18.12.2022
The world first heard about Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin on April 12, 1961, from a TASS message broadcast on the air at 10:2 Moscow time, almost an hour after the launch of the launch vehicle with the Vostok spaceship.
Then announcer Yuri Levitan read a short excerpt from the astronaut’s biography, saying that he came from a family of collective farmer, his father worked as a carpenter, and his mother was a housewife.
Although in the context of the era it seems logical that the Soviet leaders tried to select a worker from a peasant family for the role of the first cosmonaut, Western commentators immediately questioned the truth of the official version, after his last name seemed to indicate a family connection to one of the famous noble families of pre-revolutionary Russia. As a result, the first myth of Yuri Gagarin appeared, which proved to be extraordinarily tenacious: now, however, it can only be found in alternative history fiction and satirical poems.
The next day, i.e. on April, 13, the prestigious newspaper “Los Angeles Times” announced that Yuri Alekseyevich was the grandson of Prince Mikhail Gagarin, who took part in the Civil War on the side of “Whites” and was shot by the “Reds” in 1919. To somehow explain the obvious absurdity of the proposed version (the Communists are sending into space the grandson of a repressed prince, descended from Rurik!), some Russian emigrant Alexey Scherbatov, professor of history, said that probably the outcome of the orbital flight was unpredictable, so they decided to send a man who did not feel sorry for them. The same emigrant added even more colorful details to his words. It turns out that the father of the cosmonaut, Alexei Mikhailovich Gagarin, fled to the Urals, fleeing from the persecution of the authorities, and there in the town with the mysterious name of Orenberg, and his son Yuri was born. In 1939, Alexei Mikhailovich disappeared, becoming yet another victim of Bolshevik terror.
Soviet journalists, of course, immediately ridiculed the version about the prince’s son (especially since the astronaut’s father was named Alexei Ivanovich), but it had long been moved from publication to publication. And for those who replicated it, it was enough to refer to the genealogical tables of the princely family of the Gagarins in order to make sure: there are not many Mikhailovs in it, and the role of “shot grandfather” fits only Nikolai Nikolaevich Gagarin, owner of the Ivanovskoye estate in Elatomsk district of Tambov province, who really died in 1919 together with his wife. And he really had a son, but, of course, not Alexei Mikhailovich, but also Nikolai Nikolaevich, who emigrated to France and died there at an advanced age.
When Professor Scherbatov’s absurd hypothesis was rejected, another one arose: allegedly, the Gagarins were rich landlords who owned large estates, and the serfs who belonged to them, after liberation, were also recorded under the surname of the princely family. This version can be found even in the Soviet sources, and its popularity can be explained by the fact that no one was closely involved in the origin of the first cosmonaut, trusting the stories of his parents.
Nevertheless, with time the necessary work was done, and the results of their painstaking research we find in documentary and historical essay “Ancestors of Yuri Gagarin” by Galina Mozgunova (Moscow magazine, 2006, ¹ 7) and “Ancestral roots” (Journal “Native Land”, 2011, ¹ 4), and in a review article by Larissa Kovaleva “On the origin of the Yuri Gagarin family from the peasants of the village. Konyshevo, Chukhloma Uyezd, Kostroma Province (now Antropovsky District, Kostroma Oblast)” (2015). Let us refer to these materials for details.
Let’s start with the cosmonaut’s father, Alexei Ivanovich Gagarin. Although it is difficult to reconstruct the pre-revolutionary genealogy of the peasants, as they often appear without family names in the surviving documents, it was relatively quickly established that his father (i.e. grandfather of the cosmonaut) was called Ivan Fedorovich Gagarin. In the metric book of St. Nicholas Church in the village of Klushino there is a record of August 31 [September 12, New Style] 1884 of his marriage with a local maiden. The groom, as stated in the document, “dismissed to the reserve of the 7th Reserve Cadet Infantry Battalion Private Ivan Fedorov Gagarin, of Orthodox faith, 26 years of age.” His bride was “the daughter of a peasant Stepan Mikhailova Klushinsky parish village Klushina village maiden Anastasia Stepanova, orthodox, 20 years of age. It is known that her maiden name was Nastasia Lysikova. The particular value of the marriage record gives the presence of the surname Gagarin. In subsequent vital records of the births of his children it is never mentioned again.
In addition, there was a legend in the village of Klushino that Ivan Fyodorov (Fyodorovich) was a native of Kostroma Province. Indeed, a unique entry of the following content was found in a metric book of St. Nicholas Church for 1887: “Kostroma Province, Chukhloma County, Prosekovskaya volost, Konyshevo village, reserve private Ivan Fedorov”. Their search continued in the archives of Kostroma region and resulted in a significant discovery: the researchers found another historical record dated 1858 in the metric book of the Church of the Holy Virgin of the village of Bushnevo: “Date of birth – September 19, baptism – 21. The name of the born – John. Rank, name, patronymic and surname of parents – state peasant of Konyshevo village Feodor Petrov and his lawful wife Epistemia Nikolaeva, of the Orthodox faith. The parents’ names are those of the peasant of the same fiefdom and village, Pyotr Sergeyev, a peasant of the same fiefdom. Thus, the date and the place of birth of the cosmonaut’s grandfather, the name and patronymic of his great-grandfather – Feodor Petrovich and the name of his great-grandfather – Pyotr became known with high degree of reliability.
However, the researchers needed additional documents for the final truth. The main confirmation of the correctness of the chosen direction of the search was found in the archive of the Chukhloma military conscription office. Mention of representatives of the Gagarin family can be found there many times, there are even their autographs. In the Prosekovskaya Volost family list of people liable for conscription in 1890, met record of the family of Fyodor Petrovich Gagarin, that is, the great-grandfather of the cosmonaut already had this name. The list was created in 1871: the head of the family and his eldest son Vasily were listed as deceased by the time, and the younger Pavel was three years old. On the middle brother, that is, the grandfather of the cosmonaut, we learn from a later postscript: “Ivan, born Sept. 19, 1858, adopted for service in 1879 and is now on leave. From the same entry we learn that Ivan Fyodorovich in 1890 was still listed as a peasant of the village of Konyshevo. In order to transfer to another peasant or burgher society, it was necessary to obtain permission from the village council. Until then, the peasant had to pay all taxes to the community, which, for its part, was responsible for its members wherever they lived.
Comparing the data obtained with periodic censuses of the tax population (register books), we were able to trace the genealogy of Yuri Gagarin in the male line up to the beginning of the XVIII century. Today it looks like this: father Alexey Ivanovich (born in 1902), grandfather Ivan Fedorovich (born in 1858), greatgrandfather Fyodor Petrovich (born in 1832), great-greatgrandfather Peter Avvakumovich (born in in 1798), great-great-grandfather Avvakum Abakum Fedorovich (born in 1771), great-great-grandfather Fyodor Petrovich (born in 1740s), great-great-grandfather Peter (born in 1710s).
In addition, it is conclusively established that originally Gagarin’s ancestors in the male line, who lived in Konyshevo, were serfs, who belonged to the estate of Captain Alexander Matveyevich Tolstoy of the Semenov Regiment of the Life Guards. In 1821, after the death of his master, his heir, Adjutant General Count Alexander Ivanovich Osterman-Tolstoy, released his peasants for a small ransom of 17.5 thousand rubles and converted them into free farmers. In 1850 the status of Konyshev’s residents changed again: they started calling them state peasants emplaced on their own land.
The name Gagarin first appears in a metric book for 1864. It was the uncle of Ivan Feodorovich – Yakov Petrovich Gagarin. Researchers assume that in this case the “ancestor” of the surname was Peter Avvakumovich. Since the peasants of Konyshev had no relation to the Princes Gagarin, the domestic version of its origin must be rejected. Most likely, the surname came from the nickname Gagara. In dictionaries one can find different interpretations of this word: “seabird”, “swarthy, black-haired man”, “hooter, tooter”, “clumsy, long”. However, it is not possible to establish for certain what the authors of the nickname meant and why it stuck, giving the surname to the future cosmonaut a century later.
In the early XX century the village of Konyshevo was relatively big, with 250 inhabitants, and the Gagarins still lived there, but fifty years later there were almost none: the household book of the 1950s records only one household, which was owned by Elizaveta Alexeyevna Gagarina, born in 1904, the fourth cousin of the cosmonaut. Nowadays, Konyshevo is still listed on the maps, it is located in the Kurnovsky rural settlement of Antropovsky District, Kostroma Region, a few kilometers from the district center.
Let us return again to the village of Klushino, where Ivan Fyodorovich Gagarin settled after his marriage in 1884. Total in his family of eight children: Paul (born in 1885), Nicholas (born in 1887 year), Paraskeva (born in 1889 year), Michael (born in 1891 year), Ivan (born in 1894), Daria (born in 1897), Savva (born in 1899); Alexei Ivanovich, father of the future cosmonaut, was the youngest child, he was born March 14 [March 27 on new style] 1902.
The records of birth of children the head of the family until 1897 is listed as a retired private, and since 1899 – as a peasant. However, he alternated his peasant labor with the odd trade. According to the stories of Klushinskie old residents, Ivan Fyodorovich was a skilled carpenter and joiner. He often went to work, and got to neighboring provinces. From one such trip he did not return. Alexey Ivanovich remembers the last time he saw his father in 1914. According to other reports, the grandfather of the cosmonaut disappeared before 1910.
In 1917, as the census shows, the family was headed by Anastasia Stepanovna Gagarina, i.e. grandmother of the cosmonaut. The household card lists nine people in addition to the mistress: three sons, a daughter, a grandson, two granddaughters-in-law, and two daughters-in-law. At the time of the census, the Gagarins had in their communal possession 5.4 deciles (one allotment) of land, a horse, a cow, and a piglet.
The fate of the children of the Klushino branch of the Gagarins’ family was arranged differently. The elder son, Pavel Ivanovich, finished the Military-Fieldsher School in St. Petersburg before the Revolution and for many years worked in his native village as a veterinarian. Left alone in his later years, he spent much time with his brother’s family, Alexei Ivanovich, and loved to spend time with his nephews. His sons Nikolai, Mikhail and Ivan in their youth went to work in the capital. After the revolution, only Nicholas returned to Klushino, and the other two brothers “perished” as their father.
Nikolai and Savely (Savva according to the church book) moved to Moscow shortly before the Great Patriotic War. Alexei, as the youngest son, was with his mother, helped her, and in the summer grazed cattle. Early on he mastered the carpentry trade. He studied at a local parochial school. In one of the service questionnaires, he later wrote that he had a four-class education. But there is also information that Alexei Ivanovich was forced to abandon his studies, not having completed a full course of elementary school, so he even read with great difficulty.
Of the two daughters of the Gagarins, only Praskovya Ivanovna (according to the church book – Paraskeva) lived a long life. She married a widower Alexei Matveyevich Matveyev, who had many children, and this event predetermined the fate of her younger brother Alexei.
Now let’s look into the genealogy of the cosmonaut’s mother, Anna Timofeevna Gagarina, who came from the Matveev family. They lived just four versts from Klushin – in the proprietary village of Shakhmatovo. Before the abolition of serfdom it belonged to the Counts Kamensky. Peasant plots were small, so many men to feed their families, were engaged in extraction.
At sixteen Timofey Matveyev together with his brothers Efim and Alexey left for St. Petersburg and worked at the Putilov factory, occasionally visiting the village. During one of such visits, on February 13, 1891, he married a peasant girl from a neighboring parish. In the metric book of the Pyatnitskaya church in the village of Vorob’ev, in the information about the groom recorded: “Vorob’evskaya parish village Shakhmatova peasant Matvey Fedorov son Timothy Matveev, Orthodox Christianity, 21 years”. His bride was “the daughter of the peasant Egor Ivanov in the village of Lukyantsevo of Petropavlovskaya parish, 19 years of age, the peasant Yegorova, of the Orthodox faith.
After his marriage Timofei Matveyevich did not give up his work at the plant. Anna Egorovna spent the winter months in town visiting her husband. The family had many children, but they died in infancy, survived only five, among them – a daughter, which is also called Anna, who was born December 7 [December 20 New Style] in 1903.
In 1912 Anna Egorovna with children moved to St. Petersburg. The family lived at 12 Bogomolovskaya Street, apartment 3 (now Vozrozhdeniya Street, not far from Kirovsky Zavod metro station). At first, everything was going well. Timofey Matveyevich was a skilled worker who earned good money. Two years later, disaster struck, as he was injured at work. His eldest son Sergei and eldest daughter Maria got a job. Finding themselves in a proletarian environment, they early joined the revolutionary movement, which was gaining strength at the time.
All children in the Matveev family were literate. Anna Timofeevna managed to graduate from the elementary school at the Putilov plant. In the personal archive of the cosmonaut’s mother there is a certificate #5501 issued to her:
“The Standing Commission of the Imperial Russian Technical Society for Technical Education hereby certifies that Matveeva Anna Timofeevna, daughter of a peasant. of Vorobyevskaya vol., village Shakhmatovo, of Smolensk Gubernia, Gzhatsk District, born in 1903 Dec. In 1916 successfully graduated from a course in the children’s classes of the Putilov School, and in the test run by a deputy of the Ministry of Public Education, showed her knowledge:
The girl was given a recommendation to continue her education, but she did not have enough money for her schooling. As you can see, contrary to popular stereotypes, the peasant “housewife” was a more educated man than her husband, who studied only in a rural parochial school, which, incidentally, noted and contemporaries. Moreover, of all the Soviet books devoted to the childhood and growing up of the first cosmonaut, the book by Anna Timofeyevna Gagarina, Memory of the Heart (1985) is perhaps the most reliable source, as we will see later.
The turbulent year of 1917 met the Matveyev family in Petrograd; they all welcomed the revolutionary authorities. Sergei and Maria enthusiastically enlisted in the Red Guards. Meanwhile, surviving in the starving city was becoming increasingly difficult. The family began to talk about returning to the village, but they did not really get together until the spring. The former townspeople had to buy a horse, prepare wood for the construction of a new house. Unfortunately, the head of the family, Timofey Matveyevich, did not live to see the completion of the construction: his health waned with each passing day, and in November 1918 he died.
Sergei and Maria worked at the Gzhatsk labor exchange. It seemed that life was gradually getting better again. And then in 1922 Sergey died during a typhus epidemic, and nine days later, unable to withstand the grief, the mother of the family, Anna Egorovna, died. After the epidemic, the eighteen-year-old Anna Timofeevna, who had also caught typhus, became the eldest. Under her care were sixteen-year-old brother Nicholas and eleven-year-old sister Olga. Relatives, of course, helped the orphaned children.
They also took care to find a reliable life partner for Anna. Visiting Praskovya Matveeva, nee Gagarina, from the neighboring Klushin her younger brother Alexei stopped by. He had a good reputation: hard-working, artisan, was considered a good accordionist. Praskovya suited him up to Anna, who happened to be her husband’s niece.
The young couple got married right after the end of the field work – on October 14, 1923. Anna Timofeevna at the time was nineteen years old, her husband twenty-one. As was the custom, Alexei Gagarin brought his wife to her parents’ house on the outskirts of Klushin. Her younger brother and sister remained in Shakhmatov in the care of Praskovia and Alexei Matveyev. Two branches of peasant families united to give life to a new generation.
Of course, it is very amusing to watch the attempts to present Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin as a scion of an ancient princely family originating from Rurik. However, the archives are inexorable: by origin, the first cosmonaut of the planet was a simple Russian peasant. No more. But, note, and not less!
