Let’s say that during the cold war the USSR messed up quite a few calculations and sent cosmonauts back home landing them in US soil. What would happen to them? Would they be killed on the spot? Would they be arrested? I have read somewhere that the soyuz capsule had instructions printed on the outside teaching people how to open it up, so the possibility of the thing not falling on the intended location was real.
There would have been a very public and very generous welcoming of the space visitors and after a quarantine they would be sent home.
Killed? WTF?
On edit: they would have been arrested in the sense they weren’t free to just leave, but not in any criminal sense.
Just a guess, (and I do know that guesses should be held until the first factual answer), we would have treated them the same as American astronauts. We would have rescued them, treated them as guests, and probably have taken them to the nearest Soviet embassy so they could be returned home.
After all, when Apollo 13 had its accident, the Soviets offered to assist in rescuing the astronauts should they have splashed down closest to one of their ships. And there was the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz flight when the spacecraft of the two nations docked and the astronauts and cosmonauts visited each others’ capsules. Even during the space race, the astronauts and cosmonauts viewed each other as fellows. And once the race to the moon was over, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. viewed space exploration as an area where cooperation was more beneficial than competition.
EDIT - Basically what Lubricious Integument said.
There would have been no threats or hostility to the cosmonauts at all unless it was intentional and, even then, it would have been towards the Soviet government and not the individuals.
The whole point of the Cold War was that the U.S. and the Soviet Union could not go to true war with each other because of the very real risk of mutual annihilation through total nuclear war. There were many incidents of Soviets crossing into U.S. space and vice-versa (and there still are). Most of it is just posturing. That isn’t to say that such a thing couldn’t blow up (literally) into a very serious international incident but cosmonauts landing on U.S. soil by mistake isn’t among those. The U.S. would probably have taken them into custody, taken careful documentation of their space vehicle (which is much more valuable than people) and then release them to go home.
There was a similar incident withGary Powers that got shot down on a U-2 spy mission supposedly by lucky chance. He was captured by the Russians and it created some foreign relations problems between the U.S. and Soviet Union but he was on a spy mission on still was not killed for it even though it was during very intense times between the superpowers.
The Cold War and the risks associated with it were very real (and still are to some degree) but that type of game theory keeps low level hostilities like you are describing to a minimum. There is no way that either side is willing to risk the fate of both countries by being aggressive towards some of their most celebrated heroes.
Remember that the Soviet Union and the U.S. were somewhat uncomfortable allies during WWII and we run the International Space Station together today no matter the political climate (the Russians are the only ones left with the rockets to get people and supplies back and forth to keep them alive). The Soviet Union may have been the most feared enemy at some points in recent history but we have never been actively at war directly because that would mean the end of most of Western Civilization and both sides know that.
Their capsule would be confiscated, of course, and picked apart down to the last nut and bolt to see what’s in it.
The cosmonaut(s) would probably be treated as honored guests (sort-of) of the U. S. government. It would be good propaganda to be seen treating them well, and there would be no reason not to. They would probably be detained, perhaps fairly gently interrogated (again, there’d probably be no reason to interrogate them intensely). There would be whirlwind negotiations with the USSR to return them home (which would be a foregone conclusion, of course, but it’s all just for show).
Recall the national story that it was when Elián González showed up. He was certainly never seen as an enemy in any way (even aside from the fact that he was just 6 or 7 at the time). He was given honored guest treatment. The negotiations with the Cuban government were, for the most part, professional and amicable, with only some obligatory boilerplate anti-American propaganda from Cuba. Any Soviet cosmonauts in America would have probably been given the same sort of treatment.
There would almost certainly have been great public excitement. Especially in the earlier days of the Space Race, there was great public excitement over it all – even Russian cosmonauts were seen as great adventure heroes (even if they did work for the wrong side).
ETA: Note: This is definitely an IMHO answer.
When during the Cold War? The Rescue Agreement was written with this kind of issue in mind, so after 1968 it would have been pretty clear that killing them was not okay.
Probably doesn’t matter when during the Cold War. At any time during the Cold War, it’s hard to imagine any kind of response other than what all of the above posters have suggested, more-or-less.
Why in the universe would there have been even a hint of a glimmer of a wisp of a thought of killing them, before or after 1968?
This remark, from several posts above, gives the only imaginable response to that idea:
I’m in total agreement with what everyone else has said about the killing…ASSUMING the US gub’ment were to find them alive. The US gub’ment would certainly not kill them. However, if they landed in some backwoods hillbilly anti-commie deliverance country, all bets are off.
The only way they’d suffer any harm would be if they landed in the field of a paranoid farmer with a shotgun, who got to them before the officials did.
Oh, wait. There is one possibly-relevant matter that hasn’t been mentioned yet:
The Soviets, at least in all the early years, did their space shots in secret, announcing them to the world only after the (successful) conclusion of each mission. So we should ask: What happens when a Soviet cosmonaut-bearing capsule drops in from outer space, unexpected.
That probably isn’t quite an issue. American military intelligence must certainly have known and tracked all those space shots in real time. (I assume we had the technology back then to know and track such things, even though they were “secret”.) I think, if one came down in America, it wouldn’t have been a total at-the-last-moment surprise to our military.
It would, however, have been a big surprise to the American public, who would have had no possible prior preparation (not even knowing, probably, that the USSR had a manned flight up there).
So everything would have been a last-moment emergency crisis sort of situation. But I don’t think that, after the dust settled (literally), things would not be much different than suggested by all the posts above.
Now, suppose the capsule had clobbered in on American soil, leaving only a six-foot crater and some wisps of protoplasm. That could have been an ugly crisis. Or suppose the capsule landed softly, and we opened it up, only to find dead cosmonauts therein. (Recall, some of the Russian space shots did end that way, only on Russian soil.) Likewise, that could have been a nasty crisis.
Well, I don’t think there would have been a parade.
Or given them corvettes.
Maybe not quite, but perhaps almost. As I remarked above, there was such public excitement about the space shots, that all of the astronauts/cosmonauts/spacemen were seen as great adventure heroes. I recall a lot of excitement over Yuri Gagarin and his flight – First man in space, AND it was full orbital too!
OTOH, there was a massive attitude of competition between the United States and USSR over the space race (remember, too, that the USSR was ahead of us in the early days). In some ways, the whole early space race, at least up to the moon landings, was a just massive PR / propaganda campaign on the part of both USA and USSR.
The American public would have some mix of hard-and-bitter feelings toward the Soviets for having any kind of successes at all in their missions, while still being in awe of the heroic adventure heroes, whatever side they were on.
Remember how Gorbachev was received in the United States – cheering crowds, etc. I think Russian cosmonauts who landed in America would have gotten that kind of reception.
As long as the paranoid backwoods anti-commie deliverance farmer with the shotgun didn’t get to them first, of course.
Your commie has no regard for human life, not even his own. And for this reason, men, I want to impress upon you the need for extreme watchfulness. The enemy may come individually, or he may come in strength. He may even come in the uniform of our own troops. But however he comes we must stop him. We must not allow him to gain entrance to this base. Now, I am going to give you three simple rules. First, trust no one, whatever his uniform or rank, unless he is known to you personally. Second, anyone or anything that approaches within 200 yards of the perimeter is to be fired upon. Third, if in doubt, shoot first, and ask questions afterwards. I would sooner accept a few casualties through accident than lose the entire base and its personnel through carelessness. Any variation on these rules must come from me personally. Now, men, in conclusion, I would like to say that, in the two years it has been my privilege to be your commanding officer, I have always expected the best from you, and you have never given me anything less than that.
Probably not but it would have been a curiosity to Americans in general. I can guarantee that the cosmonauts would have gotten some positive press for their general achievements back in Mother Russia and the fact that they made it through their space program. I was fascinated when I met my first Russians while working in IT because they seemed like forbidden fruit to my Cold War raised brain. I had to restrain myself from asking too many questions but they have always been nice and a few have saved my ass.
This is only marginally related but it may give some insight. I just learned a few years ago that there were German POW camps spread all over the Southern U.S. during WWII and one was quite close to where I grew up. I was never aware of it until some much older people mentioned it like it was just an amusing curiosity. They weren’t prisons in any conventional sense. In fact, many of facilities didn’t even have any fences. The POW’s ended up with a movie theaters and weekly rides into nearby small towns to get what they needed as well as decent food. They were no threat because it isn’t like they could get back home to rejoin the war effort because there was no good way to do it based on all the geographical and cultural barriers. People were nice to them in general because they were just very young men that got drafted into an evil war effort.
If Americans can treat thousands of German POW’s well while an actual world war is going on, I am confident that they would have treated cosmonauts very well just a couple of decades later.
Killed…ah?
They would almost certainly have been treated well.
Oh, and of course they would also be encouraged to defect. We wouldn’t force them to, but any who did would be treated very well indeed.
The INS would have deported them for being illegal aliens…
It’s not a space ship but in 1976 Soviet pilot Viktor Belenko defected to the U.S. via Japan in a Mach 3 Mig-25, the highest tech Soviet fighter. The Soviets eventually got the plane back but Belenko settled in the U.S. and had a career as an aerospace engineer. The U.S. government established a trust fund granting him a very comfortable living in later years:
And, Peace On Earth!