STATION 01: Engels airdrome - Training flight

Galina spends the week immersed in training, encouraging herself by remembering how privileged she is to have this opportunity to be a flyer.

She takes an interest in her glamorous comrade, Anastasiya Samsonova. Galina pretends to herself that she is concerned about the woman’s bourgeois proclivities. Her attention to Moscow fashion, the cut of her uniform and ability to transform her appearance with a quick touch of make-up. But she is secretly fascinated. These things in life— fashion, poise, beauty— are they really just wicked fripperies? Or is it the case that men do not really understand or value them. Even though they are the most easily affected!

Ana no doubts regards Galina’s intense obedience to Party belief as rather ridiculous. She also fears the young woman slightly, after the NKVD interview, as a potential informer. But she helps Galina to brush her hair a certain way and pay more attention to her ‘look’. Galina convinces herself that this attention to ‘smartness’ is part of her role as a Soviet airwoman.