Five months later, Anatoli Artsebarski went home too, but Krikalev didnt mindhe was trained for long-duration flights.
Two years earlier, Krikalev had spent 152 days aboard Mir.
He did not know then, that this mission was going to be his longest.
By December 26, 1991, the dissolution was complete.
The breakup of the Soviet Union put the future of the space program at stake.
But Russias economy was collapsing.
But the new astronautsthe Kazakh and the Austrianwere not qualified to replace Krikalev.
Krikalev reluctantly agreed to stay behind to man the space station while his partner flew back home.
Russian newspapers were full of sympathy for Sergei Krikalev.
And it started to forget about its cosmonaut.
It did not even fetch him back at the appointed time, again for completely worldly reasons.
Krikalevs monthly salary of 500 rubles was barely enough for his family to survive.
The space agency also struggled to send supply crafts loaded with essential supplies to the stranded cosmonauts.
At one point, the Russians even considered selling Mir to the Americans, but NASA showed little interest.
The once communist superpower had fractured into 15 nations.
Presidents had changed, even his hometown of Leningrad had become St. Petersburg.
Krikalev had to be helped out of the Soyuz capsule.
He was pale as flour and sweaty, like a lump of wet dough, writesDiscover Magazine.
The cosmonauts were wrapped in fur-lined coats and placed on chairs.
Someone handed them hot broth to drink.
There was a moment.
You couldnt call it euphoria, but it was very good.
Krikalev emerges from a Soyuz capsule in March 1992.
Krikalev went back to space less than two years later, this time onboard the US Space Shuttle Discovery.
It was thefirst timea Russian cosmonaut was flying together with US astronauts on a US spacecraft.
Krikalev retired from spaceflight in 2007.
