GAGARIN’S JOURNEY
Sixty years ago, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. Christoph Otto sets off on a Gagarin pilgrimage, travelling from his birthplace in rural Russia to his memorial in Moscow
Christoph Otto sets off on a Gagarin pilgrimage, 60 years after the Russian became the first man in space.
It’s a very early start at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The 27-year-old Russian Yuri Gagarin gets out of bed. The calendar reminds him of what he already knows: it’s Wednesday, 12 April 1961. Gagarin does some early-morning exercises, washes and dresses then heads off to breakfast. Coffee, blackberry jam and meat pâté from a tube. At around 6.15am, Gagarin undergoes some final medical tests. Cosmonaut No. 1 displays neither nervousness nor disquiet and the measurements could hardly be better: blood pressure 115/60, pulse 64, body temperature 36.7°C. Gagarin gets into his orange spacesuit, and puts on his black aircrew cap and helmet, which is hand-emblazoned with the letters CCCP – the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The bus that will take the cosmonaut to the launch pad is already waiting. Before boarding, Gagarin waves and smiles to the cameraman. The journey to the rocket traverses the dry, treeless Kazakhstan steppe. Gagarin asks the driver to stop at a fence. He alights from the bus to relieve himself at the rear wheel. His face is a little less strained when he returns; the journey to the Vostok spacecraft can proceed.
There it is, standing in the middle of nowhere on a concrete platform: the white rocket, fully laden with highly explosive fuel. Its predecessors have already carried mice, rats, rabbits, guinea pigs and dogs into space, but never before a human being. The mission has its risks – Gagarin’s chances of survival have been calculated at less than 50 per cent. Only three of the previous seven test flights were successful.
Gagarin is optimistic, however. With the Three Musketeers in mind, he enthusiastically calls to his comrades: ‘One for all, all for one!’ and takes his leave according to the Russian custom, with a bear hug and a kiss on the cheek.
Gagarin is supplied with everything he will need while he’s in space: food, oxygen, radio contact with the Earth and a pistol. A pistol? Sergei Korolev, the ‘father of the Soviet space programme’ and chief designer of the rocket, had personally seen to this. Officially, it’s to enable the pilot to drive wild animals away after the landing, but Gagarin knows full well how it is to be used if the capsule veers of course.
With two hours to go before take-off, Gagarin inserts himself into the tiny capsule. Ground crew seal the hatch. At 9.07am, Korolev issues the command: ‘ Zazhiganiye [Ignition].’
Twenty million horsepower is unleashed in an inferno of flame, smoke and thunder. Then the massive rocket lifts off and humanity’s greatest adventure has begun. Deep underground in the explosion-proof ground station, Korolev hunches over his radio. He wipes the sweat from his forehead as Gagarin’s distorted voice comes over the radio loudspeaker: ‘ Poyekhali! [Let’s go!]. I’m fine, all’s well, everything’s functioning normally.’ In great excitement, Korolev grabs the microphone: ‘We wish you a good flight. Everything is
Despite its current function as a memorial, the house still seems full of life, as if the young Yuri has only just finished eating
under control here.’ The radio crackles and Gagarin’s voice comes back, mixed with the growling of the rocket engines and sounding like a spirit from a far-distant world: ‘Goodbye. We’ll see each other again soon. The vibration is getting stronger. The noise is getting louder. I’m well. I’m feeling how the strain of the G-forces is increasing. Goodbye, dear friends.’
Up in the Vostok capsule, Gagarin is pressed harder and harder into his bucket seat as the spacecraft accelerates. Then he feels a hefty jolt. After a burn of
120 seconds, the first rocket stage of four boosters has separated. Just under a minute later, the protective cladding is jettisoned. Under the influence of gravity, it falls away, giving Gagarin a view of the Earth for the first time. This is what people have dreamt of for centuries. ‘Here is Cedar. The protective cladding has separated. I can now see the Earth through the visor. I see rivers and streams and watch the clouds above the Earth as well as their shadows. Beautiful, it’s just beautiful!’
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
Sixty years later, I set off to visit Gagarin’s place of birth. The tiny village of Klushino in Smolensk Oblast, where Gagarin was born, can be reached from Moscow in about three hours by car. I find myself on a journey from a bustling city of 12 million inhabitants to rural Russia. I drive past the wooden houses of the suburbs, and an hour later reach the first extensive meadows. The scent of hay is in the air. Sunny periods alternate with clouds, birch woods with landscapes of grass.
The farmers are working their fields. There are horses standing in a paddock; a woman with a milk churn cycles past them. I get out of the car and continue on foot. A woman comes from a farm and waves to me. I ask her the way to Gagarin’s birthplace and she gives me a lift for the last few hundred metres.
So this is it: house number 42, in which Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin spent his childhood. There are dandelions growing in front of a fence of rough-hewn poles and behind it I can see blackcurrant bushes. The farmhouse is made of timber and roofed with reeds. Despite its current function as a memorial and museum, the house still seems full of life – as if the young Yuri has only just finished eating his kasha, the local dish of buckwheat porridge made with eggs and milk.
Family photos hang on the wall. A small Gagarin, hardly six years old, is wearing a white linen shirt and short trousers and is standing in front of his younger brother, Boris, and the older siblings, Valentin and Soya. Next to them, a black-and-white portrait looks like a painting. It’s a photo of his parents. Yuri’s father, Alexey Ivanovich, was a carpenter and his mother, Anna Timofeyevna, worked as a dairywoman on the same collective farm. They look serious but benign.
They both have their hair cut short and combed back in a no-nonsense way. And then comes a photo of Gagarin wearing an air force uniform. Images from long-forgotten times.
The bedroom is tiny. There is Yuri’s cradle, hanging from the ceiling on a steel spring. It contains a blanket and a rose-embroidered pillow. Just an arm’s length away there is a metal bedstead and behind that a wooden bed. Herbs grow on the window sill in cartons filled with earth – just as they might have done 80 years ago. Today, the house is looked after by a woman from the village. She is custodian, information point and vendor of all kinds of souvenirs, books and memorial plates. Yuri Gagarin’s laughing face beams from every one of them.
Over the years, the well in front of the house has become something of pilgrimage site. Each year, on 12 April, cosmonauts come by to drink the clear, cool water; space travellers from all over the world come to taste it prior to their maiden flights. What was good enough for the hero will certainly do for his successors.
A short distance away, I encounter a low earthen hut, hardly three square metres. This was where family Gagarin took refuge when German soldiers commandeered the house during the war. Yuri’s father cobbled the hut together from tree trunks split in two. Gagarin would describe in his memoirs how his little brother Boris nearly lost his life. Having strayed too close to the house, he was strung up in an apple tree by his scarf by a German soldier. His mother was able to save him at the last moment. The village was liberated by the Red Army in April 1943 and the family was able to move back home.
SAFE LANDING
Yuri Gagarin is travelling in space. Only one more hour before landing. The leader of the Soviet government, Nikita Khrushchev, and his ministers are well aware that the landing could fail and their hero could die. On the other hand, if they wait too long to tell the world about a successful landing, they might not be believed. So, in order to demonstrate the achievement to the world in the most convincing way possible, the plan is to broadcast the radio messages between the spacecraft and ground control. The mission has been top secret until the dramatic announcement comes over the radio: ‘Attention! Here is Moscow. This message is being broadcast by all radio stations in the Soviet Union. The time in Moscow is 10 o’clock am and two minutes. We are broadcasting the news of the world’s first flight of a human being in space.’
A little less than an hour later, the technological masterpiece has been completed. Shortly before the Vostok capsule hits the ground, Gagarin ejects from it and parachutes to the Kazakh steppe. He is quickly flown to Moscow, and on 14 April 1961, Khrushchev greets him with a hearty embrace. Together, they appear before a sea of jubilant faces in Red Square. Yuri the farmer’s son takes his place next to Nikita the farm labourer’s son. This celebration marks the high point of both of their careers.
The party very quickly grasps the huge media potential and sends its hero on a tour of 40 countries. From Cuba to Finland, from Britain to Brazil, from Venezuela to Hungary, from Egypt to Libya, from Ceylon to Japan. He’s the perfect tool for the Kremlin and the party uses him as a living demonstration of the superiority of socialism. These goals justify forcing Gagarin to tell lies. Time and again he has to describe how he landed in the capsule. The truth is that he ejected from the Vostok capsule and landed by parachute, just as planned. If this fact were to be leaked, it would lead to his space voyage being disqualified by the International Astronautical Federation, which stipulates that a pilot has to return in the vehicle in which they took off.
It’s Gagarin’s family who first begin to feel the strain of fame and constant travel, but Yuri’s ability to keep smiling is faltering as well. The party sends him to the workers on collective farms. Sometimes he makes 20 appearances in a single day.
At last, Nikolai Kamanin, who’s responsible for cosmonaut training, takes pity on him. In 1966, Kamanin appoints Gagarin as backup for Vladimir Komarov, who is to fly in the new Soyuz spacecraft. Inspecting the vehicle with colleagues, however, Gagarin discovers serious technical defects. He wants to have the risky flight postponed and seeks an audience with Khrushchev’s successor, Leonid Brezhnev, but criticism is unwelcome at this late stage. His comeback dreams are dashed completely in the catastrophe of 24 April 1967. The parachutes designed to slow the Soyuz capsule’s descent fail to open. It hits the ground like a meteorite, travelling at 145 km/h. Komarov dies instantly. Gagarin feels responsible for the death of his comrade and knows that now, he will never go into space again.
Gagarin doesn’t let go of his passion. Almost seven years after his maiden voyage into space, he resumes training as a fighter pilot. But on 27 March 1968, exactly what the party fears comes to pass. During a training flight with his instructor, Gagarin’s aircraft crashes, killing both pilots. Speculation as to the cause of the crash continues to this day and the location of what could be recovered of the aircraft remains a secret.
Exactly what the party fears comes to pass. On 27 March 1968, Gagarin’s aircraft crashes, killing him and his co-pilot
GAGARIN CITY
I leave Klushino and drive for 20 minutes through meadows full of dandelions and fields of wheat being sculpted by the breeze. At an intersection, I come across a signpost, ten metres high, bearing a photograph of Gagarin. The image appears to be reaching for the sky, but the direction it indicates is to the right. And there it is at the end of the road – an entire city that has borne the hero’s name since his death.
Almost everything in Gagarin City, once called Gzhatsk, is a reminder of the local hero who lived there as an adolescent. The city has preserved the places associated with its most prominent citizen and turned them into pilgrimage sites. The most prominent of these is the ‘House of his Youth’. A few metres further on is the ‘House of the Parents’, which the Soviet government donated to Gagarin’s parents in 1961. It’s built of stone, a green-painted bungalow, and it’s open to the public. The two beds in the bedroom appear
to be freshly made up with white linen; there’s also a sewing machine, a mirror and a chair. The bedroom features decorative wallpaper reminiscent of the 1950s. It’s a far cry from the spartan little cottage in Klushino. Outside, Yuri’s 1961 black Volga can be admired in its glazed pavilion.
The local school bears Gagarin’s name, too. And the hero himself is represented in a granite statue that towers over the main square. The whole city, with its countless blocks of Soviet-era prefabricated buildings, seems to have stood still since the 1970s, like a shrine full of relics. Nevertheless, it’s home to 30,000 people. The focal point of this culture of remembrance is to be found in the memorial museum. Gagarin’s niece and godchild, Tamara Filatova, has been the museum’s curator for 48 years. As she serves me Lipton tea imported from England and cream-filled Russian biscuits in an opulent metal tin, she reminisces: ‘We lived in the same house. Our family never had much money but Yuri always brought me presents. He worked night shifts as a stevedore at the harbour in order to earn the money for them. I adored Yuri. After his death, I immediately started working here in the museum.’ Tamara takes a sip of tea and then continues: ‘I heard about his death on the radio. I was a student in Moscow at the time. I took a taxi and went to Star City. The radio played nothing but sombre music the whole way. Then I remembered when I had last seen him. Yuri was hunting elk with his mates. Women aren’t usually allowed on trips like that, but Yuri took me with him as an exception. Afterwards, we went to a river and sat down in front of a hole in the ice. We sang songs till late at night.’ She pops a biscuit into her
Little has changed in the complex; the buildings at the entrance to Star City have all the charm of a Cold War crossing
mouth and stares out of the window. ‘This museum has become like a second home to me – almost like where I live. I guess Yuri is my greatest love and that’s how it comes that I’m closest to him here.’
CITY OF STARS
Following the traces of the space pioneer takes me 250 kilometres away from Gagarin City to Zvyozdny Gorodok, Star City, on the far side of Moscow. This is where Gagarin trained for his trip to space and was his home until his death. After a journey through fields and woods, barracks come into sight. No matter how you approach Zvyozdny Gorodok, all roads come to an end in front of concrete walls. Mounted on top of them are cameras, searchlights and barbed wire. Guards are posted at the few entry points to the stronghold and even the winter-morning sunlight, flashing through the icy snow that covers the branches of the neighbouring trees, gives the impression of search parties casting around with torches. Only those who live here or have applied for an entry permit well in advance are allowed into the settlement hidden in the forest.
This is the heart of Russia’s space programme. Everything that it has achieved, from Gagarin to the
present, was developed and tested here. For years, the location remained secret. Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, no map showed anything of interest at 55° 52’ N, 38° 6’ E, about 43 kilometres from Moscow – the area was a restricted military zone.
The buildings at the entrance to Zvyozdny Gorodok have all the charm of a Cold War border crossing.
Little has changed in this huge complex since Gagarin’s days, although it has long since been opened up to allow astronauts from all over the world to train. The Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti calls Zvyozdny Gorodok a timeless place: ‘You have the feeling of entering a world as it was 50 or 60 years ago. It looked just like this when Gagarin was here. The city in the middle of the forest with all the many trees. The little lake, the pavilion, the bridge and the cosmonauts cycling around on their bikes.’
Gagarin is omnipresent in Zvyozdny Gorodok.
Not far from the entrance, visitors on their way to the training facilities are greeted by the hero in the form of a larger-than-life mosaic. Both the visitors and the mosaic are under CCTV surveillance. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, too, has been commemorated by means of a mosaic. As early as 1903, this mathematics teacher, inventor and pioneer laid the theoretical basis for rocket technology. His likeness has seen better days: there are cracks in the figure and a number of stones are missing. But in any case, the visitor’s attention is forcibly drawn towards the central, six-metre-tall figure: in front of a dark-red backdrop, Lenin’s visage looks down onto onlookers.
Gagarin started his training in Star City in July 1960. Within a short time, 19 residential buildings had been built for the cosmonauts and their families, together with lakes and urban parks. Today, the city is home to around 6,000 people. Russian cosmonauts are granted a life-long right of residence and live rentfree. Colleagues from abroad generally stay several months, together with around 1,200 space engineers, computer engineers, medical specialists and trainers. On an area the size of New York’s Central Park, they find everything they need for daily life: a school and a kindergarten, a bank and a pharmacy, restaurants and cafés, supermarkets and a cultural centre.
RESTING PLACE AND RITUALS
I embark on the final stage of my journey on the Gagarin heritage trail. My destination is the space hero’s memorial in Moscow: a 110-metre-high, tapered column that bears a titanium rocket lifting off into the sky. At the foot of the monument, the Moscow Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics invites visitors to its exhibition, spread over three underground storeys. In the first room, decorated dramatically in black, Gagarin is represented in the form of a six-metre-high bronze sculpture, his arms raised to the heavens. Young people take selfies with him. A few metres further on, some children are looking at Belka and Strelka, the dogs whose journeys into space paved the way for Gagarin’s. He jokingly said at the time: ‘I don’t know whether I am the first man in space or the last dog.’ A dozen other rituals have established themselves. Before each Soyuz mission, the crew and their families visit Gagarin’s tomb in Red Square, where his ashes are kept in the Kremlin wall. Space voyagers lay down red carnations in front of a memorial plaque. A few days before launch, cosmonauts plant a tree on the banks of the Syr Darya river in Baikonur – just as Gagarin did. And before they climb up the same ramp as the first cosmonaut in space, they interrupt their bus journey so that they can – despite their space suits – pee against the rear tyre.