Cosmonautics Day held at the Presidential Library

On April 12, 2024, the Presidential Library hosted an annual conference dedicated to Cosmonautics Day. Traditionally, on this day, meetings are held with astronauts and representatives of the space industry, events, projects and technologies related to space are discussed. This year the event was held at the Presidential Library for the tenth time and was dedicated to the 90th anniversary of the birth of Yuri Gagarin.

“The Presidential Library pays much attention to the history of the development of astronautics”, - said Yuri Nosov, Director General of the Presidential Library, opening the conference. – We hold thematic exhibitions and video lectures with the participation of numerous centers for remote access to library resources in Russia and abroad. The electronic collection “Outer Space” is constantly updated on the Presidential Library's portal. One of the latest acquisitions was the declassified personal record of Yuri Gagarin, transferred to the library by the Roscosmos State Corporation as part of a cooperation agreement”. 

The first event of the conference was the ceremony of commemorative cancellation of a postage stamp dedicated to Cosmonautics Day. To cancel the stamp, which depicts a portrait of K. E. Tsiolkovsky and the Angara-A5 launch vehicle taking off against the background of the starry sky, a special first day stamp was made. The date on the stamp is April 12, 2024. The first impressions of the artistic stamp on postage stamps were put by Director General of the Presidential Library Yuri Nosov, Director of the North-West Macroregion of Russian Post Alexander Vakulenko, and cosmonaut Andrei Borisenko. Canceled postal products become unique and acquire special philatelic significance.

Participants in the conference “Cosmonautics Day at the Presidential Library” were traditionally greeted by Russian cosmonauts who are on board the International Space Station - Oleg Kononenko, Nikolay Chub and Alexander Grebenkin.

Guests of the Presidential Library learned about the details of Yuri Gagarin’s personal record, transferred for digitization to the Presidential Library by the Roscosmos State Corporation. 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. One can learn about them in the electronic reading room of the Presidential Library on Senate Square, 3, in the Reserve Center of the Presidential Library in Moscow, a branch of the Presidential Library in Tyumen Region, as well as in more than 1,600 remote access centers to electronic library resources opened in the Russian Federation Federation and abroad.

During the conference, the niece of the first cosmonaut Natalya Gagarina, an employee of the Yu. A. Gagarin Memorial Museum-Reserve, spoke about the institution’s international exhibition projects.

There were also performed speeches dedicated to the 90th anniversary of the birth of cosmonaut Alexei Leonov and the 65th anniversary of the launch of the world's first spacecraft towards the Moon from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The event participants learned what contribution the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Bolshevik plant (today - Obukhov Plant) made to the development of cosmonautics, what the Space Petersburg project is and what history looks like in the symbols of the Gagarin era.

As part of the conference, guests of the Presidential Library were able to visit the multimedia exhibition “Road to Space. Marking the 90th anniversary of the birth of Yuri Gagarin" and find out how it was created.

The event was attended by representatives of the Roscosmos State Corporation, Energia, the North-Western Interregional Public Organization of the Cosmonautics Federation of the Russian Federation, teachers, students and cadets of higher educational institutions of St. Petersburg. Participants from other Russian cities joined them via video conferencing.

The event record is available on the institution’s Rutube-channel. 

The Presidential Library's portal features electronic collection Outer Space. It includes theoretical studies, official documents, periodicals, photographs, newsreel fragments, documentaries and video lectures on the history of the development of astronautics.