Akilina "Leena" Mikhailovna
Chirikova
Full Name: Akilina Mikhailovna Chirikova
Date of Birth: June 10, 1937
Occupation: Member of the Air Force
Cosmonaut Corps, female cosmonaut group
Personal History: Akilina was born in
Stalingrad, and until the age of five her life was unremarkable.
Her father, Mikhail Andreyevich Chirikov, was a low ranking civil
servant and member of the communist party, and her mother, Irina
Ivanovna Chirikova, was the child of Russian gypsies. Though Stalin
had outlawed the Romany language and culture the year after
Akilina’s birth, Irina still taught her daughter the language in
secrecy. Because of her husband’s good standing with the party,
Irina escaped the purges and pogroms which sent so many other Romany
to the salt mines. In 1942, during the Great Patriotic War, Hitler’s
armies began their long siege of the city, and that winter, in a
fire caused by a barrage of incendiaries, Mikhail and Irina lost
their lives. Akilina, only five years old, survived, and for the
remaining months of the siege lived a feral existence, scrounging
for scraps, finding warmth and safety where she could. After the
Battle of Stalingrad, Akilina was taken into a state run orphanage.
When she was old enough, she enlisted in the Red Army. Akilina
excelled at both hand-to-hand combat and languages, and was assigned
to a radio listening post in East Berlin. Akilina later applied for
and was accepted into a training program of the Air Defense Forces
of the VVS. Women had served as pilots since the days of the Great
Patriotic War, but their numbers were still small compared to the
percentage of men fliers. Though Akilina scored highest marks on all
examinations, and executed her test flights perfectly, after being
fully certified as a pilot and parachutist she was given a desk
assignment in the offices of the Air Defense Forces, tracking
materiel requests and personnel movements.
In January 1962, when Akilina was 24 years old,
her application was one of 58 submitted by DOSAAF as cosmonaut
candidates, and she was one of 40 selected to go to Moscow for
interviews. In June, Akilina is one of six selected for cosmonaut
training, and is relocated to TsPK (Cosmonaut Training Center) at
Star City. Each of the six was given their own apartment, and the
rigorous training began. In November, each of the members of the
female cosmonaut group were given academic tests and interviewed, to
determine which of them would be the first woman in space. Of the
six, Ponomaryova had the best test results, but did not give
“proper” replies in the interviews. When asked “What do you want
from life?” she replied, “I want to take everything it can offer.”
Tereshkova, on the other hand, intoned “I want to support
irrevocably the Komsomol and Communist Party.” Ponomaryova also
maintained that a woman could smoke and still be a decent person,
and had made trips unescorted into Fedosiya while there for
training. However despite what were considered very grave drawbacks,
the final choice was still between Tereshkova and Ponomaryova.
Chirikova placed third behind them, not quite as technically astute
as Ponomaryova and not quite as ideologically pure as Tereshkova.
Tereshkova, though, the only one of the women tested not to receive
the highest marks in the academic tests, was selected to be the
first woman in space.
In November 1963, Chirikova is selected for
Vostok 7, with Ponomaryova as her second. The mission called for a
ten-day high altitude orbit through the Van Allen radiation belt for
radiological-biological tests, at the end of which the craft’s orbit
would be allowed to naturally decay to re-entry. The craft launched
from Star City on April 1, 1964. Ten hours into the mission, ground
stations lost radio contact with the craft, and Vostok 7 was
presumed lost.
Known Relatives: Mikhail Andreyevich
Chirikov (father), Irina Ivanovna Chirikova (mother), Sinovia
Hieronymovna Chirikova (daughter)
Associates: Sergei Vasilevich Tabanov, a
rocket technician and former lover of Akilina’s, who died in October
22, 1960 during the Nedelin Catastrophe, which killed 74 people
immediately, and 48 more in the ensuing weeks from burns or contact
with the toxic and corrosive propellants.
Physical Description: Akilina is 5’6”,
with short brown hair, brown eyes, and a slightly crooked nose, the
result of a broken-nose when she was a child during the Battle of
Stalingrad.
Equipment: Akilina carries a chrome-plated
Makarov semi-automatic pistol, standard issue in her emergency
survival kit.
