Dr Tom Ellis talks about the myth of the Lost Cosmonauts, why this symbol has had such staying power, and what it tells us about Western perceptions about the Soviet Union and its space programme. Topics include:
-American reactions to Yuri Gagarin’s flight
-The secrecy of the Soviet space programme breeding rumours and myths
-The idea of the ‘communist mind’ and communism as a ‘secular religion’
-Robert Heinlein and the Lost Cosmonauts
-‘Yurimania’ and promoting Yuri Gagarin as a sex symbol
-The Italian Battista brothers’ claims of recording lost cosmonauts
-The Lost Cosmonaut image in film and art as a representation of memories of the Soviet state
-Vladimir Komarov, the ‘real’ lost cosmonaut
-Lost cosmonauts as a political idea vs a cultural idea
LINKS
Buy Me A Coffee
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/wideatlantic
Tom Ellis on Twitter
Tom Ellis’s Blog
https://redskyatdawn.wordpress.com/
Gagarin And The Lost Moon
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000v24g
Tsar-Bomb album
https://heimatderkatastrophe.bandcamp.com/album/hdk-68-bajkonur
Imogen Knox’ article on Haxan
https://terribleimaginations.wordpress.com/2021/04/24/haxan-rationalism-and-retrospective-diagnosis/
Bobcat Goldthwait’s American Bigfoot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTY8xinMrSI
Conspiracy Culture, Peter Knight, 2000
Hermann Oberth
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Oberth
Roadside Picnics Article by darmon Richter: Chernobyl and the Falcon Lake UFO Incident
https://www.exutopia.com/chernobyl-ufos-falcon-lake/
The Space Suit Film, Gary Westfahl, 2012
https://books.google.ie/books/about/The_Spacesuit_Film.html?id=kej2ygAACAAJ&redir_esc=y
Supposed Lost Cosmonaut Recordings
http://web.archive.org/web/20180309024747/http://www.lostcosmonauts.net/man.htm
http://web.archive.org/web/20180309024745/http://www.lostcosmonauts.net/wom.htm
Sven Grahn’s Article about Torre Bert
http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/Torre/TorreB.html
Into The Silent Sea: Short Lost Cosmonaut Film
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2rmTVKU37Y
The Cosmonaut Who Couldn’t Stop Smiling, Andrew L. Jenks, 2012
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13226355-the-cosmonaut-who-couldn-t-stop-smiling