Red Moon Rising Sputnik and the Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age - Matthew Brzezinski [118]
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“You know,” said Khrushchev, when the Chief Designer finally arrived at his Kremlin office on the morning of October 10, “when you first proposed Sputnik we didn’t believe you. We thought, ‘Ah, that Korolev, he’s just dreaming.’ But today it’s another story.”
Khrushchev beamed at his star scientist. He was in exceptionally high spirits. The boss, as Korolev knew, had been cranky of late and easily flew off the cuff. But that morning he seemed completely relaxed, lounging in a sofa chair next to fellow Presidium member Anastas Mikoyan. The wily old Armenian, a survivor of Stalin’s inner circle who owed his political longevity to an utter lack of ambition, also struck an informal pose, nibbling at a bowl of fruit while he stretched his plump legs on an expensive central Asian rug. Tea and juice had been offered along with the easy banter, a sign that Korolev, who had dressed for the occasion in a respectful tie and jacket, was in unusually good standing.
“Sergei Pavlovich,” Khrushchev continued, “as you know, the October Revolution jubilee is approaching.” Korolev needed no reminder. He would have had to have been blind not to notice the frenzied preparations for the fortieth anniversary of the Bolshevik uprising. Moscow’s main streets were getting a makeover in anticipation of the parades and ceremonies that would mark four decades of communism, and construction crews were busy repaving roads, repainting buildings, and scrubbing soot from grimy facades. Sputnik would be a major theme of the celebration, a symbol of Soviet accomplishment; Khrushchev had commissioned poems lyricizing the “Leap Forward” and had ordered that detailed timetables be published in every major city showing exactly when Sputnik passed over different metropolitan regions. Huge Sputnik banners were erected, commemorative stamps printed—FIRST IN SPACE, they boasted—and millions of spherical, satellite-shaped pins were made for citizens to wear on their lapels. They would bear them proudly because Sputnik had tapped an unusually sensitive nerve with ordinary Russians. Most Soviet citizens knew that life was different in the West, that people in Europe and America enjoyed higher standards of living under capitalism. In that respect, Khrushchev’s inferiority complex was a national malaise. Sputnik compensated for those persistent feelings of inadequacy and inequality. Muscovites might not have color television sets, fast cars, or fashionable shoes, but Sputnik proved that they weren’t technologically backward after all. “‘Now we are ahead of America,’ I have been told countless times,” reported Tom Margerison, a British science writer on assignment in Moscow, in the London Sunday Times. “In the streets there is immense pleasure and pride in the rocket-engineer’s achievement. . . . In Red Square I counted no fewer than fourteen models of Sputnik circling a globe. . . . Their success is more important to the Russians themselves than to anyone else.”
Sputnik had given Moscow the high moral ground over the West, demonstrating how shallow consumerism should be sacrificed for the good of science and human progress. While it was presented as a monumental triumph, Sputnik in reality helped cover up and justify one of the most glaring shortcomings of communism: its inability to deliver basic material well-being to its citizens. As Margerison acidly put it, “Nowhere else would you find a people who are able to carry out a complex project like launching a satellite, involving the close cooperation of scientists and engineers from many disciplines, yet who prove quite unable to organize efficient butcher shops.” As a substitute for comfort, and as a tool to pacify the masses, now that terror had been rejected,