Alexei Arkhipovich Leonov[a] (30 May 1934 – 11 October 2019) was a Soviet and Russian cosmonaut and aviator, Air Force major general, writer, and artist.

On 18 March 1965, he became the first person to conduct a spacewalk, exiting the capsule during the Voskhod 2 mission for 12 minutes and 9 seconds.

Leonov was twice Hero of the Soviet Union (1965, 1975),[3] a Major General of Aviation (1975), laureate of the USSR State Prize (1981), and a member of the Supreme Council of the United Russia party (2002–2019).

It was part of a conscientious drive by the authorities to eradicate anyone who showed too much independence or strength of character.

[5] The Soviet government encouraged its citizens to move to Soviet-occupied Prussia, so in 1948 his family relocated to Kaliningrad.

[8] He applied to the Academy of Arts in Riga, Latvia, but decided not to attend due to the high tuition costs.

[8] He was one of the 20 Soviet Air Forces pilots selected to be part of the first cosmonaut training group in 1960.

[10] At the end of the spacewalk, Leonov's spacesuit had inflated in the vacuum of space to the point where he could not re-enter the airlock.

[10][12] While on the mission, Leonov drew a small sketch of an orbital sunrise, the first work of art made in outer space.

[15] Leonov was to have commanded the next mission to Salyut 1, but this was scrapped after the deaths of the Soyuz 11 crew members, and the space station was lost.

[16] The next two Salyuts (actually the military Almaz station) were lost at launch or failed soon after, and Leonov's crew stood by.

[24][25] Arthur C. Clarke wrote in his notes to his 1982 novel 2010: Odyssey Two that, after a 1968 screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Leonov pointed out to him that the alignment of the Moon, Earth, and Sun shown in the opening is essentially the same as that in Leonov's 1967 painting Near the Moon, although the painting's diagonal framing of the scene was not replicated in the film.

[28] Together with Valentin Selivanov, Leonov wrote the script for the 1980 science fiction film The Orion Loop.

[31] He received recognition as an artist (he collaborated with Andrei Sokolov), and his works are widely exhibited and published.

[32] In 2004, Leonov and former American astronaut David Scott began work on a dual memoir covering the history of the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union.