Soviets in Space: Interkosmos and its Limits

Cold War internationalism and the politics of prestige

From 1978 to 1991, cosmonauts from over a dozen countries in Europe and Asia completed spaceflight missions wearing a patch that featured a red star over the world. It was the symbol of the Soviet Interkosmos program, a tool of Soviet-led cooperation in space. Formally launched in April 1967, Interkosmos was designed to promote cooperation among socialist countries in space exploration and research. Soviet leaders tied it to Marxist ideals of internationalism. For example, Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev declared that space conquest served the “interests of men of labor” and “the interests of peace on Earth,” making Interkosmos part of a propaganda drive for peaceful socialist science. The program was explicitly advertised as a way to display solidarity with other socialist nations, especially those in the Warsaw Pact. Indeed, Interkosmos was the result of several Cold War firsts in the context of space. A Czech cosmonaut became the first person neither American nor Soviet in space, and the program included the first astronauts from Asia, Africa and Latin America.

As a concrete example, in March 1978, Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei Gubarev and Czechoslovakian pilot Vladimír Remek flew aboard Soyuz 28 to the Salyut 4 space station. Soviet and Czech media quickly published the story, praising it as a triumph of socialist internationalism; Brezhnev later delivered a statement with similar ideas. Remek himself later recalled, “I instantly became a celebrity in Czechoslovakia…it was impossible to just walk down the street without being recognized.” His enthusiastic homecoming showed how Interkosmos could generate pride across the Eastern Bloc. This success encouraged the Soviet Union to invite more allied cosmonauts.

Soon, other Warsaw Pact countries joined, with their cosmonauts becoming the first citizens of the respective nations in space. In June 1978, Polish pilot Mirosław Hermaszewski flew on Soyuz 30 to Salyut 6. In August 1978, East German pilot Sigmund Jähn flew on Soyuz 31. Similar to Remek’s flight, the flights became political spectacles in each country. After the East German press published the story, Jähn was celebrated as a hero, later being awarded the GDR’s Hero of Labour and even having schools named after him. Poland similarly celebrated Hermaszewski with posters and ceremonies. These events were used to reinforce the idea that the socialist allies were one international family exploring space together.

After additional spaceflights within the Warsaw Pact, the scope of Interkosmos then broadened beyond Europe. In July 1980, Vietnam’s pilot Phạm Tuân flew on Soyuz 37, becoming the first Asian and the first person from a developing country in space. In September 1980, Cuba’s Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez flew Soyuz 38, becoming the first person of African descent and the first Hispanic in space. Both countries’ media framed these flights as anti-colonial solidarity with the USSR. Even a Western nation was eventually included when French Air Force pilot Jean-Loup Chrétien flew on Soyuz T-6 in 1982 (and again in 1988), and was honored by the Soviets with the title Hero of the Soviet Union. Chrétien later said he and the Soviet crew felt “like a real family, with an atmosphere of brotherhood.” By 1988 Interkosmos had flown fourteen non-Soviet cosmonauts from thirteen countries, each mission accompanied by parades, medals, and media coverage that proclaimed the unity of the socialist camp.

However, behind the scenes, Interkosmos was also tightly managed. All missions and equipment were ultimately Soviet. Guest cosmonauts flew on Soviet rockets and stations under Soviet control. The foreign participants carried out only basic experiments and routine maneuvers, meaning tasks the Soviet crew could have easily handled on their own. Thus, these flights were largely symbolic, making Interkosmos “a highly publicized program that rapidly became a significant propaganda tool” for the USSR. Even inside the bloc, selection of who flew first could be political, with a former KGB General admitting that the selected teams were often based on ideology and influence. Thus, while the rhetoric was internationalist, the reality was that these missions primarily served Soviet prestige.

By the late 1980s, Interkosmos waned. Under Gorbachev, the USSR shifted toward market-style reforms, and in 1987 it created a new agency (Glavkosmos) to contract commercial missions, with a profit motive in mind. No new allied states were added after this point, and the Soviet-led program gradually wound down. Interkosmos officially ended with the Soviet collapse in 1991. Ultimately, it had arranged missions for thirteen non-Soviet countries, but for most of those nations those flights remain their only human spaceflights. When the Cold War ended the political meaning of these flights essentially evaporated. Western astronauts began flying alongside Russians in a more conventional international framework (e.g. the Shuttle–Mir and ISS programs). Once Soviet hegemony was gone, so was the special “socialist brotherhood” in space

Overall, Interkosmos illustrates both the reach and the limits of the Soviet vision of international socialism. It did forge real links. Dozens of cosmonauts and crew worked together and returned home decorated as heroes, fulfilling the propaganda ideal of an internationalist and socialist spaceflight program. But those links rested on Soviet dominance. All the rockets and stations belonged to Moscow, while allied cosmonauts were guests. Thus, when the USSR lost its power, the program could not survive. Its legacy is therefore mixed. To some extent, it was indeed a high-profile symbol of socialist fraternity, but ultimately it serves as a reminder of the practical limits of those ideals.

Works Cited

Burgess, Colin, and Bert Vis. Interkosmos. Springer EBooks, Springer Nature, 19 Nov. 2015, www.researchgate.net/publication/316391508_Interkosmos. Accessed 2 Sept. 2025. Egorov, Boris. “Why Did the USSR Send Foreign Cosmonauts into Space?” Russia Beyond, 4 May 2025, www.rbth.com/history/328941-soviet-interkosmos-space.

Meleady, Sean. “How Cold War Socialist Space Cooperation Broke New Ground.” Challenge Magazine, 17 July 2020,

challenge-magazine.org/2020/07/17/how-cold-war-socialist-space-cooperation-broke-ne w-ground. Accessed 2 Sept. 2025.

“Reaching for the Stars: The Interkosmos Programme of the Eastern Bloc.” DDR Museum, 24 Aug. 2021,

www.ddr-museum.de/en/blog/2016/reaching-for-the-stars-the-interkosmos-programme-of -the-eastern-bloc.

Sasges, Gerard. “Symbolizing (In)Dependence: Vietnam, Intercosmos, and the Strategic Ambiguity of Late Socialist Ritual.” The Russian Journal of Vietnamese Studies, vol. 3, no. 4, 2019, pp. 48–56, vietnamjournal.ru/2618-9453/article/view/87023, https://doi.org/10.24411/2618-9453-2019-10039. Accessed 3 Sept. 2025.