Pavel Ivanovich Belyayev (Russian: Павел Иванович Беляев; born 26 June 1925 in Chelishchevo, now in Vologda Oblast; died 10 January 1970 in Moscow) was a Soviet cosmonaut, air force colonel and holder of the honorary title Pilot-Cosmonaut of the USSR.
In 1942, after completing ten years of schooling, he worked in an industrial plant as a lathe operator. In 1943 he volunteered for the Red Army. In 1945 he finished pilot training school and took part in the Soviet–Japanese War in August–September 1945. He subsequently served in the air arm of the armed forces of the USSR.
From 1956 he studied at the Air Force Academy (later named after Yuri A. Gagarin), graduating in 1959. In 1960 he was assigned to the first group of Soviet cosmonauts and remained a member of the corps until his death in 1970. He trained for flights aboard the Vostok and Voskhod spacecraft.
From 18 to 19 March 1965 he flew in space as commander of the spacecraft Voskhod 2. During this mission the second pilot, Alexei Leonov, carried out the first-ever walk in open space. During the landing of Voskhod 2, a failure of the spacecraft’s solar-orientation system forced Belyayev to orient the vehicle manually and to initiate the retro-rocket firing by hand; both operations were performed for the first time in the history of crewed spaceflight. The mission lasted 26 hours, 2 minutes and 17 seconds. The spacecraft landed in the taiga, about 180 kilometres north of the city of Perm, where the cosmonauts spent more than two days in freezing conditions waiting for rescue teams and driving off wolves by firing a pistol.
