Valentina Tereshkova

Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman to go into space. As a young woman, Valentina Tereshkova worked in a textile mill and parachuted as a hobby. She was chosen to be trained as a cosmonaut in the USSR’s space program. In 1963, she spent almost three days in space and orbited Earth 48 times in her space capsule, Vostok 6. That was her only trip into space. Tereshkova later toured the world to promote Soviet science and became involved in Soviet politics.

The second of three children born to Vladimir Tereshkova and Elena Fyodorovna Tereshkova, Valentina Tereshkova was born on March 6, 1937 in Bolshoye Maslennikovo, a village in western Russia. When she was two years old, father was killed fighting in World War II. Her mother raised Valentina, her sister Ludmilla and her brother Vladimir, supporting the family by working in a textile mill.

Valentina began attending school when she was eight or 10 (accounts vary), and then started working in the textile mill in 1954. She continued her education through correspondence courses, and learned to parachute in her spare time. It was her parachuting experience that led to her being chosen, in 1962, for training as a cosmonaut in the Soviet space program. During the late 1950s and 1960s, the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union escalated for space travel supremacy. The competitiveness between the two nations for "one upping" achievements was fierce and the Soviets were determined to be the first to send a woman into space.

She was the wife of cosmonaut Andrian Nikolaev, then had the surname Nikolaev-Tereshkova. The space couple gave birth to a daughter.

She married Yuliya Shaposhnikov for the second time. He was a major general of the medical service, director of the Central Research Institute of Traumatology and Orthopedics. He died on June 4, 1999.

An error in the spacecraft's automatic navigation software caused the ship to move away from Earth, according to the RT news channel. Tereshkova noticed this and Soviet scientists quickly developed a new landing algorithm. Tereshkova landed safely but received a bruise on her face.

She landed in the Altay region near today's Kazakhstan-Mongolia-China border. Villagers helped Tereshkova out of her spacesuit and asked her to join them for dinner. She accepted, and was later reprimanded for violating the rules and not undergoing medical tests first.

However, Tereshkova was honored with the title Hero of the Soviet Union. She received the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star Medal. She became a spokesperson for the Soviet Union and while fulfilling this role, she received the United Nations Gold Medal of Peace.

Tereshkova never flew in space again. She later became a test pilot and instructor and earned a doctorate in technical sciences. On Nov. 3, 1963, Tereshkova married fellow cosmonaut Andriyan Nikolayev. Their first child, a daughter named Elena, was a subject of medical interest because she was the first child born to parents who had both been exposed to space. Elena later went on to become a medical doctor. Tereshkova and Nikolayev divorced in 1980.

In 1982, Tereshkova married Yuliy Shaposhnikov, a surgeon. She later was a deputy to the Supreme Soviet, then a people's deputy. She was also a member of the Supreme Soviet Presidium and also served on and later became head of the Soviet Women's Committee. She also was head of the International Cultural and Friendship Union and later was chairperson of the Russian Association of International Cooperation.

She remained politically active following the collapse of the Soviet Union but lost elections to the national State Duma during 1995. In the year 1995, Tereshkova was promoted to an honorary rank of major general. On 28 April 1997, she left the Russian Air Force due to reaching the age of compulsory retirement at 60 years old. In 2003, Tereshkova ran again for a seat in the State Duma. In 2007, Tereshkova was invited to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's residence in Novo-Ogaryovo for the celebration of her 70th birthday anniversary. While there she said that she would like to fly to Mars, even if it meant that it was a one-way trip. She was later elected during 2008 to her regional parliament, the Yaroslavl Oblast Duma.

On 4 December 2011, Tereshkova was elected to the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian legislature, as a representative of the Yaroslavl Oblast and a member of the United Russia party. In the 6th State Duma, together with Yelena Mizulina, Irina Yarovaya and Andrey Skoch, she was a member of the inter-factional committee for the protection of Christian values. In this capacity, she supported the introduction of amendments to the preamble of Constitution of Russia, to add that "Orthodoxy is the basis of Russia's national and cultural identity".

On 18 September 2016, Tereshkova was re-elected to the 7th State Duma. She serves as deputy chairperson of the Committee on the Federal Structure and Local Government.

In 2014 - Tereshkova, as a deputy, voted for the annexation of Crimea and actively supported the further war with Ukraine.

In March 2020, during the re-election of Russian President Putin, she proposed removing restrictions on the number of presidential terms in the Russian Constitution and nullifying the term after the adoption of amendments to the country's Basic Law.

Supported the war against Ukraine, voted for the annexation of Crimea, supported the war in Syria, symbolically, together with Joseph Kobzon visited the Russian military base, where they signed autographs on the fuselage of the Russian special operations in support of the Assad regime, killing civilians, including chemical weapons.

Novopromyshna Square in Tver was renamed Tereshkova Square in 1963.

In 1967, Gregory Postnikov created a sculpture of Tereshkova for Cosmonaut Alley in Moscow. There is a monument in Bayevsky District of Altai Territory, Siberia, close to her landing place of 53°N, 80°E. In August 1970, Tereshkova was among the first group of living people to have a lunar crater named after them. Tereshkova crater is located on the far side of the Moon.

None of the other four in Tereshkova's early group flew and, in October 1969, the pioneering female cosmonaut group was dissolved. Even though there were plans for further flights by women, it took 19 years until the second woman, Svetlana Savitskaya, flew into space.

In 1997, London-based electronic pop group Komputer released a song entitled "Valentina" which gives a more-or-less direct account of her career as a cosmonaut. It was released as a single and appears on their album The World of Tomorrow. The 2000 album Vostok 6 by Kurt Swinghammer is a concept album about Tereshkova. The 2015 album The Race for Space by Public Service Broadcasting also has a song featuring the Smoke Fairies entitled "Valentina". In the same year, Findlay Napier's album VIP: Very Interesting Persons included a song "Valentina", written in her honour by Napier and Boo Hewerdine. In 2015, a short film entitled Valentina's Dream was released by Meat Bingo Productions. The film stars Rebecca Front as Tereshkova and is based on an interview by the former cosmonaut where she expressed a desire to journey to Mars.

The Cosmos Museum was opened 25 January 1975 near Yaroslavl. Among its exhibits is a replica of her childhood home. The city library was named after her in 2013. The school she attended as a child was renamed for her. A planetarium in Yaroslavl was built and named for her in 2011. The International Women of the Year association named her as the "greatest woman achiever of the 20th century". Tereshkova was a torchbearer of the 2008 Summer Olympics torch relay in Saint Petersburg and the 2014 Winter Olympics torch relay in Sochi.

Streets in Ukraine that bore Tereshkova's name have been renamed due to her support of Russia's military actions against Ukraine and it was done in accordance with the country's 2015 decommunisation law. A proposal was also brought forward in 2015 to move a monument to Tereshkova in Lviv, Ukraine to the Territory of Terror Memorial Museum. Monuments of communist leaders are removed from the public and placed in the museum as a part of decommunization efforts. In January 2021, 24 Ukrainian streets were still named after Tereshkova; including a street in Busk, located in the same province as Lviv.