, translation quality and a whole host of factors are a factor with when dealing with Russian literature.      I read four texts and three short science fiction stories for this journal. The journal is generally separated into two broad categories-- Polar and Space with subheadings. As the journal progresses, I hope to coherently weave together the information and texts we studied together as a class with what I found individually.

Antarktida

An Introduction

In the darkness of the polar night, the sun

Of human intellect now shines brightly.

--Maxim Gorky

            For a whole semester, we have talked about “western psyche” and the reasons and motivations for exploration. Marshak’s article “Children and Art in the U.S.S.R” illustrates how even young Soviet children can feel the burn to plant their feet on unexplored, virgin soil:

            When the four plucky explorers, Papanin, Krenkel, Shirshov and Fyodorov, were        drifting down the form the North Pole on the ice-floe, two Moscow schoolchildren, Nick and Serge Robin, expressed the emotions of thousands of     Soviet youngsters in the following appeal to the “Papaninites”:

We, too, would like to visit

The frozen Pole, and land

By the earth’s jutting axis

And feel it with our hand.

Too small, too small, dear children,

Is all the answer we get.

There are no Pioneers camping

Around the North Pole yet!

Bur if we do not hurry,

And wait until we’re men,

All Poles will be discovered—

What will there be left then?

We’ll wait on one condition.

Sergei and I implore:

Leave us undiscovered

One spot at least to explore!

In the spring of 1938 the icefloe that Papanin, Krenkel, Shirshov and Fyodorov were on began to break up. News of the impending disaster horrified the Russian nation and another child, Sergei Feinberg, wrote the following:

…And then the country in a trice

Its planes and ships sent forth

To save its heroes from the ice

Adrift in the perilous North.

O happy hour, when the valorous four

Saw the lights of the Taimir gleam

And through the murk of the Artic night

Spied the Yermak’s wandering beam.

The use of the “heroes” to address the four explorers is interesting because in Gilbert Dewart’s book Antarctic Comrades: An American with the Russians in Antarctica he shares that the use of the word hero in Russia is sparing:

            They spoke reverently of Scott, Amundsen, and Byrd, and the word geroi (hero),        which is frequently used sarcastically in the Soviet Union because it has been   squandered so much on political hacks, was bestowed on the early Antarctic          discoverers with obvious sincerity.  (105)

            I would have preferred to read a direct account of polar exploration from a Russian, but in some respects I was privy to insights through an articulate and detail oriented American that wouldn’t have been otherwise seen. Early in his book, Dewart shares the fact that the polar regions had “never particularly interested” him. He did, though, have an interest in Russia--a “strange allure of that grim land at the bottom of the globe” drew him to the Antarctic.

            Dewart is invited and eventually joins the Fifth Soviet Antarctic Expedition in 1959 – a time of unrest which makes the joint American-Soviet expedition even more interesting as a study of nationalism. More than just the poles are explored! Dewart believes that he “made a trip not only to Antarctica, but also to Russia, which [. . .] created a revealing microcosm of its society in [that] distant outpost” (Preface xi). He takes along a “cultural export program” that includes American literature written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Stephen Crane, Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers and English novelist Orson Wells.  The camp became a cultural contact zone where the Russians, American and Germans exchanged music, political views, history, literature and film. From the beginning Dewart was accepted by the Russians and it seems that he and the Russians all believed that the “hands across the frozen pole marked the demise of the Cold War” (22).  Everyone at the station did their part to make sure that the exchange was a successful one. Dewart wasn’t merely tolerated, he was embraced.

The Polyarnik

A solitary sail that rises

White in the blue mist on the foam,

What is it in far lands it prizes?

What does it leave behind at home?

--Mikhail Lermontov

The polyarnik is a Russian who makes his career working in the polar regions:

            The Russian polyarniki were generally older men, well established in their careers,   and they were perhaps more motivated by practical consideration that the       typically more youthful and footloose American working in the Antarctic.             Nevertheless, they were as much intrigued by the tradition and mystique of polar       exploration as my American colleagues had been during the IGY. (105)

Dewart explains in his preface that unlike the early days of polar exploration when an expedition was “promoted, organized, and commanded by one charismatic leader who stamped his character on the whole enterprise[. . .]” expeditions now tend to be “bureaucratic, apparently faceless operation[s] run among drifts of paperwork by committees and secretariats.”  While today’s Russian polyarniki are perhaps more motivated by pay incentives than glory, tinges of exploration spirit are still to be found within them:

            Especially appealing to them [Russians] in the American myth was the concept of     the Westerner, the man of action, strong, independent, and free. Some made a           romantic association of this ideal type with the Cossacks of the past and the new            pioneers in Siberia. Floating down the Volga on a raft a la Huckleberry Finn is a            fantasy of many Russian youths. (127)

These men are professionals who are on serious career tracks, mostly scientists, but they aren’t “domesticated geeks” by any means. On one of the overland trips, Dewart meditates on what it is that brings men like himself and the Russians to the  “vast, cold, white country, which all of [them] had sought so avidly and which now surrounded [them] so ominously:

            But was it the wasteland that we really sought, or was it the integrating effect that       this menacing environment had upon the social consciousness of our little       community? Was it perhaps the fellowship of the human band, tribally        strengthened by the tempering pressures of the wilderness around us? Was it a             revolt against the atomism, the alienation of the ordinary “civilized” life so        characteristic of both our countries? Had we really been seeking the heightened   sense of humanity that grows from a communal struggle against hardship and         peril? It is paradoxical that we must leave most of our species behind to revalidate       our membership in it. (156) 

Unfortunately, we are only privy to Dewart’s internal ruminations. Bits and pieces of Russian attitudes towards their presence in the poles is there to be found in between the lines.

Russian common area in Antarctica.

Photo Credit: Gilbert Dewart

Useless Minutiae Among the polyarniki it is a tradition that the percentage of alcohol in samogon (straight alcohol diluted with fruit juice) be equal to the latitude of the place it is being drunk.

Danger

            When it came to finding volunteers to work with the explosives the Russians had no shortage of help. They lived dangerously in the poles, bringing with them customs relatively safe at home, but potentially dangerous in the Antarctic. For example, the Russians engaged in what is considered a major social event in Russia, the Russkaya banya, or Russian bath. This consists of a “vigorous scrubbing with blistering hot water, strong bar soap, and coarse brushes,” followed by a stint in a steam room, flagellation with birch branches, and then the “hardier souls [. . .] would run outside, regardless of the weather, and dive naked into a snow bank” (77). Even the cold-roughened Russians wouldn’t have been accustomed to Antarctic temperatures. In the land of frostbite lost noses, toes and fingers didn’t seem to deter the soviets one bit.

            Though drinking isn’t necessarily a habit that can be associated with living dangerously, Dewart insists that the Russians took the habit to the nth degree:

            Alcohol, and plenty of it, was common place at the Russian camps:

            Russians have to be the world’s greatest party givers. Any excuse would serve for     an evening get-together at Mirnny. It seemed to be mandatory that everybody   have a birthday party, and since there were more than a hundred men at the base a     birthday celebration was going on somewhere about once every three days. (77)

Much of the camaraderie that Dewart develops seems to be over drinks at parties. He admits that the “either you’re with us or you ain’t” mentality led him to drink far more than he was accustomed, or comfortable, doing. The Russians placed serious stock in a man’s willingness to drink and be open with his comrades -- his refusal would have been considered suspicious. The intense drinking has to be considered in light of the amazing number of accidental deaths that Dewart witnesses. He relates that the Russians are grossly nonchalant about safety and that serious accidents are a common, and accepted, event in the polar camps. The Russians not only don’t seem to risking danger and courting death, they almost laugh in the face of it and issue a challenge.

Useless Minutiae The greatest polar hero in the Russian pantheon was the Norwegian scientist, Arctic explorer, and humanitarian Fridtjof Nansen. He undertook a mission to Russia after World War I to direct famine relief and the exchanges of prisoners of war. He is still remembered with gratitude.  (Dewart 105)

“Neutral” Ground

Science and art belong to the whole world, and before

them vanish the boundaries of nationality.

-- Goethe

            “The end of the 1950’s and the beginning of the 1960s were pivotal not only in science, technology, and exploration, but also in politics (which inevitably impinged upon us even in the “nonpolitical” Antarctic” (Preface X). Even though the U-2 spy plane with pilot Powers was caught and announced to Dewart and his comrades, the men continued to fraternize—suffering very little awkwardness, “Antarctica seemed to be the only place in the world where Russians and Americans were still on speaking terms” (71).

            Dewart comments about the “gentlemanliness” that I found so appealing about the English polar explorers:

            We enjoyed another kind of warmth as well, the traditional fraternity of men     working together as a close-knot team, and all that goes with it; the banter and             inside jokes, small talk and great debates, anecdotes and confidences. A rough         democracy in the field transcends class distinctions—Captain Scott’s Edwardian    Englishmen no doubt understood it. (63)

While national distinctions are transcended, class distinctions aren’t but, it’s a nice sentiment. Dewart explains in detail later on the difference in stature and amenities that the leaders, scientists and workers in the Russian camp experience. The author is surprised at the vast difference between the private rooms of the scientists and workers. Though, when death or news that is of import to all Russians transpires the polar group tends to act as a group, outside of the class distinctions that they might have adhered to if they were back on Russian soil. “On an expedition a new sense of loyalty puts old thought patterns in a new perspective and can break down preconceptions and prejudices” (128). Perhaps the Russians were sharing the same perspective that Dewart felt.

“Charged” Ground

The earth never tires,

                                                                      The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first,

                                                                            Nature is rude and incomprehensible at first,

                                                                      Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things

                                                                            well enveloped,

                                                                      I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful                                                                                                                   than words can tell.

                           --Walt Whitman

            There is a shift in attitude midway through the book. Dewart attributes it to the disappearance of the wildlife population, and calls it the “saddest part of the winter” (84). He attributes the sadness to the “prevalent feeling of drawing in on ourselves, and increased awareness of our so vulnerable isolation, a sense of being an outpost not only of man, but of life” (84).  After the disappearance of the wildlife, the descriptions of the land became more foreboding, somehow threatening versus embracing:

            It was an eerie place, heavy with the unique magic of the Antarctic environment.         The somber towers evoked images of white sepulchers. Their distorted shadows   stabbed ominously shoreward across the ice. Many of the bergs were hung with             huge icicles, which gave them a grizzled, hoary appearance.

            After a while the frosted monoliths began to assume dreamlike forms, some enticing, some sinister, all intriguing, and the one just around the next icy corner was always more enchanting than any you have yet seen. It was hard to resist the          siren song of this weird realm [. . .]. (85)

            If there was any hint of Russian romanticization of failure, it was perhaps to be found in the way they compared and praised the Antarctic for being like themselves. While discussing the propensity for most people to stay in during hard driving cold and the Russian’s willingness to be out at work in it, one crew member notes, “this is sort of like a war here, and the Antarctic is using Russian strategy on us – drawing us into its vast interior and gradually wearing us down” (158).

Space

An Introduction

             In Robert Zimmerman’s book Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel the reader is treated to a multi-national description of Russian and American space exploration. Though technical in nature, the book is arranged with one chapter discussing the first Russian space efforts, then the American response and so on until present day is reached. Enough anecdotal information is included to keep the casual reader involved and interested. References to science-fiction writers and the roles they played in the early days of space exploration are generously given.

            Leaving Earth begins by introducing several men important to the Russian space program. The first is Konstantin Tsiolkovsky “the first Russian to dream seriously of space travel and thus considered the father of the Soviet space movement” (3). Two equally important men were Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, who was a brilliant visionary, and Valentin Glushko, also in charge of his own design bureau. Glushko read Jules Verne (author of Journey to the Center of the Earth, 1864; From the Earth to the Moon, 1865; 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas, 1869; and Around the World in Eighty Days, 1872) when he was a child and “fantasized about sending men into space, of going to the moon and the planets and colonizing the stars” (3). When Glushko was only fifteen years old he wrote a letter to Tsiolkovsky. He told Tsiolkovsky that he wanted “to devote [his] life to this great cause” (3).

            Unlike Western visionaries, many of the Soviet dreamers were engineers working on military projects building missiles (6). Glushko pushed himself and became “the expert who built all the rocket engines that Korolev used to launch Sputnik, Gagarin [, the first man in space], and all the early Soviet groundbreaking space firsts” (3). The book only makes brief mention of Yuri Gagarin and the early Russian space endeavors. It really begins with the story of the first space stations and the struggles that the cosmonauts endured within them. Because Zimmerman treats the hardships and difficulties with such candor, the book gave me a much greater appreciation for the unromantic aspects of exploration. Leaving Earth, for me, does for space what Ice did for the polar regions.

Polkan and Gray, a dog and rabbit, in their space suits preparing for a flight into space in the 1950s. Animals were used in early Soviet experiments to determine health hazards of space travel. For more information about other animal explorers visit Ashley Salter’s project at http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/hsh/whitec/LITR/5738/models/2004/projects04/rp04salter.htm

Photo Credit: Sovfoto

Failure Not an Option

            Unlike the men in A. Alvarez’s article “A Magnificent Failure” Russians found nothing laudable or heroic in failure. There were no articles written about those who failed, no conciliatory slaps on the back with a “better luck next time” attitude. The case of the second group of men to enter the Salyut space station, Patsayev, Volkov and Dobrovolsky, is a sad example. To begin with, the cosmonauts and ground grew were sorely disappointed that plant experiments were unable to produce viable flax plants in space. A fire in the station foreshadowed the troubles the crew would later have upon leaving the station. The Soyuz spacecraft that was to return them to Earth and their families had a valve problem and the men were unable to correct it before their deaths.   The untimely deaths of the space station workers set the program back by two years—morale was low. Though the men were buried in Red Square with full honors, their deaths were so publicized that the Russian people felt humiliated by the failure. The publicity turned the event into a source of shame for the county. The wives and children of the three men felt the following:

            “Our whole life turned,” remembers Marina Dobrovolsky. “Before was a bright            happy childhood. After, darkness and tragedy.” The shame that may in the space            program felt because of the mission’s failure caused the families to be abandoned         by fir3nds, and ignored by the tight-knit, tiny space community in which they       lived. (47)

The reaction to the surviving family members is a stark contrast to the outpouring of support received by family members of NASA shuttle disasters. The event was not soon forgotten because as time passed, in the minds of the Russians, the deaths of the three men “meant that the first successful space station was not a Soviet one” (47).

            The Russians were very secretive in the early days and often missions were hidden from the public, families of cosmonauts, and in a few instances, from the cosmonauts themselves. Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, received his orders a few days before he actually flew into space. The mentality seemed to be that if the expedition was successful it would be highly publicized, as was Gagarin’s return, and if it failed—tamp it down and hide it.

            A Russian ship commander by the name Romanenko “determined to be the serious, proper, Russian, space-ship commander” refused to complain about a toothache because “it would be a disgrace for the captain of a ship to complain” about such. (130) He suffered an open nerve for two weeks in space because to leave early, he felt, would leave the mission incomplete. (134). Romanenko’s determination not to fail seems typical of Russians.

            Grechko, a man on the same mission under Romanenko, later insisted that he believed that “flying in space had shortened his life” (135). He didn’t seem to mind though, the benefits of successful space flight, of completing his mission and having the opportunities he had more than compensated for any lost years.

            These are not men who would romanticize any form of failure. Nor does it seem like the society that they lived in would wax poetic about failed struggles. Success in these programs was inextricably tied to national pride.

Space versus the Poles

          Space exploration and polar exploration are significantly differences. Besides the obvious, it’s worth considering how the differences might affect the explorer. In the poles men are inundated with the environment, there is no way to escape it. Space, on the other hand, is not an environment that can be appreciated or experienced with all the senses. Russian cosmonauts often complained of the continual stench of machines and plastic. It wore on their nerves. The time allotted to spacemen to experience the foreign environment is also limited as evidenced when a harried American astronaut told ground controllers to tell the flight planners to “give [them] a little more [slack] if they possibly can, because [they’d] looked out [the] window five minutes in five days” (68). How frustrating for an explorer not to be able to explore.

            Space explorers don’t seem to have the luxury of engaging in continual contemplation of their condition and that of those around them. They are, of necessity, men who must face situations “squarely and coolly.” We’ve discussed the lack of “poets in space” and perhaps it is reasonable to speculate that explorers can be divided into different types – or flavors. How much comparison is fair between a polar and a space explorer?  The seemingly vast white wastes of the Antarctic induce different reactions in men than the genuine endlessness of space. Consider one cosmonaut’s reaction to space:

            When I saw [the distant stars] I realized that space is a bottomless abyss . . .

            And that’s not the end of our world. One can travel further and further and there is       no limit to that journey. I was so shocked that I felt something crawling up my    spine. (108)

Russians tend to prefer to make the environments they are exploring a “home away from home.” This might make them less suitable for space exploration than other nationalities. The Russians in the polar regions toasted every occasion that came along with stiff liquor, and so too did the cosmonauts. They carried tubes of cherry juice for such occasions. Visitors to the space stations were treated to salt and bread as symbols of fellowship and good luck. Are salt, crackers and cherry juice enough for cosmonauts to orient themselves with? Will they be able to achieve a state of mind that will help them explore space the way that Apsley Cherry-Gerrard was able to see and explore the poles?

            Early cosmonauts tried vainly to decorate their quarters with small posters, pictures and scraggly plants. The Russians described the stations as “isolated, lonely, artificial, and dangerous” (124). Later, as space tours became longer and longer efforts were made by ground operations to make room to send items that would make the stations seem more homelike for the cosmonauts.

            Space was similar to the poles in many ways though, especially in the ways one cosmonaut related to another. They quickly discovered that in the cramped hostile environment “every word had a meaning. Even the tone was important. [You have] to be really sensitive to your friend, even more than to yourself” (140).

            Along with the heightened awareness of one’s comrade, space, like the poles, can effect strange and bizarre consequences on the human body. One cosmonaut, Ryumin, kept a diary in space, which I have unfortunately been unable to find, but in it he records the following “all the ‘charms’ of weightlessness are apparent. Our faced swelled – you wouldn’t recognize yourself if you looked in the mirror” (140). I was reminded of the frozen blisters and lost fingers and toes in the Antarctic. Space perpetuates strange new horrors on the bodies of the explorers and thereby gives them common ground on which to bond and relate. No matter if two explorers are of the same nationality, but ill mated or from separate, rival counties—the common ailments they must suffer draws them closer.

            As a result of loneliness and boredom of space, Ryumin reportedly developed “irrational fears about getting appendicitis or an abscessed tooth like Romanenko had, giving him periodic nightmares” (146). The only activities that seemed to alleviate his fears were tending the station’s garden and watching videos of natural scenery. It is easy to believe in a correlation between the psyche and the environment when one considers Ryumin’s discomfiture and the activities he had to engage to sooth his mind.

The Poet of Space

            Russia’s second spaceman was Gherman Stepanovich Titov. According to William Shelton, author of Soviet Space Exploration, if Gagarin was comparable in character to John Glenn, then Titov and Wally Schirra were alike in that they were both “sophisticated, well-read, and articulate” (104). Some of the simulators the cosmonauts endured were described by Titov as “chambers of horror.” His reflections on the training he and the other men endured pre-flight leave little doubt as to why he was give the title “the poet of space.”

            When relating the experiences he had in a chamber created to effect the extreme absence of sound, Titov called it the “mirror of truth” and said that when you were in it you “come suddenly face to face with yourself” (110). While preparing himself to be an explorer he came to appreciate what he called the “wonderful melody of the everyday world. Every chink, bang, whimper, scratch, gasp, wheeze, knock, clang, and screech came to my ears as music!” (111)

            On the day of Gagarin’s first flight into space, Titov accompanied him right up to the hatch. Titov’s description of Gagarin is moving:

            [He] stood entirely on his own—bearing the tremendous responsibility not only of       his nation and his planet, but actually of the entire race of men. These are not        empty words. We believed this to be so. I had not yet met any of the astronauts of             the United States, but not for a single moment do I doubt that we could literally translate our feelings into the language of one another, and find we have long             carried the same thoughts. (113-114)

So, maybe not all space men are so hopeless after all! Titov’s expression of understanding and relation to the American astronauts during such a tensely competitive time is telling. His heart was in the exploration, the thing that transcends petty political squabbles and national differences. Not only did the early Russian explorers extend “hands across the poles,” but there seems to be a willingness to extend them across space as well. Explorers truly seem to be a breed apart; it would be too abrupt to simply sum them up, to dismiss them, as thrill seekers.

One Explanation for Bland Descriptions from Space

It is the poet versus physicist;

One is out, the other in, today.

Perhaps a general law is this,

And no accidental step astray?

-- Boris Slutsky

            Since we addressed this in class several times, I thought it would be nice to include it in my journal. Despite the length of the following passage from Shelton’s Soviet Space Exploration it was just too tempting to exclude:

            American astronauts and, to an extent, their Russian counterparts, early in their         flying careers are subjected to and develop the art of understatement. As a World            War II combat pilot, I noticed that the more hazardous, violent, and dramatic was          an experience in the air, the more understated and coolly objective were my     fellow pilots’ official and informal reports. One of the badges of recognition, in f          act, of men who live close to danger—as Ernest Hemingway often demonstrate in            dialogue—is the discipline cultivation of a terse and abridged understatement.   Vivid or metaphorical language hints at ornamentation of the raw fact of a   deeply             felt experience. While this is sometimes an admirable personal trait, it often            appears to leave unsaid some of the more vivid and subjective impressions and             emotions that the uninitiated hunger for. (118)

Though most of Titov’s descriptions contained familiar clichés, he was able to translate his excitement to those left behind on Earth. He said the African continent looked “like a strangely mottled leopard skin with green jungle sprinkle across the yellow mass,” and The Gulf of Mexico was “as a startling salad-green color” (119).  Titov observed that “if space has its poetry it also has its prose” (119).

            Most telling perhaps, about the nature of explorers is the night Gagarin and Titov, at the time the only two men on Earth to have ever been in space, walked along a moonlit riverbank together. Naturally they discussed space, but under the “vault of bright stars, the two spacemen talked about Mars” (123). Men had barely made it to space, not yet even to the moon, and already those who had pushed the envelope were talking about pushing even farther.

Useless, Minutiae The firing command at the end of the Russian countdown is Natchinay zhar!

Science Fiction

Introduction

            Though I don’t wish to emphasize science-fiction to the extent of the non-fiction accounts of polar and space exploration, I saw threads which connect them. Gilbert Dewart also took along, interestingly, science fiction by Ray Bradbury and Frederik Pohl to meet his soviet comrades in the Antarctic. Several times in class we have discussed the irony of Ben Bova’s uncannily accurate description of the Mars surface—so uncanny that if taken seriously his account could have prevented at least one technical difficulty for NASA.

            I read three science fiction shorts in Robert Magidoff’s Russian Science Fiction anthology.

            The earliest, “On the Moon,” is the most interesting for its author Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935), who you might recall is considered by the Russian to be the father of modern rocketry. Magidoff included “On the Moon” as representative of early Russian science fiction efforts. Tsiolkovsky’s biography reveals that the story is considered as awkward in Russian as it is in translation.

             “Cor Serpentis” (The Heart of the Serpent) was written by Ivan Yefremov (1907-1971) a professor of geology. He was the “acknowledged dean of Soviet science-fiction writers” (Magidoff 13-14).

            “The Astronaut” was written by a female, Valentina Zhuravleva (1933- ?). She was a doctor by profession and, at the time, was one of the youngest and most popular writers of science fiction in Russia. Women seem to have a much more active role than in early Russian explorations and science fiction British and American society.

“On the Moon” by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

            In William Shelton’s book Soviet Space Exploration: The First Decade the author includes in his biography of Tsiolkovsky that the man, in his childhood wrote “In my imagination I could jump higher that anybody else, could climb poles like a cat and walk ropes. I dreamed that there was no such thing as gravity” (16).  Mid-way through his tale the narrator shares that “the burning desires of childhood came true here on the Moon” (253). His story is strangely reminiscent of Edgar Rice Burroughs “Princess of Mars” in that the two characters simply wake up on the moon as though through a dream. Like Carter, the characters must learn to move all over again under the strange new atmospheric conditions.  That is where the similarity ends though.

            I would consider this hard science fiction. The story is in the first person and the second characters is simply the “physicist friend”—indeed what other manner of friend would one need on the moon? Very little of the human is in the story and only a few instances of characterization stand out. Near the end the narrator jumps from an extreme height and hurts his foot. He considers warning his friend “but instead [he] maliciously urged him to jump” (254). The few references to the narrator cast him in a childlike light. It isn’t difficult to believe that the story is the product of a brilliant scientist revisiting childhood fantasies.

            There is one small reference to the narrators experience in the polar regions in reference to the long nights he experiences on the moon, “I remember that I had the same experience when I once spent several summer weeks in the polar countries. The sun never left the horizon and it was terribly monotonous” (251).

             Tsiolkovsky references the issue of technology gone obsolete once in his short, “What can I say? You’ve heard about Mouchez? His highly perfected solar cooking was no obsolete” (252). Mouchez was a French astronomer and science-fiction author of the day.

            In spite of the highly detailed accounts of physics and gravitational science there are bits of unexplained fancy. At one point the narrator explains that they don’t know how they could “live without air, or how we, our house, yard, garden and supplies of food and drink had been transferred from Earth to the Moon” (253). Witchcraft is offered as a possible explanation.

            I read most of my soviet polar exploration texts first and consequently the fact that Tsiolkovsky had the entire homestead transferred to the moon, along with a friend, seems to be a significant Russian twist. John Carter in Princess goes alone, literally without the clothes on his back, very a la American, Russians have and express strong needs to bring home to the frontier. The following is a passage from Antarctic Comrades describing the difference between Russian and American stations:

            The Russian quarters also had a much more individualistic and homelike quality        than the sterile dormitories of the American stations. The décor was Victorian with a Slavic accent, the furnishings those of a comfortable though antiquated        hotel, with traditions Russian touches like oriental carpets on the walls. It was     indeed, more like a settlement or a village than an institutional station. (47)

Latent attitudes about exploration show up in science-fiction and can be compared with non-fiction sources for a more complete picture. This is one of the examples that convinced me to include science fiction with the other non-fiction in this journal.

            As for the home on the moon, towards the end of the story it starts to show the strain of placement on the moon:

            The shutters and other wooden objects had blackened and crumbled on the surface             from the prolonged action of the sun. In the yard we found splinters from a sealed         barrel of water which we had carelessly left in the sun and which had burst under          the pressure of the steam. Near the porch we found fragments of glass from the             lantern, whose metal mounting had melted. We found less damage in the house;             the thick stone walls had protected it. In the cellar everything was intact. (264)

Reading the home as a metaphor for the Russian explorer’s psyche can reveal interesting results. Two readings come to mind immediately. One, the home becomes alien and unfamiliar and two, the home is representative of the explorer’s body or mind. Either way it seems that Tsiolkovsky is alluding to the effect that the alien environment has, not only on the house itself, but on the psyche of the explorer.

      Early editions of Tsiolkovsky's science                                  Tsiolkovsky was photographed in his office

       fiction novel entitled "Na Lune"                                    © on March 15, 1930.                                

      (On the Moon). Copyright                                                  Credit: Tsiolkovsky Museum of Cosmonautics          

       2001 by Anatoly Zak                                                         

Useless Minutiae My favorite line from the story: “I should also mention the flies. They were unable to fly, but instead leaped at least a foot into the air” (257).

“Cor Serpentis” by Ivan Yefremov

            “Cor Serpentis” (The Heart of the Serpent) by Ivan Yefremov is a bit more modern, but still dated. It is interesting because the Russian space explorers encounter another race of explorers. There are more characters and better characterization in this tale, though a good part of it is devoted to promoting a “classless society” and “inspired creative labor.” While the story is certainly science-fiction, it has strong tones of social-fiction as well. Passages like the following are heavy and frequent:

            ‘Of course,’ Kari said. ‘When mankind already knew how to control matter and           space, but when social relationships and the development of social          consciousness          lagged far behind the             advances of science.’

            ‘Exactly. You have a good memory, Kari. But let’s put it another way; man’s    knowledge and conquest of space conflicted sharply with the primitive ideology     of the individualistic property owner. For several years the health and future of           humanity wavered on the scales of fate until the new humanity was united into      one family in a classless society. In the capitalistic half of the world men could            not visualize new solutions. They regarded their society as unshakable and eternal,         and saw in the future only inevitable wars and self annihilation.’ (117).

Rhetoric like the above are spaced throughout the first part of the novel, before the crew reach the alien race. A modern creative writing instructor might suggest that the author cut the first part since very little action occurs.

            Obsolete information is dealt with in a creative manner. Because the crew is supposedly traveling at light speeds, their nominal amount of time spent out exploring is going to mark the passage over seven hundred years back on Earth. The crew is aware that most likely the data they return with will be “a load of obsolete and useless information” (107). It was a nice turn to see science fiction deal with outdated information internally. The crew forges ahead with their mission because they “have as great an obligation to fulfill our duty as any other member of society” (107).

            Space explorers in this story become strange relics of yesteryear. Because of the physics of their warp travel, returning explorers are always outdated, nearly a millennium older than anyone on the planet they return to:

            Each time such a long-range space ship returned to Earth, it brought with it scores    of immigrants from another age, survivals of the distant past. Even though their           level of development was very high, the new age seemed alien to them, and often             deep melancholy and a sense of isolation became the lot of these cosmic             wanderers. (110)

Because of this phenomenon, supposedly, the crew of this ship, and others, are now forbidden to have children during their explorations. Previous explorers, on the other hand, had been encouraged. Once again, women are a part of the exploration process. 

            Of central interest in the story are the expectations of the crew in regards to alien life forms. A clue about values is given when the captain, Moot Ang considers what to tell crew members who lament the people that they have lost back on Earth, “But out there in the future, people await us who are no less dear, people who will know more and feel more deeply than the contemporaries we have abandoned forever” (115). Emphasis mine. I wonder how important it is that they captain might plausibly console members of his crew with the idea that more knowledgeable and more deeply feeling people exist to be found.  Later, the second in command, Tey Eron, worries that he will “never make a real captain” because he’ll “never know as much” as Moot Ang (118). Although extensive knowledge and information gathering are a central theme in the story the classic signs of an explorer at heart do appear.

             One of the ship officers is a female named Taina, which we learn means the unknown and mysterious in an ancient language. She feels that no more mysteries are left on Earth, that people are “all quite simple and predictable” (111).  She is portrayed as a consummate explorer herself, consumed with a desire to discover the new and hidden:

            Sometimes I would like to meet someone from the distant past. Someone who had   to hide his dreams and emotions from the evil world around him, to temper them till they were as strong and unbending as steel.” (111)

She doesn’t seem to regard the “immigrants from another age” as societal burdens, but as mysteries to be explored. She reveals to another officer who expounds on “all the unsolved mysteries” awaiting discovery her wish to “find some hidden corner or secret passage” on their ship (111).

            The crew members chance to explore the unknown occurs when an alien ship suddenly appears. Strangely, crew members heatedly debate appearances. The narrator relates the following, “most important, exciting, and problematic was the question of what the strangers rushing towards them looked like. Would they be ugly or beautiful by human standards” (122)?  The ship biologist denies that there could be any such things as “thinking monsters, human mushrooms, or octopus-men” (123). The biologist’s argument for the appearance of beautiful aliens follows the logic tract that beauty’s form “is a product of natural expediency” and that though dogs and horses are different from us we find them beautiful for their function and natural harmony. Because the scientist is trying to form a picture of the aliens through her projection of an intellectual environment and developed psyche, this seems to be a form of “Romantic insistence on correspondence between individual and environment.”

            A jab is made at the American way of dealing with first contact when the captain brings out a film to share with the crew. First Contact “the fantasy by an ancient American author” (124). The crew scorn the science-fiction writer’s supposed difficulty in dealing with the imminent meeting with an alien ship:

            The captain of the Earth ship ordered his crew to prepare all stellar maps, records,   and course data for immediate destruction and to train all the antimeteorite guns            at the strange ship. Then he began to wrestle with a weighty problem: did he       have a right to try negotiating with the strange astronauts, o she he immediately   attack the ship and destroy it? The captain was terribly afraid that the strangers         might succeed in retracing their ship’s course and might try to conquer Earth.

            The whole crew accepted the captain’s wild fears as irrefutable truth. The meeting    of two independent civilizations must, in the captain’s opinion, inevitable lead to        the subjugation of one, to the victory of the one possessing the stronger weapons.       A meeting in space could mean either trade or war; no other alternative occurred           to the author. (125)

Issues of capitalism and colonization are apparent in the passage. Of course, the aliens possessed views on social relations “fully as primitive as those of the Earth people” and through a series of ultimatums, blatant distrust and strange maneuvers the two groups ended up swapping ships and quickly scurrying away from one another—the failure to form a friendship and exchange information is clearly a sign of failure to the Russians.

             In “Cor Serpentis” the crew members are given sedatives to calm them down so they can “meet [their] brothers in perfect mental and physical condition’ (129). Again, we see that failure is an unthinkable option for these cosmonauts.

            Loathe to withhold a few last parting shots, the narrator points out that the American science fiction story suffered from “many purely technical mistakes, like the impossibly rapid deceleration of the space ships” and that First Contact’s “impoverished description of outer space” was “all the more surprising since several decades before [. . .] the great ancient scientist Tsiolkovsky had warned mankind that the Cosmos was far more complex that it was believed to be” (126). Not surprisingly, the technical faults that the narrator finds in First Contact form the basis for the true science that occurs between the Russian cosmonauts and the aliens in “Cor Serpentis.” Nothing builds verisimilitude quite like addressing the failings in others then offering alternative, correct solutions!

            When the meeting finally occurs, the Russians learn that while the aliens are similar to us, they come from a fluorine based world. The ship’s female biologist, in the end, devises a scheme to change the fluorine people’s chemical process so that they may “preserve all the inherited characteristics of the fluorine people, but for their bodies to work on a different energy basis’ (149). She sees humanity and great intelligence in them, but is unwilling to allow that they not correspond to her environment. Her attempt to comprehend the unknown is hindered by her inability to allow the unknown to become the unfamiliar. She must reconcile their alieness to her environment in some way. It is not unlike the attempts of colonists, settlers and explorers in the past who have tried to mix the known and the unknown in an attempt to form a compatible hybrid of understanding.

Useless Minutiae My favorite line from the story: “Unforeseen accidents are possible, of course” (116). 

“The Astronaut” by Valentina Zhuravleva

            “The Astronaut” by Valentina Zhuravleva is perhaps the least interesting of the three science fiction stories. She opens her story with a quote by Maxim Gorky:

            ‘What can I do for these people?’ shouted Danko in a voice that drowned the             thunder.

            Suddenly, he clutched at his breast, tore it open, plucked out his heart and held it       high above his head. (204)

It sets the tone for understanding the sacrifice of the main character in the book. Captain Alexei Zarubin is the consummate cosmonaut. He is described as “fire and ice” the strange mixture of “calm sagacity of a scholar and the fiery temperament of a fighter’ (206). 

            The crew realizes mid-way to a distant star that they must either turn around and return home now, or forge on and most likely die. The navigator is the most emphatic of the crew, “we can only go forward. Forward in the face of the impossible. Why, how can we even speak of returning” (210). Aborting a likely fatal mission and returning home in disgrace are not desirable options for the crew, although one member questions the worth of forging ahead to explore a star that will be explored by those that might eventually rescue the crew. In face of making discoveries that might be credited to others, the crew balks. Death and not receiving credit for discovery seem to have equal weight amongst the astronauts. 

            Ultimately, the captain stays behind with equipment to direct the ships navigation from the icy planet they set out to explore. He faces certain death, but was willing to risk it for the sake of exploration. When a rescue crew finally arrives, he has left a solitary note, “Forward in face of the impossible” (217).

Valentina Zhuravleva

Conclusion

            Maybe an obvious question at this point is why did I cover so much? At first I tried to keep the journal narrowed into one topic. I tried to just consider space exploration, polar exploration, or science fiction, but in the end all the threads entangling them together were too much to ignore.

            The idea I tried to impart through the journal is the interconnectedness amongst the genres, and more importantly the people writing them—how physical barriers and literary one are crossed and recrossed at times. All three support one another to form a larger picture of the Russian explorer.  It’s my hope that anyone who took the time to read this journal will leave with a greater appreciation for not only the Russian explorer, but the ability to discern the chance to explore people through their explorers. I hope I succeeded in playing up the importance of explorations as cultural contact zones, but if I didn’t, let me leave you with this last thought-- though the amount of unexplored territory lessens each decade, the human frontier is still wide open. We’ll never run out of space in which to come together in the spirit of exploration.

One cannot be brought into close association with this great people, in prosperity or adversity, without feeling an affection for it and acquiring faith in its possibilities.

--Fridtjof Nansen

Russian Polar Poetry of Interest

From John McCannon’s Red Artic

Written in honor of Bering’s Great Northern Expedition:

In vain does stern Nature

Hide from us the entrance

To the shores of the evening in the East.

I see with wise eyes:

A Russian Columbus speeding between the ice floes –

Defying the mystery of the ages.

                        --Lomonosov

Excerpt from “March of the Happy Fellows”:

We will achieve, grasp, and discover it all,

The cold North Pole and the blue vault of heaven!

When our country commands that we become heroes,

Then anyone among us can become a hero.

                        -- Vasily Lebedev-Kumach

An anonymous ditty known as “Song of the Cheliuskin” which pokes fun at polar exploits:

Greetings, Levanevsky, greetings, Liapidevsky,

Greetings, Camp Shmidt, and farewell!

How did this affair happen?

The Cheliuskin sank.

Perhaps they were drinking vodka?

They took off from Leningrad and got their just rewards.

What was so bad for them on the ice?

What did they lack?

They had cheese, butter, preserves, and sausage.

What was there to stop them from calling

Vankarem and sending to the Central Committee for more?

Shmidt sat on his ice-floe, safe as in his feather-bed.

If not for Mishka Vodopianov,

You would never have seen your native Moscow again.

You wouldn’t have heard all the greetings,

You wouldn’t have gotten all the gifts.

And now the heroes live quite well—

A little money in their pockets, their faces on the big screen.

Works Cited

Dewart, Gilbert Antarctic Comrades An American with the Russians in Antarctica. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1989.

Magidoff, Robert Russian Science Fiction. New York: New York University, 1964.

Marshak’s “Children and Art in the U.S.S.R” Marxists. 07 May 2004.             <http://www.marxists.org/subject/art/literature/children/texts/marshak/art.html>

McCannon, John Red Artic. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

“Na Lune" Photo (On the Moon). 2001 by Anatoly Zak             http://www.russianspaceweb.com/tsiolkovsky_kaluga.html

Shelton, William Soviet Space Exploration: The First Decade. New York: Washington         Square Press, Inc., 1968.

Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin “On the Moon” Russian Science Fiction. New York: New York         University, 1964. (246-272)

Tsiolkovsky Photo. Tsiolkovsky Museum of Cosmonautics                 http://www.russianspaceweb.com/tsiolkovsky_kaluga.html

Yefremov, Ivan “Cor Serpentis” (The Heart of the Serpent) Russian Science Fiction. New    York: New York University, 1964. (102-150)

Zhuravleva, Valentina The Astronaut” Russian Science Fiction. New York: New York            University, 1964. (204-217)

Zimmerman, Robert Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest     for Interplanetary Travel. Washington: Joseph Henry Press, 2003.