How Soviet Science Magazines Fantasized About Life in Outer Space

It's easy to forget that for many years the Soviet Union was the leading space power and their space program was a source of immense national pride. Artists reflected that pride, and also used their art as an educational tool, as pointed out in this article about Soviet space art.

Soviet illustrations, even ones with whizzing UFOs and bafflingly futuristic machines, were not drawn to entertain as much as to educate and promote the Communist project. An open letter from cosmonauts to the public in a 1962 issue of Technology for the Youth read “… each of us going to the launch believes deeply that his labor (precisely labor!) makes the Soviet science and the Soviet man even more powerful, and brings closer that wonderful future—the communist future to which all humanity will arrive.” Scientists, astronauts, and aircraft engineers were treated like legends, since outer space was such an important idea in the Soviet Union, according to Sankova. “Achievements of the USSR in the field of space have become a powerful weapon of propaganda,” she says. Soviet citizens lived vicariously through such images, and even the more surreal and fantastical visuals—living in space, meeting new life forms—demonstrated that the idea of cultural revolution need not be limited to Earth.

Much of the art shown in thie article is impressionistic, which you might think would be surprising for a communist state, but it probably harkens back to poster art from the 1920s. If you want to see more realistic Soviet space art, look up some of the art of cosmonaut Alexei Leonov on Google Images.