New Sources on Yuri Gagarin (April 2021)

DOCUMENT No. 6

Proposal to the Central Committee from industrial leaders and the scientific community on creating a cosmonaut training center and establishing regulations on the professional activities of cosmonauts. – Asif Siddiqi

VP-3/1042    

June 15, 1960

To the CPSU CC

By the CPSU CC [Central Committee] and USSR Council of Ministers Decrees of January 5, 1959,^[1] May 22, 1959,^[2] and December 10, 1959^[3] the USSR Ministry of Defense was entrusted with the mission of preparing for and supporting a manned flight into space.

At the present time the USSR Ministry of Defense has selected 20 military fighter pilots as cosmonaut candidates who will undergo special training for spaceflight.

The training program includes a theoretical course, bench drills, special flights in conditions of weightlessness, research and drills under the influence of spaceflight factors modeled in laboratory conditions, and also general physical training of candidate cosmonauts.

In order to ensure the training of cosmonauts a draft USSR Council of Ministers decree has been prepared providing for:

- approval of the “Regulations on Cosmonauts of the Soviet Union”;

- a monetary award to people for participation in the tests of cosmonaut spaceflight safety support systems in laboratory conditions and during aircraft flights;

- the creation of a Cosmonaut Training Center with the necessary laboratory and material and technical base and the construction during 1960-1961 of a complex of buildings for this Center (in Moscow Oblast’), and also the reconstruction of the existing buildings of the Scientific-Research Aviation Hospital in Moscow.

The proposed “Regulations on Cosmonauts” determines the procedure for recruitment, service, and training of candidate cosmonauts, the rules and responsibilities of the cosmonauts, and also the everyday material and pension support of the cosmonauts and their families.

We request the proposed draft decree of the USSR Council of Ministers be approved.^[4].

D. Ustinov^[5]

K. Vershinin^[6]

M. Keldysh^[7]

Archival source: APRF, f. 3, op. 47, d. 277. l. 38. Original. Signatures

^[1] See Document No. 4.

^[2] See Document No. 5.

^[3] This was the CPSU Central Committee and USSR Council of Ministers decree no. 1388-618 issued on December 10, 1959 under the title “On the Development of Research on Cosmic Space.”

^[4] This decree was approved on August 3, 1960. See Document 7.

^[5] Dmitriy Fedorovich Ustinov (1908-1984) was chairman of the Military-Industrial Commission.

^[6] Marshal Konstantin Andreyevich Vershinin (1900-1973) was commander-in-chief of the Air Force.

^[7] Mstislav Vsevolodovich Keldysh (1911-1978) was chairman of the Special Commission for Object D of the USSR Academy of Sciences.