| Russians retain pride in Gagarin space flight First manned orbit of Earth embarrassed U.S. 04/08/2001 Associated Press MOSCOW – Strapped inside a clumsy, cannonball-shaped capsule atop a modified nuclear missile, Yuri Gagarin exuberantly cried, "Poyekhali!" – off we go. The ground shook with the rocket's thunder, and the world shook when it heard of his feat.
In 108 minutes on April 12, 1961, the 27-year-old Mr. Gagarin made man's first orbit of the Earth, an achievement that Russians recall happily 40 years later at a time when the country's space program is in doubt following the dumping of the Mir space station.
Mr. Gagarin's face became an icon of pride for Soviets still struggling out of the horrors inflicted on them by World War II and dictator Josef Stalin.
But the candid eyes and easy smile that warmed hearts at home seemed to mock the United States, already humiliated by a series of Soviet space firsts. As Mr. Gagarin circled the globe, the American space program was dithering over whether it was safe to send a man on a mere 15-minute suborbital trip.
Americans' sheepishness was aggravated by the unexpectedness of Mr. Gagarin's flight. He and the other five in the first Soviet cosmonaut team had trained in secret, unlike the American squad who were lavishly feted and adoringly profiled in magazine articles even before they blasted off.
The contrast brings a delighted smile to the face of Pavel Popovich, another of the six-man cosmonaut corps, 40 years later.
"The United States was a rich country, a developed one – but we were the first in space!" he exulted in a recent interview.
Brute will
Mr. Gagarin's mission underscored the brute will that the Soviet Union could apply in competing with its privileged rival. Compared with the smooth, aerodynamic space capsule that the United States was developing, the outside of Mr. Gagarin's craft bristled with conduits and switches, looking like the product of a basement workshop.
Even its name had an ominous ring: Vostok I – The East, the monolith of severe terrain and strange ways that haunted the thoughts of America, whose astronauts rode capsules bearing more optimistic names such as Friendship and Liberty.
Mr. Gagarin himself was potent propaganda. As a carpenter's son raised on a collective farm, he had the perfect background for a system that lauded common workers. He also had an inborn charm and natural smile that confounded Western stereotypes of dour, crude Soviets.
"Out of the six of us, Gagarin rose up most of all. He was so very communicative, affable, very curious and merry ... his famous smile," Mr. Popovich said.
Those qualities were put to the test after his return to Earth, ejecting from the capsule and parachuting down to a field near Saratov in southern Russia.
He quickly was inundated with adulation. A six-hour parade before a cheering and happily weeping throng in Red Square was just the beginning. He became a member of the Supreme Soviet legislature and a prestigious central committee member of the Young Communists' League, Komsomol.
"He was 27, a young age, and the pressure was heavy, very heavy. But it didn't turn his head," Mr. Popovich said. "He remained a fine, attentive friend."
"It was hard for him to work because he was deluged with a stream of letters from every country. He tried to answer them all," a colleague on the Supreme Soviet, Anatoly Lukyanov, said at a recent ceremony marking Mr. Gagarin's birthday.
23 days later
Twenty-three days after Mr. Gagarin's flight, Alan Shepard became the first American in space, but his flight was suborbital. And the Soviet space program racked up further firsts. Before John Glenn became the first American in orbit, German Titov circled the globe for more than a day and became the first man to fall asleep in space. Mr. Popovich and Andrian Nikolayev made the first simultaneous orbits in 1962, and the Soviets later notched the first spacewalk.
But Mr. Popovich suggests Mr. Gagarin's mission signaled a change in the competitive atmosphere because he was the first to understand the planet's wholeness.
From space, he said, "Borders are not visible, or religions or nationality. This is a great advantage to mankind."
Mr. Gagarin had only a few years to ponder the philosophical implications of his flight and to endure the limelight. It was switched off abruptly after less than seven years.
On March 27, 1968, while test-flying a MiG-15 fighter plane near Moscow, he told ground control that he was on a compass heading of 220 degrees. It was the last time his voice was heard. About 45 seconds later, the plane smashed into the ground. That month he had celebrated his 34th birthday. He left a wife and two daughters.
"For many years, for very many years, I could not believe he was dead," Mr. Popovich said.
He was not alone. Rumors persist that Mr. Gagarin is not dead, but was spirited off somewhere for unclear but devious reasons. Others maintain that he was killed on Kremlin orders because he had begun to doubt communism, and even that he was kidnapped by space aliens.
The wild array of theories reflect not only shock at the untimely death of one of Russia's few unambiguous heroes, but suspicion over the failure to explain the cause of the crash. An investigation was begun, but Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev eventually ordered it closed.
One theorist, former air force Gen. Yuri Kulikov, suggested Mr. Gagarin died like the protagonist of a Greek tragedy, brought down by his own hubris. Mr. Gagarin was unprepared to fly the sophisticated MiG-15, he said: "On the day of the tragedy, the level of Yuri's preparedness could be compared only with a final-year air student."
But even 40 years later, Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin remains untouchable for many, as was evident from the aggrieved mutterings in Gen. Kulikov's audience.
"He was a man of merit; he was the first," one man said. "We should stop all this."
|
