Red Moon Rising Sputnik and the Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age - Matthew Brzezinski [114]
The turnaround, the KGB reported, had profoundly shaken America’s allies in both tangible and esoteric ways. The European Assembly in Strasbourg censured the United States for falling behind the Soviet Union. In Tehran, the shah’s CIA-sponsored government “considered the satellite such a blow to U.S. prestige,” according to a diplomatic assessment, “that they displayed uneasy embarrassment in discussing it with Americans.” In Mexico, editors had begun requesting Soviet rather than U.S. scientific source material, while Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party had taken Sputnik as a cue to begin “agitating” against further deployment of U.S. conventional armed forces. As the U.S. Information Agency would itself concede, in an October 10 memo, “Public opinion in friendly countries shows decided concern over the possibility that the balance of military power has shifted or may soon shift in favor of the USSR. American prestige is viewed as having sustained a severe blow, and the American [domestic] reaction, so sharply marked by concern, discomfiture, and intense interest, has itself increased the disquiet of friendly countries and increased the impact of the satellite.”
The cold war had suddenly taken on a new and, from Khrushchev’s perspective, eminently more appealing dimension. It was now the specter of Soviet supremacy rather than American dominance that haunted the global arms race. Moscow, for once, held the high moral ground in this new phase of the contest because Sputnik, as opposed to Hiroshima, could be touted as a purely peaceful and scientific achievement. That must have been the most delicious irony for Khrushchev. He had tried, and failed, to rattle the world with his announcement in August boasting of a deadly new weapon that would raise the scale of mass destruction to unprecedented levels. People had simply shrugged. Korolev, on the other hand, had placed a tiny transmitter on top of an R-7 and managed to put the entire planet on notice with its innocuous little beeps. “It will generate myth, legend, and enduring superstition of a kind peculiarly difficult to eradicate,” the USIA memo accurately predicted, “which the USSR can exploit to its advantage.”
The Soviet leader smiled. He had read enough. He may have lacked the formal education and erudition to intuitively grasp the historic context of man’s ascent to the heavens, but he was too well grounded a politician not to recognize opportunity when it knocked. “People all over the world are pointing to the satellite,” he exclaimed, as if struck by a revelation. “They are saying the U.S. has been beaten.” Pushing aside his breakfast, and all previous thought of the dearly deposed Zhukov, Khrushchev sprang into action. Get me Korolev! he ordered.
• • •
By the time the Chief Designer arrived at Khrushchev’s Kremlin office on Thursday, October 10, the propaganda apparatus of the Communist Party of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics had been marshaled and unleashed for the benefit of its citizenry. Pravda and every other Soviet mass medium now single-mindedly pursued the glorious twin topics of space and satellites, trumpeting the proud and limitless promise of Soviet science. “World’s First Artificial Satellite of the Earth Created in Soviet Union,” Pravda’s October 6 issue hailed in a page-wide banner headline. “Russians Won the Competition,” the paper boasted the next day, in equally bold print. Western newspaper articles from publications usually reviled as corrupt capitalist organs were duly reprinted on front pages to reassure the Soviet citizenry that the world thought as much of Sputnik as the ITAR-TASS