Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Tsiolkovskii and the Invention of ‘Russian Cosmism’: Science, Mysticism, and the Conquest of Nature at the Birth of Soviet Space Exploration

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Science, Religion and Communism in Cold War Europe

Part of the book series: St Antony's Series ((STANTS))

Abstract

The rhetoric of the early years of the Soviet space program was rooted in a long and enthusiastic discourse about the transformative role of modern science and technology in the socialist context. Yet, it has become evident that ‘Russian Cosmism’, a mystical and occultlike worldview with Orthodox Christian overtones continues to animate Russian interest in the cosmos. The goal of this essay is to dispel some fundamental misconceptions, especially about the embellished historical importance of ‘cosmism’ in the lived historical context of twentieth century Russia. By doing so, I hope to position the philosophical foundations of Soviet space activities as part of a broader aspirations for ‘modernity’ and a concomitant ideology of conquering the natural world.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
eBook
USD 19.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 29.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Anonymous (1962a) ‘Startovaia ploshchadka—sotsializm’, Sovetskii voin 17, 1–4. The quotation was originally published as part of a lengthy joint statement of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet, and the Council of Ministers in the aftermath of the joint space mission of Vostok-3 and Vostok-4 in August 1962.

  2. 2.

    For useful biographies in Russian, see Sergei Samoilovich (1969) Grazhdanin vselennoi (cherty zhizni i deiatelnosti Konstantina Eduardovicha Tsiolkovskogo) (Kaluga: GMIK Named After K. E. Tsiolkovskii); Valerii Demin (2005) Tsiolkovskii (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia). For a short treatment, focusing primarily on Tsiolkovskii’s pedagogy and fiction, see James T. Andrews (2009) Red Cosmos: K. E. Tsiolkovskii, Grandfather of Soviet Rocketry (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press).

  3. 3.

    Albert A. Harrison (2013) ‘Russian and American Cosmism: Religion, National Psyche, and Spaceflight’, Astropolitics, 11, 25–44; Vladimir Lytkin, Ben Finney, and Liudmilla Alepko (1995) ‘Tsiolkovsky, Russian Cosmism and Extraterrestrial Intelligence’, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, 36, 369–76; R. Diordievic (1999) ‘Russian Cosmism (with the Selective Bibliography) and Its Uprising Effect on the Development of Space Research’, Serbian Astronomical Journal, 159, 105–09; Michael Holquist (1985–1986) ‘The Philosophical Bases of Soviet Space Exploration’, The Key Reporter, Winter, 2–4; Vladimir V. Lytkin (1998) ‘Tsiolkovsky’s Inspiration’, Ad Astra, November/December, 34–39; Nader Elhefnawy (2007) ‘Resurrecting Nikolai Fedorov’, The Space Review, May 21, http://www.thespacereview.com/article/873/1. See also Chap. 9 (‘The Scientific Cosmists’) of George M. Young (2012) The Russian Cosmists: The Esoteric Futurism of Nikolai Fedorov and His Followers (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 145–76.

  4. 4.

    Andrew Thomas (2010) ‘Kul’tura Kosmosa: The Russian Popular Culture of Space Exploration’, M.A. thesis, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK.

  5. 5.

    George Carey (2011) ‘Why Russia Won the Space Race’, The Telegraph, April 8, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8437995/George-Carey-Why-Russia-won-the-space-race.html. The documentary in question is Knocking on Heaven’s Door (2011), BBC Storyville documentary series. I should note that I was thanked in the credits of the documentary for assistance to Mr. Carey.

  6. 6.

    The best writing in Europe or the USA on ‘cosmism’ and ‘Russian Cosmism’ is the work of Michael Hagemeister. Hagemeister (1997) ‘Russian Cosmism in the 1920s and Today’ in Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal (ed.) The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press); Hagemeister (2011) ‘The Conquest of Space and the Bliss of the Atoms: Konstantin Tsiolkovskii’ in Eva Maurer, Julia Richers, Monica Rüthers, and Carmen Scheide (eds) Soviet Space Culture: Cosmic Enthusiasm in Socialist Societies (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan); Hagemeister (2012) ‘Konstantin Tsiolkovskii and the Occult Roots of Soviet Space Travel’ in Birgit Menzel, Michael Hagemeister, and Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal (eds) The New Age of Russia: Occult and Esoteric Dimensions (Munich: Verlag Otto Sanger), pp. 135–49.

  7. 7.

    Asif A. Siddiqi (2010) The Red Rockets’ Glare: Spaceflight and the Soviet Imagination, 1857–1957 (New York: Cambridge University Press), pp. 16–42.

  8. 8.

    E. A. Lazarevich (1984) S vekom naravne: populiarizatsiia nauki v Rossii: kniga, gazeta, zhurnal (Moscow: Kniga). For more on the emergence of ‘public science’ as a distinct category, see also James T. Andrews (2003) Science for the Masses: The Bolshevik State, Public Science, and the Popular Imagination in Soviet Russia, 1917–1934 (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press).

  9. 9.

    A. Admiralskii and S. Belov (1970) Rytsar knigi: ocherki zhizni i deiatelnosti P. P. Soikina (Leningrad: Lenizdat).

  10. 10.

    Loren R. Graham (1994) Science in Russia and the Soviet Union: A Short History (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press); Alexander Vucinich (1963) Science in Russian Culture: A History to 1860 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press); Alexander Vucinich (1970) Science in Russian Culture, 1861–1917 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press); Michael Gordin (2004) A Well-ordered Thing: Dmitrii Mendeleev and the Shadow of the Periodic Table (New York: Basic Books).

  11. 11.

    Sheila Fitzpatrick (1994) The Russian Revolution, 2nd ed. (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press), p. 113.

  12. 12.

    Richard Stites (1989) Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press).

  13. 13.

    Anindita Banerjee explores the nature of ambivalence about science and technology in her recent book: Banerjee (2012) We Modern People: Science Fiction and the Making of Russian Modernity (Middleton: Wesleyan University Press). See also Julia Vaingurt (2013) Wonderlands of the Avant-Garde: Technology and the Arts in Russia of the 1920s (Chicago: Northwestern University Press).

  14. 14.

    Siddiqi, Red Rockets’ Glare, pp. 74–113.

  15. 15.

    Efofbi (Ol’ga Kholoptseva) to Tsiolkovskii (3 December 1928), Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ARAN), f. 555, op. 3, d. 199, ll. 5–6.

  16. 16.

    Paul R. Josephson (1995) ‘“Projects of the Century” in Soviet History: Large-Scale Technologies from Lenin to Gorbachev’, Technology and Culture 36, no. 3, 519–59.

  17. 17.

    I. Stalin (1952) ‘Ekonomicheskie problemy sotsializma v SSSR’, Pravda, October 4.

  18. 18.

    Siddiqi, Red Rockets’ Glare, pp. 301–13; Mark Kuchment (1990) ‘Bridging Two Cultures: The Emergence of Scientific Prose’, in Loren R. Graham (ed.) Science and the Soviet Social Order (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), pp. 325–40.

  19. 19.

    Paul R. Josephson (1996) ‘Atomic-Powered Communism: Nuclear Culture in the Postwar USSR’, Slavic Review 55, no. 2, 297–324; Paul R. Josephson (1990) ‘Rockets, Reactors, and Soviet Culture’ in Science and the Soviet Social Order, pp. 168–91; Matthias Schwartz (2011) ‘A Dream Come True: Close Encounters with Outer Space in Soviet Popular Scientific Journals of the 1950s and 1960s’ in Soviet Space Culture, pp. 232–50.

  20. 20.

    For Tsiolkovskii’s re-appropriation by the Soviet state in the postwar era, see Siddiqi, Red Rockets’ Glare, pp. 294–301.

  21. 21.

    Some of this correspondence has been published. See for example, M. V. Keldysh (ed.) (1990) Tvorcheskoe nasledie akademika Sergeia Pavlovicha Koroleva: izbrannye trudy i dokumenty (Moscow: Nauka), pp. 52–53, 79–80.

  22. 22.

    Valentin Glushko, introduction to Grigorii Mishkevich (1986) Doktor zanimatelnykh nauk (Moscow: Znanie).

  23. 23.

    Many of these reminiscences are interspersed through cosmonaut biographies and autobiographies. See for example, L. Lebedev, B. Lukianov, and A. Romanov (1971) Syny goluboi planety (Moscow: Politizdat).

  24. 24.

    Anonymous (1957) ‘Soobshchenie TASS’, Pravda, 5 October.

  25. 25.

    Much has been written about this period of popular fascination with space. For two recent edited volumes, see James T. Andrews and Asif A. Siddiqi (eds) (2011) Into the Cosmos: Space Exploration and Soviet Culture (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press); Maurer, Richers, Rüthers, and Scheide (eds) (2011) Soviet Space Culture.

  26. 26.

    M. K. Tikhonravov (1970) ‘K. E. Tsiolkovskii i budushchee’ in A. D. Ursal et al. (eds) (1974) Idei Tsiolkovskogo i problemy kosmonavtiki (Moscow: Mashinostroenie). I elaborate in more detail on the connection between the past and the future in Soviet popular visions of space exploration in: Siddiqi (2012) ‘From Cosmic Enthusiasm to Nostalgia for the Future’ in Soviet Space Culture, pp. 283–306.

  27. 27.

    Tikhonravov (1970) ‘K. E. Tsiolkovskii i budushchee’.

  28. 28.

    Dmitry Shlapentokh (1996) ‘Bolshevism as Fedorovian Regime’, Cahiers du monde russe: Russie, Empire russe, Union soviétique, États indépendants 37, no. 4, 429–65.

  29. 29.

    Michael Hagemeister (1989) Nikolaj Fedorov: Studien zu Leben, Werk und Wirkung (Munich: Sagner); George M. Young, Jr. (1979) Nikolai F. Fedorov: An Introduction (Belmont, MA: Nordland); Young, Jr. (2012) The Russian Cosmists.

  30. 30.

    Young (1979) Nikolai F. Fedorov, p. 7.

  31. 31.

    N. F. Fedorov (1995) ‘Regulation of Nature’ in A. G. Gacheva and S. G. Semenova (eds) N. F. Fedorov: Sobranie sochinenii v chetyrekh tomakh, t. 2 (Moscow: Progress), p. 239.

  32. 32.

    Kendall E. Bailes (1990) Science and Russian Culture in an Age of Revolutions: V. I. Vernadsky and His Scientific School, 1863-1945 (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press); G. P. Aksenov (1993) ‘O nauchnom odinochestve Vernadskogo’, Voprosy filosofii no. 6, 74–87.

  33. 33.

    N. F. Fedorov (1995) ‘Part IV: What is our Goal?’ in A. G. Gacheva and S. G. Semenova (eds) Sobranie sochinenii v chetyrekh tomakh, t. 1 (Moscow: Progress), p. 255.

  34. 34.

    Fedorov, ‘What is our Goal?’, p. 256.

  35. 35.

    They included Vasilii Chekrygin (1897–1922), Nikolai Setnitskii (1888–1937), Aleksei Brusilov (1853–1926), Olga Forsh (1873–1961), and Iuliia Danzas (1879–1942). Hagemeister provides a detailed survey of the Fedorovtsy in his Hagemeister (1989) Nikolaj Fedorov, pp. 343–62. Besides Gorskii, the most well-known Fedorov devotee in the 1920s was probably Valerii Muravev (1885–1930) about whom little is known. See V. G. Makarov (2002) ‘Murav’ev V. N.: Ochelovechennoe vremia’, Voprosy filosofii no. 4, 100–28; V. G. Makarov (2003) ‘“Otnosias sochuvstvenno k sushchestvuiushchemu stroiu …”: sledsvennoe delo 1929 g. filosofa-kosmista V. N. Muraeva’, Otechestvennye arkhivy, no. 1.

  36. 36.

    Nikolai Krementsov (2014) Revolutionary Experiments: The Quest for Immortality in Bolshevik Science and Fiction (New York: Oxford University Press).

  37. 37.

    A. Sviatogor, N. Lebedev, and V. Zikeev (1924) ‘Golos anarkhistov’, Izvestiia, January 27; A. Sviatogor, P. Ivanitskii, V. Zikeev, and E. Grozin (1924) ‘Deklaratsiia kreatoriia rossiiskikh i moskovskikh anarkhistov-biokosmistov’, Izvestiia, January 4.

  38. 38.

    For the Biocosmist manifesto, see A. Sviator (2000) ‘Biokosmizm: biokosmicheskaia poetika’ in S. B. Dzhimbinov (ed.) Literaturnye manifesty ot simvolizma do nashikh dnei (Moscow: XXI vek-soglasie), pp. 305–14.

  39. 39.

    A. Gornostaev (1928) ‘N. F. Fedorov’, Izvestiia, December 28.

  40. 40.

    For the space activists, see Asif A. Siddiqi (2008) ‘Imagining the Cosmos: Utopians, Mystics, and the Popular Culture of Spaceflight in Revolutionary Russia’ in Michael Gordin, Karl Hall, and Alexei B. Kojevnikov (eds) Osiris, 2nd Series, Vol. 23 (Intelligentsia Science: The Russian Century, 1860–1960) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 260–88.

  41. 41.

    Probably the first use the term ‘Russian cosmism’ in a publication can be found in R. A. Gal’tsev (1970) ‘V. I. Vernadskii’ in F. V. Konstantinov (ed.) Filosofskaia entsiklopediia, t. 5 (Moscow: Sovetskaia entsiklopediia), p. 624. See V. P. Rimskii and L. P. Filonenko, ‘Sudba termina “Russkii kosmizm”’, paper presented at 2012 Tsiolkovskii Readings, http://readings.gmik.ru/lecture/2012-SUDBA-TERMINA-RUSSKIY-KOSMIZM.

  42. 42.

    A. V. Gulyga and S. G. Semenova (eds) (1982) N. F. Fedorov: Sochineniia (Moscow: Mysl).

  43. 43.

    There is a vast body of literature on the imagined history and current concerns of Russian Cosmism. For general overviews from the early 1990s, see L. V. Fesenkova (ed.) (1990) Russkii kosmizm i sovremennost (Moscow: IFAN); Svetlana Semenova (1992) ‘Russkii kosmizm’, Svobodnaia mysl’ no. 17, 81–97; S. G. Semenova and A. G. Gacheva (eds.) (1993) Russkii kosmizm: antologiia filosofskoi mysli (Moscow: Pedagogika-Press); O. D. Kurakina (1993) Russkii kosmizm kak sotsiokulturnyi fenomenon (Moscow: Moskovskii fiziko-tekhn. in-t); V. N. Demin and V. P. Seleznev (1993) K zvezdam bystree sveta: russkii kosmizm vchera, segodnia, zavtra (Moscow: Akademiia kosmonavtiki im. K. E. Tsiolkovskogo).

  44. 44.

    K. E. Tsiolkovskii (1939) ‘Cherty iz moei zhizni’ in N. A. Islentev (ed.) K. E. Tsiolkovskii (Moscow: Aeroflot), pp. 15–25 (see page 27 for the quote).

  45. 45.

    The legend that Fedorov pointed Tsiolkovskii in the direction of space travel probably originated from scientist Viktor Shklovskii in Shklovskii (1971) ‘“K” in “Kosmonavtika ot A do Ia”’, Literaturnaia gazeta, April 7. See also V. E. Lvov (1977) Zagadochnyi starik: povesti (Leningrad: Sov. pisatel).

  46. 46.

    Konstantin Altaiskii (1966) ‘Moskovskaia iunost Tsiolkovskogo’, Moskva, no. 9, 176–92. See also all the sources cited in Refs. 3, 4, and 5.

  47. 47.

    In his original pencil-written notes, Tsiolkovskii notes that in the library he ‘noticed one of [the library] employees’ rather than he ‘met one of the [library] employees’. See K. E. Tsiolkovskii, ‘Cherty iz moei zhizni’ (1934–1935), ARAN, f. 555, op. 2, d. 14, ll. 1–29ob (See especially. ll. 12ob–13).

  48. 48.

    One of Tsiolkovskii’s earliest biographers (who also knew him well), B. N. Vorobev, wrote in 1940 that according to the testimony of scientist’s family, Tsiolkovskii learned of the philosophical works and personal life of Fedorov from magazine articles in his adulthood and that there is no evidence to suggest that the two ever spoke to each other. See B. N. Vorobev (1940) Tsiolkovskii (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia), pp. 29–30.

  49. 49.

    K. Tsiolkovskii (1911) ‘Issledovanie mirovykh prostranstv reaktivnymi priborami’, Vestnik vozdukhoplavaniia no. 19, 16–21. Quote on p. 16.

  50. 50.

    Maria Carlson (1993) No Religion Higher Than Truth: A History of the Theosophical Movement in Russia, 1875–1922 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).

  51. 51.

    Christine Rosen (2004) Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement (New York: Oxford University Press); Marouf A. Hasian, Jr. (1996) The Rhetoric of Eugenics in Anglo-American Thought (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press).

  52. 52.

    During his lifetime Tsiolkovskii published 68 philosophical works. A much larger number was never published. See T. N. Zhelnina and V. M. Mapelman (1996) ‘K izucheniiu praktiki izdaniia filosofskikh sochinenii K. E. Tsiolkovskogo’, Trudy XXVIII chtenii, posviashchennykh razrabotke nauchnogo naslediia i razvitiiu idei K. E. Tsiolkovskogo (Kaluga, 14–17 Sentiabria 1993 g.): Sektsiia ‘Issledovanie nauchnogo tvorchestve K. E. Tsiolkovskogo i istoriia aviatsii i kosmonavtiki’ (Moscow: IET AN SSSR), 65–87.

  53. 53.

    All of these works—and many others which were unpublished during his lifetime—have been compiled together into one volume: V. S. Avduevskii (ed.) (2001) K. E. Tsiolkovskii: kosmicheskaia filosofiia (Moscow: URSS).

  54. 54.

    For a comparative overview of the philosophies of Fedorov and Tsiolkovskii, see V. V. Kaziutinskii (1997) ‘Kosmizm i kosmicheskaia filosofiia’, in B. V. Raushenbakh (ed.) Osvoenie aerokosmicheskogo prostranstva: proshloe, nastoiashchee, budushchee (Moscow: IIET RAN), pp. 139–44.

  55. 55.

    For ‘cosmic’ theosophist ideas in English from the late nineteenth century, see John Fiske’s Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy (1874) and Richard M. Bucke’s Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Mind (1901).

  56. 56.

    Hagemeister (2012) ‘Konstantin Tsiolkovskii and the Occult Roots of Soviet Space Travel’.

  57. 57.

    K. E. Tsiolkovskii (1925) Monizm vselennoi (Kaluga: K. E. Tsiolkovskii). Tsiolkovskii republished the brochure with some minor additions and changes in 1931.

  58. 58.

    K. Tsiolkovskii (1928) Volia vselennoi: neizvestnye razumnye sily (Kaluga: K. Tsiolkovskii), p. 7.

  59. 59.

    The essay was first published (in edited form) in 1981. See K. E. Tsiolkovskii (1981) ‘Kosmicheskaia filosofiia’, Tekhnika-molodezhi no. 4, 22–26. The original is in ARAN, f. 555, op. 1, d. 534, ll. 20–27ob.

  60. 60.

    Tsiolkovsii believed that the short-term goal of humans in space was to use the energy resources of the solar system to improve the lot of the human race. In Kosmicheskie raketnye poezda (Cosmic Rocket Trains), he noted that ‘[c]onquering the solar system will yield not only energy and life that will be two billion times more plentiful than Earth’s energy and life, but spaciousness which will be even more abundant’. He also pointed to other sources of energy besides the Sun., particularly, mineral resources on the asteroids (or minor planets) that circle the Sun. beyond the orbit of Mars. He meditated on the technical, managerial, and economical challenges of setting up industry in outer space for extraction and use of various minerals. For the quote, see K. E. Tsiolkovskii (1929) Kosmicheskie raketnye poezda (Kaluga: Kollektiv sektsii nauchnykh rabotnikov), p. 8.

  61. 61.

    The few hints that Tsiolkovskii was aware of Fedorov’s ‘philosophy of the common task’ come from second-hand sources, particularly the journalist Konstantin Altaiskii-Korolev (1902–78) who, in the 1960s, wrote about his private conversations with Tsiolkovskii. Altaiskii (1967) Tsiolkovskii rasskazyvaet … (Moscow: Detskaia literatura). Altaiskii claimed that Tsiolkovskii told him that he heard about Fedorov’s ideas about ten years after ‘publication’ of the Philosophy of the Common Task, but it is not clear if he meant publication of the first volume (1905) or the second (1913).

  62. 62.

    Tsiokovskii quoted in Hagemeister (1997) ‘Russian Cosmism in the 1920s and Today’, p. 202.

  63. 63.

    K. Tsiolkovskii (2001) ‘Etika ili estestvennye osnovy nravstvennosti’ in K. E. Tsiolkovskii: kosmicheskaia filosofiia, p. 82. For one of the few Russian commentators to investigate Tsiolkovskii’s racist and eugenicists ideas, see N. Gavriushin (1992) ‘Kosmicheskii put k vechnomu blazhenstvu” (K. E. Tsiolkovskii i mifologiia tekhnokratii)’, Voprosy filosofii no. 6. 125–31.

  64. 64.

    For Chizhevskii’s famous introduction, see Alexander Tshijewsky (1924) ‘Anstatt eines Vorworts’, in K. E. Tsiolkovskii, Raketa v kosmicheskoe prostranstvo (Kaluga: K. E. Tsiolkovskii), unnumbered preface page. Chizhevskii’s most famous work on ‘helio-biology’ was published the same year: Chizhevskii (1924) Fizicheskie faktory istoricheskogo protsessa (Kaluga: A. L. Chizhevskii). Tsiolkovskii, in turn, published a review of Chizhevskii’s book the following year in a local Kaluga newspaper. See Kommuna, April 4, 1924. For a recent reading, see V. V. Kaziutinskii (1998) ‘Kosmizm A. L. Chizhevskogo’, Iz istorii raketno-kosmicheskoi nauki i tekhniki no. 2, 98–122.

  65. 65.

    Gor’kii to Tsiolkovskii (1932) ARAN, fond 555, op. 4, d. 183, l. 1.

  66. 66.

    For Zabolotskii and Tsiolkovskii, see Sarah Pratt (2000) Nikolai Zabolotsky: Enigma and Cultural Paradigm (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press), pp. 183–86; Darra Goldstein (1993) Nikolai Zabolotsky: Play for Mortal Stakes (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), pp. 143–48; A. Pavlov (1964) ‘Iz perepiski N. A. Zabolotskogo s K. E. Tsiolkovskim’, Russkaia literatura no. 3, 219–26, which discusses the two letters Zabolotskii wrote to Tsiolkovskii in January 1932.

  67. 67.

    The two most prominent volumes from the 1950s do not mention Tsiolkovskii. See V. V. Zen’kovskii (1948) Istoriia russkoi filosofii (Paris; YMCA Press) and N. O. Losskii (1951) Istoriia russkoi filosofii (Moscow).

  68. 68.

    Gavriushin’s 1973 dissertation was entitled ‘Artistic Creativity and the Development of Science (The Establishment of the Idea of Conquering Space)’. His very first paper on Tsiolkovskii’s philosophical work was published in 1972 under the title ‘From the History of Russian Cosmism’. He had orally presented the paper 2 years previously at the Tsiolkovskii Readings in Kaluga. For the publication, see Trudy V i VI chtenii posviashchennykh razrabotke nauchnogo naslediia i razvitiiu tvorchestva K. E. Tsiolkovskogo (Moscow: 1972), pp. 104–06.

  69. 69.

    L. V. Leskov (1998) ‘K. E. Tsiolkovskii i rossiiskaia natsional’naia ideia’, Zemlia i vselennaia no. 4, 62–7.

  70. 70.

    For a lengthy meditation on the role of Russian Cosmism in post-socialist Russia, see V. V. Kaziutinskii (1994) ‘Kosmicheskaia filosofiia K. E. Tsiolkovskogo na rubezhe XXI veka’ in Trudy XXVII chteniia, posviashchennykh razrabotke nauchnogo naslediia i razvitiiu idei K. E. Tsiolkovskogo (Kaluga, 15–18 sentiabria 1992 g.): sektsiia ‘K. E. Tsiolkovskii i filosofskie problemy osvoeniia kosmosa’ (Moscow: IIET RAN, 1994), pp. 4–40.

  71. 71.

    Anonymous (1962b) ‘Titov, Denying God, Puts His Faith in People’, New York Times, May 7. A variation of this quote is often falsely attributed to first cosmonaut Iurii Gagarin, but there is no evidence to suggest that he said anything about God or his faith in any of his public pronouncements.

  72. 72.

    Victoria Smolkin-Rothrock (2011) ‘Cosmic Enlightenment: Scientific Atheism and the Soviet Conquest of Space’ in Into the Cosmos, pp. 159–94.

  73. 73.

    M. V. Mostepanenko (1959) ‘Kosmonavtika protiv religii’, Nauka i zhizn’ no. 1, 74–5. See also the invocation of Tsiolkovskii in a book arguing for the inextricable link between technological progress and atheism, G. S. Gudozhnik (1961) Tekhnika i religiia (Moscow: Voenizdat), pp. 22–3.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of History, Fordham University, New York, NY, USA

    Asif Siddiqi

Authors
  1. Asif Siddiqi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Oxford, St Antony’s College, Oxford, United Kingdom

    Paul Betts

  2. All Souls College, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

    Stephen A. Smith

Copyright information

© 2016 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Siddiqi, A. (2016). Tsiolkovskii and the Invention of ‘Russian Cosmism’: Science, Mysticism, and the Conquest of Nature at the Birth of Soviet Space Exploration. In: Betts, P., Smith, S. (eds) Science, Religion and Communism in Cold War Europe. St Antony's Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54639-5_6

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54639-5_6

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-54638-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-54639-5

  • eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation