космонавты

[Giuliano Vivaldi]

The term космонавты refers to the riot police - I'm pretty sure it is a reference to the headgear they use which looks surprisingly similar to the headgear of space cosmonauts.
  
Giuliano Vivaldi,
Independent Film scholar,
giulianovivaldi at hotmail.com

>From a linguistic perspective, I'm interested in the reference to космонавты.  It was suggested to me by a 16 year-old native speaker that this term can denote a stupid person in a position of power.  Can anyone corroborate this?  I've never come across it before.
  		 	   		  
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