The people at the base of the rocket: who is depicted on the Monument to the Conquerors of Space

The Monument to the Conquerors of Space near VDNKh honours the people whose work made spaceflight possible, rather than a single crew or spacecraft. The rocket is visible from afar; the answer to who is depicted lies at its base. Bronze high reliefs depicting scientists, designers and workers adorn two sides of the granite pedestal. The approved description of the monument’s protected features specifies their number: 29. A separate sculpture of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky connects this collective image with the man who contemplated spaceflight long before it became a reality.

The original competition design was called ‘The People as Creators’. The name offers a key to the composition: the achievement is shown above, and below are the people who made it possible. The high relief should not, however, be read as a complete list of those involved in a particular launch. The official description identifies professions above all; differing accounts remain of what happened to a planned portrait of Sergei Korolev.

To whom was the monument originally dedicated?

The obelisk originally proposed for the competition was dedicated to the launch of the first artificial Earth satellite on 4 October 1957, and to the work of the scientists, designers and workers who made it possible. The Museum of Cosmonautics dates the announcement of the nationwide competition to March 1958. The winning design, ‘The People as Creators’, was created by architects Alexander Kolchin and Mikhail Barshch with sculptor Andrei Faidysh-Krandievsky; Lev Shchipakin contributed to the engineering work. The monument was unveiled in 1964, by which time people had also travelled into space. Its final dedication was therefore broader than the event that first inspired it.

Between 1957 and 1964, what the public sought to commemorate had changed. When the competition began, the aim was to mark an achievement that had just ushered in the space age. By the time the monument opened, visitors knew of Yuri Gagarin’s flight and other crewed launches. The rocket could represent both sets of events without depicting any one historical spacecraft. The figures at its base preserved the original message: every launch depended on the work of many people.

The pedestal retains the texts of TASS reports on the first satellite and the flight of the Vostok spacecraft. A document from the Moscow Department of Cultural Heritage also lists inscriptions recording later achievements, including some dated 1965 and 1966. This is an important distinction when interpreting the monument: inscriptions across the ensemble record a history that continued after the monument’s unveiling in 1964. A later inscription should not be presented as evidence of the original competition design.

What did the competition brief require?

The competition was prompted by a specific event — the launch of the satellite on 4 October 1957. The Cosmonautics Museum’s virtual exhibition sets out the competition terms, published in Izvestia on 9 March 1958. Entrants were asked to create a composition expressing the launch of the first artificial satellite through architecture and sculpture; they were also required to show the role of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. The figure of the scientist beside the planned obelisk was therefore a response to the original brief, rather than an arbitrary decorative addition.

Entries were submitted under mottos in sealed envelopes. This kept the artists’ names hidden during judging, allowing the motto ‘The People as Creators’ to present an idea to the jury without identifying its authors. According to the museum’s virtual exhibition, by August 1958 around a thousand plans, calculations, drawings and models had arrived from 114 cities in the USSR and abroad. The entries were displayed at the Manege. Sources differ on the number of submissions: the historical section of a state expert assessment report records more than three thousand designs and dates the competition to 1957. Without a record of how the entries were counted, these figures cannot confidently be reconciled; what matters for this article is that the sources agree on the winner’s name and motto.

The Cosmonautics Museum notes that the three prizewinning designs portrayed a rocket launch in different ways. In ‘The People as Creators’, the artists raised the rocket above groups of people at the base and placed Tsiolkovsky in front of the obelisk. This brought together the themes of launch and labour set out in the competition brief. The winning model was not yet a depiction of the finished monument: a 1962 album showing the right-hand side of the relief confirms that work on the sculpture continued before the monument’s unveiling in 1964.

The Cosmonautics Museum’s virtual exhibition cites an archival reference to Decree No. 316 of the USSR Council of Ministers, dated 10 March 1960: the government approved the design and changed the site for the obelisk. Under the terms of the 1958 competition, the monument was to stand in front of the Moscow State University building on the Lenin Hills. Following the decree, the site became a public garden near VDNKh. The early competition models were therefore designed for a different urban setting and cannot be used without qualification to describe the final arrangement of the ensemble on Prospekt Mira.

A report by Radius Tour Bureau on a guided walk around VDNKh notes that the group began at the monument and the guide drew attention to the theme of collective effort. This records a moment in the tour, not the sculptor’s intentions. It shows why this is a fitting place to move from the grand story of the Space Age to the less prominent figures at the monument’s base.

Why was the project called ‘The People as Creators’?

The competition title credited the achievement to the team of people who made it possible. The sculptor depicted people on two sides of the base, while the architects raised a rocket above them. The connection between the relief and the launch is tangible: those depicted researched, designed and made what was needed for the flight. This is how their occupations are described in the state historical and cultural expert assessment report, which includes the high reliefs among the ensemble’s protected features.

The project’s title draws attention to something easily missed because of the obelisk’s height. From a distance, the monument looks like the silvery trail of a rocket. Up close, the granite base offers another perspective: the achievement in space is expressed through human labour. This interpretation follows from comparing the project’s title with the figures depicted; it does not suggest that every figure is a portrait of an individually identified specialist.

The monument’s creators had different professional roles. Barsh and Kolchin were responsible for the spatial design, Faidysh-Krandievsky for the sculptural vision, and Shchipakin contributed to the engineering. The composition of the team itself shows why the monument is difficult to place in a single genre. It brings together sculpture, design and craftsmanship. The same combination of disciplines is reflected in its dedication to the people of the space programme, although the number of people involved in that programme was vastly greater than the relief could depict.

How did the design change before the unveiling?

The winning design differed from what visitors see at VDNKh today. According to the Museum of Cosmonautics, the designers initially proposed a 50-metre obelisk with a frosted-glass trail that could be lit from within. It was later clad in polished titanium sheets, and its final height was more than double the original. For this article, the significant change is in the material rather than the scale: a metal familiar to the space industry became the surface of a monument to the makers of space technology.

The museum credits Sergei Korolev with the suggestion to use titanium. The state expert assessment report describes the work in greater detail: specialists at his design bureau calculated the internal structure and the cutting patterns for the cladding sheets, while engineer Vladimir Laptev worked on the frame at the Proektstalkonstruktsiya Institute. The same document names the Verkhnyaya Salda Metallurgical Plant, where the ingots were rolled; VIAM, which developed the technical specifications; and the Lavochkin Plant in Moscow, where the pieces were shaped. The report lists those involved in making the monument; they cannot automatically be regarded as the models for the bronze figures.

According to the Museum of Cosmonautics’ virtual exhibition, specialists from more than twenty ministries and government agencies helped develop the monument. That figure refers to the monument’s construction, not the satellite programme. A sculptor, architects, engineers, foundry workers and installation crews worked on the bronze, stone and titanium plume. This division of labour helps explain how such a complex project was realised. It echoes the story told by the relief, but does not prove that its creators consciously intended a symbolic parallel between the two.

Materials published by the Museum of Cosmonautics help trace the creation of the Monument to the Conquerors of Space: a model from 1959, a plan for the future museum from 1962, and an image of the right-hand high relief from the album Conquerors of Space, also dating from 1962. These dates show that work on the base was under way before the monument’s towering section was completed in 1964. Anyone looking at the monument today sees the result of a series of decisions, rather than a design approved all at once in 1958.

Who is depicted in the bronze high reliefs?

The approved heritage designation specifies who is depicted on the Monument to the Conquerors of Space: scientists, designers and workers, 29 figures in all. The high reliefs appear on both sides of the granite pedestal. The Museum of Cosmonautics describes them more broadly as depictions of Soviet people from different professions who took part in space exploration. It is therefore more accurate to see them as a collective portrayal of the people behind that work than to try to identify every figure from a single search image or a tourist’s retelling.

This distinction matters. The scientist, designer and worker represent different stages of a shared undertaking: defining the problem and conducting research, turning calculations into a design, then making and assembling it. The relief does not tell us how many hours each stage took or who carried out each task. It makes visible the way the result depended on people working together. In a photograph of the monument taken from a distance, that idea almost disappears along with the barely discernible human figures at its base.

Two sources, each describing a different aspect of the work, help establish the scale of the composition. The historical section of the expert assessment report says the creators initially planned figures four metres tall, while the museum’s virtual exhibition describes the cast bronze figures as four metres tall. Together, these accounts show the substantial scale of the completed relief while preserving the distinction between the original plan and the finished work. The report’s dimensions of seven metres in height and 23 metres in length for the entire composition refer specifically to the original design; they cannot be applied to the monument as it stands without measuring the finished work.

Why are the figures described as a high relief?

The high reliefs of the Monument to the Conquerors of Space are bronze compositions on the sides of its pedestal; this term is used in the official heritage protection document. The Great Russian Encyclopaedia defines a high relief as one in which a raised form projects from the background plane by more than half its volume or is partly detached from it. For visitors, this description is more precise than calling it a ‘drawing on a wall’: the figures extend into the space in front of the granite while remaining connected to the monument’s shared base.

In its caption to the 1962 project album, the museum’s virtual exhibition uses the term ‘bas-relief’, while its own description of the completed ensemble calls it a ‘high relief’. The difference in terminology does not prove that there were two distinct sculptural programmes. For the surviving work, we use the term found in the official heritage protection document. This allows us to compare a photograph taken during the work with what is protected today, without treating the project photograph as an exact record of the final arrangement of figures.

Is there a recognisable person among these representative figures?

Yes. The Museum of Cosmonautics’ virtual exhibition identifies Yuri Gagarin: in one of the high reliefs, he climbs a metal ladder towards a spacecraft. He can be identified from the museum’s description and his action in the composition. The exhibition describes the scientists, engineers and workers as representative figures. The scene brings together the man who was to board the spacecraft and those who built it, but does not identify the other figures by name. Doing so would require a document linking each person to a particular sculpted portrait.

The Museum of Cosmonautics’ virtual exhibition shows a photograph from the early 1960s of Gagarin, the monument’s creators and a film crew in a workshop, with the relief behind them. The photograph confirms that the cosmonaut saw the work before the bronze was installed near VDNKh. The caption, however, says nothing about whether he posed for the sculptor, approved his figure or helped choose where it would be placed. Those details cannot be established from a single photograph.

What is known about how the bronze figures were made?

The high reliefs were cast in sections at the Monumentskulptura factory in Leningrad and assembled in Moscow. The state expert assessment report recounts an account by architect Alexander Kolchin: after casting, the sections were mechanically finished, the sprues removed and the surfaces chased. Some sections were also joined into larger units before shipment to Moscow. Transport by road limited the size of these assembled units. At the site, the sections were joined using fastenings and welding.

The sequence of assembly recorded in the report is particularly revealing: the craftsmen installed the bronze groups first, then assembled the granite backdrop behind them. The visible combination of bronze and stone was therefore not cast as a single piece. What viewers see as one continuous scene was built from separate parts. This technical detail does not, by itself, explain the meaning of the figures, but it offers a clearer understanding of how the sculptor and foundry workers created this depiction of a group.

The figure of 29 in the heritage protection document refers to the sculptural composition as described there. It would be misleading to divide the figures into imagined occupational groups or invent a sequence ‘from left to right’ without a specific account to support it. A museum’s virtual exhibition shows the right side of the relief in a 1962 album, but the photograph of the design and the 2021 description of the protected features have different documentary standing. The former helps trace the artists’ work; the latter confirms which elements of the ensemble are protected.

Why is Sergei Korolev absent from the figures?

The Museum of Cosmonautics reports that Faidysh-Krandievsky originally included Sergei Korolev in the high relief, but his figure was later removed. The museum’s account offers two possible explanations: the designer believed that other participants were more deserving of commemoration; or his portrait was removed because his work was classified. The museum’s published account cites no document that would allow us to choose between these explanations. To present either reason as certain would go beyond the available evidence.

The Museum of Cosmonautics’ virtual exhibition states without qualification that Korolev was omitted because of the secrecy surrounding his work. A separate article by the same museum also presents the possibility that he himself objected. Both sources confirm that the planned portrait of Korolev did not appear in the finished relief. Until a document recording the change to the design or direct testimony from those involved comes to light, the choice between the two explanations remains open: the categorical wording of the virtual exhibition’s caption does not, by itself, settle the matter.

Korolev’s absence from the relief does not mean he played no part in the monument’s history. The museum credits him with choosing titanium cladding for the rocket’s trail and proposing that a museum of cosmonautics be housed inside the base. The expert assessment report also describes structural calculations carried out by specialists from Korolev’s design bureau. These were different roles: someone could help bring the project to life without appearing among the portraits in the finished work.

The high relief on the monument’s base should not be confused with the later memorials on the Alley of Cosmonauts. The museum dates the creation of this memorial space to 1967, three years after the monument opened; a bust of Korolev was installed here at that time. This was the next stage in the development of the site as a place of remembrance. It does not change the question of whom the original designers depicted on the bronze sides of the monument’s pedestal.

Why is there a statue of Tsiolkovsky in front of the obelisk?

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky is part of the same ensemble, depicted as a scientist seated before the rocket. The official description identifies his sculpture as a seated figure of grey granite on its own pedestal; the heritage designation groups it with the Monument to the Conquerors of Space. The sculptor Faidysh-Krandievsky had already planned to place Tsiolkovsky before the obelisk in his design for “The People as Creators”. His presence in the launch scene is therefore no accidental later addition.

Their placement together follows a clear chronology. Tsiolkovsky represents the theoretical beginnings of spaceflight, the bronze figures the collective effort, and the rocket the achievement that required both theory and technology. This is an interpretation of the composition, not a verbatim explanation from its creators. It rests on the placement of the sculptures, the competition design and the monument’s official description. A separate inscription on Tsiolkovsky’s pedestal calls him the founder of cosmonautics.

The ensemble was originally proposed for Sparrow Hills. According to the museum, it was moved because the tall obelisk would have competed visually with the Moscow State University building. The monument was ultimately placed near VDNKh on Prospekt Mira. The idea of spaceflight thus took shape as a sequence in the city: from the alley to the seated scientist, from his figure to the people on the base, and from them to the ascending rocket. This progression is visible in the arrangement of the ensemble itself, without assigning invented names to its sculpted figures.

What does the statue of Tsiolkovsky add to the story of the people behind space exploration?

The 1958 competition brief specifically called for Konstantin Tsiolkovsky’s role to be shown. Faidysh-Krandievsky placed the scientist before the obelisk, at the centre of the broad flight of steps. The official report describes him as a seated figure of grey granite. A virtual exhibition by the Museum of Cosmonautics adds a detail that is easy to see for yourself: Tsiolkovsky’s hand rests on a star chart spread across his knee. The sculptor portrayed the theorist deep in thought, rather than posing as a participant in a ceremonial occasion.

Faidysh-Krandievsky had already depicted Tsiolkovsky. A study by T. P. Musatova, published in the proceedings of a scholarly conference, dates the unveiling of the Kaluga monument to 1 June 1958. The Museum of Cosmonautics’ virtual exhibition gives the same year, while a news item published by a Kaluga institution in August 2026 gives 1959. The expert assessment of the Moscow ensemble directly compares the two designs: in both Kaluga and VDNKh, the obelisk is paired with a figure of the theorist, but the Moscow version has a sloping line suggesting ascent. This continuity in the artistic brief is documented; it is not an assumption based on the visual resemblance of two distinct monuments.

The Museum of Cosmonautics reports that Faidysh-Krandievsky and workers at the Mytishchi Art Casting Plant spent three years working on the 40-tonne block of granite brought in for the Moscow sculpture of Tsiolkovsky. This detail brings the labour behind the ensemble into focus: one scientist was portrayed in stone, but both the sculptor and the factory craftsmen worked to create his likeness. The weight given in the museum’s account refers to the original block; it does not state the weight of the finished sculpture.

Tsiolkovsky died before the first satellite was launched. Through the arrangement of its elements, the Moscow ensemble connects his scientific legacy with the events of 1957 and the spaceflights that followed. This aspect of the design is documented by the museum: the competition brief specified the scientist’s role, his figure forms part of the composition, and high reliefs depicting groups of people stand nearby. The sequence ‘idea — collective effort — launch’ can be inferred from the arrangement of the elements; it is no substitute for Tsiolkovsky’s biography or a full history of the Soviet space programme.

What else does the monument’s base reveal about the time when it was created?

The inscriptions on the granite help distinguish when the monument was conceived, when it was unveiled and when later achievements were added to the story it tells. The expert assessment records TASS reports from 1957 and 1961 on the pedestal, along with inscriptions about events in 1965 and 1966. The first pair recalls the satellite and the first human spaceflight; the second shows that the story of achievement continued after the monument was built. Together, the inscriptions trace stages of the space programme before and after the unveiling.

According to the Museum of Cosmonautics, Korolev proposed placing a cosmonautics museum in the base of the planned monument in March 1960. Space was set aside for it in the pedestal, but the museum did not open until 10 April 1981. These two dates distinguish the design decision from the use of the completed building. The bronze high reliefs were installed in time for the monument’s unveiling in 1964; the museum inside its base began operating much later.

The official list of protected features includes more than the rocket and the sculpture of Tsiolkovsky. It also covers the bronze figures, inscriptions and arrangement of the monuments. This matters when interpreting the site’s history: the ensemble’s meaning lies in more than its striking vertical form. The inscriptions record events, the figures depict those whose work made them possible, the seated scientist recalls the ideas that came before, and the rocket brings these elements together in a single composition.

Why did the story of the ensemble continue after its unveiling in 1964?

The monument and the statue of Tsiolkovsky were unveiled together on 4 November 1964. Captions in the museum’s virtual exhibition identify Yuri Gagarin, Valentina Tereshkova, other cosmonauts and the creators of the ensemble on the platform in Vladimir Cheredintsev’s photographs of the ceremony. This helps distinguish between the people depicted as bronze figures in the monument and those present at the historic unveiling in the archive photographs. The list of attendees should not be assumed to match the figures on the relief.

The designers proposed the Alley of Space Heroes as an extension of the monument in November 1962, while work on the monument was still under way. According to the museum’s virtual exhibition, it was planned to stretch for 250 metres. In February 1967, the Moscow City Council decided to install busts of Gagarin, Tereshkova, Belyayev, Leonov and Korolev here. The alley opened on 4 October that year, marking the tenth anniversary of the launch of the first satellite. The 1964 relief depicts a collective endeavour, while the later monuments honour individuals. Their proximity does not mean that the other figures in the composition are portraits of specific people.

The first monument to the chief designer appeared on the alley after his death in January 1966, when his name became public. During the 2006 reconstruction, the bust was moved to the Korolev Memorial House Museum on 1st Ostankinskaya Street. A different monument to the designer was unveiled on the renovated alley on 3 September 2008: a five-metre bronze figure by Salavat and Sergei Shcherbakov. The museum’s chronology distinguishes three separate works: the portrait planned for the high relief but never made, the bust from 1967 that was later moved, and the sculpture unveiled in 2008.

In April 1981, the Museum of Cosmonautics opened in the base of the monument, as Korolev had envisaged during its design. The granite pedestal now serves two purposes: outside, it commemorates people and events; inside, it provides space for a museum account told through objects. The 2021 heritage protection document, reproduced in the expert assessment, safeguards not only the rocket’s silhouette but also the high reliefs, inscriptions, figure of Tsiolkovsky and their arrangement. To understand the monument, it is therefore important to distinguish between the original design, the ensemble as unveiled and the later history of its use.

How do the inscriptions carry the story beyond the date of the unveiling?

The official record notes that the left side of the pedestal bears TASS reports on the launch of the satellite on 4 October 1957 and the flight of Vostok on 12 April 1961. The right side records the first human spacewalk in 1965, Luna 9’s soft landing and Luna 10’s entry into lunar orbit in 1966. The monument was unveiled in November 1964, so the inscriptions about these later events were added to its commemorative account afterwards. The record does not give the exact date when those inscriptions were added.

The TASS report on the satellite begins by referring to the ‘extensive and demanding work of research institutes and design bureaux’. The words carved into the granite name the institutions involved in its creation; the bronze high reliefs depict people from different professions, including workers whom the quoted passage does not list. The report on Vostok mentions a person on board without naming him; the museum exhibition separately identifies Gagarin in the relief. The inscriptions and sculpture complement each other in specific but distinct ways.

The front of the pedestal bears lines by Nikolai Gribachyov and a dedication to achievements in space exploration. The words ‘our’ and ‘the Soviet people’ give the monument a collective audience. On the sides, the heritage protection record identifies 29 bronze figures of scientists, designers and workers. Seeing the words and figures together gives a clearer sense of the competition entry’s title, ‘The People as Creators’, than a photograph of the rocket alone, in which the base is often barely visible.

How can we interpret the monument without jumping to conclusions?

The official heritage protection record describes 29 bronze figures of scientists, designers and workers on the two sides of the pedestal; a granite statue of Tsiolkovsky stands in front of the obelisk. The competition entry’s title, ‘The People as Creators’, and the inscriptions on the base connect the work depicted with spaceflight. This leads to the central conclusion: the monument’s creators portrayed the pioneers of space exploration as the people who made that achievement possible. Cosmonaut Gagarin appears in the relief alongside people from different professions.

The heritage protection record does not identify every figure by name, and publications by the Museum of Cosmonautics offer differing explanations for the absence of Korolev’s portrait. The accounts of events in 1965 and 1966 belong to the monument’s history after its unveiling. Its original concept should therefore be reconstructed from the competition brief, the project’s motto and early materials, while the later inscriptions should be read as a subsequent layer. Seen this way, the towering rocket represents the achievement itself, while the figures at its base show the people whose work made the launch possible.

This connection can be explored in the cityscape on the ‘VDNKh and Space’ route: the meeting point is beside the statue of Tsiolkovsky, and the monument and Cosmonauts Alley are part of the walk. Examining the high reliefs makes it easier to distinguish the memorial to the scientist, the collective image of those who made spaceflight possible, and the rocket that represents the result of their work.

Sources

1. Museum of Cosmonautics: The ‘Conquerors of Space’ monument turns 55!
2. State historical and cultural expert assessment report on the ‘Conquerors of Space’ monument
3. Radius: the ‘VDNKh and Space’ route
4. Museum of Cosmonautics: virtual exhibition ‘55 Years of the Alley of Space Heroes’
5. State Museum of the History of Cosmonautics: ‘The Image of K. E. Tsiolkovsky in Art’
6. Radius: ‘Space Routes and the Secrets of Old Moscow’
7. Great Russian Encyclopedia: ‘High Relief’
8. State Museum of the History of Cosmonautics: ‘Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky’
9. T. P. Musatova: ‘Little-Known Facts About the Monument to K. E. Tsiolkovsky in Kaluga’s Skver Mira’ (2018)