Russia: Women Are Different

To hear the Russians tell it, all the world’s women were in chains before Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova. As the first woman cosmonaut looped the earth, Tass exulted: “A brilliant star has flared up in the cosmic firmament. It outshines all the film stars in the world. Never and in no country did women ever attain such height.” In every Russian village, women celebrated, and congratulations were fired aloft from such Soviet heroines as Lyubi Li, described in the press as “the renowned corn planter and hero of Socialist labor.”

In her space capsule, Vostok VI, “Valya” was still the compleat Soviet woman. Her space suit was embroidered with a snow-white dove, and she had had her hair done before blastoff. Once a tomboy, she now has an admitted weakness for spike heels, stylish clothes, and a perfume called Red Moscow. From space she radioed ground control: “Please tell Mamma not to worry.” Once, when ground scientists lost contact with “Seagull” (Valya’s orbital call name), they hastily ordered her cosmic companion in Vostok V, Lieut. Colonel Valery Feodorovich Bykovsky, to try and rouse her. “Sorry, I was having a snooze,” apologized Valya.

Missed Rendezvous. Over their radios, Valya and Valery sang songs of friendship to each other, flashed “best wishes to the industrious American people” and “warm greetings to the multimillioned Chinese.” Loosening their harnesses, both cosmonauts performed calisthenics while floating weightlessly in their cabins. But though the two Vostoks passed within three miles of each other, their orbital paths were so divergent that they could not rendezvous. Since U.S. scientists had fully expected the two capsules to link up in space, they speculated that Soviet scientists had made a launching miscalculation.

Three days and 48 orbits after takeoff, Valya re-entered the atmosphere, was ejected from her capsule and floated to earth by parachute near a small village in Kazakhstan; slowed by another parachute, the empty Vostok VI landed near by. Two hours and 46 minutes later and some 500 miles away, Bykovsky landed similarly in the meadow of a collective farm after a record 81 orbits and 119 hours aloft. But Bykovsky was all but forgotten in the furor over Valya. Television commentators described her “cornflower blue eyes,” and peasants showered her with bouquets. Overcome by her welcome, Valya broke into tears; it was the first time, Moscow assured the world, that anyone had seen her cry since she was a child. In a telephone conversation with Nikita Khrushchev, she admitted that she had bruised her nose in landing, said that the “people received me very cordially in the Russian manner with bread and salt.” Foresightedly, she had brought along photographs of herself and passed them out to workers who greeted her, giving most of the pictures to women. “I prefer women today,” she said. “The men shouldn’t complain.” When she flew into Moscow for her official reception three days later, Valya was greeted by more flowers than anyone remembered ever having seen before in the Russian capital, a bear hug and kiss from Khrushchev, and her best beau, Bachelor Cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev.

Paper Dolls. Though Russia’s second double shot added little new to space technology, the fact that Valya was not a pilot and admittedly was mechanically unsophisticated raised the question of why U.S. astronauts all must be skilled test pilots. The answer from NASA officials: use of test pilots permits the elimination of space-consuming automatic equipment in the cramped capsules. But some authorities are convinced that young scientists would be far more effective in observing and analyzing unexpected space flight phenomena.-Says Clinton Anderson, chairman of the Senate Space Committee: “The Russians have proved to us that you don’t have to have 20 years of test-pilot experience before you can handle one of these capsules.”

Fervent agreement was voiced by U.S. feminists. Said Jane Hart, wife of Michigan Senator Philip Hart and leader in the fight to get women astronauts accepted by solidly misogynistic NASA: I’m tempted to go out to the barn and tell the story to my horse and listen to him laugh.” Added Clare Boothe Luce: “We must stop trying to make paper dolls of our women.” Anthropologist Margaret Mead commented acidly: “The Russians treat men and women interchangeably. We treat men and women differently.”

And vive la différence, said at least one Russian male last week. “My age and conservative mental makeup compelled me to think up to the last few days that we men were the rulers of man’s mind and the salt of the earth,” said Novelist Mikhail (And Quiet Flows the Don) Sholokhov. “And what do we see now? A woman in space! Say what you will, this is incomprehensible. It contradicts all my set conceptions of the world and its possibilities.”

* Many scientists doubt Astronaut Gordon Cooper’s report of seeing trucks on the road and smoke coming out of chimneys in Tibet. According to Dr. W. R. Adey of U.C.L.A., this is equivalent to seeing objects 1 in. in diameter 4,000 ft. away. He thinks Cooper had disorders of vision or judgment.