In the Soviet Union, the cult of science and space research was as close to religious studies as possible in an atheist state. Unfortunately, with the collapse of communism, this only positive trend disappeared.
Even when, as early as in 2015, April 12, which is the World Day of Aviation and Cosmonautics, this date coincided with Orthodox Easter. Religious celebrations on the streets and television screens overshadowed the celebrations dedicated to the first human space flight. The Internet community reacted quickly by creating an "Easter Day" with Gagarin's face in the form of a sledgehammer and surrounded by painted eggs with images of the International Space Station, the Vostok-1 spacecraft and other aircraft. Many people disapproved of the fact that the day of the great scientific breakthrough had been replaced by a religious holiday.
Most of the 20th century was the other way around: the thirst for space research replaced religion. It was a cult of science, spread through propaganda, not preaching. Yuri Gagarin, a man of the people and a martyr who died young under mysterious circumstances, was the supreme godlike creature of this cult. Monument to Gagarin in Moscow, created by the sculptor Pavel Bondarenko of titanium and presented for the Moscow Olympics in 1980, is a 42-meter column with the figure of Gagarin on top, depicted in the form of a rocket, aspiring to the sky and very similar to the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro. Other venerated idols of this cult were Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman cosmonaut, Alexei Leonov, the first cosmonaut to enter outer space, and engineer Sergei Korolev. Party leaders and communist theorists were also often mentioned as people without whom scientific progress would not have been possible. However, they were often ignored by the people who were used to seeing party leaders where they were superfluous.
The space program was presented as a result of hard work of the proletariat. Pavel Klushantsev's film "The Moon", released in 1965, depicts the Soviet people living in peace and colonizing the Moon thanks to technological progress, possible only under communism.
"We got to the stars, and, as they say, "there was no old bearded God. Only science. Only Soviet power".
Space issues were closely intertwined in everyday life, in endless festivals and festivities dedicated to space exploration. The playgrounds were designed in the form of rockets, the walls of schools and kindergartens were decorated with drawings of spacecrafts and stars. Houses were built to look like spaceships, moon stations and flying saucers. Currently, scientists refer 60-80s of XX century to the "space" period in Soviet architecture. Thousands of artists drew postcards and posters, which were regularly issued in honor of anniversaries and new discoveries. These images were often signed with pompous phrases such as "Communists pave the way to the stars", "Country of workers and peasants furrowing the starry ocean", "Science and Communism are inseparable".
Also, for propaganda purposes, the topic of space research has been deeply embedded in pop culture. Many novels and novels by Kir Bulychev, Chingiz Aitmatov, Strugatsky brothers. Many of the books were screened, including Tarkovsky's classic films "Stalker" and "Solaris". The 1985 mini-serial "Guest from the Future" and the 1981 film "Through Thorns to the Stars", both based on Bulychev's novels, enjoyed great success in the Soviet Union, and they are still often shown on the screens.
Even works by foreign authors, which were not usually published under the Soviet regime, became part of propaganda. In 1989, a 10-minute cartoon film based on Ray Bradbury's science fiction novel "Tigers can be found here" was shot. And in 1987, based on Isaac Azimov's novel "The End of Eternity" was shot two-serial surrealistic cyberpunk saga.
Children were the main target of propaganda contained in space-related films and cartoons for younger audiences. The 1981 animated film "The Mystery of the Third Planet", which tells the story of a space trip organized to purchase rare animals for the Moscow Zoo, was a hit hire. Other cartoons, such as "The Murzilka on a Satellite", "In the Thirtieth Century", "Novels of Space", were based on simple adventure stories carried over to space, and sometimes accompanied by a small dose of ideology.
Pop songs also followed suit. Perhaps the most famous of them is the "Grass at Home" band with the appropriate title "Earthlings". Despite the fact that the lyrics of the song tells the story of cosmonauts dreaming of returning to Earth, this song became the anthem of all space-related events and a symbol of the Soviet thirst for intergalactic travel. Many other songs were written for films and theatrical productions, some of which also raised the cult of space to the level of religion. In Vladimir Troshin's song "My Friend, I Believe" the faith has nothing in common with God, but only with the Soviet people who conquer the space.
Many pieces of music were written by Evgeny Dolmatovsky, one of the most famous poets who composed texts on the cosmic theme. His most famous songs are "And on Mars there will be apple trees in bloom" and "I am the Earth". His song "Motherland hears, Motherland knows" was one of Yuri Gagarin's favorite songs. According to the legend, the astronaut sang it during a flight over the Earth in the spaceship "Vostok-1".
The Soviet space ideology was both utopian and cynical, and the authoritarian regime was looking for a new environment to fill it with ideology. Along with the end of the empire, enthusiasm faded. Nowadays, despite the political nostalgia for the USSR, the cult of science is a thing of the past. Russia's recent problems with space technology prove it. In May this year, two Russian spacecraft, an unmanned cargo ship and the Proton-M with a Mexican satellite, crashed within a week due to malfunctions. The Russian space program can't boast of anything else.
To tell the truth, in those years, many people left the ideological aspect of space propaganda unattended. Karl Marx, who compared religion to opium, would probably not approve of the notion of love for space as a new illusory belief. Again, it is important to consider the times when Marx wrote. At the time, opium was an anesthetic rather than a way to escape reality. A full quote explains this: "Religion is the breath of a depressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of soulless orders. Religion is the opium of the people. Indeed, the Soviet people's craving for space was in fact the breath of an oppressed people seeking to escape to a better world, albeit leaving the old behind for this purpose.