State Duma deputy Valentina Tereshkova. Dossier

Childhood

As a baby, V. Tereshkova was left without a father, who died in the Soviet-Finnish war. The proverb said: “Without a father, you are half an orphan...”. The family survived Stalin's terror, collectivization, and famine. The mother and three children were in poverty. From childhood, the independent and vital character of the girl emerged, who was more interested in boyish undertakings. At an early age, Valentina swam, jumped from trees into the water, and enjoyed riding horses. Household chores fell on her shoulders: she was Elena Feodorovna’s first assistant. During the harsh years of the Great Patriotic War, there was a shortage of many things: food, shoes, kerosene. According to the memoirs of V. Tereshkova, in her childhood she communicated in the Belarusian language. She liked learning to play domra. It was a plucked string musical instrument, known in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.

Childhood and youth

The biography of this woman begins in the village of Bolshoye Maslennikovo, Yaroslavl region. Valentina's parents came from Belarusian peasants. They got married by chance: the guy wooed Elena's friend, but the girl refused him. Then Lena admitted that she herself would marry such a groom. Vladimir did not think long - he immediately invited her to have a wedding. Valentina's older sister Lyudmila was born first in the young family.

Elena Tereshkova worked at a textile factory, and her father was a tractor driver. He took part in battles during the Soviet-Finnish War and died. The girls’ younger brother Volodya was born after his father’s death. Elena Fedorovna never married again.

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Valentina Tereshkova in her youth
As a child, Tereshkova attended the Yaroslavl school, received high grades, and also learned to play the dombra (the girl had a good ear for music). She was distinguished from her peers by her stubborn character and courage - she sat on a horse without fear, jumped headfirst into the river. As a child, I dreamed of becoming a train driver, but my mother did not allow me to enter the railway school.

Having completed her basic seven-year school education, she decided to help her mother support the family and got a job as a bracelet maker at the Yaroslavl Tire Factory. This work was physically demanding, but paid well. However, the purposeful girl did not intend to give up education: her workdays ended with classes at evening school.

The next stage of Valentina Vladimirovna’s life also did not foretell the heights that she was to achieve. So, she studied in absentia at a technical school for light industry. In her youth, she worked for 7 years as a weaver at a nearby plant called “Krasny Perekop”. At this time, Tereshkova began to get involved in parachuting. She enjoyed going to the local flying club and fearlessly jumped from great heights.

A space flight

Having completed the training, she was considered candidate number one. The space flight took place on June 16-19, 1963 on the Vostok-6 spacecraft. At the same time, Vostok-5 was also in space, where V. Bykovsky was the commander. V. Tereshkova’s personal recognition signal is “Seagull”. The flight lasted about three days. Vostok 6 orbited the Earth 48 times.

“Chaika” continued to study in the cosmonaut group until 1968. Soon their team was disbanded.

Valentina Tereshkova - biography

Valentina Tereshkova is the world's first female cosmonaut, Hero of the Soviet Union. Currently, Valentina Vladimirovna is a deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation. On June 16, 1963, the Vostok-6 spacecraft launched from Baikonur. There was an unusual cosmonaut on board: for the first time in the history of mankind, a female cosmonaut flew to the stars alone.

Social activity

V.V. Tereshkova was the chairman of the Soviet Women's Committee, a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, and a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. She has held leadership positions in various centers, federations, and associations related to work at the international level. Currently, he is a deputy of the State Duma of Russia.

After successful flights of male astronauts, the search for female astronauts began based on the following parameters:

• paratrooper,
• up to 30 years old,
• height up to 170 cm,
• weight up to 70 kg.

Future life

From 1955 to 1966, Valentina Vladimirovna was trained to fly on the Voskhod spacecraft. From 1964 to 1969, she studied at the Zhukovsky Military Aviation Institute and received a diploma as a pilot-cosmonaut-engineer. In 1977 she defended her dissertation for Candidate of Technical Sciences. Tereshkova has more than 50 scientific publications to her credit. Until 1997, the first woman cosmonaut served in the cosmonaut corps as an instructor-test cosmonaut. From 1966 to 1989, Valentina Tereshkova worked as a deputy of the Supreme Council. For the next couple of decades, the female astronaut devotes her life to politics. In the spring of 2016, Valentina Vladimirovna took part in the internal party elections of United Russia, where she took first place in the Yaroslavl region.

Interesting facts from the life of Valentina Tereshkova

• The birthplace of V. Tereshkova - not far from Yaroslavl - became a reason for songwriters to call her Yaroslavna.
• The wedding celebration of V. Tereshkova and A. Nikolaev was attended by the head of the Soviet Union N.S. Khrushchev. It is believed that both medical scientists, who hoped to extend research into human behavior not only during the flight, but also after it, and the leaders of the Soviet country showed interest in this marriage.
• About the reasons for the divorce, Tereshkova once said that A. Nikolaev was a golden man at work, but at home he was despotic.
• Out of hundreds of candidates, five were chosen, among which was Valentina Tereshkova. After the girls were accepted into the cosmonaut corps, they were immediately called up for military service with the rank of privates.
• When choosing a female cosmonaut for the first flight, not only successful training was considered, but also other points: Tereshkova’s social status was a worker, her father died in the war, she had experience as a Komsomol secretary of an enterprise. The person responsible for the medical provision of this program, V.I. Yadzovsky, recalled that this was not an ideal selection option.
• During each zero-gravity session, it was necessary to write down your first and last name, talk on the radio, and try to eat.
• On the day of the flight, V. Tereshkova, as usual, told her relatives that she would be at a parachuting competition. The family heard about the space flight on the radio. “Hey, sky! Take off your hat! - this was her pre-launch remark.
• “Seagull” recalled that an error had been made in the ship’s program, and therefore it did not approach the Earth, but, on the contrary, moved away. She informed Academician S.P. Korolev about this nuance. The next day, the indicators in the system were replaced, and the orbit straightened out. The general designer convinced V. Tereshkova not to tell anyone about what happened, and she kept the secret for a very long time. It was only when reports of this emerged that she began to speak openly.
• Problems in flight were also explained by the physiological characteristics of the female body. V.I. Yadzovsky explained this point by saying that “...in women, during a certain period of the monthly life cycle, physiological stability seriously deteriorates...”
• At the landing site, V. Tereshkova distributed food from the astronauts’ food rations to people, but she herself preferred ordinary food.
• When Chaika was asked how the country could show its gratitude, she asked for help finding the place where her father was killed.

Flight

June 16, 1963 - made the world's first flight of a female cosmonaut. Tereshkova went into space on the Vostok-6 spacecraft. Her flight lasted almost three days. On the day of her first flight into space, Valentina Tereshkova told her family that she was going to a parachute competition. They learned about the current state of affairs from the radio news.

When choosing the first female cosmonaut, political issues were also taken into account. Tereshkova's advantage was that she was from the workers, and her father died in the war. When, after the flight, Valentina was asked how the SRSR could thank her, she asked to find her father’s grave. No less important was the candidate’s ability to conduct social activities - to speak in public, demonstrating the advantages of the Soviet system. Note that when Tereshkova was appointed as a spaceship pilot, she was 10 years younger than the youngest American astronaut of the first squad.

N. Kamanin, who was involved in the selection of cosmonauts, noted that Tereshkova had a better launch than Nikolaev and Popovich. Valentina’s call sign for the duration of the flight is “Seagull.” Before the start she said: “Hey! Sky! Take off your hat! (quote from a poem by V. Mayakovsky). True, during the flight Tereshkova did not cope well with the orientation of the spacecraft. This was due to improper installation of the control wires. Therefore, Valentina had to put new data into the computer. She was silent about this incident for 40 years; Korolev himself asked her not to tell anyone anything.

The problems that Tereshkova encountered during the flight also had a physiological explanation. Note that according to the results of the medical examination, her indicators were the worst. But thanks to the intervention of Nikita Khrushchev, she was still determined to be an astronaut. Her social background played a decisive role.

Despite severe physical discomfort, Tereshkova survived as many as 48 revolutions around the planet. While in space, she kept a special logbook and also took photos of the horizon, which were later used to detect aerosol layers in the earth’s surface and landed in the Bayevsky district of the Altai Territory. True, Tereshkova was accused of violating the regime: she distributed food from the astronaut’s diet to local residents, and she herself ate local food. After Tereshkova’s flight, Sergei Korolev said: “As long as I’m alive, no more woman will fly into space!” There was some truth in these words, because the next flight of a Soviet woman into space took place 19 years later.

Other interesting facts

• With the rank of general, she is the first and so far the only woman in the Russian army.
• When Yu.A. Gagarin found out that Tereshkova was in the delivery room, he flew to Sochi and gave her tea roses. He said that only girls are born in the space corps, so we need to pay attention to this fact, in case there is a serious scientific discovery hidden behind it.
• In 1969, during the assassination attempt on Brezhnev, V. Tereshkova was in a car that was fired upon, but everything turned out okay.
• After Tereshkova saw the Earth from space, she dreamed of going to Australia. And she managed to make her dream come true.
• In 2004, she underwent a difficult ordeal: complex heart surgery.
• In 2014, at the opening of the Olympic Games in Sochi, V. Tereshkova, among 8 people, carried the Olympic flag.
• In 2021, for her 80th birthday, V.V. Putin presented the birthday girl with a sculpture made by I. Rukavishnikov, “A Seagull Landing on the Water,” and a painting by V. Zaitsev, “Seagulls over the Volga.” The first gift is based on the call sign, the second is based on the name of the river where the village where V. Tereshkova was born is located.

What happened after?

After the space flight, Valentina Vladimirovna entered the Air Force Engineering Academy, from which she graduated with honors. She later became a professor and wrote more than fifty scientific papers.

1966-1989 - Deputy of the Supreme Council.

1968-1987 - Head of the Soviet Women's Committee.

1969-1997 — worked as an astronaut instructor.

1969 – became a member of the World Peace Council.

1971-1989 - Member of the CPSU Central Committee.

1974-1989 — was a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Council.

1992 - headed the presidium of the Russian Association for International Cooperation.

1997 – becomes a senior researcher at the Cosmonaut Training Center.

1994-2004 — headed the Russian Center for International Scientific and Cultural Cooperation.

2008-2011 - Deputy from the United Russia party in the Yaroslavl Regional Duma.

2011 – elected to the State Duma. Tereshkova is part of a parliamentary group that defends Christian values. In particular, she advocates amending the Constitution, according to which “Orthodoxy is the basis of Russia’s national identity.” Let us note that with the assistance of Tereshkova, a university was opened in Yaroslavl, a river station and a planetarium were built. In addition, she constantly provides assistance to the Yaroslavl orphanage and her native school.

According to official data for 2012, Tereshkova owns a land plot of 1,500 m², a house with an area of ​​607 m², 1.5 apartments with an area of ​​175 m², and 2 cars.

short biography

The most important facts from the biography of Valentina Tereshkova:

1. Valentina Tereshkova was born in the Yaroslavl region ; later her family moved to Yaroslavl, where the future cosmonaut spent her childhood.
2. After finishing 7th grade, Valentina was forced to get a job as a bracelet maker at a tire factory , while continuing her studies at school in the evening department.
3. as a weaver for several years .
4. Parachuting became her hobby, which led her to astronautics.
5. Tereshkova’s first flight was rated “satisfactory” , since during her stay in space the astronaut’s condition worsened and the ship had technical problems.
6. From 1969 to 1997, Tereshkova was a designer-cosmonaut in the cosmonaut corps , and then became a senior researcher at the Yu. A. Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center.
7. Tereshkova received the title of professor , she was actively engaged in scientific and teaching activities.
8. Valentina Tereshkova is a famous politician and State Duma deputy .
9. Streets and schools, as well as a crater on the Moon and small planets in the Universe are named after Tereshkova.