{"id":1334487,"date":"2026-06-03T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/?p=1334487"},"modified":"2026-06-11T18:04:29","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T16:04:29","slug":"soviet-aviation-propaganda-1980s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/soviet-aviation-propaganda-1980s\/","title":{"rendered":"The 1980s: Mir and Buran \u2014 Aviation in Soviet Propaganda Part 6"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style>\n<p>The 1980s were the decade Soviet aviation propaganda kept its volume but lost its conviction. The propaganda apparatus that had spent sixty years building the Aviamarsh, the cosmonaut cult, and the Salyut routine kept producing the same posters, the same stamps and the same Pravda front pages. The country underneath the propaganda was beginning to fail.<\/p>\n<p>And yet, on a snowy morning in November 1988, with Mikhail Gorbachev&#8217;s perestroika reforms already three years old, the Soviet aviation industry achieved the single most expensive engineering display in its entire history. The Buran orbital shuttle \u2014 a clean-sheet Soviet answer to the American Space Shuttle, years late and billions of roubles over budget \u2014 flew its first and only mission. The propaganda apparatus, briefly, lit up one last time. Then it went dark with the state that had built it.<\/p>\n<div style=\"background:#f5f5f5;padding:16px 20px;margin:18px 0 24px;border-radius:8px;font-size:15px;line-height:1.7\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:700;color:#333;font-size:16px\">Quick Facts<\/p><p style=\"margin:6px 0\"><strong>Mir core module launch:<\/strong> 19 February 1986 \u2014 first permanent orbital outpost<\/p><p style=\"margin:6px 0\"><strong>First Soviet female spacewalk:<\/strong> Svetlana Savitskaya, 25 July 1984 (Salyut 7)<\/p><p style=\"margin:6px 0\"><strong>Buran first flight:<\/strong> 15 November 1988 \u2014 uncrewed, 206 minutes, two orbits<\/p><p style=\"margin:6px 0\"><strong>Buran builder:<\/strong> Molniya NPO + Energia rocket from Energia NPO<\/p><p style=\"margin:6px 0\"><strong>Buran programme cost:<\/strong> ~16 billion roubles (~$24 billion 2026 USD)<\/p><p style=\"margin:6px 0\"><strong>Buran total flights:<\/strong> 1<\/p><\/div>\n\n<div style=\"display:flex;gap:14px;flex-wrap:wrap;justify-content:center;margin:18px 0 26px\"><figure style=\"flex:1 1 200px;max-width:31%;margin:0\"><img data-opt-id=1945851527  fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/05\/soviet-stamp-mir-soyuz-tm-1988-cpa-5984.jpg\" alt=\"1988 Soviet Mir\/Soyuz-TM stamp\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;border-radius:6px;border:1px solid #ddd\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:12px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:4px;font-style:italic;line-height:1.4\">USSR 1988 (CPA 5984) \u2014 Soviet\u2013Afghan space flight to Mir. The &#8220;interkosmos&#8221; stamp series reframed Mir as the centre of socialist-internationalist space cooperation.<\/figcaption><\/figure><figure style=\"flex:1 1 200px;max-width:31%;margin:0\"><img data-opt-id=1718892943  fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/05\/soviet-stamp-buran-energia-1988-souvenir-sheet.jpg\" alt=\"1988 Buran souvenir sheet\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;border-radius:6px;border:1px solid #ddd\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:12px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:4px;font-style:italic;line-height:1.4\">USSR 1988 souvenir sheet (CPA 6036) \u2014 the Buran orbital shuttle with the Energia rocket. Issued to mark the orbiter&#8217;s only flight, 15 November 1988.<\/figcaption><\/figure><figure style=\"flex:1 1 200px;max-width:31%;margin:0\"><img data-opt-id=496478640  data-opt-src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/05\/soviet-stamp-deyneka-conquerors-of-space-1970-cpa-3850.jpg\"  decoding=\"async\" src=\"data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20viewBox%3D%220%200%20100%%20100%%22%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20fill%3D%22transparent%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E\" alt=\"1970 stamp after Deyneka\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;border-radius:6px;border:1px solid #ddd\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:12px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:4px;font-style:italic;line-height:1.4\">USSR 1970 stamp (CPA 3850) \u2014 &#8220;Conquerors of the Space,&#8221; still in use as iconographic shorthand twenty years after first issue.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Mir, Salyut 7 and the propaganda routine<\/h2>\n<p>The decade began with the propaganda apparatus repeating, with diminishing returns, the success of the 1970s Salyut programme. Salyut 7, launched in 1982, became the most-photographed Soviet space station of the decade \u2014 partly because of an unscheduled rescue mission in June 1985 when cosmonauts Vladimir Dzhanibekov and Viktor Savinykh docked with a powerless, dead Salyut 7 and brought it back to life through one of the most ambitious in-orbit repair operations in the history of crewed spaceflight.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px\"><img data-opt-id=1636318233  data-opt-src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/05\/mir-space-station-soviet-orbit-1988-1990s-scaled.jpg\"  decoding=\"async\" src=\"data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20viewBox%3D%220%200%20100%%20100%%22%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20fill%3D%22transparent%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E\" alt=\"Mir space station\" style=\"max-width:100%;height:auto;border-radius:6px\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">The Mir space station seen from STS-89 \u2014 the central propaganda image of Soviet space activity in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Mir stayed in orbit for fifteen years and was visited by 104 people from twelve countries. Photo: NASA \/ Wikimedia Commons (public domain)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The propaganda apparatus made the Dzhanibekov rescue a Pravda feature for three days. The 2017 Russian film <em>Salyut-7<\/em> dramatised the mission with full state cooperation. But Salyut 7 was an old design. What the apparatus actually needed \u2014 and got, on 19 February 1986 \u2014 was the Mir core module: a clean-sheet space station designed for modular expansion through the late 1990s. Mir was bigger, more capable, more comfortable, and built specifically so the propaganda could keep showing forward motion.<\/p>\n<p>Mir worked. The apparatus celebrated every new module \u2014 Kvant in 1987, Kvant-2 in 1989, Kristall in 1990. By the early 1990s Mir was the largest object ever assembled in orbit and the largest crewed object in space. The propaganda kept showing cosmonauts inside Mir conducting Soviet\u2013East European\u2013international experiments under the same internationalist banner the 1970s programme had built. The Aviamarsh kept playing.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Buran: the sixteen-billion-rouble propaganda gesture<\/h2>\n<p>The decade-defining moment was Buran. Begun in 1976 as a direct Soviet answer to the American Space Shuttle programme, Buran went through twelve years of development, some sixteen billion roubles of expenditure, the construction of a clean-sheet vehicle (the OK-1K1 Buran), a clean-sheet super-heavy launcher (Energia), a clean-sheet flying-truck carrier aircraft (Antonov An-225 Mriya), and a clean-sheet runway at Baikonur designed to handle the orbiter&#8217;s landing weight.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px\"><img data-opt-id=1659571145  data-opt-src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/05\/buran-space-shuttle-an-225-le-bourget-1989.jpg\"  decoding=\"async\" src=\"data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20viewBox%3D%220%200%20100%%20100%%22%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20fill%3D%22transparent%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E\" alt=\"Buran on An-225 Mriya, Paris 1989\" style=\"max-width:100%;height:auto;border-radius:6px\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">The Buran orbital shuttle riding the Antonov An-225 Mriya at the Paris Air Show, June 1989. The propaganda apparatus presented this combination as evidence of Soviet aerospace superiority. Both the orbiter and the Mriya itself were one-off products of the Buran programme. Photo: Wikimedia Commons (public domain)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>On 15 November 1988, at 03:00 GMT, an Energia super-heavy launcher lifted off from Baikonur with the Buran orbiter strapped to its side. Two orbits and 206 minutes later, the orbiter executed a fully automatic re-entry, glided into the atmosphere above the Indian Ocean, and landed itself on Baikonur&#8217;s specially-built 4.5-kilometre runway in a 17 m\/s crosswind that the American Space Shuttle was not certified to handle. No human had been aboard. The entire flight had been executed by the on-board software stack and the ground-control loop. The propaganda apparatus declared it a triumph of Soviet computing.<\/p>\n<p>It was. Buran&#8217;s automated flight-control software was, in 1988, more advanced than the American Space Shuttle&#8217;s manual-landing pilot interface, and the Soviet vehicle had executed an end-to-end mission with no human input at all. Pravda devoted its front page of 16 November 1988 to the flight.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px\"><img data-opt-id=1930610311  data-opt-src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/05\/buran-an-225-mriya-paris-airshow-1989-scaled.jpg\"  decoding=\"async\" src=\"data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20viewBox%3D%220%200%20100%%20100%%22%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20fill%3D%22transparent%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E\" alt=\"Buran at Paris Air Show 1989\" style=\"max-width:100%;height:auto;border-radius:6px\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">The Buran orbiter at the Paris Air Show, 1989 \u2014 the propaganda apparatus&#8217;s last great international moment. Within four years the Soviet Union had dissolved and the Buran programme had been cancelled. Photo: Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The aircraft that never flew again<\/h2>\n<p>What the propaganda apparatus did not say \u2014 and what Gorbachev&#8217;s reforming Politburo already knew \u2014 was that Buran had no operational purpose. The Soviet Union had no civilian payloads that required a reusable shuttle. The American programme had been built around classified military payloads that Buran&#8217;s customer-base (the Soviet Ministry of Defence) had largely cancelled by 1988. The cost-per-launch projection of $300 million in 1988 dollars \u2014 roughly equivalent to ten Soyuz launches with equivalent crewed-up-mass \u2014 made the vehicle commercially impossible to justify.<\/p><p>Gorbachev and the reform-minded Politburo were openly asking what the shuttle was actually for \u2014 what missions it could fly that the existing Soyuz and Proton could not handle at a fraction of the cost \u2014 and whether the space programme could justify itself as anything other than a gesture against the West.<\/p><p>It was, in propaganda terms, the most heretical question a Soviet leadership had asked about space in thirty years. The answer the apparatus eventually had to accept was that Buran had been built as a propaganda gesture against the West \u2014 and that the Soviet Union, at the end of the 1980s, no longer had the money to keep producing propaganda gestures at this scale.<\/p>\n<p>Buran flew once. The orbiter was placed in storage at Baikonur. In 2002, fourteen years after its only flight, the hangar roof at Baikonur collapsed onto the orbiter and destroyed it completely. The collapse killed eight workers who were carrying out repairs on the long-neglected roof.<\/p>\n\n<div style=\"display:flex;gap:14px;flex-wrap:wrap;justify-content:center;margin:18px 0 26px\"><figure style=\"flex:1 1 200px;max-width:31%;margin:0\"><img data-opt-id=49383701  data-opt-src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/05\/soviet-poster-in-the-name-of-lenin.jpg\"  decoding=\"async\" src=\"data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20viewBox%3D%220%200%20100%%20100%%22%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20fill%3D%22transparent%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E\" alt=\"In the name of Lenin\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;border-radius:6px;border:1px solid #ddd\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:12px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:4px;font-style:italic;line-height:1.4\"><strong>&#8220;\u0412\u043e \u0438\u043c\u044f \u041b\u0435\u043d\u0438\u043d\u0430!&#8221; \u2014 &#8220;In the name of Lenin!&#8221;<\/strong> By the 1980s the propaganda apparatus was reissuing painted classics of the 1960s as fixed iconography. The image of Lenin on a Mir-era poster is, in cultural terms, an exhibit of the propaganda system&#8217;s own exhaustion.<\/figcaption><\/figure><figure style=\"flex:1 1 200px;max-width:31%;margin:0\"><img data-opt-id=1395206880  data-opt-src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/05\/soviet-poster-stubbornly-boldly-stars-heroism.jpg\"  decoding=\"async\" src=\"data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20viewBox%3D%220%200%20100%%20100%%22%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20fill%3D%22transparent%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E\" alt=\"Stubbornly and boldly\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;border-radius:6px;border:1px solid #ddd\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:12px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:4px;font-style:italic;line-height:1.4\"><strong>&#8220;\u0423\u043f\u0440\u044f\u043c\u043e \u0438 \u0441\u043c\u0435\u043b\u043e \u2014 \u043a \u0437\u0432\u0451\u0437\u0434\u0430\u043c! \u041f\u043e\u0434\u0432\u0438\u0433\u0443 \u043d\u0435\u0442 \u0433\u0440\u0430\u043d\u0438\u0446!&#8221; \u2014 &#8220;Stubbornly and boldly to the stars. Heroism knows no bounds!&#8221;<\/strong> A late-Soviet painted poster recycled across half a dozen issues from the 1960s through Mir-era propaganda.<\/figcaption><\/figure><figure style=\"flex:1 1 200px;max-width:31%;margin:0\"><img data-opt-id=1647720748  data-opt-src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/05\/soviet-poster-not-far-distant-planet-friends.jpg\"  decoding=\"async\" src=\"data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20viewBox%3D%220%200%20100%%20100%%22%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20fill%3D%22transparent%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E\" alt=\"Not so far to most distant planet\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;border-radius:6px;border:1px solid #ddd\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:12px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:4px;font-style:italic;line-height:1.4\"><strong>&#8220;\u041d\u0435 \u0442\u0430\u043a \u0434\u0430\u043b\u0435\u043a\u043e \u0434\u043e \u0441\u0430\u043c\u043e\u0439 \u0434\u0430\u043b\u0451\u043a\u043e\u0439 \u043f\u043b\u0430\u043d\u0435\u0442\u044b, \u0434\u0440\u0443\u0437\u044c\u044f!&#8221; \u2014 &#8220;It&#8217;s not so far to the most distant planet, friends!&#8221;<\/strong> The Soviet space-propaganda imagination, by the 1980s, was looking past Earth orbit to a future Mars mission that the Soviet Union would not live to launch.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The Antonov, the orbiter, the Aviamarsh<\/h2>\n<p>The Antonov An-225 Mriya \u2014 the six-engine, 88-metre-wingspan, 250-tonne-payload cargo aircraft Antonov built specifically to carry the Buran orbiter on its spine \u2014 flew its first public display at the Paris Air Show in June 1989, with the Buran strapped to its back. The image of the Mriya on the ramp at Le Bourget, the Buran riding it, became the single most reproduced piece of Soviet aerospace propaganda of the late 1980s. It is also the image you now have to look at twice, because the Soviet Union had thirty months left to live.<\/p>\n<p>The Mriya itself, the only flyable An-225 ever built, kept flying as a cargo aircraft after the Soviet Union dissolved. It was destroyed at Hostomel airfield outside Kyiv during the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The Buran orbiter that it had carried into Paris in 1989 had been destroyed twenty years earlier. The propaganda machinery that built both of them no longer existed.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed\" style=\"margin:0 0 28px\"><div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/VOpyCA-aQsA\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0;border-radius:6px\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">Energia-Buran \u2014 unique archival footage of preparation and launch (30th anniversary release). Includes the Energia rollout, the launch, and the automated landing.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n<figure style=\"margin:24px 0;text-align:center;padding:14px;background:#fafafa;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;border-radius:0 8px 8px 0\"><img data-opt-id=795825745  data-opt-src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/05\/klucis-1934-youth-onto-airplanes-poster-scaled.jpg\"  decoding=\"async\" src=\"data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20viewBox%3D%220%200%20100%%20100%%22%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20fill%3D%22transparent%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E\" alt=\"Klucis 1934 - Youth onto the airplanes\" style=\"max-width:100%;max-height:520px;height:auto;border-radius:4px;display:inline-block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#555;text-align:center;margin-top:10px;font-style:italic;line-height:1.5;padding:0 12px\"><strong>Gustav Klucis, &#8220;\u041c\u043e\u043b\u043e\u0434\u0451\u0436, \u043d\u0430 \u0441\u0430\u043c\u043e\u043b\u0435\u0442\u044b!&#8221; (1934).<\/strong> Fifty years on, the propaganda apparatus was still using Klucis&#8217;s compositional vocabulary. The 1988 souvenir sheet for Buran (above) draws on exactly the same rising-aircraft \/ radiant-sky geometry that Klucis pioneered for the OSOAVIAKhIM flying clubs of the early Stalin era. The Soviet aviation propaganda visual language had not actually changed in half a century.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The 1980s in propaganda terms<\/h2>\n<p>The decade closed with the Soviet aviation industry still flying, still building, still producing the iconography the apparatus needed. The Aviation Day flying displays still drew enormous crowds. The Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker was on the propaganda posters. The 1989 Paris Air Show, with the Mriya and the Buran together on the ramp, was the single most visible Soviet aerospace event in the West since the Tu-104 had landed at Heathrow in 1956.<\/p>\n<p>What the propaganda did not say \u2014 could not say \u2014 was that the Soviet Union was, by 1989, two years from dissolution. Gorbachev had begun perestroika. The Berlin Wall fell in November 1989. The Warsaw Pact signed its dissolution in July 1991. The August 1991 coup attempt collapsed in three days. On Christmas Day 1991 the red flag came down from the Kremlin.<\/p>\n<p>The aviation propaganda apparatus simply, quietly, stopped. By the spring of 1992 the posters were gone from Moscow billboards. The Aviamarsh kept being played on military parades because the Russian Federation, the Soviet successor state, inherited the apparatus that had used it. But the cosmonaut cult, the pilot cult, the Pravda front pages, the Komsomol training films, the schoolbook portraits of Gagarin \u2014 all of those had been an artefact of a state that was now historical. The 1990s \u2014 the last piece in this series \u2014 is the story of what happened next.<\/p>\n<p><em>Sources: Bart Hendrickx and Bert Vis, &#8220;Energiya-Buran: The Soviet Space Shuttle&#8221; (Springer Praxis, 2007); David Harland, &#8220;The Story of Space Station Mir&#8221;; Asif Siddiqi, &#8220;The Soviet Space Race with Apollo&#8221;; David Hoffman, &#8220;The Dead Hand&#8221; (Anchor, 2009); Russian State Archive of Science and Technology (Buran flight data).<\/em><\/p>\n<div style=\"background:#f0f4ff;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:16px 20px;margin:32px 0 8px;border-radius:0 8px 8px 0\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:600;color:#333\">Aviation in Soviet Propaganda \u2014 Series Index<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\">\u2192 <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/soviet-aviation-propaganda-overview\/\">Series Overview<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\">\u2192 <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/soviet-aviation-propaganda-1930s\/\">The 1930s: Stalin&#8217;s Falcons<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\">\u2192 <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/soviet-aviation-propaganda-1940s\/\">The 1940s: The Great Patriotic War<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\">\u2192 <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/soviet-aviation-propaganda-1950s\/\">The 1950s: Jets and Sputnik<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\">\u2192 <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/soviet-aviation-propaganda-1960s\/\">The 1960s: The Cult of the Cosmonaut<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\">\u2192 <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/soviet-aviation-propaganda-1970s\/\">The 1970s: The Routine Cosmonaut<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0;color:#888\">\u2192 <strong>The 1980s: Mir and Buran<\/strong> (you are here)<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\">\u2192 <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/soviet-aviation-propaganda-1990s\/\">The 1990s: The Last Soviet Cosmonaut<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The 1980s were the decade Soviet aviation propaganda kept its volume but lost its conviction. The propaganda apparatus that had spent sixty years building the Aviamarsh, the cosmonaut cult, and the Salyut routine kept producing the same posters, the same stamps and the same Pravda front pages. The country underneath the propaganda was beginning to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":1334372,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[666,664],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1334487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history-and-legends","category-military-aviation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The 1980s: Mir and Buran \u2014 Aviation in Soviet Propaganda Part 6 | MiGFlug.com Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The 1980s were the decade Soviet aviation propaganda kept its volume but lost its conviction. 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