The Kamanin Diaries 1964-1966

B. Hendrickx. (1998), JBIS, 51, pp.413-440

Refcode: 1998.51.413

Abstract:

The diaries of Kamanin are a unique historical document and provide a rare glimpse behind the scenes of the Soviet manned space programme in the 1960s. Kamanin at one point himself describes his motives for keeping the diaries: “My notes have been brief and [were made] in between other things, conversations and telephone calls and often had to be interrupted in the middle of a sentence. But many facts are so interesting in their own right that they don’t have to be <cast in a literary mould>. I don’t know if my notes will ever be of public interest, but for me personally they have become a necessity. I have the impression that I don’t fully carry out my professional and moral duty if I don’t write down the most important things about the first steps of the Soviet people into space“.