20th July 1969 20th July 1969
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Illustration by Igor Kubik
Experiences

20th July 1969

Anniversary of the Month
Adam Węgłowski
Reading
time 5 minutes

It was 8.17pm GMT when the unassuming, almost shoddy landing module of the Blue Planet’s travellers appeared on the surface of the moon. Several hours later, the proud representative of the Homo sapiens species emerged: it was the American Neil Armstrong. “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,” he said when his foot touched the moon for the first time in history.

It was a Sunday night, but humans watching the landing on their television sets hardly thought about the duties awaiting them in the upcoming week. This was also true for the citizens of the Polish People’s Republic, busy with preparations for the

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Watercolours Under a Spacesuit Watercolours Under a Spacesuit
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From Galina Balashova's archives/DOM publishers
Science

Watercolours Under a Spacesuit

The Story of Galina Balashova
Konstanty Usenko

Androids may dream of electric sheep, but Soviet cosmonauts dream of flowery meadows and white birch tree-trunks. Fortunately, there was someone who painted their dreams and sent them along up into space.

The Soviet space-exploration dream left its mark in various forms. There are monuments and streets named after Yuri Gagarin in most cities and towns, numerous Cosmonaut Avenues and Cosmonaut Boulevards, countless statues of rockets and sputniks. There are space-themed murals and mosaics on buildings and bus stops, as well as sports venues and brutalist-style circus buildings shaped like flying saucers. There is also science-fiction literature, electronic music played on Soviet analogue synthesizers that once blasted from speakers in parks and department stores, and children’s films such as Visitor from the Future and Adventures of the Electronic. There are all the posters, stamps and pennants you can still find at any of the Russian barakholki, or flea markets. In the early 1980s, smoke-enwreathed dance floors were filled with dancers bopping to the hit of the band Zemlyane (meaning ‘Earthlings’): “Earth in the viewpoint that I see / Like a son missing his mother / We miss our Earth – we have but one […]”.

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