18.12.2022
Much more has been written about Saratov period of Yuri Gagarin’s life than about Lyubertsy period. It is understandable: at last the details of the future cosmonaut’s biography began to fit into the “legend” composed post factum.
Since the choice of sources is large, we will, as before, be guided primarily by the memories of Gagarin’s friends, classmates and teachers, selecting them according to their historical context and their overlap with other sources, primarily with extant documents.
The trio of excellent students of the trade school (that is, Yuri Gagarin, Alexander Petushkov and Timofei Chugunov) were accompanied to Saratov by their tutor Vladimir Alexandrovich Nikiforov, who was in charge of the students’ dormitory and, accordingly, of their well-being. We arrived on August 13, 1951, from the station immediately went to the technical college, where we completed the necessary documents. Gagarin’s statement was preserved:
“To the director of the Saratov Industrial Technical School of the Ministry of Labor Reserves from the pupil of the craft school № 10 of group № 21 Gagarin Yuri Alekseevich, born in 1934 in the Smolensk region of Gzhatsky district, Klushinsky s/s, village Klushino. Member of Komsomol since 1949.
I ask you to enroll me as an apprentice in the technical school entrusted to you, as I wish to improve my knowledge in the field of foundry production and to bring as much benefit to my homeland as possible. I undertake to fulfill all requirements imposed on me honestly and unconditionally.
Pay attention to the date – the beginning of July. At that time Yuri was not yet sure whether he would go to another city to expand his education as a foundry worker. Consequently, the document is backdated, which was and, incidentally, remains a fairly common practice in educational matters. Apparently, the educator Nikiforov went to Saratov precisely in order to resolve any problems related to admission to the technical school.
I, Gagarin Yuri Alekseevich, was born on March 9, 1934 in a poor peasant family. My father – Gagarin Alexey Ivanovich – was born in 1902, disabled veteran of the Great Patriotic War. Mother – Gagarina Anna Timofeevna – born in 1903. His brother – Boris Alekseevich Gagarin – was born in 1936, at present time he studies at the Gzhatskaya NSS.
In 1943 went to the Klushino elementary school. In 1945 with his family moved to Gzhatsk. Went to study in Gzhatsk high school, finished six classes there and went to study in RU ¹ 10 in Lyubertsy. Lyubertsy. In 1950 he went to study in the seventh grade Lyubertsy School of Working Youth № 1. In 1951 he graduated from the seventh grade of that school with honours.
December 16, 1949 joined the Komsomol. As of the Komsomol organization, and by the administration of the school, I have no penalties.
Yury simplifies and slightly ennobles his biography, which was also a common thing (I want to write “for those times, common”, but similar things happen all over the place today). Simplification consists in the fact that Gagarin did not mention Gzhatsk elementary school, where he was in the third and fourth grades, and ennoblement in the fact that he called his father “invalid of the Great Patriotic War,” although formally Alexei Ivanovich’s disability had no relation to the war. It also draws attention to the fact that Gagarin did not mention in his autobiography his elder brother Valentin and his older sister Zoya. The researcher Vladislav Iosifovich Kats in the article “Either brother or no brother” (2010) offered another hypothesis, according to which Yuri did not mention Valentin and Zoya, because they were sent to Poland to work and this could have cast a shadow over him. I think there is a simpler explanation: the young man did not consider them part of his family, they had their own families and lived separately, so he did not list them in the brief biography, which was just another bureaucratic formality.
Having completed all the documents, the trio settled in a dormitory located at 21 Michurinskaya Street, Room 9. Again we turn to the memories of Timofey Chugunov:
“After Moscow, the city of Saratov didn’t seem so big to us. But we liked it for the beauty of its streets and squares, and most importantly, the people. They walked with a good mood, talked about something and often smiled. Our tutor remarked at once: “You see, what kind of people I am handing you over to.
Evening was approaching. One of the students on duty escorted us to the dormitory at 21 Michurina Street.
Tired from the road, we quickly fell asleep. At dawn, while everyone was still awake, a tall man came into the room and said loudly: “Where are the young Muscovites who came to study here?” Then he introduced himself: “I am the director of the technical school, Alexander Maximovich Koval,” asked about our well-being in the land of Saratov and invited us to the technical school canteen for a meal.
We liked our breakfast. The kitchen staff said a big thank you. And Yura Gagarin, smiling, added: “This is our first beautiful breakfast at your place, but not the last! We came to Saratov for a long time.
The admissions committee began its work at 9 o’clock. After breakfast we had time to walk around the campus. On the roof of one of the buildings we saw a sparks extinguisher on a pipe not more than 800 mm in diameter. It became clear that the technical school had a foundry. “That’s great! – said Petushkov, – no need to go to the factories.
At 9 o’clock we arrived at the door of the admissions office. Soon we were invited in. Receiving our personal files from the hands of the tutor, the director looked at them carefully, and then said: “Our technical school is replenished with excellent students. That’s very good! You won’t have to take the theory exams. But we will test your ability to work in the foundry specialty. Consider that all three have already been accepted into our technical school.
We were happy about the decision of the admission committee and set off on foot to the Volga. We walked slowly, looking at everything we saw on our way. There was the Volga! We stopped on a steep bank and admired its beauty for a long time. Passenger steamships, fast boats and very slowly barges loaded with timber were sailing by us along the river. Hundreds of people were fishing from boats right by the shore.
Yura Gagarin, turning to his tutor, said: “Let’s, Vladimir Alexandrovich, go boating together.” Eagerly everyone agreed. The motorboat was quickly rushing us to one of the islands. We spent the whole day relaxing there. Sasha Petushkov, Vladimir Alexandrovich and I did not sail far from the island. The Volga turned out to be insurmountable for us. We envied Yura in a good way. He sailed so far away that for a long time it was impossible to see him from the island. Yes, the constant practice of sports, including swimming, made itself felt. Yuri felt in the big river, like on the basketball and volleyball courts. We liked the Volga.
By the way, the island is called Green and is still a favorite vacation spot for Saratov residents. On the next day, August 15, Nikiforov went away, and the “Smolensk” trio, which they called Muscovites at once, went to demonstrate their shaping skills. The task turned out to be familiar: together with the other candidates they were charged under the direction of the master of industrial training Anatoly Ivanovich Riknev to fulfill the order of “municipal workers” to make the openwork cast-iron fence for the public garden at the Saratov Drama Theater named after K. Marx (nowadays named after I.A. Slonov). The beginners made casting compound by themselves, filled the flasks with it, formed imprint with the help of a model, then “boiled” in a cupola iron, poured it into flasks, knocked out and roughly processed ready grids. The master praised the work done, and on August 18 the “Muscovites” were enrolled at the technical college.
There were still two weeks left before classes started, so the pupils were sent for a few days to the collective farm in Bakury, a village 200 km to the north-west of Saratov, to help the peasants with the wheat harvest. Timofei Chugunov recalled:
“We went to the harvest by truck, led by the chauffeur of the technical school, L. S. Mesropian. In the collective farm we worked on the current. At that time there were no electric facilities for sorting and cleaning grain. All work was done by hand. The finished products were taken to the elevator in Yekaterinovka. We liked the work. True, we were very tired. Jura encouraged us with jokes and songs, calling us to the battle labor. He himself took up the work with even more passion. We worked honestly for almost two weeks. We lived in one family’s house. We were well fed. We often ate straight from the pot. We drank milk from big wartime aluminum cups.
The chairman of the collective farm thanked us and wished us success in our studies. We returned to Saratov in the same car and with the same driver, L.S. Mesropian. We addressed him with the words “Uncle Leva”.
Saratov on the right bank of Volga river was cultural and industrial center of ASSRNP (Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of Volga Germans) before war, with its administrative center in Engels (Pokrovsk before 1931) on the other bank. Volga Germans accounted for 60% of the population of the republic, bilingual administration and education were conducted there, newspapers were published in German in Saratov, and national theaters welcomed spectators.
Unfortunately, the history of the Republic ended on August 28, 1941, when the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, which ordered the deportation of all Germans in Kazakhstan, Siberia and Altai, was adopted. In a short time over 438 thousand people were deported from the region. The territory of the republic was divided between the Saratov and Stalingrad regions. At the same time the evacuation of institutions and enterprises from the western part of the USSR to the east began, and many of them were placed in Saratov and the region: during 1942 there was launched a hundred plants removed from the lost territories; installation in a new place took from one and a half to two months, after which they began to produce military products. About one million refugees passed through Saratov during the war, and the apparatus of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet and the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR was also temporarily relocated to the city. It is clear that refugees were settled first of all by the settlements of the deported Volga Germans.
As a result of the evacuation and the industrial construction, started before the war, the number of plants of the allied importance in the region increased one and a half times. The most important Saratov enterprises were aviation plant, which produced fighters “Yak-1” and “Yak-3”, oil refinery, bearing factory and battery factory. However, by the end of the war Saratov’s potential was exhausted: industrial equipment was worn out and required complete replacement; production of consumer goods dropped to a critical minimum; agriculture fell into decay; threat of famine loomed. The situation was especially difficult in the territories of the liquidated ASSRNP, where due to the lack of able-bodied population 40% of the cultivated areas were not cultivated. Therefore, immediately after elimination of the consequences of the bombing, intensive reconstruction of the region’s economy began. A significant contribution was made by ten thousand Germans from special camps GUPVI (Main Directorate for prisoners of war and interned) NKVD / MIA of the USSR, located in the Saratov region – a small labor army. By 1950, the mobilization mode managed not only to fully restore the destroyed, but also to double the prewar level of production. Saratov plants, factories, power plants, and gas fields received thirty thousand young specialists. Three friends from Lyubertsy were to join this stream.
Saratov Industrial College had a glorious history. Abolition of serfdom in 1861 stimulated the development of Russian economy. There was an urgent need for skilled workers, but the liberated peasants were almost entirely illiterate and did not meet the demands of the new labor market. Saratov merchant Timofei Yefimovich Zhegin appealed to the city’s society for donations to establish a trade school that would train specialists for industrial enterprises, but he failed to raise the necessary funds. A dramatic event helped: on April 4 (April 17, New Style), 1866 a revolutionary-terrorist Dmitry Vladimirovich Karakozov carried out an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Emperor Alexander II, which, of course, caused a national resonance. The public of Saratov, “in gratitude to the Almighty for saving the life of the Emperor” decided to open a trade school in the city and name it in honor of the reigning person – Alexander. Four years later, “Imperial permission” was received, and activities to create the school immediately revived. The town council allocated funds for the purchase of the place and building for the school. Zhegin managed relatively cheaply to buy a large three-story house in the city center on the corner of Nikolskaya Street (now – Radishchev Street) and Bolshaya Kostrizhnaya (now – street Sacco and Vancetti, 15). The site formerly belonged to the landowner Grigory Vasilievich Gladkov, who organized a theater, where serf artists performed. The landowner laid out a large garden with alleys and arbours around the theater, some parts of which have survived until the mid-1950s: there are photos of students, including Yury Gagarin, near the flowerbed with a fountain in the school yard. The theater burned twice, and Gladkov sold the land, garden, and building to the governor’s aide Unkovsky, who broke down the adobe-brick building and began building a large three-story house, perfect for an educational institution.
August 30 (September 11 New Style), 1871 in the presence of high-ranking officials led by the governor the official opening of the Alexander College of Crafts. The next day the school visited the emperor himself: he was taken to the students, who at the time were chosen mainly from orphans, and he favorably spoke with them. At first they taught tailoring and bookbinding, as well as trained singers for church choirs. Later the list of specialties expanded, and teaching was subordinated to the so-called “Russian system” of industrial training, in which production of individual items was replaced by mastering of work techniques and operations that could be applied to entire classes of products. The period of training also increased: from two to four years.
Under the Soviet regime the educational institution in the center of Saratov went through several reorganizations. On the 5th of January 1945 by the order of the Chief directorate of labor reserves on the basis of Saratov industrial college № 2 Saratov technical school was established, which began to prepare masters in three specialties: metal cutting (technician-technologist), installation and repair of industrial equipment (mechanic technician) and foundry production of ferrous metals (foundry technician). According to the instruction for the admission of students, the technical school for admission admitted the USSR citizens under thirty years old with education of not less than seven grades of secondary school, graduates of vocational schools, who had worked in their specialty for at least two years and have production qualification of not less than the 3rd category. Advantages in admission were given to those who had been demobilized from the army. Students were provided with free three meals a day, uniforms, linen, dormitory and scholarship. On March 1, 1945 the first bell rang in the Saratov industrial technical school, 240 students began classes. The official opening of the college took place on March 24. The curriculum provided serious training in the specialty, as well as in general subjects. It is important that the technical school had a pedagogical bias, that is, its graduates were sent to work as masters of industrial training in the system of labor reserves.
In Saratov, Yuri Gagarin expectedly made new friends. One of them, Viktor Sidorovich Porokhnya, left a lot of memories about the future cosmonaut. Here, for example, is how he described the daily routine of the first year of training (I quote from the book “The Road to Baikonur”, 1977):
“All those who arrived to enter the technical school were placed in a dormitory. It was a good-quality old two-storey building made of red bricks. However, the second floor was only a third of its length. The porch’s canopy was supported by cast-iron columns. The entrance was asymmetrical to the building and divided it into two unequal parts.
There was a gymnasium on the second floor, the main living quarters were on the first, and the basement was used for auxiliary services. This building served as our home for all four years of our studies.
I have described our dwelling in some detail because this building no longer exists. In its place were built three nine-story buildings, which gladly inhabited the students of the technical college set in 1975. And how not to rejoice: in each room used to be arranged the whole study group, and now live in two or three people.
The front of the dormitory faced Michurina Street, and the right side of it faced Proviantskaya Street. These streets were the beginning of daily about a kilometer long, but with many turns way to the classroom. Its terminus was Sacco and Vancetti Street. The main and only three-floor school building of the technical college was on this street, at No. 15.
The building was too small for us. On the first floor were the school management and library, on the remaining two floors were classrooms, laboratories, auditorium, etc. It was just amazing. It’s amazing how the scheduling office managed to put things in such a way that all the groups were able to keep up with the teaching load. There was a foundry, machine shop, and other workshops in the courtyard, where we had our daily production practice. By the way, if you mentally extend Proviantskaya Street for 250-300 meters, then we would be just inside the property of the technical college. This “mentally” often took on a real form. Assuming that any straight line is shorter than any curve, we solved the problem in a correct, but somewhat “illegal” and therefore tempting way: we jumped over a wooden fence which lengthened our way… And this despite the proximity of the regional department of labor reserves, some workers of which taught at the technical school part-time and knew us well. Naturally, Yura Gagarin was among those who stormed the fence…”
As of August 24, 1951, thirty-one people were in group L-11 (foundry workers, first year, first group), according to the surviving list. Eleven graduated with Gagarin: many of the students were drafted into the army. In addition, at different times four more joined the group, so the full graduation of the “Gagarin” set was fifteen people.
Of course, all students were on full state support. Their grants were modest: 50 rubles for freshmen, 60 rubles for top students, and 100 rubles for sophomores (in 1947 dollars). Since students were mature enough to meet their own needs, they sought opportunities to earn extra money. In one of his interviews, Porokhnia said (I quote from V. С. Porokhnya “The character of Jura was forged in Saratov”, published on the Roscosmos website on May 21, 2010):
“In general, we were clothed and well fed at the technical school, and in this respect we did not have any particular problems. At first, this money was enough, but then our demands grew: we wanted to go with our girlfriend to the theater or cinema, buy a watch, take a trip on the Volga River. So I had to look for earnings.
We had a nearby pier on the Volga, and at night we ran to unload barges coming to Saratov. That is how we earned money. It enabled us to buy a suit – one for everybody. We were all about the same height, some shorter, some taller, and when the question arose – to go out somewhere, to run to a girl, we dressed the guy “be good!”, with a needle. The guy was “naked as a falcon” but he looked decent in the suit (smiling).
I remember once in the evening a foreman from the quay came to us – and the whole room got up and went to unload watermelons. It was ten p.m. – early eleven. We unloaded till about five in the morning. We got to the hostel, could hardly drag our feet. We ate enough watermelons – one had to pee, the other one. And then we fell asleep: we simply had no strength”.
Speaking of costumes. Besides a civilian clothes kit (a cotton jacket, a sweater, pants, two shirts, felt boots, chrome shoes with galoshes), the technical school also believed in a uniform – elegant, black fabric, for which the locals called the students rooks. Once again we turn to the article by Alexander Valentinovich Glushko “The uniform of Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin. Varieties and Peculiarities of Wearing” (2014). He reports that the uniform for students of industrial technical colleges was introduced by Order No. 54 of January 7, 1944 by the Chief Directorate of Labor Reserves under the Council of People’s Commissars. It was identical to the uniform of the trade schools – with the only difference that the button with the same image was silver instead of a hammer and a crescent wrench with letters and numbers on the buttonhole, and the dark blue cloth cap had the same visor, strap and canting as the cap. The cap again had a crossed hammer and an adjustable wrench. It is this cap and light-colored cape that we see Gagarin in the replicated photos: near the monument in the oldest Saratov park “Lipki” and sitting on the bench. On the left sleeve of the tunic was supposed to be an armband of the technical school, the color of which varied depending on the color of the uniform. There was one more difference: while the silver buckle of the trade school had a hammer and an adjustable wrench, the buckle of the industrial technical school had two letters: “IT”. Friends testify that Gagarin wore a Komsomol badge on his chest and a “round and silver wreath of a third-class athlete”, which he received in early 1951 after winning the 10 km ski race at the Lyubertsy trade school.
I must say that the rooms in the dormitory of the technical school were designed for large groups of children: in room 9, for example, lived at different times from 13 to 15 people. At the same time, as Gagarin’s classmates claimed, the cramped conditions didn’t divide but rather drank them in. They called themselves “industrialists” and adhered to the unwritten rules of student brotherhood. Viktor Porokhnya recalled:
“They put us all in one small room… They put a table in the middle, and we studied on it. And someone had to do his homework right on his knees – there was not enough room for everyone.
In general I should say that this communal room brought out all of us: there were guys who were on their own, so to speak, kept apart, and there were very companionable guys. But we lived together. We had everything in common. There was no stealing, no one owed anybody anything, etc. For example, if I ran out of tooth powder, I could easily borrow it from a friend.
Thanks to soccer, I had some money. It was in my nightstand – we had an ordinary soldier’s nightstand. And I knew no one would ever take it! And if they did, they would put it back, so it wouldn’t go to waste. I never felt like I was missing anything or anything.
In addition, if necessary, it was necessary to defend the honor of the “industrialists” in a fist fight. Yuri Gagarin was not the least of these, having extensive experience in Gzhatsk and Lyubertsy. Victor Porokhnya testified:
“If one of our people was touched or offended, things like that could start there – the whole dormitory could run out into the street at once and have a mass fight. Everything was very serious with us: the director of our technical school, A.M. [Aleksandr Maksimovich] Koval regularly received several severe reprimands a year from the District Party Committee.
And our fights were purposeful: if we knew exactly who the offender was, he would be in trouble… I remember one case. One time our guy was touched, and the one who hurt the guy lived next door to a movie theater. And in the cinema it was like this: the entrance was from the street, and the exit was in the alley. So we came in from the exit, dragged the bully out of the house – and there was a lot going on. There were 100 of us, just imagine! And “their” also came. Until the police arrived – it was very “hot” at the cinema. And again we reprimanded Koval. Yura did not stand aside – if there was a cry, he would “break away” with everyone else.
Another similar episode. In 1954, we had a fight, and it was, if memory serves me correctly, at the celebration of the 300th anniversary of the reunification of Ukraine and Russia. On Revolution Square in Saratov (it’s called differently now) came a car, on which a piano was installed. Artists performed, sang – in general, it was a festive day…
And we were walking in a group at that time: we had a habit of walking all together – on the one hand, we were afraid, on the other – we were revenged for being strong. And then a big fight broke out on that square… I had just come from some game and was wearing a beautiful silk shirt, and someone stabbed me with a knife or something sharp – in short, ripped my shirt like it was not there. But the scuffle did not end there: When we moved into the crowd, we overturned the poor piano, because the brawlers were hiding behind it. And we were dressed in uniform, such outwardly decent guys. All in overcoats, suits, shirts. And our ‘weapon’ was a belt with a buckle – we wound it around our arms – and went forward.
Folk memory has preserved even more intriguing stories. One of them is given in the book by Vladimir Ivanovich Rossoshansky “Boys from our city” (2004), a unique collection of verifiable materials about graduates of the Saratov Industrial College. One evening Gagarin was walking to his dormitory and in the alleyway he heard a scream. Rushed to the rescue. A frightened woman barely explained: some hooligan snatched her bag of money and fled. Yura ran in the right direction, overtook the robber and confronted him. The bag was returned to its owner.
Still, the main activity of the “industrialists” was not unloading barges, fighting, or chasing robbers, but training. All graduates remember the teachers of the technical school as experienced, demanding mentors who made no concessions to anyone. The class instructor for L-11 was math teacher Anna Pavlovna Akulova, who had worked at the technical school since it opened in 1945. She not only taught her subject at a very high level, but with great attention to the lives of her charges, their leisure time: she took part in group visits to theatrical performances and film premieres, to the “Dynamo” stadium, to the Volga, she organized discussions and academic conferences. In addition, Akulova was an active book-lover, giving preference to modern literature, adventure and fantasy prose, never shy to share her impressions of what she had read. Vladimir Rossoshansky in his book cites several cases from her practice that characterize her teaching style:
“Anna Pavlovna also used the following method: she asked a student and gave him an ‘A’. The next day she calls him to the blackboard again, but he had not prepared the lesson because she asked him yesterday. She gives him an “F”:
I must say that if in Gzhatsk and Lubertsy future cosmonaut was one of the older, in Saratov was among the very young, that is barely seventeen years old. Here his predisposition for informal leadership, which grew out of the need to monitor the welfare of his younger brother and take shape in the status of the mastermind of the teen team, required a serious basis for further development, because Yuri was surrounded by veterans with great experience, which can not be persuaded by the charm or wit – something more substantial was needed. And Gagarin, as we see, bet on his ability to quickly and reliably learn knowledge, the good thing he just graduated from seventh grade, so scholastic wisdom was still fresh in his memory. Let’s turn to the memories of Victor Porokhny:
“At the beginning of the school year, I was “unlucky. I was into sports, and I “earned” several “F’s” in math. In our group both we and Zhenya Steshin, a Stalingrader who had spent all the years of the war in his native city, were the youngest – seventeen years old each. Many of our older comrades had gone through the harsh school of life – the war, work at half-destroyed factories. Some of them were married with children. Knowledge was given them very hard, but they studied hard. As for us, young people, after our unhappy wartime childhood, we sometimes wanted to play around. Sometimes nothing seemed to matter. But when I was threatened with expulsion from technical school for failure to pass, my bravado quickly faded. And then Yura came to the rescue.
Well versed in mathematics, he regularly tutored me. Often we would stay up well past midnight. He prepared lessons with me. Sometimes we’d read the material once, again, and again, and then Gagarin would close the book and say:
Having done the theoretical part of homework together, we, apart from each other, proceeded to solve problems. After that Yura, like a real teacher, checked my work.
Some time passed, and we both felt that my work was going well, that my efforts were not wasted, a muddy mess of different concepts, formulas, theorems began to be defended, put in order. The “dispute” between mathematics and the student was resolved in favor of the latter. The unfortunate “pairs” finally stopped appearing in the class register against my last name. And what a joy it was for both of us when I passed all the exams of the first session successfully.
Gagarin’s confession sounds a bit vague in this place. It is quite believable that just in the library of the Saratov Industrial Technical School the young craftsman could find books, which hardly had Gzhatsk physics teacher Bespalov. The above-mentioned collection of science-fiction works is almost certainly a small book consisting of two texts by Tsiolkovsky: On the Moon (1893) and Dreams of Earth and Heaven (1894). The collection was published twice, in 1935 and 1938, edited by Yakov Perelman, with a total circulation of 70,000 copies and distributed to libraries. It may, of course, be the 1951 edition of the story “On the Moon,” but the definition of “collection” does not apply to it. As for other books “related to this question,” Gagarin could have used Konstantin Tsiolkovsky’s “Works on Rocket Engineering” (1947), Ari Sternfeld’s “Flight to World Space” (1949), and Boris Lyapunov’s “Stories about Rockets” (1950) at the time. Any one of these books could have served as the basis for the report. The vagueness of the confession, however, lies elsewhere. Biographers, referring to Gagarin, easily made the inference that although the path to cosmonautics for Yuri Alexeyevich began in Bespalov’s office, it was in Moskvin’s office that he found the ideological grounding that gave the eighteen-year-old foundryman a conscious dream of flying to the stars. In my opinion, this conclusion is another consequence of the desire to simplify the biography of the first cosmonaut. Even in the memoirs of his friends, which abound in moments of memoir selection, we do not find specific references to Gagarin’s theoretical background in rocket science and cosmonautics. A truly serious interest in this subject would come later in his life. And Tsiolkovsky will “turn over his soul” later – approximately at the time when his fantastic forecasts will suddenly begin to come true, and much earlier and faster than the founder himself believed. At the same time, it cannot be denied that being under the influence of such an enthusiastic inventor as Nikolai Ivanovich Moskvin, who seemed to know Tsiolkovsky personally, Gagarin should have paid some attention to the mentioned topic, to follow it. Moskvin’s enthusiasm, however, is beyond doubt. Vladimir Rossoshansky reported on this (I quote from the book Guys from Our Town, 2004):
The manuscript ends with the words: “Beautiful and majestic starry sky in all its enormity. Already to the naked eye the night sky gives a faint premonition of the immeasurable wealth of stars, scattered in the world of space.
How it resonates with K.E. Tsiolkovsky’s statement about the benefits of conquering the cosmos, which, he believed, would give “mountains of bread and abyss of power to society” in the future. And yet Moskvin’s manuscript was written before the October Revolution, when few people were familiar with the works of the great space theorist. Rossoshansky exaggerates by drawing parallels between Tsiolkovsky’s pretentious philosophy and Moskvin’s popular science text on the achievements of modern astronomy. Nevertheless the history of cosmonautics (not only Russian, but also worldwide) knows many examples when “cosmopolitan cranks-academics” became ideological mentors for enthusiastic youth, who later turned into designers and test-builders of space-rocket technology. And in this sense, the parallels are more than relevant: it was Nikolai Ivanovich Moskvin who became the first ideological mentor for Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin – and not only as a cosmonaut and test pilot, but also as a design engineer.
