Sergei Krikalev — The Last Soviet Citizen
The cosmonaut trapped in space for 311 days as his world fell apart
On March 25th, 1992, Sergei Krikalev returned to earth a broken man. He was pale, thin and weak, described by reporters of the time as “pale as flour and sweaty, like a lump of wet dough.” He bore the insignia of the country he’d proudly called his home for his entire life, a state that no longer existed — the USSR. He was no longer a son of the city of Leningrad, but of St Petersburg, the re-introduced historic name for his hometown.
He had been trapped in space for an incredible 311 days, a world record at the time, but unlike those who would later surpass his stay in the vast emptiness of space, Sergei Krikalev never intended to break any records. He was simply a victim of far larger forces on the earth below.
The Cosmonauts and Mir
Krikalev, for all his achievements, seemed unlikely to loom large in the world’s spacefaring consciousness. Yuri Gagarin, a fellow cosmonaut, had gone into space in 1961, the first human to do so. The USSR had also been the first to place a satellite into orbit in 1957.