Ukrainian’s way into space

This exhibition was organized within the framework of the pro-ject Ukrainians of Russia and tells about the life of the legendary pilot-spaceman, two times Hero of the Soviet Union, and prominent public figure. The exposition, prepared with the help of the spaceman’s second wife Alevtyna Popovych, features books from their home library, photos from spaceman’s family archives, and books published for the 80th anniversary of his birth, including the book O vremeni i o sebe (About Time and Myself) by Popovych, published by MAKD, Moscow 2010. Unfortunately, the author, who died last year, never saw this wonderful illustrated edition. The book includes memoirs from different years — documentary novels Vyletaiu utrom (Fly in the Morning), Ispytanie Kosmosom i Zemlei (Challenges of Space and Earht), and Robinzon Vselennoi (Robinson of the Universe), from which the reader would be able to learn about the obstacles that a young Ukrainian man from the Dnipro region had to go through on his way to the stars.

In the preface to the book the ma-nager of the Federal Space Agency Anatoly Perminov says: “Pavlo Popovych was an astronaut of the first grade, a legend, and a historical personality. A mountain range in Antarctica and a small planet were named after him. He was twice a hero of the Soviet Union, pilot-spaceman of the USSR, Aviation Major General, Honored Master of Sports of the USSR, Honorary Citizen of Kaluga, Poltava, Magnitogorsk, Guryev, Zaporizhia, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Kovrov, Bila Tserkva, Targoviste (Bulgaria), Leninsk, Nkus, and of his native town of Uzyn.”

The biographies of the first six space conquerors were somewhat similar. They were not pampered by fate. It was a generation of those who survived the World War II. Children of ordinary workers, they came to the spacemen crew from the production lines, from aero-clubs and aviation schools, from military service... They were very focused people who would not turn from their chosen path.

Perhaps not everyone knows that Popovych was the first to come into the newly formed crew of spacemen. He was appointed a commander, or as the future spacemen liked to say — the master sergeant.

On August 15, 1962 Popovych had his first flight into space on the spaceship Vostok-4. This was the first time in history that a group flight of two manned spacecrafts was made. The flight duration was two days 22 hours and 57 minutes.

From July 3 through July 19, 1974 Popovych had his second space flight as a commander of the spacecraft Soyuz-14 and the orbital station Salyut-3. It was the first flight on an orbital station of purely military nature. The flight lasted 15 days 17 hours 30 minutes and 28 seconds. After two space flights Popovych had flown 18 days 16 hours 27 minutes and 28 seconds.

In 1980 through 1989 Popovych worked as deputy head of Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center.

Popovych was a charming, sensitive man, an excellent organizer, a wonderful storyteller, and a warm-hearted person, he had an amazing life energy and natural optimism. Everyone who ever met him remembers him just like that.

Popovych became the head of the Moscow Society of Ukrainian Culture Slavutych and was one of the initiators of the revival of the Library of Ukrainian Literature in the Russian capital.

Ukraine and Space are like two wings which have raised the image of the famous countryman to the pantheon of famous Ukrainians forever. Maybe the most lyrical pages of the book (in the chapter Home of Motherland) are those where Popovych wrote: “There are words that you absorb with your mother’s milk. For me such a word was Dnipro. I remember it from my childhood. Maybe I was still in the cradle when I heard it from my mother, who would sing soft lullabies to me. Later I would sing to my sister:

Dnipro-Father is sad,
He is quietly whispering to his star-kids:
‘Sleep, my dear ones, I will rock you…’

“Here, in the Star village, he found out that each of my new friends had his favorite river: Yuri Gagarin, Valentina Tereshkova, and Andriyan Nikolayev certainly loved the Volga, German Titov — the Ural River, and Valery Bykovsky — the Moskva. Other guys favored the stormy Yenisei, the Danube, the Don, the song-like Amur, the Neva fanned with winds of the Baltic Sea, the Bug, and some unknown Vovcha River. And it seemed to me that each of my friends had an unseen reflection of their favorite river in their characters.

“During our flight with Nikolayev, we talked about the Volga and Dnipro, even there, in orbit. We sang songs about them. What a soul burning excitement it was when from the space you’d try to guess your native river!”

Today the memories of Popovych are already history. The chief designer Serhii Koroliov, determining the sequence of the first set flights, said: “The first to fly would be Gagarin, Titov duplicates him. The next one to fly will be Titov. And you — Koroliov looked at me and Nikolayev — will show the friendship of the USSR peoples in space. You will be the first to do a joint flight.” That’s what eventually happened.

Popovych did a lot, both in space and on Earth, remaining a true son of his people, and preserving the friendship between the peoples of the USSR. A lot has been said about it in his books, which were presented at the exposition: Kapitany zvezdnykh gorodkov (Captains of Star Towns), Zov galaktiki (Call of Galaxy), Professii — kosmicheskuyu vysotu (Space Height to Profession), and others.

We should note that the author of these works has long been honored by becoming a member of the Ukraine’s Union of Writers. Among the literary works of the prose writer and documentary maker, it is his poems that stand out with the fullness of their emotional content. They were turned into songs when the composer Oleksii Kurchenko wrote music to them. The lyrics of those songs are collected in the book Kosmos moikh nadezhd (Cosmos of My Hopes), published in Kyiv, Mystetstvo, 1987. In one of those songs we come across the following lines:

“I have heard not once about
the love for the sea,
However my heart longs for the sky.
Under the high blue space
Around the Earth I have walked
a hundred times.
And if I will fall down in the starry sky
Under the cosmic rain —
Earth, I will lean to you
And will find continuation in you…
I am laying a peaceful way
into the sky,
Into the space, that was opened
to us by Gagarin.
But without you, my Dnipro land,
I would not do anything in my life.”

Popovych’s heart stopped beating on September 30, 2009. He died from a stroke in Gurzuf (Crimea), and was buried in Moscow on Troyekurovskoe cemetery.