(Written by Anagha Jayakumar) On June 16, 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to venture into space, marking a pivotal moment in the ‘Space Race’ between the USSR and the USA amid the Cold War. At 26, Tereshkova’s feat brought her into focus worldwide. The only space flight she undertook in her lifetime was sufficient to catapult her into prominence in her home country as well.
What was the nature of the US-USSR rivalry in that period and how did Tereshkova become the chosen one? We explain. Context for the flight – the ‘Space Race’ Advertisement The end of World War II in 1945 marked the beginning of a new bipolar global order where two nations, the USA and the USSR, were competing to seek absolute dominance. This would kickstart the Cold War, a decades-long rivalry marked by the two countries also engaging in non-militaristic actions.
An all-out war could risk the new-age threat of nuclear weapons, capable of unleashing destruction on a new level. British author George Orwell is credited for first using the term “Cold War” to describe these conditions, in his essay titled ‘You and the Atom Bomb’. It referred to a world living in the shadow of a nuclear war.
He predicted the new geopolitical reality would be marked by “the prospect of two or three monstrous super-states, each possessed of a weapon by which millions of people can be wiped out in a few seconds, dividing the world between them.” In such a light, the Cold War would mark an i.