THE VOICE OF FREE EUROPE: His name was Sergei Krikalev. When he left Earth in 1991, he did so as a Soviet citizen. But when he returned, the nation that had sent him into space didn’t exist anymore.

It had taken off from the Baikonur cosmodrome to the orbiting station Mir, the highlight of Soviet engineering. A mission scheduled for five months.

But as he floated above the planet, the world beneath him was disintegrating.

Moscow was ravaged by riots and riots. Republicans proclaimed independence. One day, from Earth, he received the most absurd message a cosmonaut could receive:

‘The country that sent you up there doesn’t exist anymore. And we run out of funds to bring you back.’

Suspended in space, Sergei became the last citizen of the Soviet Union. While orbiting above a planet that was rewriting its boundaries, his body weakened. His bones lost calcium, loneliness weighed, radiation increased the risk of cancer.

He could have gotten away. There was a rescue pod.

He would have left the station Mir to crash onto Earth. So, he chose to stay in alone watching over a ghost nation.

The new emerging post-Communist Russia was in crisis. To keep the Mir station alive, they began selling space mission seats.

Countries such as Japan, Austria, and Germany bought these seats. This helped Russia recover funds. The space had become a market and Sergei, his silent guardian.

311 days have passed.

I finally landed on March 25, 1992. He did so on the steppe of Kazakhstan. It was no longer the Soviet Union. A man emerged from the capsule. He wore a tracksuit that still read ‘CCCP’ and held in his hands a flag that represented a dissolved empire.

His hometown, Leningrad, was now called Saint Petersburg. His salary, 600 rubles, was barely enough for a kilo of sausages.

The world had been changed, but he hadn’t. He was disciplined, calm and loyal.

Two years later, he was named Hero of Russia.

He flew with NASA. He was the first man to reach the International Space Station. He was the last to leave the Mir. The last to carry the letters of a disappeared empire on his chest. The last one to embody a vanished dream among the stars.

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