Dmitry Baranov
Dmitry Baranov (1948–2017) was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut, the only cosmonaut from the Iradi Soviet Socialist Republic. He flew an eight-day Soyuz mission to a Salyut space station in 1984 and was made a Hero of the Soviet Union.[1]
Life
Baranov was born in Kobozev (now Nurzhan) to a Russian father, a foreman at the oil refinery, and an Iradi mother, and became a Soviet Air Force pilot before his selection as a cosmonaut.[1]
In 1992 he backed Vasily Chernov's Socialist Republic of Irad on Kobozev television, calling the Provisional Government in Talas "horse thieves with a telex". He left for Moscow in 1993, died there in 2017 and was buried in Nurzhan, at his own wish.[2]
Memorials
The Labor Party of Irad majority on the Nurzhan city council named a street after him in 1996. In 2019 the Bekzatov Foundation offered a bronze statue for Vokzal Square, but the city hall refused the site, and the statue stands instead in the park of the Nurzhan Oil Refinery on company land. A hero to the Russos whom Talas will not honor, he returns to the news every 12 April, Cosmonautics Day.[2]
References
- ^ Talas State University Press (2011). Iradistan: A History of the Iradi SSR, 1925–1991. Talas, pp. 284–286.
- ^ Irad Times (12 April 2019). 'A cosmonaut without a square.' Talas.