Alexei Leonov

Alexei Leonov was a Soviet and Russian cosmonaut, Air Force major general, writer, and artist. On 18 March 1965, he became the first person to conduct a spacewalk, exiting the capsule during the Voskhod 2 mission for 12 minutes and 9 seconds. He was also selected to be the first Soviet person to land on the Moon although the project was cancelled. In July 1975, Leonov commanded the Soyuz capsule in the Apollo-Soyuz mission, which docked in space for two days with an American Apollo capsule. Leonov was twice Hero of the Soviet Union (1965, 1975), a Major General of Aviation (1975), laureate of the USSR State Prize (1981), and a member of the Supreme Council of the United Russia party (2002–2019). Leonov was born in Listvyanka, a small town in the Kostroma Oblast, in 1934. His father was a parish clerk and his mother was a housewife. He showed an early interest in art and took private lessons from a local painter. He later moved to St. Petersburg and studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts under Ilya Repin, who became his mentor and friend. He also learned sculpture and etching from other teachers. He specialized in landscape painting and was influenced by the works of Ivan Shishkin and Ivan Kramskoi. He traveled extensively in Russia and abroad, creating sketches and paintings of various places and scenes. He exhibited his works in many exhibitions and received several awards and honors, including the Order of Saint Stanislaus from Tsar Alexander III. He became a member of the Union of Russian Artists and the World of Art group. He also taught drawing at the Odessa Academy of Fine Arts and had many famous students, such as Boris Anisfeld, Pyotr Nilus and Oleksii Shovkunenko. He married Svetlana Pavlovna Dozenko in 1959 and had two daughters, Viktoria and Oksana. He suffered from poor health and became paralyzed in 2014. He died in 2019 and was buried in the Federal Military Memorial Cemetery in Moscow. He is regarded as one of the most original and popular Russian cosmonauts and artists of the 20th century.