Yuri Gagarin

Gagarin was born 9 March 1934 in the village of Klushino, in the Western Oblast, near Gzhatsk (renamed Gagarin in 1968 after his death). His parents worked on a sovkhoz—Aleksey Ivanovich Gagarin as a carpenter and Anna Timofeyevna Gagarina as a dairy farmer. Yuri was the third of four children. His elder brother Valentin was born in 1924, and by the time Yuri was born he was already helping with the cattle on the farm. His sister Zoya, born in 1927, helped take care of "Yura" and their youngest brother Boris, born in 1936. Like millions of Soviet citizens, his family suffered during the German occupation during World War II. During this period, Yuri became a saboteur, especially after one of the German soldiers (called "the Devil" by the children) tried to hang his younger brother Boris on an apple tree using the boy's scarf. In retaliation, Yuri sabotaged the soldier's work; he poured soil into the tank batteries gathered to be recharged and randomly mixed the different chemical supplies intended for the task. In early 1943, his two elder siblings were deported by the Germans to Poland for slave labour. They escaped and were found by Soviet soldiers who conscripted them into helping with the war effort. They did not return home until 1945, after the war. The rest of the Gagarin family believed the two elder children were dead. Yuri's father was overcome with "grief and hunger" and often sickly; he was beaten for refusing to work for the German occupiers. He spent the remainder of the war at a hospital as a patient and later as an orderly. Yuri's mother was hospitalized during the same period, after a soldier gashed her leg with a scythe. Aleksey helped the Red Army find mines buried in the roads by the fleeing Germans following their rout out of Klushino on 9 March 1943. == Education and early career ==

In 1946, the family moved to Gzhatsk, where Gagarin continued his education. he was selected for further training at the Industrial Technical School in Saratov, where he studied tractors. While in Saratov, Gagarin volunteered at a local flying club for weekend training as a Soviet air cadet, where he trained to fly a biplane, and later a Yakovlev Yak-18. He 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 initially began training on the Yak-18 already familiar to him and later graduated to training on the MiG-15 in February 1956. Gagarin began flying solo in 1957. He was assigned to the 769th Fighter Aviation Regiment of the 122nd Fighter Aviation Division flying Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15bis aircraft. By October 1959, he had flown a total of 265 hours. After expressing 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. By this point, he had accumulated 265 hours of flight time. Gagarin was promoted to the rank of senior lieutenant on 6 November 1959, three weeks after he was interviewed by a medical commission for qualification to the space programme. == Soviet space programme ==

Selection and training and an effigy of him on display at the RKK Energiya museum in 2010 Gagarin's selection for the Vostok programme was overseen by the Central Flight Medical Commission led by Major General Konstantin Fyodorovich Borodin of the Soviet Army Medical Service. He underwent physical and psychological testing conducted at Central Aviation Scientific-Research Hospital, in Moscow, commanded by Colonel A.S. Usanov, a member of the commission. The commission also included Colonel Yevgeniy Anatoliyevich Karpov, who later commanded the training centre, Colonel Vladimir Ivanovich Yazdovskiy, the head physician for Gagarin's flight, and Major-General Aleksandr Nikolayevich Babiychuk, a physician flag officer on the Soviet Air Force General Staff to the Commander in Chief of the Air Force. Gagarin was tall. From a pool of 154 qualified pilots short-listed by their Air Force units, the military physicians chose 29 cosmonaut candidates, of whom 20 were approved by the Credential Committee of the Soviet government. The first twelve, including Gagarin, were approved on 7 March 1960 and eight more were added in a series of subsequent orders issued until June. Gagarin began training at the Khodynka Airfield in central Moscow on 15 March 1960. The training regimen involved vigorous and repetitive physical exercises, which Alexei Leonov, a member of the initial group of twelve, described as akin to training for the Olympic Games. In April 1960, they began parachute training in Saratov Oblast and each man completed about 40 to 50 jumps from both low and high altitudes, over both land and water. Gagarin was a candidate favored by his peers; when they were asked to vote anonymously for a candidate besides themselves they would like to be the first to fly, all but three chose Gagarin. from which the first cosmonauts of the Vostok programme would be chosen. The other members of the group were Anatoly Kartashov, Andriyan Nikolayev, Pavel Popovich, Gherman Titov, and Valentin Varlamov. However, Kartashov and Varlamov were injured and replaced by Khrunov and Grigory Nelyubov. Gagarin was also subjected to experiments that were designed to test physical and psychological endurance, including oxygen starvation tests in which the cosmonauts were locked in an isolation chamber and the air slowly pumped out. He also trained for the upcoming flight by experiencing g-forces in a centrifuge. Psychological tests included placing the candidates in an anechoic chamber in complete isolation; Gagarin was in the chamber from 26 July to 5 August. On the second day, they were given a written examination, following which the special commission ranked Gagarin as the best candidate. He and the next two highest-ranked cosmonauts, Titov and Nelyubov, were sent to Tyuratam for final preparations. Vostok 1 On 12 April 1961, at 6:07 am UTC, the Vostok 3KA-3 (Vostok 1) spacecraft was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome. Aboard was Gagarin, the first human to travel into space, using the call sign Kedr (, Siberian pine or cedar). The radio communication between the launch control room and Gagarin included the following dialogue at the moment of rocket launch: Gagarin's farewell to Korolev using the informal phrase Poyekhali! () later became a popular expression in the Eastern Bloc that was used to refer to the beginning of the Space Age. The five first-stage engines fired until the first separation event, when the four side-boosters fell away, leaving the core engine. The core stage then separated while the rocket was in a suborbital trajectory, and the upper stage carried it to orbit. Once the upper stage finished firing, it separated from the spacecraft, which orbited for 108 minutes before returning to Earth in Kazakhstan. Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth. of Gagarin arriving in Moscow to be greeted by First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev "The feeling of weightlessness was somewhat unfamiliar compared with Earth conditions. Here, you feel as if you were hanging in a horizontal position in straps. You feel as if you are suspended", Gagarin wrote in his post-flight report. He also wrote in his autobiography released the same year that he sang the tune "The Motherland Hears, The Motherland Knows" () during re-entry. Gagarin was recognised as a qualified Military Pilot 1st Class and promoted to the rank of major in a special order given during his flight. There were concerns Gagarin's orbital spaceflight records for duration, altitude and lifted mass would not be recognized by the (FAI), the world governing body for setting standards and keeping records in the field, which at the time required that the pilot land with the craft. Gagarin and Soviet officials initially refused to admit that he had not landed with his spacecraft, an omission which became apparent after Titov's flight on Vostok 2 four months later. Gagarin's spaceflight records were nonetheless certified and reaffirmed by the FAI, which revised its rules, and acknowledged that the crucial steps of the safe launch, orbit, and return of the pilot had been accomplished. Gagarin is internationally recognised as the first human in space and first to orbit the Earth. Among the technical gear he wore to space, he kept the time from the Sturmanskie watch on his wrist. == After the Vostok 1 flight ==

and Parliament Speaker Anwar Sadat in a speech at Cairo Stadium, 1961 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, as well as a worldwide celebrity. Newspapers around the globe published his biography and details of his flight. He was escorted in a long motorcade of high-ranking officials through the streets of Moscow to the Kremlin where, in a lavish ceremony, Nikita Khrushchev awarded him the title Hero of the Soviet Union. Other cities in the Soviet Union also held mass demonstrations, the scale of which were second only to the World War II Victory Parades. (seated to his right) signing autographs at a youth forum in 1964 Gagarin gained a reputation as an adept public figure and was noted for his charismatic smile. On 15 April 1961, accompanied by officials from the Soviet Academy of Sciences, he answered questions at a press conference in Moscow reportedly attended by 1,000 reporters. Gagarin visited the United Kingdom three months after the Vostok 1 mission, going to London and Manchester. While in Manchester, despite heavy rain, he refused an umbrella, insisted that the roof of the convertible car he was riding in remain open, and stood so the cheering crowds could see him. Gagarin toured widely abroad, accepting the invitation of about 30 countries in the years following his flight. In just the first four months, he also went to Poland, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Hungary, and Iceland. Because of his popularity, US president John F. Kennedy barred Gagarin from visiting the United States. and was elected to the Central Committee of the Young Communist League. He later returned to Star City, the cosmonaut facility, where he spent several years working on designs for a reusable spacecraft. He became a lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Forces on 12 June 1962, and received the rank of colonel on 6 November 1963. Soviet officials, including Kamanin, tried to keep Gagarin away from any flights, being worried about losing their hero in an accident noting that he was "too dear to mankind to risk his life for the sake of an ordinary space flight". Kamanin was also concerned by Gagarin's drinking and believed the sudden rise to fame had taken its toll on the cosmonaut. While acquaintances say Gagarin had been a "sensible drinker", his touring schedule placed him in social situations in which he was increasingly expected to drink alcohol. and was backup pilot for his friend Vladimir Komarov on the Soyuz 1 flight after five years without piloting duty. Kamanin had opposed Gagarin's reassignment to cosmonaut training; Gagarin had gained weight and his flying skills had deteriorated. Despite this, he remained a strong contender for Soyuz 1 until he was replaced by Komarov in April 1966 and reassigned to Soyuz 3. The Soyuz 1 launch was rushed due to implicit political pressures and despite Gagarin's protests that additional safety precautions were necessary. Gagarin accompanied Komarov to the rocket before launch and relayed instructions to Komarov from ground control following multiple system failures aboard the spacecraft. Despite their best efforts, Soyuz 1 crash-landed after its parachutes failed to open, killing Komarov instantly. After the Soyuz 1 crash, Gagarin was permanently banned from training for and participating in further spaceflights. He was also grounded from flying aircraft solo, a demotion he worked hard to lift. He was temporarily relieved of duties to focus on academics with the promise that he would be able to resume flight training. On 17 February 1968, Gagarin successfully defended his aerospace engineering thesis on the subject of spaceplane aerodynamic configuration and graduated cum laude from the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy. == Personal life ==

at the 1964 Swedish bandy final at a concert in Moscow in 1964|alt=Gagarin and his wife Valentina clapping at a concert in Moscow in 1964. In 1957, while a cadet in flight school, Gagarin met Valentina Goryacheva at the May Day celebrations at the Red Square in Moscow. She was a medical technician who had graduated from Orenburg Medical School. They were married on 7 November of the same year, Yelena Yurievna Gagarina, born 1959, and Galina Yurievna Gagarina, born 1961, Following his rise to fame, at a Black Sea resort in September 1961, he was reportedly caught by his wife during a liaison with a nurse who had aided him after a boating incident. He attempted to escape through a window and jumped off a second floor balcony. The resulting injury left a permanent scar above his left eyebrow. He was also a basketball fan and coached the Saratov Industrial Technical School team, as well as being a referee. Some Soviet sources have said that Gagarin commented during his space flight, "I don't see any god up here.", though no such words appear in the verbatim record of his conversations with Earth stations during the spaceflight. In a 2006 interview, Gagarin's friend Colonel Valentin Petrov stated that Gagarin never said these words and that the quote originated from Khrushchev's speech at the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU about the state's anti-religion campaign, saying "Gagarin flew into space, but didn't see any god there". Petrov also said Gagarin had been baptised into the Russian Orthodox Church as a child, and a 2011 Foma magazine article quoted the rector of the Orthodox Church in Star City saying, "Gagarin baptized his elder daughter Yelena shortly before his space flight; and his family used to celebrate Christmas and Easter and keep icons in the house". Nevertheless, Gagarin's officially sanctioned autobiography, released by the USSR's state publishing house in 1961, includes a passage that upholds the official Soviet position on religious belief: "The manned space flight was a crushing blow to the churchmen. In the streams of letters that were addressed to me, I was pleased to read confessions in which believers, impressed by the achievements of science, renounced God, agreed that there is no god and everything connected with his name is fiction and nonsense". == Death ==

|left On 27 March 1968, while on a routine training flight from Chkalovsky air base, Gagarin and flight instructor Vladimir Seryogin died when their MiG-15UTI crashed near the town of Kirzhach. The bodies of Gagarin and Seryogin were cremated and their ashes interred in the walls of the Kremlin. Wrapped in secrecy, the cause of the crash that killed Gagarin is uncertain and became the subject of speculation, including several conspiracy theories. At least three investigations into the crash were conducted separately by the Air Force, official government commissions, and the KGB. According to a biography of Gagarin by Jamie Doran and Piers Bizony, Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin, the KGB worked "not just alongside the Air Force and the official commission members but against them." In April 2011, documents from a 1968 commission set up by the Central Committee of the Communist Party to investigate the accident were declassified. The documents revealed that the commission's original conclusion was that Gagarin or Seryogin had manoeuvred sharply, either to avoid a weather balloon or to avoid "entry into the upper limit of the first layer of cloud cover", leading the jet into a "super-critical flight regime and to its stalling in complex meteorological conditions". , the same type as Gagarin was flying when he died Alexei Leonov, who was also a member of a state commission established to investigate Gagarin's death, was conducting parachute training sessions that day and heard "two loud booms in the distance". He believes that a Sukhoi Su-15 was flying below its minimum altitude and, "without realizing it because of the terrible weather conditions, he passed within of Yuri and Seregin's plane while breaking the sound barrier". The resulting turbulence would have sent the MiG-15UTI into an uncontrolled spin. Leonov said the first boom he heard was that of the jet breaking the sound barrier and the second was Gagarin's plane crashing. == Awards and honours ==

Medals and orders of merit On 14 April 1961, Gagarin was honoured with a parade attended by millions of people that concluded at the Red Square. After a short speech, he was bestowed the Hero of the Soviet Union, Order of Lenin, and the first Pilot-Cosmonaut of the USSR. Gagarin had also been awarded four Soviet commemorative medals over the course of his career. and Hero of Socialist Labour (Bulgaria, including the Order of Georgi Dimitrov) the same year. Gagarin was also awarded the 1960 Gold Air Medal and the 1961 De la Vaulx Medal from the in Switzerland. He received numerous awards from other nations that year, including the Star of the Republic of Indonesia (2nd Class), the Order of the Cross of Grunwald (1st Degree) in Poland, the Hero of Labour award from the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and a Gold Medal from the British Interplanetary Society along with another medal from the British Union of Foundry Workers. President Jânio Quadros of Brazil decorated Gagarin on 2 August 1961 with the Order of Aeronautical Merit, Commander grade. During a tour of Egypt in late January 1962, Gagarin received the Order of the Nile and the golden keys to the gates of Cairo. Tributes The date of Gagarin's space flight, 12 April, has been commemorated. Since 1962, it has been celebrated first in the USSR and since 1991 in Russia and some other former Soviet republics as Cosmonautics Day. Since 2000, Yuri's Night, an international celebration, is held annually to commemorate milestones in space exploration. In 2011, it was declared the International Day of Human Space Flight by the United Nations. at the Royal Greenwich Observatory in London, England A number of buildings and locations have been named for Gagarin, mostly in Russia but also in other Soviet republics. The Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City was named on 30 April 1968. The launch pad at Baikonur Cosmodrome from which Sputnik 1 and Vostok 1 were launched is now known as Gagarin's Start. Gagarin Raion in Sevastopol was named after him during the period of the Soviet Union. The Russian Air Force Academy was renamed the Gagarin Air Force Academy in 1968. The town of Gzhatsk where he lived in Smolensk Oblast was renamed Gagarin after his death in 1968, and has since become home to numerous museums and monuments to him. A street in Warsaw, Poland, is called Yuri Gagarin Street. The town of Gagarin, Armenia was renamed in his honour in 1961. Gagarin has been honoured on the Moon by astronauts and astronomers. During the American space programme's Apollo 11 mission in 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left a memorial satchel containing medals commemorating Gagarin and Komarov on the Moon's surface. In 1971, Apollo 15 astronauts David Scott and James Irwin left the small Fallen Astronaut sculpture at their landing site as a memorial to the American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts who died in the Space Race; the names on its plaque included Yuri Gagarin and 14 others. In 1970, a wide crater on the far side was named after him. Gagarin was inducted as a member of the 1976 inaugural class of the International Space Hall of Fame in New Mexico. Gagarin is memorialised in music; a cycle of Soviet patriotic songs titled ''Gagarin's Constellation'' () was written by Aleksandra Pakhmutova and Nikolai Dobronravov in 1970–1971. The most famous of these songs refers to Gagarin's poyekhali!: in the lyrics, "He said 'let's go!' He waved his hand". Vessels have been named for Gagarin; Soviet tracking ship Kosmonavt Yuriy Gagarin was built in 1971 and the Armenian airline Armavia named their first Sukhoi Superjet 100 in his honour in 2011. Two commemorative coins were issued in the Soviet Union to honour the 20th and 30th anniversaries of his flight: a one-rouble coin in copper-nickel (1981) and a three-rouble coin in silver (1991). In 2001, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Gagarin's flight, a series of four coins bearing his likeness was issued in Russia; it consisted of a two-rouble coin in copper-nickel, a three-rouble coin in silver, a ten-rouble coin in brass-copper and nickel, and a 100-rouble coin in silver. In 2011, Russia issued a 1,000-rouble coin in gold and a three-rouble coin in silver to mark the 50th anniversary of his flight. In 2008, the Russia-based Kontinental Hockey League named their championship trophy the Gagarin Cup. In a 2010 Space Foundation survey, Gagarin was ranked as the sixth-most-popular space hero, tied with the fictional character James T. Kirk from Star Trek. A Russian docudrama titled Gagarin: First in Space was released in 2013. Previous attempts at portraying Gagarin were disallowed; his family took legal action over his portrayal in a fictional drama and vetoed a musical. Statues, monuments and murals There are statues of Gagarin and monuments to him located in the town named after him as well as in Orenburg, Cheboksary, Irkutsk, Izhevsk, Komsomolsk-on-Amur, and Yoshkar-Ola in Russia, as well as in Zagreb and Pula, Croatia, Nicosia, Cyprus, Druzhkivka, Ukraine, Karaganda, Kazakhstan, and Tiraspol, in the breakaway state of Transnistria. On 4 June 1980, Monument to Yuri Gagarin in Gagarin Square, Leninsky Avenue, Moscow, was opened. The monument is mounted to a tall pedestal and is constructed of titanium. Beside the column is a replica of the descent module used during his spaceflight. In 2011, a statue of Gagarin was unveiled at Admiralty Arch in The Mall in London, opposite the permanent sculpture of James Cook. It is a copy of the statue outside Gagarin's former school in Lyubertsy. In 2013, the statue was moved to a permanent location outside the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. In 2012, a statue was unveiled at the site of NASA's original spaceflight headquarters on South Wayside Drive in Houston. The sculpture was completed in 2011 by Leonov, who is also an artist, and was a gift to Houston commissioned by various Russian organisations. Houston Mayor Annise Parker, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak were present for the dedication. The Russian Federation presented a bust of Gagarin to several cities in India including one that was unveiled at the Birla Planetarium in Kolkata in February 2012. In April 2018, a bust of Gagarin erected on the street in Belgrade, Serbia, that bears his name was removed, after less than a week. A new work was commissioned following the outcry over the disproportionately small size of its head which locals said was an "insult" to Gagarin. Belgrade City Manager Goran Vesic stated that neither the city, the Serbian Ministry of Culture, nor the foundation that financed it had prior knowledge of the design. In August 2019, the Italian artist Jorit painted Gagarin's face on the facade of a twenty-storey building in the district of Odintsovo, Russia. The mural is the largest portrait of Gagarin in the world. In March 2021, a statue of Gagarin was unveiled at Mataram Park (Taman Mataram) in Jakarta, Indonesia in celebration of the 70th anniversary of Indonesia–Russia diplomatic relations as well as the 60th anniversary of the first human space flight. The statue, sculpted by Russian artist A.D. Leonov and presented by Russian embassy in Jakarta, is considered as "a sign of strengthening relations" between Moscow and Jakarta, which have been sister cities since 2006. In November 2025, a monument to Gagarin was unveiled in Islamabad's Fatima Jinnah Park, marking a new cultural exchange initiative between Russia and Pakistan. The ceremony coincided with the 10th meeting of the Russia–Pakistan Intergovernmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation. The bust, provided by the International Charitable Fund "Dialogue of Cultures–United World" with support from the St. Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange, was presented as a symbol of bilateral cooperation. 50th anniversary The 50th anniversary of Gagarin's journey into space was marked in 2011 by tributes around the world. A documentary film titled First Orbit was shot from the International Space Station, combining sound recordings from the original flight with footage of the route taken by Gagarin. The Russian, American, and Italian crew of Expedition 27 aboard the ISS sent a special video message to wish the people of the world a "Happy Yuri's Night", wearing shirts with an image of Gagarin. The Central Bank of the Russian Federation released gold and silver coins to commemorate the anniversary. == Notes ==