Valentina Tereshkova, cosmonaut, deputy of the State Duma. Biography

Childhood and youth

Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova was born on March 6, 1937 in the village of Bolshoe Maslennikovo in the Tutaevsky district of the Yaroslavl region in a peasant family of immigrants from Belarus. Her father, Vladimir Tereshkov, a tractor driver by profession, was drafted into the Red Army in 1939 and died in the Soviet-Finnish War when Valentina was just two years old. Mother Elena, a textile factory worker, raised three children alone — the eldest Lyudmila, Valentina and the youngest Vladimir.

In 1945, Tereshkova entered secondary school No. 32 in Yaroslavl, from which she graduated seven years later. To help her family, in 1954 she went to work as a bracelet maker at the Yaroslavl Tire Factory, while continuing her studies at the evening school of working youth. Since April 1955, the future cosmonaut worked as a roving artist in the ribbon-cutting workshop of the Yaroslavl Industrial Fabric Plant Krasny Perekop, where her mother and older sister also worked.

In 1960, Tereshkova graduated from the Yaroslavl Correspondence College of Light Industry, specializing in cotton spinning. In parallel with her work, she held the position of the released secretary of the Komsomol committee of the Krasny Perekop combine, and in her spare time she played the domra in the orchestra of folk instruments of the House of culture.

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The flight of the first woman into space

Since 1959, Tereshkova began parachuting at the Yaroslavl Aero Club, completing 90 jumps. In December 1961, the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU approved the idea of sending a woman into space, after which the selection of candidates began according to strict criteria: age up to 30 years, height no higher than 170 cm and weight up to 70 kg. Of the hundreds of applicants, five were chosen, including Tereshkova, who was enrolled as an astronaut student on March 12, 1962.

The training included training in a thermal chamber at a temperature of +70 degrees, a ten-day stay in a mute chamber, zero gravity flights on a MiG-15 aircraft and intensive parachute training. When choosing the first female cosmonaut, not only professional qualities were taken into account, but also political aspects: Tereshkova came from a working-class family, her father died in the war, and she was active in public activities.

26-year-old Tereshkova began her space flight on June 16, 1963 on the Vostok-6 spacecraft with the call sign Chaika. The start was exceptionally clear, and, according to Lieutenant General Nikolai Kamanin, "she held the start better than Popovich and Nikolaev." Before the start, Tereshkova uttered a phrase from Mayakovsky's poem: "Hey! The sky! Take off your hat!"

During the flight, which lasted almost three days, the ship made 48 orbits around the Earth. At the same time, Vostok-5 was in orbit with cosmonaut Valery Bykovsky. Tereshkova kept a logbook and took photographs of the horizon, which were later used to detect aerosol layers in the atmosphere.

As the cosmonaut herself told many years later, on the first day of the flight, she discovered a malfunction: the descent program was set not to land, but to raise the orbit. Tereshkova received the new data, entered it, and everything went fine. The lander landed safely in the Bayevsky district of the Altai Territory on June 19, 1963.

Public activity and political career

After the flight, Tereshkova continued her service in the cosmonaut squadron, while simultaneously doing community work and studying at the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy. Subsequently, she became a candidate of technical Sciences, professor and author of more than 50 scientific papers.

From 1966 to 1989, Tereshkova was a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, and since 1974 she has been a member of its Presidium. From 1968 to 1987, she headed the Soviet Women's Committee, and then became vice-president of the International Democratic Federation of Women. In 1971, she was elected a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU, she remained in this position until 1990.

In the 1990s, Tereshkova held senior positions in structures responsible for international cooperation. From 1994 to 2004, she headed the Russian Center for International Scientific and Cultural Cooperation. In 2008, Tereshkova became a deputy of the Yaroslavl Regional Duma from the United Russia party, and since 2011 she has been elected to the State Duma, where she heads the commission on parliamentary ethics.

Personal life

The first husband of Valentina Tereshkova in 1963 was cosmonaut Andriyan Nikolaev. Nikita Khrushchev was present at their wedding. In 1964, the couple had a daughter, Elena, the first child in the world whose mother and father were cosmonauts. The marriage was officially dissolved in 1982, and Tereshkova explained the reasons for the divorce as follows: "There is gold in work, there is a despot at home."

Her second husband was Major General of the medical service, field surgeon Yuli Shaposhnikov, with whom she lived until his death in 1999.

Awards and recognition

Tereshkova was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, she is a full holder of the Order of Merit for the Fatherland. In June 2023, the president awarded her the Order of Gagarin on the 60th anniversary of her flight into space. Among the foreign awards are the Orders of Karl Marx, Sukhbaatar, the Grunwald Cross of the First degree and many others.

A crater on the far side of the Moon, the minor planet Chaika 1671 (by her call sign), an oasis in Antarctica, and streets in many cities of Russia and the CIS are named after Tereshkova. In 1983, a commemorative coin with Tereshkova's image was issued — she became one of the few Soviet citizens whose portrait was placed on a coin during her lifetime. A cultural and educational center with a planetarium named after her has been opened in Yaroslavl.

Tereshkova has been retired since 1997, but continues to work as a senior researcher at the Cosmonaut Training Center. In 1995, she received the rank of Major General of Aviation.