18.12.2022
Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin is the first cosmonaut of the earth (1934-1968). He was born on March 9, 1934 in Gzhatsk (now Gagarin), Smolensk region.
His mother, Anna Timofeevna, and father, Alexey Ivanovich, were common countryside toilers from the village of Klushino, Gzhatsk District. In May 1949, he graduated from the incomplete secondary school of Gzhatsk and entered the Lyubertsy Vocational School #10, specializing as a molder and foundry worker.
Simultaneously with his studies at the school, Yuri entered the Lyubertsy evening school for working youth. In 1951, he became a student at the Saratov Industrial Technical School. It was in those years that he became interested in aviation and on October 25, 1954 for the first time he joined the Saratov flying club.
In June, Gagarin graduated with honors from the Saratov Industrial Technical School, in July he made his first solo flight on the Yak-18 and on October 10 of the same year he graduated from the Saratov Aviation Club. On October 7, 1955 Yury Alekseyevich was drafted into the Soviet Army and sent to Orenburg to study at the 1st Chkalov military aviation school named after K.E.Voroshilov. On October 25, 1957 he graduated and a few days later married Valentina Ivanovna Goryacheva. Two daughters were born to the marriage: Elena, now director of the Moscow Kremlin Museum Reserve, and Galina, who became an economist and professor at Plekhanov Russian University of Economics.
At the end of 1957, Gagarin arrived at his destination – a fighter aviation regiment of the Northern Fleet. On December 9, 1959 Gagarin wrote an application requesting to be enrolled in the group of cosmonaut candidates. On March 3, 1960, by order of the Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force K.A. Vershinin, he was enrolled in the group of cosmonaut candidates, and from March 11 he began training.
The leader of the Soviet space project Sergey Korolev and the leaders of the Defense Department of the CPSU Central Committee, who were in charge of space development, as well as the leaders of the Ministry of General Machine Building and the Ministry of Defense understood perfectly well that the first cosmonaut should become the face of our state, worthily representing our motherland on the international scene.
The spaceship “Vostok” with the pilot-cosmonaut on board Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on April 12, 1961 at 9 hours 7 minutes Moscow time. Just 108 minutes later the cosmonaut landed near the village of Smelovka in the Saratov region. Those minutes were destined to be stellar in Gagarin’s biography. Two days later, Moscow welcomed the hero of space. A crowded meeting devoted to the first space flight took place on Red Square. Thousands of people wanted to see Gagarin with their own eyes. For his flight he was awarded the titles “Hero of the Soviet Union”, “Pilot-Cosmonaut of the USSR” and was given the order of Lenin. Already at the end of April, Yuri Gagarin went on his first foreign trip. “Mission Peace,” as the first cosmonaut’s trip around countries and continents is sometimes called, lasted two years. Gagarin visited dozens of countries and met thousands of people. Kings and presidents, politicians and scientists, actors and musicians were honored to meet him.
Yuri Alekseyevich soon got over the star sickness and more and more time was given to work in the Cosmonaut Training Centre. Since May 23, 1961 Gagarin was the commander of the cosmonaut team. And in the fall of 1961, he enrolled in the Zhukovsky Military Academy of Aerospace Engineering to get higher education. The following years were very busy in Gagarin’s life. A lot of time and energy was spent on preparing new space flights and studying at the Academy. On December 20, 1963 Gagarin was appointed deputy chief of the Cosmonaut Training Center. He returned to his flight training in 1963 and started to prepare for the new space flight in summer 1966. One of those who began to prepare for a flight to the moon was Gagarin. It’s not hard to guess how he wanted to be the first to go to our eternal companion. But this was still far away. For now, it was necessary to teach the “Soyuz” spaceship to fly. The first test flight in the manned version was scheduled for April 1967. Vladimir Mikhailovich Komarov and Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin were getting ready for it. The fact that Komarov became the main pilot of the spacecraft does not mean at all that he was better prepared. When the decision was made, they decided to “save” Gagarin and not to risk his life. Everyone knows how the flight of Soyuz-1 ended. Speaking at a mourning rally dedicated to the memory of Vladimir Komarov, his understudy Yuri Gagarin promised that the cosmonauts would teach the Soyuz to fly. In the end, they did. But it was done without Yuri Gagarin.
On February 17, 1968, he defended his diploma at the Zhukovsky Academy. He continued to prepare for new flights into space. With great difficulty he obtained permission to fly the plane himself. On March 27, 1968 was my first such flight. And the last one… The plane crashed near the village of Novoselovo, Kirzhach district of Vladimir. The circumstances of that disaster are still not fully elucidated. But whatever happened on that day, only one thing is clear – the first cosmonaut of the planet Earth, Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, died. A nationwide mourning period was declared in the USSR.
