The Vostok programme (Russian: Восто́к, Orient or East) was a Soviet human spaceflight project that succeeded in putting a person into Earth's orbit for the first time. The programme developed the Vostok spacecraft from the Zenit spy satellite project and adapted the Vostok rocket from an existing ICBM design. "Vostok" was a classified word before the first release of the program's name to the press.
There were six manned spaceflights in the Vostok programme, all of which took place between 1961 and 1963. The programme preceded the Voskhod programme, which used modified Vostok capsules. By the late 1960s, those programmes were superseded by the Soyuz programme, which continues as of 2011.
Read more about Vostok Programme: Background, Cosmonaut Selection and Training, Missions
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“In the case of all other sciences, arts, skills, and crafts, everyone is convinced that a complex and laborious programme of learning and practice is necessary for competence. Yet when it comes to philosophy, there seems to be a currently prevailing prejudice to the effect that, although not everyone who has eyes and fingers, and is given leather and last, is at once in a position to make shoes, everyone nevertheless immediately understands how to philosophize.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)