The Lady Cosmonaut Day

“Valentina Tereshkova, for her spaceflight thing...”

I have no doubt that now all of Minsk will be covered with “busts in the homeland of the hero”: now we have not only the long-suffering space satellite “Belka”, which failed during the first launch, but also a real heroic Belarusian woman in space.

As soon as Maryna Vasileuskaya flew away and arrived, Lukashenka awarded her the Hero of Belarus title, and sculptor Ivan Misko began working on the sculptural composition. Maryna Vasileuskaya will be cast in bronze and stuck somewhere in the city center next to Chyzh’s house or the unfinished Kempinski Hotel. Then she will be appointed senator or deputy and the pioneer detachment will be named after her. All this is just beginning.

Or rather, has already begun: Lukashenka took the space lady to Moscow on his own plane to meet with Putin. I think that they will not limit themselves to bronze statues alone.

“Valentina Tereshkova,

For her spaceflight thing,

Got from Khrushchev as a present

An automatic d*ck.”

This abusive verse began to circulate throughout the USSR after Valentina Tereshkova’s flight. By the way, I absolutely don’t understand those compatriots who are choking with enthusiasm on social media about the fact that Belarus finally has its own cosmonaut. Our woman in space, let's toast to this, this is success! Who cares that at this time a former paratrooper died in a pre-trial detention center, awaiting trial for the comments “Belarus has lived and will live” and “Glory to Ukraine!”, who cares that the city court makes up a sham trial of a young Belarusian language teacher, who faces ten years for an unproved donation, but wow, our woman in an orbit! So, lovers of state successes, I have to disappoint you: the first Belarusian woman flew into space half a century before you woke up. Her name is Valentina Tereshkova.

Her dad is from Bialynichy district, her mother is from Dubrouna. How they ended up in Yaroslavl in the thirties does not matter. All encyclopedias have always written about this. Yes, Tereshkova is Belarusian. And not just the first female astronaut, but also the only woman in history to fly alone in space. “Got from Khrushchev as a present...” But you and I don’t want to admit at all that this creepy woman from United Russia, who spent her entire life after the flight in the presidiums, initiated Putin’s “restart”, was included in all the sanctions lists of the civilized world, is Belarusian. Of course it's disgusting, I agree. But that’s why we are a people, because we give birth to all sorts of heroes and scoundrels, just like all the other peoples of the world. And it is impossible to disown the latter. In the same way, we tried to convince ourselves that it was not our compatriots who beat us in August 2020, like, it was probably Putin who sent his National Guard. Then, when the punitive compatriots stopped hiding their names and faces, and began, on the contrary, to speak out and publicly enjoy the torture and humiliation of political prisoners, many experienced, in addition to hatred, also terrible disappointment: how come, they really are our neighbours? It can't be like that! It's as if the Jews announced that the Soviet sadist Rozalia Zemlyachka was actually an Arab from Gaza in disguise.

So Tereshkova, like all sorts of Balabas, is Belarusian, don’t blame me. That is, the first Belarusian woman went into space in 1963, and not at all in 2024. But there is something in common between them. After the flight, Valentina Tereshkova personally thanked Nikita Khrushchev and the plenum of the CPSU Central Committee. And Maryna Vasileuskaya said that Lukashenka’s support helped her a lot during the flight. It seems like 60 years have passed, and the Belarusian cosmonauts are still talking about the same thing, everyone thanks the party and the government, everyone looks into the distance with their statues’ bronze eyes, they still accept gifts from Nikita Khrushchev and Aliaksandr Lukashenka, as in that verse.

By the way, about the device that, according to the verse, Khrushchev gave to Tereshkova. Shortly before the 1994 presidential elections, deputy Lukashenka stole the same device from a flight attendant when the parliamentary delegation was traveling to China. Also, by the way, in a flight, even if not in space one.

Iryna Khalip, exclusively for Charter97.org