[FPSPACE] Update on Czecho Cosmonaut Vladimir Remek

[james oberg]

 DATELINE: PRAGUE, Nov 17 ; (RTJ)  // CTK National News Wire  // November
17, 2001
CZECH ASTRONAUT NOT REGRETTING HIS AIR, LIFE TURBULENCES - PRESS
      "However unimaginable it may seem now, money really was not the main
reason for me to embark on a spacecraft," Vladimir Remek, the first and so
far only Czech astronaut to orbit the Earth, says in the latest weekly
supplement to the daily Lidove noviny.
     Once very popular among Czechs, Remek, 53, was condemned by many after
the 1989 fall of the communist regime as a prominent communist and a symbol
of totalitarianism and he would have probably fallen into oblivion had not
it been for the recent crash of an army helicopter with him and visiting
U.S. astronaut Eugene Cernan among the passengers aboard.
     An army pilot by profession, Remek was given an insignificant post in
the Museum of Aviation and Astronautics after 1989. He says he left the
post, which many called humiliating given his university education and
experience, and simultaneously withdrew from the army in 1995 because he
believed that he could do a more challenging job. Now he lives in Nizhny
Novgorod, Russia, working as a director of the CZ-Turbogaz Czech-Russian
joint venture. He is married for the second time.
     Asked whether he had faced pressures at home after 1989, he says that
pressure on him had been exerted "by a man who knew me only superficially.
For example, he published a photo featuring me walking at the Prague airport
along with (Czechoslovak Communist) President Gustav Husak. He wrote:
'...this photograph testifies to his (Remek's) character.' I could not help
laughing, as this is absolutely stupid. How a photograph featuring one
together with the president can testify to his/her character?"
Remek says. He says that in general people did not start to "spit" at him
after 1989. "The opposite was true", he says. "People told me they realised
that the (post-1989) regime did not treat me well. My space flight was a
historic event!" Remek says.
     Remek was the 87th astronaut in the Earth's history, preceded by 43
colleagues from each the Soviet Union and the USA. He was chosen as a son of
a Slovak high-ranking military pilot and deputy and a Czech mother. The
choice by Moscow of a Czechoslovak citizen as the first foreign astronaut
was reportedly a "consolation" for the 1968 Russian-led invasion of
Czechoslovakia, Lidove noviny says.
     Remek, aged 30, was launched into the orbit aboard the Sojuz 28
spacecraft together with Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Gubarev on March 2, 1978,
to spend a week on the space station Salyut 6.
     "Long live socialist internationalism!" read the message of greetings
which the Salyut crew sent to then Soviet and Czechoslovak communist
leaders, Leonid Brezhnev and Gustav Husak.
     Remek was presented with lots of Czechoslovak and Soviet distinctions
and was received by President Husak. Paradoxially, he was received, together
with U.S. astronaut James Lovell, by current Czech President Vaclav Havel, a
former leading anti-communist dissident, last year.
     Remek, a former member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSC),
says he had never been a fanatic advocate of the former regime, nor did he
feel nostalgia over it. He concedes that in material terms and as for
freedom, the current regime is definitely better.
     "However, in certain respect, I mind many things more now. People have
lost certainties. Social certainties, health care - we've abandoned them too
quickly. I also mind that many leaches gained huge properties at the cost of
other people," Remek says.
     "When I was joining the KSC, I was young and I trusted the ideals. Even
now I don't condemn all of them...Many people whom I esteemed were
communists and strived for better life of people on the Earth," Remek says.
     He says that after his famous flight he received lots of invitations
for discussion meetings. Moreover, fearing for his safety, his superior
officers were reluctant to let him continue his work of a pilot. All this
thwarted his job of a pilot, which he finally gave up in the second half of
the 1980s.
     Already under the former regime, he fell into prominent communists'
disfavour for having divorced his first wife, a daughter of a top communist
functionary.
     "To a certain extent, I am still viewed as a hot potato, since I'm not
involved in politics or any political party. Moreover, I haven't publicly
blasted my past as many people did after 1989...I haven't thrown away the
distinctions bestowed on me.  Why should I do so? I'm trying to live a
normal life," Remek says.