Czechoslovakia has for a long time been a place of experimentation and intrigue -- not just in the magic-filled world of The Witch Who Came In From the Cold, but in our real, less-magical world as well! In fact, Vladamir Remek, the first Soviet cosmonaut to venture into space, came from the Czechoslovakian capital, Prague.
In the late 1970s, with the arrival of the Shuttle enimminent, NASA made no secret of the fact that it intended to invite European scientists to work aboard the reusable spacecraft, thereby fostering wider international participation. The Soviet response was to beat them to it by staging the first in a series of missions, known as ‘Intercosmos’, involving pilots from Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany, Bulgaria, Hungary, Vietnam, Cuba and Romania. The cynic might doubt the sincerity of these missions, for virtually all of them were one-off exercises in propaganda to reinforce the image of the ‘perfect’ Communist lifestyle. However, ‘perfect’ or not, with Intercosmos the Soviets operated a truly ‘international’ space station for the first time in history...
Why Vladimir Remek was chosen to fly first has aroused much debate over the years. His selection is surprising, because Warsaw Pact tanks had rumbled into Prague in August 1968 to crush a short-lived attempt to implement democratic reforms in a country ruled by the iron fist of Soviet-led Communism. In the wake of the failed ‘Prague Spring’, a hardline dictator, Gustav Husak, had achieved rapid economic growth, good living conditions for the people and a widespread availability of material goods. By the late 1970s, however, the reality set in that Czechoslovakia’s economy was beginning to stagnate and it has been suggested that the choice of Vladimir Remek to fly the first Intercosmos mission was an attempt to appease a disgruntled Czech population and soften anti-Soviet sentiment in the country.
Soyuz 28, with Gubarev and Remek aboard, was launched on the evening of 2 March 1978. Czechoslovak Radio’s Ilja Jenca described the two cosmonauts – their faces projected onto a gigantic monitor screen in the control centre – as “two brothers, or even twins, representing two brother socialist countries…the symbolism mingles with reality”. There was no doubting with such words that the scientific importance of the mission paled in comparison to its political importance. A day later, Gubarev guided his ship to dock with the Salyut 6 space station, then occupied by two other Soviet cosmonauts, Yuri Romanenko and Georgi Grechko. Very little has been published, other than an anecdote, here and there, about what Remek did during his few days aboard the station. Each Intercosmos nation sponsored its own programme of scientific research and Remek performed medical and materials science investigations and observed his homeland from orbit.
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Witches, spies, and cosmonauts -- Prague sure is a one-of-a-kind kind of town!
