This was very cool. Khrushchev grinned.
He even thought up a slogan. Whoever conquers space wins the Cold War.
At last, Khrushchev’s perspective changed. This was in October 1957. The anniversary of the October Revolution was coming up soon, the very next month, on November 7, and as it happened this year they would be celebrating the Revolution’s fortieth anniversary. Plans were being made for a grandiose ceremony. This is perfect! Khrushchev thought. If we had the Yankees trembling in their boots because we set a satellite in orbit around the earth, sending out little beeps, just imagine how humiliated they’ll be when we do it again almost immediately! We’ll turn their shock into shame.
Well then, let’s hit ’em with a bang!
There’s no time like the present, as they say, and so Khrushchev lost no time in arranging a meeting at the Kremlin with the people who had created Sputnik 1—the starry-eyed scientists who had been the driving force behind the rocket project. So, guys, how do you feel about sending up something flashy and doing it in time for the anniversary next month?
How do we feel about what? said the scientists.
Something that’ll make the Yankees groan with shame.
With only a month to prepare, it seems…
What should it be, I wonder? Khrushchev went on, ignoring the scientists’ befuddlement.
Something that would make them groan? You realize, of course, that we have certain plans of our own that…
Something flashy, Khrushchev told them, not even registering the consternation written on their faces.
Well, yes, Comrade Khrushchev, if you think that would… but what…
Something that’ll makes their jaws drop, those bastards in the West, you know? Bam! Just like that. You get what I’m saying? We won’t niggle about the budget, of course, it’s there, the same as always. Whoever conquers space wins the Cold War. Hahaha!
He was demanding the impossible. What sort of project could they possibly develop from scratch in a month? Still, it was an order. And so Sputnik 2 was born. The basic structure was the same as Sputnik 1, except that it had suddenly grown much larger, and it was equipped for experiments on living subjects. And it would carry the very first mammal ever to travel in space. It would carry a dog.
A dog?
The scientists themselves were dumbstruck when it occurred to them.
But that was the decision they made, and that’s how history unfolded. That’s how the great Soviet hero Laika was born. Khrushchev deserved the credit. Khrushchev created the space dog. And so, in the year zero Anno Canis, Laika rocketed into the sky and died.
Gazing down, all along, at the earth.
Khrushchev deserved the credit.
And now Khrushchev was bellowing Ura! In August 1960, two dogs returned alive from space, and Khrushchev guffawed. Two more heroes had been born. A male dog named Belka and a bitch named Strelka. They had returned to Earth as the Soviet Union’s great space dogs, Communism’s space dogs. Now Khrushchev had a dream. It was a quest—a political, military adventure. It was totally stupid. The kind of dream scientists wouldn’t care about at all.
The two dogs should mate. There was a need for their children to be born. The scientists were more than happy to go along with this part of the plan. They were gathering all sorts of data, everything they could think of relating to the effect of space flight on animals—on the animal, that is to say, as a living organism. Soon they would be sending a person up. They had to keep cranking out all kinds of experiments. Not just everything they could think of, even things they couldn’t quite imagine. This, in particular, was crucial. They had already determined that dogs could live in space, but might their bodies have been damaged in some way invisible to the eye? For instance, were these dogs, having once rocketed into space, still capable of reproduction? Could their sojourn in weightlessness have stripped them of that ability? Or might the lack of gravity one day produce some irregularity in their genes as a side effect? The scientists, eager to test this possibility, gladly mated Belka and Strelka. In fact, they later did the same thing with their human cosmonauts. The first female cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova—who rode the Vostok 6 in June 1963, and whose call sign ya chaika, “I am a seagull,” became famous around the world—was pressured by the Kremlin elite into marrying Andrian Nikolayev, who had ridden on the Vostok 3 in August 1962. Data about the couple, including their experiences leading up to Tereshkova’s pregnancy and information relating to their daughter’s physical development, were gathered and closely guarded as a state secret. Of course, in a sense this made sense: at the time, the USSR treated any data related in any way to space exploration as top-secret information.
But that’s neither here nor there. We were talking about Khrushchev’s dream. His proposal. The two returnee space dogs, reborn into the world in August 1960—August of year 3 Anno Canis—devoted themselves to their procreative activities under the scientists’ round-the-clock watch, until at last they achieved their mission as the lab animals they now were. The bitch Strelka became pregnant by Belka and gave birth to a litter of six. For the next few weeks, the scientists monitored the six puppies’ every movement. Veterinarians and animal ecologists were called in. There seemed to be nothing at all unusual about the pups. The scholars presented their results: all six of the heroes’ children were in perfect health. They had entered their third month now and were growing like beanstalks. Ura! cried the scientists. We have approached a step nearer to launching a manned spacecraft! Khrushchev selected one of the six puppies, a bitch, and sent it as a gift to the leader of those bastards in the West. John F. Kennedy had been inaugurated as president of the United States in January 1961. Khrushchev had heard that the Kennedys were unusually fond of dogs, and so he sent the puppy with a card signed “From Khrushchev” to Kennedy’s daughter Caroline. This present, however, had nothing to do with Khrushchev’s dream. It bore no relationship to the political/military adventure he was fantasizing about. He was just rubbing it in. The young American president, leader of the capitalist bloc, oozed charm, and so Khrushchev had decided to send him a message, that was all. “Pretty cool, huh?” he was saying. “Here in the Soviet Union we’ve already bred a second generation of our space dogs! Not bad, eh? Yes sir, science and technology are pretty advanced here in the Communist bloc, if I do say so myself. Yes, yes, I know what you’re thinking. We’re screwed, you’re thinking. How about it? Am I right, Kennedy, my boy?”
There went the first puppy.
There had been six, so now there were five. Five healthy Russian laika puppies. There they were. And Khrushchev had a dream. Or rather, he had a whim. He had created the space dogs, so now, he thought, he would create a platoon of dogs descended from those Soviet heroes! There was no telling when the Cold War might suddenly turn into a hot war. Proxy wars were brewing in the Third World even now. They could send this new platoon of dogs there, to the front lines. A meticulously trained, elite group led by the descendants of space dogs. Yes! Yes! Khrushchev groaned at the brilliance of his idea. What will happen if we succeed with these dogs? It will be the best possible propaganda within the Communist world, and with respect to the West it will have the combined effect of the first Sputnik flights—all that shock and shame balled up into one. And it will work! Just imagine! Mere animals, beasts, made special by the impossibly rare distinction of descent from the very dogs that expanded the USSR’s territory into outer space, kicking the shit out of dippy little capitalist soldiers! Wahahahahaha!