Documents on the history of space exploration from the collections of the Presidential Library available at RUSSIA EXPO

On April 13, 2024, the head of the scientific examination department of the Presidential Library collection, Alexey Voronovich, as part of the educational program of the Russian Society “Znanie”, spoke to visitors to RUSSIA EXPO at VDNKh in Moscow. Showing documents from the collections of the Presidential Library, he spoke about the contribution our country has made to the exploration of outer space.

The electronic collection Outer Space has been created and is constantly being updated on the Presidential Library's portal. It includes theoretical studies, official documents, periodicals, photographs, newsreel fragments, documentaries and video lectures on the history of the development of astronautics. One of the latest acquisitions was the declassified personal record of Yuri Gagarin. It was transferred to the Presidential Library by the Roscosmos State Corporation as part of a cooperation agreement signed in March 2023.

The personal record of the first cosmonaut on the planet includes a questionnaire, a list of positions in the cosmonaut corps from trainee to pilot-engineer-cosmonaut, information about marital status, characteristics from the place of study and other documents. The personal record also contains some interesting details. For example, one can find out that Gagarin had the second sports category and the first referee category in basketball. No less interesting is the autobiography written by Gagarin himself.

Outer Space collection features documentary evidence of a significant day for all mankind – April 12, 1961. Thus, newsreel footage shows Yuri Gagarin before the start of the flight: the future first cosmonaut of the Earth travels on a bus to the launch site, says goodbye to designer Korolev, then settles into the cockpit, and the spacecraft takes off. Other newsreels show Sergei Korolev at the control panel, anxiously awaiting radio communication with Yuri Gagarin. Seconds stretch agonizingly until the moment when he hears Gagarin’s words: “I see the Earth!”

"Victory! Man in space!”, “Hello, space! – says the Russian” - the main headlines of the digitized issue of the Smena newspaper, published on April 13, 1961 and presented in the collection of the Presidential Library. The Krasnaya Zvezda correspondent even managed to conduct a short interview with the first cosmonaut immediately after landing. When asked about his health, Gagarin replied: “As you can see, it’s good. Safe and sound. The flight was successful. The equipment worked great. I am infinitely happy that it was I who managed to open the way for people into space”. 

The world’s first cosmonaut later shared his impressions on the pages of his books: “From a height of 300 kilometers, the illuminated surface of the Earth is visible very well. Observing the surface of the Earth, I saw clouds and their light shadows that lay over fields, forests and seas. When I flew over our country, I clearly saw squares of collective farm fields”. The digitized publications “The Road to Space”, “I See the Earth...”, “Psychology and Space” and others are available in the electronic reading rooms of the Presidential Library.

One of those who made humanity’s dreams of flying into space a reality was the representative of Russian cosmism, the founder of theoretical cosmonautics, Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky. A separate collection is dedicated to him on the Presidential Library's portal. It presents electronic copies of numerous books and articles by the scientist, for example, The simplest project of a purely metal aeron made of corrugated iron (1914) and Space rocket trains (1929), autobiographical and documentary materials: KonstantinTsiolkovsky. 1857–1935 (1939), Guide to the K. E. Tsiolkovsky House and Museum (1965), video film of the Presidential Library Tsiolkovsky (2011) and much more.

More interesting facts about the history of space exploration are available in the Presidential Library’s collections, which today exceed a million depository items. Full access to the library's resources is provided in the electronic reading room on Senate Square in St. Petersburg, in the Reserve Center of the Presidential Library in Moscow, a branch of the Presidential Library in Tyumen Region, as well as in remote access centers in Russia and abroad.