Cult of the cosmic: how space travel replaced religion in USSR

As the Science Museum in London explores the birth of the space age, The Calvert Journal looks back at the Soviet Union's cult-like love of all things cosmic

For most of the 20th century, the thirst for space exploration replaced religion in the Soviet Union, with the cult of science disseminated through propaganda, not sermons.

Yuri Gagarin, the first human in outer space, was the God-like figurehead, a man of the people and a martyr who died too young in mysterious circumstances. The titanium Gagarin monument in Moscow, created by sculptor Pavel Bondarenko, features a 42m-tall column topped with a figure of the cosmonaut rocketing to the sky in a pose similar to Rio De Janeiro's Christ the Redeemer.