He was born on March 9, 1934, in the village of Kluschino near Gschatsk (later renamed after him to Gagarin), about 180 kilometers west of Moscow. His father Alexei Ivanovich Gagarin (1902-1973) was a carpenter in the local collective farm, and his mother Anna Timofeyevna Gagarina (1903-1984) was a milker. Juri had three siblings: brothers Valentin (1924-2006) and Boris (1936-1977) and sister Soja (1927-2004).
Yuri Gagarin (1934 to 1968)
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Yuri Gagarin in Helsinki 1961
Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space
Although his flight only lasted 108 minutes, Yuri Gagarin wrote history: On April 12, 1961, the cosmonaut became the first human being to fly into space.
On April 12, 1961, Anna Tacharova and her granddaughter Rita met an alien near the village of Smelovka, not far from the city of Engels. He wears an orange space suit and a chunky white helmet. The two are already about to run away, when Yuri Gagarin takes off his helmet and shouts: "I am a friend, comrades, I am a friend! Then space technicians come running. They greet the man who was the first man to fly into space: Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin.
The Soviet engineers had made a thorough miscalculation about the planned landing site. During the landing approach, Gagarin also ejected the aircraft at an altitude of seven kilometers for safety reasons and flew to earth by parachute. The capsule landed four kilometers away from Gagarin's landing site. There a sign was put up with the note: "Do not remove! 12.4.1961 10:55 o'clock" was attached. In this way the authorities wanted to make sure that a later monument would actually be erected at the real landing site. Never in the timeline of humanity a man flew higher into space before.
The Germans occupy Gschatsk (1941)
Juri Ggarin as child 1945
On September 1, 1941, he was sent to school in Kluschino. However, the Second World War ended his school attendance with the occupation of the town by the Wehrmacht. History has changed the fate of the family. Walentin and Soja were deported to Germany for forced labor in February 1943. On April 9, 1943, the Red Army recaptured the area and Yuri Gagarin was able to continue his schooling.
Move to Ljuberzy, near Moscow (1949)
bertsy, which he attended in 1949-1951Monument to Yuri Gagarin in front of the vocational school in Lyu
Yuri attended secondary school for six classes in Gagarin from the summer of 1945. His sister Soja applied for a job as a nurse. In a questionnaire she truthfully stated that she had experienced occupation and imprisonment by the Nazis. Her application was rejected because at that time people from these areas were discriminated against. They were generally considered as possible collaborators.
For this reason Yuri Gagarin moved to Lyubertsy. There nobody knew him and he and he did a two-year training at a craftsman school. He finished the training with a skilled worker examination as a foundryman.
Afterwards, after he had falsely stated his father as a war invalid in his application for a study place and had concealed two of his siblings, he studied at the Industrial Technical College in Saratov and received a diploma as a foundry technician there in 1955.
Joined the Air Force and started a family (1955)
The young Yuri Gagarin at the flying school
He became a member of the aero club in Saratov and passed the pilot's exam. In the same year he joined the Air Force and joined the flying school in Orenburg. In 1957 Gagarin was appointed lieutenant and on the same day he married the doctor Valentina Ivanovna Goryachova.
From 1957 to 1959 Yuri Gagarin served in a fighter regiment in the North Fleet and became a member of the CPSU. His daughter Yelena was born on April 10, 1959, and on March 12, 1961, one month before his space flight, his second daughter Galina. On November 6, 1959, he was promoted to first lieutenant.
The first cosmonaut circumnavigate the earth (1961)
Rocket R7 took Yuri into the sky
The young pilot was selected as a potential cosmonaut and received training from March 11, 1960 to January 1961. His calm temperament and thoughtfulness were decisive factors in his being selected for the mission.
On April 12, 1961, the almost 1.60m tall pilot completed the spectacular space flight with the spaceship Vostok 1 and, according to official information, circumnavigated the Earth once in 108 minutes. He landed in the Volga region, near the cities of Saratov and Engels. A monument stands on the landing site today.
After his historic flight, Yuri Gagarin traveled around the world as an "ambassador of peace". For state propaganda he was a lucky choice as an ideal image of an ordinary citizen from a working class family. "Yuri Gagarin was unusual, rousing and at the same time one of us. And he had this brilliant smile."
On the timeline of human history, the Soviets were clearly ahead of the US at the time.
Change of power in the Kremlin (1964)
Leonid Iljitsch Breschnew 1967
Gagarin was commander of the Soviet cosmonaut group until 1963 and then studied at the military academy for air force engineers "Prof. N. Y. Zhukovsky". In 1967 he was designated as a replacement pilot for Vladimir Mikhailovich Komarov during the flight of Soyuz 1 - the latter died during the mission.
In 1964 there was a change of power in the Soviet Union: Gagarin's patron Khrushchev was deposed. Yuri Gagarin thus lost all his political contacts. Khrushchev had always propagated his first cosmonaut as a peace ambassador. Under Brezhnev, however, the arms race began again. Gagarin no longer fitted into the political concept and was no longer important for the regime.
Yuri Gagarin wanted to go into space again (1968)
Rouble with Gagarin
Gagarin wanted to show it to everyone once again and applied for further space missions. It didn't work out, but he became a cosmonaut trainer instead. However, on March 27, 1968 Yuri Gagarin and his colleague Vladimir Seryogin crashed near Moscow during a test flight with a MiG-15 fighter jet.
Rumors are still spreading about the cause of the crash. The official version is: lack of flight experience, bad weather and non-compliance with safety standards had led to the collision with a weather balloon.
Gagarin's urn received a state funeral and was buried at the Kremlin wall in Moscow. His early accidental death made Yuri Gagarin a legend for good. His hometown Gschatsk was renamed Gagarin and today a huge crater on the moon bears his name. Gagarin definitely got his place in human history.
Embedded Videos
Gagarin: Untold Story of First Man in Space (RT Documentary)
Yuri Gagarin on BBC TV, July 11 1961
Yuri Gagarin, First Human in Space (1961)
Yuri Gagarin: The First Man In Space - Space Documentary
The flight of Gagarin, at movie theater! " First in space ", (The best sequences) in FULL HD, 2013
Yuri Gagarin - Starman
Comments & Conclusions
Yuri the poster boy for the Soviet Union
The fame that came over Gagarin with his first space flight also had its price. He became an instrument of propaganda and was a kind of poster boy for the Soviet Union. The cosmonaut had to perform a demanding public-political work. This was appreciated and played an important role. He not only became the first cosmonaut, he became the face of the Soviet Union. When he was on tour abroad, he was already an important political figure.
What was very nice about Yuri Gagarin was his modesty. He never developed star airs and graces. People still tell how polite he was with ordinary people and how he could join a queue without taking advantage of his position as the first cosmonaut. So many people remembered above all his human qualities: his modesty and his smile.
But with Brezhnev's rise to power, his fame was fading. Alcohol became a good friend of him and his charisma faded somewhat. But with his early death he became a legend. The space program of the Soviets was a wake-up call for the Americans to regain the technological leadership with their own Apollo program.
It is easy to imagine that Yuri Gagarin and Neil Armstrong were very similar in character. Both had a lot of courage and risked their lives for the fatherland.
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Author: AKU010 | First published: 2020-12-06 | Last update: 2021-10-30
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