Vincze Miklós at io9 has recently posted some interesting images by Soviet artists showing how they pictured future life in space might be.

While space exploration has historically fueled the imagination of artists and writers, it should also be noted that postwar space programs were often beneficiaries of popular cultural and political sentiments. As historian Slava Gerovitch explains in his recent book on the Soviet space program (Soviet Space Mythologies), communist party and state officials and propaganda tended to hail cosmonauts as heroic figures, while also extolling accomplishment in space as the epitome of Soviet science and engineering.

Fatherland! You lighted the star of progress and peace. Glory to the science, glory to the labor! Glory to the Soviet regime!

The blog RussiaTrek has posted some images of Soviet propaganda posters (see here as well) about the space program that play on some of these very themes. In general, all these images demonstrate that space programs, science fiction, and popular cultural values have historically all had an impact on one another.