Cosmonauts

During the Cold war, the Soviet Union and the United States were two super powers locked on a cold war (as they never got into actual battle albeit for some proxy wars in places like Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan). One key part was the space race in which was an arms race and it saw the introduction of new technology like computers. The Soviet made a lot of advancements during this period even though it was decided in the end that the US won after the Moon Landing of 1969. While there was Laika the Soviet Space Dog, there were also people in space. Let's look that the cosmonaut achievements, shall we?

Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space while on- board Volstok 1 which completed a single orbit of Earth on 12 April 1961. He became such a hero that a village originally called Gzhatsk near his birthplace of Klushino was re-named in his honour.

The first woman in space was Valentina Tereshkova who was on board Vostok 6 in 1963. She almost ended up remaining in space because of some technical glitches but after getting in touch with the engineers back at mission control, she was able to return to earth safely and without jetting off into outer space. She was only twenty-four at the time.

Vladimir Komarov became the first cosmonaut to fly into space twice but with no contact with ground control and having to work with broken equipment, his descent back into earth caused the parachutes to malfunction which caused his spacecraft to crash near Orenburg. All that remained of him and the craft was twisted metal, charred metal and a chip of his heel. He became the first human to die in a space flight, even if it didn't happen in space.

Alexei Leonov became the first person to float freely in orbit, essentially doing the first ever space
walk in 1955 for 12 minutes.Though, there were also cosmonauts who weren't Russian so let's take a look at them as well.

Kazakh born Viktor Patsayev became the first man to operate a telescope in space.

Patsayev alongside Ukrainian born Georgy Dobrovolsky and Russian born Vladislav Volkov perished when the crew capsule they were in depressurised during re-entry preparations and the men became the first humans known to have died in outer space in 1971.

Milosław Hermaszewski became the first Polish national in space when he spent eight days on board Salyut 6 space craft.
Along with him was also the first Belarusian in space, Pyotr Klimuk who while made his third and final spaceflight from 27 June - 5 July 1978 with Hermaszewski, made his first space flight on Soyuz 13 in 1973.