Sergei Krikalev: The Last Soviet Citizen Stranded in Space as His Country Disappeared

Sergei Konstantinovich Krikalev was born on August 27, 1958, in Leningrad — a city built on marshlands that had already changed its name twice in the century before it would change again. He studied mechanical engineering at the Leningrad Mechanical Institute, graduating in 1981. Right after, he joined NPO Energia — the organization that designed and built Soviet spacecraft.

He tested flight equipment, developed space operations procedures, and worked at ground control. When the Salyut 7 space station malfunctioned in 1985, Krikalev was part of the rescue team — he helped design the procedure for docking with the uncontrolled station. That same year, he was selected as a cosmonaut. He completed basic training in 1986 and was initially assigned to the Buran program — the Soviet space shuttle that never flew with a crew.

His first mission came in November 1988 aboard Soyuz TM-7. He spent 151 days on Mir alongside commander Alexander Volkov and French astronaut Jean-Loup Chrétien. He conducted spacewalks, tested the new Soviet Manned Maneuvering Unit, and prepared the station for an uncrewed period before returning in April 1989.

Nothing foreshadowed what his second mission would become.

On May 19, 1991, Krikalev launched for a second time toward Mir. With him were commander Anatoly Artsebarsky and British astronaut Helen Sharman — the first Briton in space. Sharman returned after one week, leaving the two men alone aboard the station.

That summer, Krikalev and Artsebarsky carried out six spacewalks. Experiments, maintenance, repairs. The mission was scheduled to last five months. Krikalev would return in October.

But down on Earth, things had started unraveling. In August 1991, tanks rolled through the streets of Moscow. A coup against Gorbachev. Three days of uncertainty. Krikalev followed events from Mir's 350-kilometer altitude — through radio communications and news bulletins that arrived in fragments.

In July — even before the political crisis erupted — the Soviet space program had asked Krikalev a favor. Two planned resupply flights had been cut to one. They needed someone experienced permanently aboard the station. Could he stay a bit longer?

He agreed. He didn't know that “a bit” would turn into months.

The coup failed. But the Soviet Union had already begun to disintegrate. One by one, republics declared independence. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus. In December 1991, the Soviet Union officially ceased to exist. Fifteen new nations emerged where a superpower once stood.

And Krikalev was still up there.

On Mir. Orbiting a country that no longer existed. The flag on his suit — hammer and sickle — no longer represented any state. The Baikonur Cosmodrome, the only place from which he could return, was now on foreign soil: it belonged to Kazakhstan. The landing zone — the fields on the Kazakh steppe — was no longer under Moscow's control.

"I looked down and my country didn't exist anymore. My city had changed its name. I didn't know which country I'd return to." — Sergei Krikalev

His city, Leningrad, had been renamed St. Petersburg while he was in orbit. Krikalev had left a city that no longer exists, in a country that no longer exists.

On October 2, 1991, Soyuz TM-13 arrived at Mir. Aboard were Toktar Aubakirov — a cosmonaut from Kazakhstan — and Franz Viehböck, the first Austrian in space. Neither had been trained for a long-duration mission. Both returned with Artsebarsky on October 10. Commander Alexander Volkov stayed aboard with Krikalev.

The truth was brutally simple: there was no budget. The new Russian Federation inherited an economy in freefall. Inflation skyrocketed. Store shelves were empty. The ruble lost value daily. The space program — once the pride of a superpower — didn't have enough money to launch supplies, let alone a replacement crew.

The replacement mission was postponed once. Twice. Three times. Every month, Krikalev received a new message from ground control: “Stay a little longer.” The months kept adding up. Five months. Six. Seven. Eight.

At one point, the Los Angeles Times ran a story with a headline that said it all: “Junked in Space.” Krikalev's situation became a symbol of an empire collapsing. The world was watching, but no one could bring him down.

Krikalev spent 311 days in space — nearly 10.5 months instead of 5. Every day, Mir completed 16 orbits around Earth. Sixteen sunrises and sixteen sunsets. Every 90 minutes, the entire planet spun beneath his feet.

The loneliness was crushing. Artsebarsky had left in October. Volkov kept him company during the final months, but daily life aboard the station was a loop: experiments, maintenance, exercise to keep muscles from wasting, sleep, and start again. The hum of the ventilation system never stopped.

His lifeline to the outside world was amateur radio. Using the call sign U5MIR, Krikalev regularly communicated with ham radio operators across the globe. One of them, Australian Margaret Iaquinto, spoke with him almost every day for an entire year. Together they achieved something pioneering: the first packet radio communication between an orbiting space station and an amateur radio operator on Earth.

Iaquinto even set up a makeshift digital bulletin board through which the Mir cosmonauts could receive Western news — information about the collapse of the Soviet Union that Moscow didn't always relay in full.

"Was I terrified up there? No. Was I lonely? Yes. Is it the same thing? Sometimes yes." — Sergei Krikalev

His mind never stopped. He kept running experiments. Maintained the station. Conducted spacewalks in a vacuum that would kill anyone in seconds if something went wrong. If anything had happened to him, no one could have mounted a rescue — the nearest help was 350 kilometers straight down.

On March 25, 1992, Krikalev finally returned to Earth. Exactly 311 days, 20 hours, and 54 seconds after launch. The Soyuz capsule touched down in the fields of Kazakhstan — on soil that no longer belonged to the country that had sent him to space.

When the hatch opened, he needed help standing. His muscles and bones had deteriorated significantly after nearly a year in zero gravity. They lifted him into a chair and carried him out. The space hero couldn't even walk.

The world he found wasn't the one he had left. The Soviet Union was gone. Fifteen new nations operated in its place. The economy was in freefall — people queuing at shops, ration coupons instead of money. The ruble had lost enormous value. His city no longer bore the name Leningrad. Even the flag was entirely different.

Krikalev didn't stop. He didn't grow bitter. He didn't retire. Instead, he became the most experienced cosmonaut in history — a living symbol that space exploration can transcend borders and ideologies.

In February 1994, he flew aboard the American Space Shuttle Discovery on mission STS-60. He was the first Russian cosmonaut on a US spacecraft — a symbol of the new world that had emerged after the Cold War. He operated the Shuttle's robotic arm during 130 orbits around Earth over eight days.

In December 1998, on mission STS-88 aboard Endeavour, he helped connect the first two segments of the International Space Station — Russia's Zarya and America's Unity. Alongside mission commander Robert Cabana, he was among the first humans to set foot inside the ISS on December 10, 1998.

Then came Expedition 1 (October 2000 – March 2001) — the first permanent ISS crew. And finally, Expedition 11 (April – October 2005) as commander, during which on August 16, 2005, he surpassed the 748-day career spaceflight record held by Sergei Avdeyev.

The career totals: 803 days, 9 hours, and 39 minutes in space. Eight spacewalks, 41 hours outside the station. He was the first person awarded the title of Hero of the Russian Federation — while already holding the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Two honors, from two countries, one of which no longer exists.

After retiring as a cosmonaut in 2007, Krikalev became vice president of Energia — the very organization where he had started his career decades earlier. He headed the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center from 2009 to 2014. Since then, he has worked at Roscosmos, Russia's space agency, as deputy director general leading crewed spaceflight operations.

His story was captured in the documentary Out of the Present (1995) by Romanian filmmaker Andrei Ujică, and inspired the Cuban film Sergio and Sergei (2017), where a professor in Havana communicates via radio with a cosmonaut stranded on Mir.

But what makes his story singular isn't the numbers. Not the awards. It's what he represents. Krikalev launched as a citizen of a superpower and returned as a citizen of a country in crisis. His homeland forgot him in space — and he never forgot why he flew.

They called him “the last citizen of the Soviet Union.” Because when his country died, he was still up there — in orbit, in silence, staring down at a map that no one recognized anymore. The one piece of the USSR that no one could bring down.