This poster was issued by the Soviet travel agency Intourist. Its promotion of the Soviet Union as “the Country of the World’s First Cosmonaut” is intended both to lure foreign visitors and currency to the USSR and to serve as propaganda in the continuing Cold War space race with the United States and its Apollo program. The cosmonaut referred to here was the national hero Yuri Gagarin; on April 12, 1961, he had become the first human being to enter outer space, and subsequently became the subject of much Soviet propaganda. This bold composition does not show Gagarin, however, but the red form of Vostock I, the Soviet spacecraft that carried him into orbit; it is launched into the night sky from earth, on which the expansive territories of the Soviet Union and the word “VISIT” are similarly defined in Soviet Red.