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THE LAST SOVIET - EP 3: No Experience Necessary · The Steve Harvey Morning Show

• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Twenty seven year old Helen Charman makes her way to
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: her car. She's a chemist at the Mars Chocolate factory
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: and she's on the way home. Her days are filled
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: with questions about the right kind of toffee to use
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: on chocolate ice cream, or how long a Mars bar
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: will survive in the heat. She likes her job. Get up,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: go to work, come home a regular nine to five
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: that day. Helen turns out of the factory car park
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: and quickly hits the rush hour traffic. She sighs and
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: turns the radio up loud. On it, a newscaster is
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: going through the day's headlines. It's early summer nineteen eighty
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: nine and in Hungary, the communist regime has just been overthrown,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: which could end forty years of one party rule. An
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Ira bar has gone off at a British military base.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Please believe the tech, May Harold as summer of terror.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Two hundred and sixty people arrested at Stonehenge for celebrating
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: the Summer Solstice. Protesters moving towards Stonehenge. Helen starts flicking
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: through the channels. I means number one, the new single
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: yeahde and she just wants to listen to some music,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: and that's when she hears it. I was driving my
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: car home from work and flicking through the stations, trying
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: to find some music, and I heard an announcement, A
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: suppose an advert really, and it said started off with
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: astronaut wanted, no experience necessary. Suddenly Helen's staring at the
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: radio an astronaut. Now, lots of kids me included dream
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: of being an astronaut, but not Helen. She might work
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: for a company called Mars, but she's never thought about
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: going into space. Being British, who was no job for
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: an astronaut. Growing up in the nineteen sixties nineteen seventies,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Britain didn't even have a space program, so it wasn't possible.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: It wasn't part of my agenda. But now Helen's listening
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: hard as the voice on the radio continues and then
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: went on to describe they wanted people to go over
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: to Star fifteen year Moscow, train with the cosmonauts and
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: do experiments on the Mere Space station Cosmonauts Star City,
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Mere Space Station. These were words Helen hardly knew. They're
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: looking for someone between twenty one and forty with scientific
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: training and the ability to learn a foreign language, and
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: Helen thinks, I'm twenty seven, and I have a degree
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: in chemistry, and I know French and German. And then
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: this idea begins to form in the back of her mind.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: What if the traffic light turns red before she can
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: talk herself out of it. Helen reaches for a scrap
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: of paper and scribbles down the number from the radio.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: She has no idea that this moment, stuck in traffic
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: is about to change her life. That not only will
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: she be soon going to space, but she's about to
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: get a front row seat to one of the most
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: important events of the twentieth century, the collapse of the
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Soviet Union, and by her side will be a Russian
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: cosmonaut called Serge Kracole from Kaleidoscope. iHeart podcasts and exile content.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: This is the last Soviet I'm Lance Bass. So actually,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Helen Sharman and I have pretty similar stories. We grew
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: up in very different worlds and had very different jobs,
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: but we both somehow ended up in the same strange place,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: a secret town outside of Moscow, doing the same insane thing,
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: training to go to space. We were both young, myself
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: twenty three, Helen twenty seven, and we left everything we'd
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: ever known behind us to see that electric blue light
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: of our planet from orbit. We were actually at the
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: frontier of something that today is a familiar idea, paying
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: to go to space, except in our case it was
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: TV companies who were paying for us. It was CBS
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: and MTV fronting the money for my trip and for
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Helen a bunch of companies with backing from a British
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: TV channel. We were fish out of water, and both
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: of our journeys started completely by chance. For me with
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: a call from my agent Lance. What would you say
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: if I told you I've got you a ticket on
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: a Russian space rocket for Helen? Sitting in her car
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: one day in nineteen eighty nine, It all began with
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: that radio ad astronaut wanted new experience necessary. Helen keeps
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: the application for him in her bag for weeks before
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: she sends it in a few weeks later, she gets
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: a call. A woman's voice says, I'm telephoning on behalf
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: of Air Vice Marshal Peter Howard and would like to
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: ask if you would come for a medical for the
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: Anglo Soviet Juno's space mission. Hotline has been buzzing continuously
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: with hopeful astronauts. The mission was a joint project between
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: the Brits and the Soviets. They called it Project Juno,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: and the idea was to hold a contest to try
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: to find the best person in Britain to go to space,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: retracting applications from, among others, a city brokers, a tax inspective,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: a baker. There were commercials on posters, in newspapers, on
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: TV and of course on the radio. With nearly twelve
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: thousand enthusiastics making contact, the chance of success is six
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: thousand to one. There was a selection process and medical
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: psychological tests and then gradually whittled us down. This morning,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: it was only a small step onto the platform for
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: the four who've beaten thirteen thousand candidates in the space race.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: A documentary film crew even followed their every move. It
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: was kind of like an early version of a reality
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: show which one would make it to space. Not quite
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: The Bachelor, but you know what I mean. Helen Sharman's
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: a research technologist for a confectionery firm and is already
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: used to comments about her being the woman from Mars.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: I know we have to be fit, we have to
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: be able to run the Russian language. So I have
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: to be able to be perhapsing scientists fell in sextus annually. Yeah,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: I think I've got it now. Helen is pretty understaid.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: In fact, I would say she's quite tipathy British. She's
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: not like US Americans, always saying we are the best
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: at everything. But she had done pretty damn well to
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: get to this stage. Thirteen thousand people had applied, and
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: now she's just one of four. He only obstacle. Three
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: other equally determined to spurring astronauts or four have the
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: same ambition to join the Juno mission. They were tested
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: and tested, intelligence, reasoning power, how they work under pressure.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: They asked Helen about her motivations. Why she was doing
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: this money, fame, the good of science, the thawing of
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: East West relations. This was, after all, a rare opportunity
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: for people from the West to go behind the Iron
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: Curtain to experience a slice of the Soviet way of life.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: Helen thought about these questions for a while, and in
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: the end she answered, honestly, after doing all this work,
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: all these tests, and getting excited, she just wanted to
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: go to space, blast off in a rocket, see the
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: Earth from above. Just like me. She had been bitten
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: by the space bug from starting out, not really believing
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: that space was for someone like her. Now it was
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: all she could think about and it was almost within reach.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: The final announcement was made in the Science Museum in London.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: There was a big sort of glitzy TV show and
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: we were being encouraged to tryand and be terribly excited.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: Helen isn't really one for the cameras or glitz and glamour,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: so she isn't really feeling it. She's sitting there just
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: trying to remember what to do if they call her name,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: and trying not to think about how many people are
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: watching at home. Helen Charmotte. When day and asked my name,
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: I just knew I had to stand up, go to
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: the stage, shake hands, turned to face the cameras, smile
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: a lot. And it was only really when the whole
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: thing finished when I could relaxing people. I'm going to
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: train with the cosmonauts and it could really start to
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: sink in them. Helen was off to train for eighteen
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: months with a team of cosmonauts for omission to the
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: Mere Space Station, the Soviet's most advanced piece of space technology.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: It's a huge floating network of tubes and wires in
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: orbit around the Earth where multiple cosmonauts can live, work
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: and perform experiments. Helen had forty eight hours to pack
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: up her life and move to the Soviet Union. I
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: had to resign from my job. I closed for the
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Moscow winter. Eighteen months in Moscow. She was going to
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: need a thick coat and sell my car. You know
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: all that. She even got her affairs in order in
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: case she died in training or on her emission, the
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: arrange power of attorney. It was before internet banking, before
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: the internet as we know it now, no emails, no
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: mobile phones. It was all very very weird, a feeling
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: of being cut off, I think, very much from everything
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: that's had known in the UK. For Helen, the Soviet
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: Union was very much an alien land. It fell very
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: exotic and very very exciting. It was going to some
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: other world. Really. Helen had grown up in the nineteen
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: seventies where we were told that the Soviets were all
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: nasty and they were going to come in Boma country
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: with new clibombs. So she was already nervous. Then in
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: November nineteen eighty nine, just as she's preparing to leave
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: everything she knows. She hears this news from ABC This
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: is World News Tonight with Peter Jennings reporting tonight from
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: Berlin from the Berlin Wall specifically, take a look at them.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: They've been there since last night. They are here in
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: the thousands, They are here in the tens of thousands.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: The Berlin Wall was coming down. Thousands and thousands of
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: West Germans come to make the point that the wall
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: has suddenly become irrelevant. Earlier that summer, a peaceful revolution
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: began in East Berlin calling for more freedom, and finally,
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: on the night of November ninth, the checkpoints were overrun
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: and the gates of the wall were swung wide. For
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: the hapless East German border guards at Checkpoint Charlie, they
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: were swamped. They simply gave up, opened the gate and
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: allowed thousands through the one crossing point that had remained
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: firmly closed. The news was beamed across the globe in
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: deep indimenticab Checkpoint Charlie day, the government of East Germany
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: announced that its borders are open for Helen's family and friends.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: It was worrying, would it be dangerous going to Moscow
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: at this totally uncertain time, and I expected a sort
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: of harsh exterior, perhaps people who were a bit secretive,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: people who didn't want to share much. But Helen was determined.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: She realized not only did she have the chance to
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: become a cosmonaut, but she could find out what was
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: really happening behind the iron curtain that's coming up after
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: the break. Star City, the secret cosmonaut training facility. I
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: remember arriving there in two thousand and two for my
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: very first days of training. They shipped me out there
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: in the dead of night, to a place about twenty
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: miles north of Moscow, in the middle of a forest.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: It was a place that until the nineties was completely
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: off the map. It felt like I was arriving at
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: the Russian version of Area fifty one. When you get there,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: there are these huge iron gates and guards standing there.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: Helen remembers the same thing soldiers with their guns at
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: the gates and bobbed while around the edge of Star City.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: But once you got inside the walls of Star City,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: I remember it had the feel of kind of a
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: movie set, cut off from the rest of the Soviet Union.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: There was a bank, shops, a movie theater, a railway,
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: station sports fields. But if that sounds quaint, it wasn't.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: All the buildings were gray Brutalis blocks, and let me
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: tell you, on a cloudy day, the whole place felt
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: pretty bleak. But there also was this big sense of community.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Everybody knew everybody because the only people allowed to live
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: there were cosmonauts and their families. The fact that there
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: were customauts wool king around who I'd read about and
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: who I could see in space magazines, and something that
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: I was cute in the post office behind them. Helen
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: was star struck. But before she could meet her heroes
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: and her future crew, she had to train. Training to
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: be a cosmonaut is one of the hardest things I
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: have ever done, no doubt about it, more physically and
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: mentally grueling than any INSYNCT world tour. And those were rough.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: Days of Star City started at about five am. First
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: on the schedule was a Russian language class taught by
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: a teacher that only spoke French and Russian. Yeah, and
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: I gotta say Russian. It's not easy. In fact, Russian
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: is one of the most difficult languages in the world
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: to learn. I didn't even know that I had to
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: learn a whole new alphabet. I mean it took me
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: six months to learn Jagabaru, Pruskin and noshka, which means
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: I speak Russian a little. And that's before we even
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: started the physical training. There's not so much about running marathons,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: but it's building up good muscle strength in general fitness.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: All right, Helen's doing that thing we call British understatement
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: again because the training it's brutal. We had this machine
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: which is meant to recreate what it feels like when
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: your rocket is returning to earth. They strapped me into
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: a chair, spun me around. I got up to five
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: g's which is basically like a grand piano being pressed
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: into your chest. Then there was the weightlifting, working so
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: hard I was puking like every five minutes. And I
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: haven't even told you what happened in the woods. Sometimes
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: they would just leave you there after a long run
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: and say, okay, enjoy your night. And I had to
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: build a shelter and start a fire and find food
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: all on my own in the deep dark depths of
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: a Russian forest. Then there was the technical stuff, which
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: you had to totally learn from scratch as to navigation ballistics.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: Basically the theory of flying really freaking fast through space,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: and all of us in Russian. One thing I found
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: out pretty quickly was that they weren't going to make
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: any distinctions between the train cosmonauts and us newbies. Every
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: member of the crew would have responsibilities. I was in
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: charge of oxygen on the soils, and so I had
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: to know exactly how much air was needed to keep
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: my crew made safe. I had to calculate all of
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: this in my head. And did I mention all of
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: this was in Russian. Yeah, if you were even a
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: point off, everyone was dead. Because so much can go
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: wrong with space travel, we were always having to learn
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: what you should do in the event of a disaster.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: So some simple things, for instance, say the radio might
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: not work, what if you can't speak to ground control?
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: But there could be something else more complex, like what
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: if your spaceship fails to land on the station? What
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: the hell do you do? Then? What if the electricity
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: cuts out or one of your fellow crew goes on
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: a spacewalk and never comes back. So together we would
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: work through that. Now, that's the kind of thing that
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: we did in the simulators, and you would practice and
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: practice and practice, and it really was a case of
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: practice makes perfect. Years and years of Soviet missions to
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: space meant that if anything went wrong, there was always
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: a go to answer. These scenarios are often written down
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: as well. It's part of our manuals, so we don't
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: have to remember everything. We just have to remember which
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: page we've got to quickly moved to for Plan B
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: or Plan and C instead of Plan A. After months
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: in Star City, Helen started to believe in herself. She
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: was strong, she knew a bit more Russian than I did,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: and she knew how to save the spaceship from disaster.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: And eventually, in the summer of nineteen ninety she was
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: ready to meet her crew, the famous cosmonauts, the guys
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: she had been standing behind in the post office. The
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: commander of her mission would be Anatoly Artabaski, and she
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: would also ride with an engineer, the hero of the
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Salud seven rescue, sarage Crecovat. Sagey starts off when you
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: meet him. He is a very modest kind of character,
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: and he's very strong internally, but he's not the kind
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: of person who would be the loudest in the room
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: by any stretch of the imagination. You could probably go
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: into a room. Unless he's standing up, he's quite tall,
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: but if he was sitting down, you probably could go
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: pass without even noticing him because he's not shouting, he's
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: not waving his arms around, so you know, his presence
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: just sort of creptopotomy. Helen says, there's this thing you
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: need to understand about cosmonauts. All the cosmonauts have chosen
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: in many respects. We're all quite similar fairly, I would say,
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: even tempered, so not too excitable, not too depressive. But
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: Sarah Gay stood out. I think Sagey has got a
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: particularly high propensity to deal with stress. He's just outwardly
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: very calm. He probably deals with it all inside, but
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: he does deal with it soon. She was being invited
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: to his house to meet his family, and of course,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: the first time that any British person goes to a
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Soviet house for dinner, you think this enormous amount of food, Wow,
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: it's this amazing, and then you're offered more and more
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: and more. You think, thank you very much, that was
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: it's just really feeling super full. That's great, and then
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: they say, oh, now it's the main course. I can
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: tell you what Helen says about the Russians. Is true,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: they love to feed you and they like to get
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: a drunk on vaca. But the generosity Helen experienced in
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: Saragey's house also made her think, I know they were
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: very well off compared to the average Soviet citizen at
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: that time. I certainly was aware of the difficulty of
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: many of them. The queues I hate, standing in lines
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: I hated, and some of the hunger that was going around,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: some of the homelessness as well. In Moscow. It caused
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: the average Russian a full day's pay for a pound
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: of meat at the private markets. And then compared to
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: the relatively good standard of living in Star City, and
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: the fact that I could go to a canteen rude.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: Star City has looked curious by Soviet standards. The diet
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: calculated by scientists to give them and eat my breakfast,
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: lunch and dinner there, and so could the other cosmonauts
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: without having to worry about where is that food coming from?
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: That was a real luxury because in the rest of
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: the country people were starving, women and children were sleeping
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: in Moscow's railway stations. So what do you do now,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: go into I don't even know what I can do,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: I'm going to have to go back to the train
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: station and spend the night there. Thirty two million Russians
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: now found themselves below the poverty line. So only one
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: in six families has a telephone, only one in twenty
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: four owns a car. The quality of most things people
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: can buy here is third rate. Helen heard about all
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: of this from the Western media and her friends from
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: back home. She knew about the collapse of the Soviet economy,
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: and she also knew about President Gorbachev and about how
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: he was trying to change the Soviet Union. So in England,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: in the UK, we'd got these two Russian words, and
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: Glasnost and pedestroca. We talked a little bit about this
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: in episode to Glasnost generally just means openness and pedestroika
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: means rebuilding, and they became synonymous with what Gorbutof was
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: trying to do. He was being more open with the West.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: We liked Glasnost and we liked paristroika in the West,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: and here was a chance to ask actual Soviets what
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: they thought. And so she started going up to the
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: cosmonauts in Star City, What do you think about these
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: reforms of glasnost of pedestroika, And the response I got
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: was a bit of a blank. What's odd? I don't
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: people don't normally kind of sort of stum upon me
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: when I'm asking them questions and they say, what do
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: you mean? She replied, well, you know, I mean like
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: society opening up what President Gorbachev was trying to do.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: Aren't we open? We thought we were being quite open
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: with you. And what about pedestroika rebuilding? Well, but rebuilding
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: the school down the road. Isn't that's a good thing,
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: isn't it? The political connotations to these two words just
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: weren't used in the Soviet Union. This made Helen realize
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: everything she thought about the Soviet Union was wrong. That
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: people in Star City, people like Serage Kreklov cosmonauts, they
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: actually liked their lives because their lives were relatively quite
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: good and relatively quite stable. They liked the way that
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: they worked and the way that they lived. They weren't
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: aware of any other way to do that, and they
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: were very happy with that. And I kind of, I
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: suppose I'd always assumed that they would always be trying
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: to live more like the life in the West was.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: And of course they weren't. They were very happy with
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: their lives, happy with their lives and proud to be
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: part of the Soviet space program, the most revered men
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: and the Soviet Union revered and rewarded with comfortable houses,
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: food and a good life. The only problem is that
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: comfortable life, the one enjoyed by Soviet cosmonauts since the
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: age of Uriga Gerin it was in serious jeopardy. So
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: it's now April nineteen ninety one and the three cosmonauts Sarage, Helen,
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: and Anatoli are finally ready ready to go to space.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: They leave Star City by military plane and three hours
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: later they start their descent to Bikanir, the secret city
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: in the desert where the Soviets launched their rockets. From
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: Helen clings to her seat. Bikenore is everything she pictured,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: the closest thing on Earth to a Star Wars planet,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: with great hangars and domes jutting out of the reddish
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: brown Earth, and the cosmonauts are going to have to
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: spend two weeks there in quarantine. They need to make
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: sure that they're not carrying any viruses into the space station.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: Then they have to go through a series of strange rituals,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: rituals that go back to the very early days of
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: Soviet space travel. There's a huge number of very traditional
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: things that we do before the space flights itself. On
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: the day, you wake up whichever bedroom you'd be sleeping,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: and you sign the door. Your signature goes on the
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: door of that room. Goodnessays what they've done with all
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: these doors. They must be jampactful of signatures. But the
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: signatures are only the first part of the ritual. Next,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: the cosmonauts watch a movie. Picture the scene Helen, Sergei
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: and Anatolie all gathered around on this little sofa from
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: movie night, maybe eating some popcorn or probably more like
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: sunflower seeds. And what was the movie White Sun in
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: the Desert. I think it's called to some sort of comedy,
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: White Sun in the Desert, very Russian Harley sounds like
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: me the parents, But you know anyway, Then the next
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: day they get up early, get into their spacesuits, they
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: get on a bus to the launch site, and then
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: comes another ritual. Your Gagarin forgot to go to the
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: loo before he went to the rocket, so he needed
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: to get out of the bus and have a pee
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: on the back wheels, so you will do that. That's right,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: because Juriga Garan forgot to take a leak before his
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: flight into space in nineteen sixty one. Every cosmonaut who
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: flies in the Soviet Union still has to do this,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: although Helen actually didn't. She's a woman, remember, and she'd
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: have to take her space suit off. Finally, bathroom bregg Dunn.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: They head to the launch site. There's a television on
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: the bus where they watch video messages from Saragei and
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: Anatoli's kids. Anatole's little boy tells them, pity you won't
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: be here this summer. Goodbye. And then there there in
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: front of the rocket, a rocket plastered with two flags,
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: one for Great Britain the Union Jack and the other
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: for the Soviet Union the Hammer and Sickle. They climb
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: the still stairs and get in the elevator. Up and
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: up they travel to the top of the rocket to
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: their capsule. I was sitting on the right hand side,
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: and the commander toleh he had their middle seat, and
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: Sigay had this seat on the left. And the hatch
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: door closes and that's it, just the three of them,
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: all totally focused on the job at hand. The launch,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: the docking, and what they need to do when they
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: get to the station. After what seems like an age,
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: they feel it, the rumble, the shaking, the rockets start
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: to fire, the rookie t engines fire. It takes well
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: for the thrust to build up one second, two seconds,
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: three seconds, probably tens of seconds before the thrust bills
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: up enough. Ten seconds of waiting, neither off the ground
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: nor attached. If the thrust bills up enough to lift
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: you off the ground. But as they wait in this
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: in between state, about to sever gravity's hold on them,
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: to break the tether with Earth, something at the back
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: of their mind, something completely out of their control, keeps
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: intruding on their thoughts. What are they leaving behind? Because
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: away from the rocket, beyond the Kazakh Desert, outside the
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: guarded walls of Star City, the Soviet Union is beginning
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: to break down. It covered it all across East Europe.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: That searched Memen again. He was the New York Times
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: Moscow correspondent who was hungry a few years ago. This
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: march could not have taken place Czechoslovakia. People were standing
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: on the roofs above. Whence the fast Square. An hour
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: before today's demonstration in Romania used the army is now
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: firmly on the side of the people. Poland. I spent
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: a lot of time in Poland the euphoria over the
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: collapse of communism, as it was a period when Gorbatov's
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: reforms just swept through the former Soviet Empire. The latest
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: surge in the tide sweeping eastern Europe, demanding communist heads
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: and knocked down wall after wall. In the old days
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: when people protested the vie sin in tanks, but Gorbchef
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: was all about freedom, and so we said, go ahead, protest,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: take to the streets, and people did in the millions.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: That was at the Hungarian border when people started flooding across.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: I was in Prague when hundreds of thousands of people
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: went out to wed Sislas Square and jangled their keys,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: a dissidence and becoming much more confident, which was assigned.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: You know, the keys are gone and the doors are open.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: R if the freedom had been getting loud a here
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: all week, there was a feeling of change in the
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: air and the Soviet system. The main glue had been fear,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: the thing that held people in check and enthralled. Then
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: now the fear was gone. What I think nobody understood
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: was that this was a system built on repression, that
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: if you loosen one grew, they're all going to start loosening,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: and then you can't hold this thing together. The empire
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: was rap would lead disintegrating. So as the cosmonauts took off,
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: they knew what they were leaving. They knew that they
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: were leaving a country that was in deep into Surrey,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: in deep in existential crisis. That's next time on the
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: Last Soviet. The Last Soviet is a Kaleidoscope production in
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: partnership with iHeart Podcast and Exile Media, produced by Sama'
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: Dat Audio and hosted by me Lance Bass. Executive produced
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: by Kate Osbourne and Mangesh had A Kador with Oz
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: Wallashan and Kostas Linos from iHeart Executive produced by Katrina
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: Norvelle and Nikki Atore from Sama's Dad Audio Our executive
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: producers or Joe Sykes and Dasha Lissina. Produced by Asia Fuchs,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: Dasha Litzitzina and Joe Sykes. Writing by Lydia Marchant, Research
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: by Mika Golobovski and Molly Schwartz. Music by Will Epstein.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Themed by Martin or string sound designed by Richard Ward,
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: and special things to Nando Villa, Lyssa Pollock, Will Pearson,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: Connel BYRNE, Bob Pittman, and Isaac Lead if you want
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: to hear more shows like this. Nothing is more important
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: to the creators here at Kaleidoscope than subscribers, ratings, and reviews,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: so please spread the love wherever you listen.