The Soviet Cosmonauts’ Club (so to speak)

An unusual piece in my collection: the personal ID card of Ivan Grigorievich Borisenko, the legendary spaceflight official

This collector’s item is an official’s ID in the fold-out card style common for political and cultural organizations in the Eastern Bloc. It certified that its holder, Ivan Borisenko, was the Deputy Chairman of the Soviet Federation of Cosmonautics.

The document was co-signed on the left-hand side by the then-chairman of the organization, two-time cosmonaut Anatoly Filipchenko. Instead of a stamp, the right-hand side shows an embossed seal that can be faintly felt through the paper. The rather symbolic dating of April 12, 1979, clearly alludes to the anniversary of Gagarin’s flight in 1961.

For regular members of the Federation of Cosmonautics, similar IDs existed. I have a blank specimen, probably of later origin, which surely served only as a sample. Normally, personal data were first filled in on paper and then pasted in—a manual process. On the right-hand side, payment of membership dues could later be recorded, confirming the continuation of membership.

Members also received a special pin, more elaborate than the stylized logo on the IDs. It shows a Sputnik-like satellite orbiting Earth. Badges with spaceflight themes were abundant in the Soviet era, but this membership pin stands out for its relatively fine workmanship. A notable detail: alongside the Russian organizational title, it also carries an English inscription—“Federation Cosmonautics USSR.”

The Spaceflight Nomenklatura

The FK had a remarkable backstory that needs explanation for Western readers. Its direct predecessor was the All-Union Committee for Cosmonautics (Всесоюзный комитет космонавтики), a unit of the Volunteer Society for the Assistance to the Army, Aviation, and Navy (Доброво́льное о́бщество соде́йствия а́рмии, авиа́ции и фло́ту, ДОСААФ / DOSAAF). DOSAAF itself was a paramilitary state mass organization. Similar associations existed in all socialist countries; the East German equivalent was the Gesellschaft für Sport und Technik (GST).

DOSAAF had a historical link to the pre-cosmonautics era. Founded in 1927 as the Union of Societies of Assistance to Defense and Aviation-Chemical Construction (Союз обществ содействия обороне и авиационно-химическому строительству, ОСОАВИАХИМ / OSOAVIAKhIM), the organization oversaw projects such as the high-altitude balloon Osoaviakhim-1 in 1934, which ended in tragedy. OSOAVIAKhIM also hosted the Jet Propulsion Study Group (Группа изучения реактивного движения, ГИРД / GIRD), led first by Friedrich Zander and from 1932 by Sergey Korolev, who later became head of the Soviet space program. In 1933, GIRD succeeded in launching the first Soviet liquid-fuel rocket.

Against this backdrop, the founding of the FK was a rather bureaucratic act, carried out without ceremony. The choice of December 5, 1978, as the founding date was not symbolic—it simply marked the DOSAAF Central Committee’s resolution to expand the existing Committee for Cosmonautics into a larger organization.

The FK is best understood as a professional association within the aviation federation FAS. Unfortunately, the literature provides no reliable numbers on its membership, but it must have been significant. The FK was structured federally, with branches in all Soviet republics and wide-ranging ties to the space industry, design bureaus, cosmodromes, educational institutions, and museums. It was much more than a mere “cosmonauts’ club.” However, cosmonauts were at the helm: the first chairman was Filipchenko, later succeeded by three-time cosmonaut Nikolai Rukavishnikov.

The Spaceflight Official

If the Soviet FK represented a kind of spaceflight nomenklatura, then Ivan Grigorievich Borisenko (1921–2004) can rightly be called a spaceflight functionary. It was no coincidence that he was chosen as Deputy Chairman of the FK.

For decades, Borisenko was known in professional circles as a special correspondent for the state news agencies TASS and APN (aka RIA Novosti), as a spaceflight expert for the military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda, and as the author of several books. In this role, he was not a historian but rather bound to the official line—his “smoothed-over” accounts of Gagarin’s flight are the source of more than one enduring legend.

Since 1957, Borisenko had served on the DOSAAF Central Committee. After DOSAAF founded the aviation federation FAS in 1959—and after FAS became the Soviet national section of the World Air Sports Federation (better known as the Fédération aéronautique internationale, FAI) in 1960—Borisenko acted as a kind of cosmonautics secretary. As the so-called “sports commissioner” of FAS, he was responsible from Gagarin’s flight onward for registering spaceflight statistics and transmitting them to the FAI. As an eyewitness, he was present at almost all manned launches and often rushed to the landing sites as well. His documentation work was mainly about certifying Soviet records.

When the FK was founded, Borisenko not only became Vice Chairman, but the documentation role was also transferred to the new organization and continued under his direction.

The FK gained yet another bureaucratic task at its founding: it issued “certificates” to Soviet cosmonauts and produced flight licenses for them on behalf of the FAI—essentially pilot-style licenses, visually quite similar to FK membership IDs. The magazine Novosti Kosmonautiki published an in-depth investigation into these documents.¹ It was usually Borisenko who issued and signed them.

What Remains

In 1985, the FK was separated from DOSAAF and placed under the newly created state Main Department for Space Activities, better known as Glavkosmos. This made the FK part of the official Soviet space program during the final years of the USSR—likely also serving as a civilian showcase at a time when commercialization was beginning.

The FK survived the collapse of the Soviet Union. Its direct successor is today’s Russian Federation of Cosmonautics (Федерация космонавтики России, ФКP / FKR), now a formally independent association without official state duties. After Rukavishnikov as chairman came German Titov, Vladimir Kovalyonok, and—currently—Aleksandr Aleksandrov. Borisenko remained active in the FKR until 1999, only a few years before his death.

Today, the FKR claims more than 300,000 members. This figure apparently comes from employees and affiliates of some 300 institutional members, including the space agency Roscosmos and several corporations. From the outside, however, the organization looks more like a heritage and veterans’ association, far removed from its original character as a mass organization. A look into its recent activities can be found in the bulletin published for the 45th anniversary of the FK’s founding. A historical chronicle is also available online.

Footnote

1. Шамсутдинов, С.: Удостоверение космонавта. Новости космонавтики No. 9/2003, pp. 60–63