Bruhns Sarah - Yuri Gagarin: a biography

On a clear, quiet day in April, 1961, two schoolgirls i n Russias Saratov region looked into the sky and saw a huge, glowing ball hurtling towards the earth. Five tons of charred steel hit the ground, bounced, then fell again, leaving a huge smoking crater in the plains.

Two kilometers away, a peasant farmer and her daughter were frozen to the spot, staring at a bright orange figure with a large, round white head and a huge cape striding towards them. The terrified farmer and her daughter turned to run. Then the figure cried out, not in a space language, but native Russian, Dont be afraid! I am a Soviet like you!

They moved closer to him and saw, instead of a alien invader or a spy, a man in an orange jumpsuit, dragging a cumbersome parachute. He pushed back the visor on his white helmet and they could see the red letters CCCP stenciled on the front. Could it be that you have just descended from space? asked the farmer.

The man stood only 52 and had the broad, plain features of a typical Muscovite. Yes, I have, he said, flashing his winning smile, a smile soon to be famous throughout the entire world. He said, I must find a telephone to Moscow.

The man had just completed a 102-minute orbit of the Earth. His name was Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin. He was twenty-seven years old and he had changed Earths history forever.

Reds Win Running Lead in Race to Control Space screamed a headline. Since the tiny Sputnik had orbited Earth four years earlier, the United States and the Soviet Union had been locked in a battle for more advanced technologies. Both nations had immense technological resources.

The United States had imported several prominent German scientists during Project Paperclip , clearing their records of Nazi involvement in exchange for their knowledge of rocketry . The Soviet Union had the legacy of KonstantinTsiolkovsky , the eccentric eccentric pioneer of astronautics and the de facto leadership of visionary engineer Sergei Korolev, as well was a powerful thirst to prove themselves. Each nation was determined to be the first in space. The Soviet Unions early successes in the Space Race were an undeniable challenge to the United States scientific and political authority.

Yuri was selected out of thousands of candidates for the manned mission because, in addition to his experience and talents, he was a propaganda gold mine. He was from a humble working-class background, completely Russian, and a loyal Party member. He also intuitively knew how to gain peoples trust and remain calm under scrutiny. The ramifications of Gagarins space flight were going to be immense on the stage of world politics, and the government wanted someone who could charm a crowd while staying on message.

Yuri Gagarin became symbol of the triumph of Soviet engineering and Communisms success . In national publications his natural humility was amplified and he was portrayed as the model Soviet citizen. Yuri the Hero modestly forgot to pin on his medals at public events, praised construction workers building a dam, and described his reverence at dear Ilichs [Lenins] tomb in Red Square for Soviet journalists.

Amid all the propaganda, smokescreens, and misinformation about the Space Race, it can be easy to forget Yuri Gagarin was a real man, and what he actually did.

He had been buckled into a suit that no one could be really sure would protect him, loaded into a five-ton steel ball, strapped to a rocket that had failed half its safety tests, and shot into space. No one was even sure humans could survive in zero-gravity, or wouldnt lose their minds in the vacuum of space. He reentered the atmosphere in a tumbling corps de ballet over Africa, ejected from the red-hot steel sphere about 7 kilometers (approximately 4.3 miles) from the ground, and floated to a parachute landing near the Volga River while Russia was only just receiving the news of his flight over the radio.

A triumphant victory tour followed. He charmed the world with his broad, genuine smile, generous spirit, and innate politeness. Streets were named after him and statues erected across the Soviet Union. The American people demanded to know why the Russians were beating them into space, and the Space Race ratcheted up another notch.

Yuri was such a beloved public figure that the government would never risk flying him into space again. While his fellow cosmonauts were training for longer, more elaborate missions, walking in space and performing experiments, Yuri was grounded. He taught, supervised training for new cosmonauts, coached his friends during their spacewalks, and took an advanced engineering degree from Zhukovsky Academy . He spent time with his family whenever he could, but longed to return to space.

In 1967, he was finally allowed to start training for a space mission again, possibly because the new Soviet regime under Leonid Brezhnev wanted to diminish his role in propaganda . He was designated the backup pilot for Vladimir Komorov on the Soyuz 1 mission. However, the mission ended in disaster when the Soyuz 1 experienced numerous mechanical failures and crashed, killing Komorov and devastating the cosmonaut community. Gagarin was grounded again, but despite his grief, continued to persist in his quest to get back into the sky.

On March 27, 1968, Yuri Gagarin and his co-pilotVladimir Seryogin were killed during a training flight. This tragedy, which robbed the world of its first space hero over a year before men would walk on the moon, has been the source of much speculation and conspiracy theories. Whether they were forced off course or suffered equipment malfunction, one detail remains certain: from the way his bones were broken, investigators could tell Yuri had never taken his hands off the controls. He had never given up trying to pilot them to safety.

It is often difficult to tell what was going on behind a celebritys public persona, and Gagarin is no exception. He is such a revered figure in Russia today that he has even been compared to an orthodox saint . Additionally, the culture of secrecy that historian Andrew Jenks describes permeating the Soviet government, as well as the heavily censored media at the time, can make it very difficult for historians and journalists to separate truth from fact.

Books like the Jamie Doran and Piers Bizonys 1998 Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin claim many sensational stories and describe gory details from dubious reliable sources that, while they make for a thrilling read, have largely been debunked by many historians. Since information about the Soviet space program and its cosmonauts remained almost completely classified until the glasnost in the late 1980s, many aspects of the program still remain unclear, unconfirmed, or disputed, ensuring the rumor mills immortality. This book attempts to look beyond rumor and relies on the research of proven experts like Asif Siddiqi and Andrew Jenks to create a portrait of the man who truly existed.

Yuri was born March 9, 1934 on a collective farm 100 miles outside Moscow. His mother Anna worked the fields and his father Alexei was a carpenter. Anna was well educated and kept many books in the house. For the early years on the farm, life was calm and scheduled. Family members recall Yuri as a mischievous, happy child .

Then the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, and life was thrown into chaos. German officers occupied their home and sent Yuri's brother Valentin and his sister Zoya to slave labour camps in Poland. Yuri, his parents, and his younger brother Boris lived in a tiny mud hut for 21 months, the remainder of the German occupation. Alexei Leonov, a fellow cosmonaut and first man to walk in space , recalled this time as the formative years in Yuris life.