The twentieth century has become an era of emancipation. Women became nuclear scientists, aviators, they played football, practiced other sports, until then the former prerogative of the stronger sex.
The world's first state of workers and peasants was in a hurry to consolidate their priority positions in everything that was considered the forefront of civilization. The pioneer of space was our Gagarin. It was necessary to consolidate success. It took a woman to demonstrate the unprecedented opportunities that socialism provided for workers, regardless of gender.
At the same time, the applicant for a place in the spaceship should have had a suitable biography. Tereshkova, like the other four girls selected for the cosmonaut corps, met the main requirements: excellent health, height up to 1m 70 cm, weight less than 70 kg and experience in parachuting. And, of course, proletarian origin.
Of the five, one was chosen. Tereshkova, whose biography was the same as that of millions of Soviet girls, fit perfectly. Born in a small village in the heart of Russia. Father, a collective farm tractor driver, died in Finnish, his mother is a weaver. At the age of seven, like all Soviet children, she went to school, where she studied for seven years. Next - work at the tire factory in Yaroslavl on a working level. The most common biography. Tereshkova studied at evening school and was engaged in parachuting in the flying club. The number of jumps is 10.
The desire for personal and career growth, the desire to study was expressed in the fact that the girl entered the technical school of light industry. A place of work (textile mill) and specialized education could be the key to a successful career. But it happened differently, in 1962 her space biography began. Tereshkova was enrolled in the squad, was trained and successfully passed the exams. A year and three months later, she made her first and only space flight, which lasted three days, during which the Vostok-6 spacecraft manned by her flew around the globe 48 times.
The mission was not easy. There were difficulties with the orientation of the "East", in weightlessness Valentina Vladimirovna felt very bad, she couldn’t eat, but her strong-willed qualities allowed her to complete the flight successfully.
The glory that the most famous people of the planet could only dream of did not turn the head of a young woman. Tereshkova is an astronaut, her biography began with the words "first in the world", almost like that of Yuri Gagarin. Streets were called by her name, songs were written about her, she smiled from postage stamps. But Valentina Vladimirovna did not rest on her laurels, she studied at the Air Force Academy. Zhukovsky, and then engaged in the preparation of a new generation of space explorers. In addition, she was passionate about social activities, was repeatedly elected deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.
Valentina Vladimirovna married in the same starry for her in 1963. The wedding was played in the government residence on the Sparrow (then Lenin) mountains less than six months after the space flight. Among the guests was the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU N. S. Khrushchev. Apparently, it was he who decided what her further biography should be. Tereshkova married Andrian Nikolaev, also an astronaut. The couple had a daughter, Lena, who today is the only person on Earth whose both parents have been in orbit. Despite this unique fact, family life failed. According to Tereshkova herself, one can judge that her husband showed despotism in a relationship. After the divorce, she remarried, this time to the doctor Julia Shaposhnikova.