Tereshkova, contrary to the opinion of experts, was personally chosen by Nikita Khrushchev, who liked the woman’s origin: Valentina’s parents were from a simple family. Her father worked as a tractor driver, he died in the Soviet-Finnish war, her mother worked at a textile factory. In addition, Valentina Tereshkova herself began her career at a weaving mill, where she became the secretary of the Komsomol. In this, she favourably differed from Ponomareva, who came from a family of engineers and had a Ph.D. in mathematics, and Solovieva, a famous athlete, and world champion in parachuting. Tereshkova also parachuted, but Solovieva, for example, had about 700 jumps by that time, whilst Tereshkova had less than a hundred.
THE SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 