Nikolaev Andrian Grigorievich is the first cosmonaut who left the chair and hovered in the rocket office in Earth orbit without a spacesuit. His whole life was connected with astronautics, and he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union twice.
Andrian Nikolaev is just a Chuvash boy
Andrian Grigorievich was born into a simple peasant family in Chuvashia. His parents worked on an ordinary village farm - his father was a groom and his mother was a milkmaid. Before leaving school, the boy bore the surname Grigoriev, according to the traditions of those times and the area. He never dreamed of astronautics, moreover, he aspired to become a medical assistant, wanted to help people in his native village. But fate turned out differently, and after graduating from a forestry technical school, the boy got into the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy, and then Andrian was selected to the first cosmonaut corps and he became a backup for the legendary Titov.
Career of Andrian Nikolaev
During his "space" career, Andrian made two flights into orbit, for which he was awarded the high title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Its first flight was significant in that during it military exercises were carried out to capture the orbital station and it lasted four days for the first time since the launch of the rockets. During the second flight on the Soyuz-9 spacecraft, the pilots were already hovering inside the rocket without spacesuits, and this led to difficulties in adaptation upon their return to Earth. Later this experience will be called the “Nikolaev effect”.
Subsequently, Andrian Nikolaev was for a long time the commander of the cosmonaut detachment, the deputy head of the center for their training, went in for sports and had the title of master. Nikolaev also left his mark in the political life of the country - he was a deputy of the Central Committee of the CPSU and a member of the Credentials Committee of the State Duma of the Russian Federation.
How Nikolaev lived and died
Nikolaev's only wife was Valentina Tereshkova, with whom he lived for 18 happy years. In the press they were called nothing other than the "space family". In 1964, they had a daughter, Elena, who was immediately rightfully dubbed a "space child", because she was the only offspring whose mother and father devoted their lives to flying into orbit.
Andrian Grigorievich died in 2004, in the city of Cheboksary, where he headed the panel of judges of the All-Russian rural sports games. Controversy flared up around where the cosmonaut Andrian Nikolaev would be buried.
They decided to bury the legendary pilot-cosmonaut in his native village of Shorshely, in Chuvashia. This was insisted on by Andrian's fellow countrymen and the President of the Republic of Chuvashia. But the only daughter of the cosmonaut Elena, who insisted on burying her father in Star City, where his colleagues are buried, strongly disagreed with this decision. However, later she nevertheless agreed with the decision and visited the memorial complex and the grave of her father in his small homeland.
In 2006, the Chuvash Museum of Cosmonautics in the village of Shorshela was named after Andrian Nikolaev, and a chapel was built next to his grave.
