Tribune: “Why we must rename rue Valentina Terechkova in Toulouse”
Christophe Furger is a cell biologist, Doctor from the Pierre and Marie Curie University, and currently directs a toxicology research program at the LAAS/CNRS in Toulouse, but it is as a citizen that he writes to us about the cosmonaut Russian Valentina Tereshkova. He considers, in view of current events in Ukraine, that the street which bears his name in Toulouse should be renamed…
“I happen to have a sandwich on Friday at noon on the terrace of a bakery in the Lespinet district of Toulouse. The street sign that sits in the middle of the sidewalk can only attract the passer-by. It reads: St. Valentina Tereshkova, cosmonaut This information had tickled my curiosity a few years ago and I had then become interested in the great lady to discover that she was the first woman to have gone into space..
A heroine of the conquest of space
At the controls of the Vostok 6 spacecraft, she made this first flight of 2 days and 23 hours in June 1963 from the Baikonur cosmodrome. She was then 26 years old and to this day she remains the youngest woman to have walked in space. We will have to wait 19 years, Wikipedia tells us, before another woman, Svetlana Savitskaïa, still a Soviet, takes over and 21 years before the American Sally Ride sticks to it. Valentina also remained in the history of the conquest of space the only woman in the world to have performed a solo flight.
I had stayed with this impressive and heroic journey when I read two years ago in the international press that Valentina Tereshkova is close to Vladimir Putin, dean of the Duma deputies and representative of the President’s United Russia party. And that as such, she has just been the initiator of the amendment which will allow the latter to modify the constitution and keep power until 2036. The project has been carefully orchestrated so that the initiative is not perceived as coming from the President, the deputy Tereshkova suddenly taking the floor during a session of the Duma on March 10, 2020 to present the context of the project. She will end her short speech with these words: “… the president must be allowed to run for this position again”.
“Other women happy to replace her”
Since this coup de theater which quickly led to the modification of the Russian constitution that we know, my perception of this street sign which always faces me on Friday noon in front of my sandwich was troubled. Suffice to say that since the beginning of the Russian invasion in Ukraine, I find it indecent to say the least.
At a time when the yachts of the Russian oligarchs are being boarded, the assets of those close to the Kremlin are being frozen, at a time when Vladimir Putin is threatening peace in the world, at a time, above all, of this incredible outpouring of solidarity which is being set up with Ukraine and the Ukrainians and of which we must be proud, I think that the municipality of Toulouse, whose city it should be recalled is twinned with Kiev, should take note that we can no longer honor for a long time no actor in this policy of evil. There are countless other women, whether they have conquered space or not, who deserve to replace the architect of Putin’s stay in power until 2036 on the street sign of the Lespinet district.