Yuri Gagarin

Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin (9 March 1934 – 27 March 1968) was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut who became the first person to journey into outer space during the first successful crewed spaceflight. He was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Kazakh SSR. Travelling on Vostok 1, Gagarin completed one orbit of Earth on 12 April 1961, a flight that took 108 minutes. By achieving this major milestone for the Soviet Union during the Space Race, he became an international celebrity and earned many honours, including his country's highest distinction, Hero of the Soviet Union.

Born in the village of Klushino in the Russian SFSR, Gagarin worked as a foundryman at a steel plant in Lyubertsy when he was young. He later joined the Soviet Air Forces as a pilot and was stationed at the Luostari Air Base, near the Norway–Soviet Union border. He was then chosen for the Soviet space programme alongside five other cosmonauts. After his spaceflight, he became deputy training director of the Cosmonaut Training Centre, which was later named after him. He was also elected as a deputy of the Soviet of the Union in 1962 and then to the Soviet of Nationalities, the lower and upper chambers of the Supreme Soviet respectively.

Vostok 1 was Gagarin's only spaceflight. He was the backup crew for Soyuz 1, which ended in a fatal crash that killed his friend and fellow cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. Fearful that a high-level national hero might be killed, Soviet officials banned Gagarin from further spaceflights. After completing training at the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy in February 1968, he was allowed to fly regular aircraft again.

Gagarin died five weeks later, when the MiG-15 he was piloting with flight instructor Vladimir Seryogin crashed near the town of Kirzhach.

Early life

Gagarin was born on 9 March 1934 in the village of Klushino, in the Western Oblast of the Russian SFSR, near Gzhatsk (renamed Gagarin in 1968 after his death). His parents, who were ethnic Russian, worked on a sovkhoz. His father, Aleksey, was a carpenter, and his mother, Anna, was a dairy farmer. Yuri was the third of four children. His older brother Valentin was born in 1924, his sister Zoya in 1927, and his youngest brother Boris in 1936.

Like many Soviet families, the Gagarins suffered during the German occupation in World War II. The Nazis captured Klushino on 18 October 1941 and burned down the school, which ended Yuri's first year of education. The family was allowed to build a small mud hut behind their house, and they lived there for 21 months until the occupation ended. In early 1943, the Germans sent Yuri's two oldest siblings to Poland for slave labour. They escaped and were found by Red Army soldiers, and they did not return home until 1945, after the war.

Education and early career

In 1946, the family moved to Gzhatsk, where Gagarin continued his education. He and his brother Boris attended a simple school run by a young woman who volunteered to be the teacher. They learned to read using an old Soviet military manual. Later, a former airman joined the school to teach maths and science, Yuri's favourite subjects. Yuri also joined a group of children who built model aeroplanes. He was fascinated by aircraft from a young age, and his interest grew after a Yakovlev fighter plane crash-landed in Klushino during the war.

In 1950, at the age of 16, Gagarin began an apprenticeship as a foundryman at a steel plant in Lyubertsy, near Moscow. He also attended evening classes at a local "young workers" school. In 1951, he graduated from both the seventh grade and his vocational school with honours in mouldmaking and foundry work. He was then chosen for more training at the Industrial Technical School in Saratov, where he studied tractors. In Saratov, he volunteered at a local flying club on weekends as an air cadet. There he learned to fly a biplane and later a Yakovlev Yak-18. He also earned extra money as a part-time dock labourer on the River Volga.

Soviet Air Force service

In 1955, Gagarin was accepted to the First Chkalov Higher Air Force Pilots School in Orenburg. He first trained on the Yak-18, which he already knew, and later moved on to the MiG-15 in February 1956. He twice struggled to land the two-seat trainer aircraft and nearly lost his place in pilot training. The commander of his regiment gave him another chance to land. His flight instructor gave him a cushion to sit on, which improved his view from the cockpit, and he landed successfully. After finishing his evaluation in a trainer aircraft, Gagarin began flying alone in 1957. On 5 November 1957, he became a lieutenant in the Soviet Air Forces, with 166 hours and 47 minutes of flight time. The next day he graduated from flight school and was sent to Luostari Air Base, near the Norwegian border in Murmansk Oblast, for a two-year assignment with the Northern Fleet. There he flew Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15bis aircraft with the 769th Fighter Aviation Regiment, and by October 1959 he had flown 265 hours in total.

On 7 July 1959, he was rated Military Pilot 3rd Class. After showing interest in space exploration following the launch of Luna 3 on 6 October 1959, his recommendation to the Soviet space programme was endorsed and forwarded by Lieutenant Colonel Babushkin. Gagarin was promoted to senior lieutenant on 6 November 1959, three weeks after a medical commission interviewed him for qualification to the space programme.

Soviet space programme

See also: Vostok programme

Gagarin was chosen for the Vostok programme after tests overseen by a medical commission. Out of 154 pilots, 29 were picked as cosmonaut candidates. Gagarin began training at the Khodynka Airfield in Moscow in March 1960, with hard physical exercises and parachute jumps in Saratov Oblast. Fellow candidates favoured him, and he was chosen for an accelerated training group known as the Vanguard Six. Gagarin also studied at the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy and went through tests of endurance, including tests in an anechoic chamber. In the final selection, the commission ranked him the best candidate, and he was named the primary pilot for the first crewed Vostok mission.

Main article: Vostok 1

On 12 April 1961, the Vostok 3KA-3 (Vostok 1) spacecraft was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome. Gagarin, using the call sign Kedr (Кедр, Siberian pine or cedar), became the first human to travel into space. His words at launch, Poyekhali! (Поехали!, 'Off we go!'), later became a popular expression in the Eastern Bloc and marked the beginning of the Space Age. The spacecraft orbited the Earth for 108 minutes before returning to Earth in Kazakhstan, making Gagarin the first human to orbit the Earth. Gagarin landed by parachute after ejecting from the descending capsule, as planned. Gagarin's records were later certified by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), which revised its rules after the flight of Vostok 2.

After the Vostok 1 flight

Gagarin's flight was a triumph for the Soviet space programme, and he became a national hero of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. He also became a celebrity around the world, and newspapers everywhere published his story. He rode in a long motorcade through Moscow to the Kremlin, where Nikita Khrushchev gave him the title Hero of the Soviet Union in a grand ceremony. Cities across the Soviet Union held huge celebrations, second only to the World War II Victory Parades. Gagarin became known for his friendly smile and his skill with the public. He visited the United Kingdom, including Manchester, and toured many other countries, such as Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. Because he was so popular, US President John F. Kennedy did not allow him to visit the United States.

In 1962, Gagarin became a deputy in the Soviet of the Union and was elected to the Central Committee of the Young Communist League. He later returned to Star City, the cosmonaut training centre, where he spent several years working on designs for a reusable spacecraft. That year he became a lieutenant colonel. Later, he was re-elected as a deputy, this time to the Soviet of Nationalities, the upper chamber of the legislature. He began training again to become a fighter pilot and was a backup pilot for his friend Vladimir Komarov on the Soyuz 1 flight. In April 1966, Komarov replaced him, and Gagarin was reassigned to Soyuz 3. In 1968, he defended his engineering thesis on spaceplane design and graduated cum laude from the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy.

Personal life

In 1957, while he was a cadet in flight school, Gagarin met Valentina Goryacheva at the May Day celebrations in Red Square in Moscow. She was a medical technician. They married on 7 November 1957, the same day Gagarin graduated from flight school. They had two daughters. Yelena Yurievna Gagarina, born in 1959, is an art historian who has been director general of the Moscow Kremlin Museums since 2001. Galina Yurievna Gagarina, born in 1961, is a professor of economics at Plekhanov Russian University of Economics in Moscow.

As a young man, Gagarin enjoyed sports. He played ice hockey as a goalkeeper, liked basketball, and coached a school team. Some Soviet sources said that he remarked during his spaceflight, "I don't see any god up here." However, his friend Colonel Valentin Petrov said in 2006 that Gagarin never said this. Petrov said the words came from a speech by Khrushchev at a meeting of the Central Committee of the CPSU about the state's anti-religion campaign. Petrov also said Gagarin had been baptised into the Russian Orthodox Church as a child, and that his family celebrated Christmas and Easter.

Death

Main articles: Death of Yuri Gagarin and Funeral of Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Seryogin

On 27 March 1968, Gagarin and flight instructor Vladimir Seryogin died when their MiG-15UTI crashed near the town of Kirzhach. They had been on a routine training flight from Chkalovsky air base. Their ashes were placed in the walls of the Kremlin. The cause of the crash was uncertain and became the subject of much guessing, including several conspiracy theories. At least three investigations were carried out by the Air Force, official government commissions, and the KGB. A biography by Jamie Doran and Piers Bizony says the KGB worked "not just alongside the Air Force and the official commission members but against them."

The KGB's report, made public in March 2003, said that actions by airbase staff contributed to the crash. It said the crew received outdated weather information and that conditions had become much worse by the time of the flight. The report concluded that the plane entered a spin, possibly after a bird strike or a sudden move to avoid another aircraft. In 2007, the Kremlin blocked a new investigation, saying there was no reason to start one. In 2011, documents from a 1968 commission were made public, showing that Gagarin or Seryogin had made a sharp move that may have led the jet into a dangerous flight condition.

Awards and honours

On 14 April 1961, Gagarin was honoured with a 12-mile (19 km) parade that ended at Red Square. He was given the Hero of the Soviet Union, the Order of Lenin, the Merited Master of Sports of the Soviet Union, and the first Pilot-Cosmonaut of the USSR. The Soviet Academy of Sciences gave him the Konstantin Tsiolkovsky Gold Medal, named after the Russian pioneer of space aeronautics, and he had earned four Soviet commemorative medals. Other countries also honoured him, including Bulgaria with the Order of Georgi Dimitrov and Cuba, where President Osvaldo Dorticos gave him the first Order of Playa Girón on the eighth anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. He received the De la Vaulx Medal from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale in Switzerland, and a Gold Medal from the British Interplanetary Society. In 1961 he also received the Star of the Republic of Indonesia, the Order of the Cross of Grunwald in Poland, the Order of the Flag of the People's Republic of Hungary, and the Hero of Labour award from the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. President Jânio Quadros of Brazil gave him the Order of Aeronautical Merit in August 1961. In 1962 in Egypt he received the Order of the Nile and the golden keys to the gates of Cairo. On 22 October 1963, he and Valentina Tereshkova were honoured with the Order of Karl Marx from the German Democratic Republic.

His spaceflight date, 12 April, has been remembered as Cosmonautics Day since 1962, and Yuri's Night has been held each year since 2000. In 2011 the United Nations named it the International Day of Human Space Flight. Many places have been named for him, including the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, the Gagarin's Start launch pad from which Sputnik 1 and Vostok 1 were launched, Gagarin Raion in Sevastopol, the Gagarin Air Force Academy, Yuri Gagarin Street in Warsaw, and the town of Gagarin, Armenia. Astronauts from Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, left a memorial satchel with medals for Gagarin and Komarov on the Moon, and Apollo 15 astronauts David Scott and James Irwin_ sculpture there in 1971 to honour those who died in the Space Race. A crater on the far side of the Moon was named after him in 1970. He joined the International Space Hall of Fame in New Mexico in 1976. He is also remembered in music, through a cycle of songs called Gagarin's Constellation by Aleksandra Pakhmutova and Nikolai Dobronravov, and through pieces by Jean-Michel Jarre on Métamorphoses, Public Service Broadcasting, and Undervud. Ships and aircraft have carried his name, including the Kosmonavt Yuriy Gagarin tracking ship and the Armavia airline's Sukhoi Superjet 100.

Many commemorative coins have been issued in his honour in the Soviet Union and Russia. The Kontinental Hockey League named its championship trophy the Gagarin Cup in 2008, and a 2010 Space Foundation survey ranked him sixth-most-popular space hero, tied with James T. Kirk from Star Trek. A Russian docudrama, Gagarin: First in Space, was released in 2013. Statues and monuments to him stand in many places, including at the Birla Planetarium in Kolkata, Irkutsk, Zagreb, Karaganda, Tiraspol in Transnistria, and Jakarta. The Monument to Yuri Gagarin on Leninsky Avenue, Moscow opened in 1980. In London, a statue of Gagarin was unveiled at Admiralty Arch in The Mall in 2011, opposite a sculpture of James Cook, and later moved in 2013 to the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. In Houston, a statue was unveiled in 2012 with Annise Parker, Charles Bolden, and Sergey Kislyak at the dedication. In 2019, the Italian artist Jorit painted a mural of Gagarin on a building in Odintsovo. In 2025, a monument was unveiled in Islamabad's Fatima Jinnah Park as part of cooperation between Russia–Pakistan.