20.12.2022
The “legend” about Yuri Gagarin, created by Soviet propaganda, claims that he was so fascinated by Tsiolkovsky’s ideas and was so impressed by satellite launches that he could no longer restrain his inner impulse and submitted a report to the command with a request to send him to where they train space conquerors.
That is, astronauts (recall that the term “cosmonaut” was not yet used in the late 1950s). Named even the date of the report – 5 or 6 October 1959.
In principle, there is nothing supernatural in this. I think if you dig, you can find in military archives dozens of reports with similar requests. Young people in general are susceptible to propaganda, and here they have satellites, Laika, “The Andromeda Nebula”. I also saw a film – “The Road to the Stars” (1957), directed by Pavel Klushantsev, a remarkable Leningrad filmmaker. A necessary thing, promising, with bonuses in the form of heroic adventures and worldwide fame – why not try to join him? For example, famous journalist Yaroslav Kirillovich Golovanov told how the science department of Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper called after launching the third satellite with a question: can we fly the fourth?
So Gagarin, who loved sharp turns in life and was attentive to space achievements, could well write such a report. But when? Biographers have no doubt that exactly before the arrival of the selection committee, and it appeared in Luostari October 12, 1959. And here we begin to have doubts about the authenticity of the “legend. In fact it turns out that those who worked on medical-biological support of the rocket-space program were only waiting for an occasion to come to a distant aviation regiment to examine a volunteer. Did they do the same in all similar cases? Common sense suggests that it is unlikely.
Unclassified documents relatively recently also reject such a connection: the selection board arrived in Luostari on its own initiative and not on October 12. There is still a list of Gagarin’s admission to the aviation hospital, dated October 11, 1959. Physician Ivan Ivanovich Kasyan, who participated in the preliminary and clinical examinations, said that the future cosmonaut arrived in Moscow from Luostari even earlier – October 7! Moreover, according to recollections of medical professionals who traveled to garrisons and directly communicated with the pilots, travel took place during June-July 1959. That is, they could meet with Gagarin in the summer – before he went on vacation with his family. The “legend” is crumbling before our eyes!
However, Yuri Alekseyevich himself writes about it rather vaguely in his book of memoirs:
“Life has made significant amendments to my designs and plans. If I quite recently believed – there is still time for reflection, but now I realized: to delay no longer can not. The next day, as required by military regulations, I filed a command report with a request to enroll me in the group of candidates for astronauts. It seemed to me that the time came for forming such a group. And I was not mistaken. I was summoned [to Moscow] for a special medical commission.”
Note, there is not a word about the selection committee. According to Gagarin, it turns out that he wrote a report, and some time later he was immediately sent to Moscow. When his “The road to space” was published no one doubted that everything in it was true. But today we see a lot of tricks: on the one hand, Yuri Alekseyevich and his lithographers helped him and tried to bring to the reader maximum of true information; on the other hand, they had to consider the requirements of censors, who did everything to keep the “state secret”, under which the entire cosmonaut squad and specialists, who worked with them, were disclosed. It turns out that we cannot give an exact answer on this question today, because there is another explanation: Gagarin wrote a report after he passed the initial selection to be sent to Moscow, because, being on military service, he could leave the air regiment only with the permission of superior officers.
