Shooting the Moon - Yuri Gagarin, First Earthling in Space

By Kelly Raftery 

Soviet heroes, including Yuri Gagarin were interned in the red brick walls
(denoted by the black plaques) of the Kremlin near Red Square.
Photo by Bern Rostad.

In Moscow, a visit to Red Square is a must. When you are there, you will see the worldwide symbol of Russia, St. Basil’s Cathedral’s colorful domes, stand at the spot where Ivan the Terrible beheaded his loyal guard, gawk at the expansive commercialism of the central department store, GUM, and just across the square, you will see a squat little red granite building that has the name Ленин emblazoned across the top. It has been many years since I was a tourist in Moscow, but in my day, the official guide led the group into the cool dimness of Lenin’s Tomb, past the preserved leader (wax, not wax –the debate continues), and back outside again. A long pathway takes one back to the main square. To one side is a deep red wall with black plaques denoting the burial or internment spots of Soviet notables, on the other side are graves, including those of Stalin, Brezhnev and Chernenko.

Internment or burial under, near, or in the actual historic red wall of the fortress was a place of great honor granted to very few individuals. One of those is perhaps one of history’s greatest travelers—Yuri Gagarin. 

Yuri Gagarin,
first person in space.

Without the bravery of Yuri Gagarin, there would have been no Neil Armstrong, no “Houston, we have a problem” and no International Space Station. Gagarin was the first man to be strapped to a rocket and catapulted into space. Yes, as much as we celebrate our own moon landing, the simple fact is that the Soviets beat us into space initially. Not many Americans know that fact or anything about the man who is a Soviet hero. Today, the crew of the international space station still leaves earth from the same place Yuri Gagarin did in 1961. Americans would not visit the moon until years after this accomplishment. 

The Russian archive entry on Gagarin states, “he was the first man to see that the earth was indeed round, indeed mostly water, and indeed magnificent.” What an incredible journey that must have been for a child of a rural Russian village who spent years of his youth in a 3x3 meter mud dugout after the Nazis confiscated the family home and sent his elder siblings to Germany as slave labor. Yuri Gagarin’s father was a bricklayer, his mother a milk maid on a collective farm in southern Russia. 

Having left home to continue his education, Yuri Gagarin learned to fly biplanes as a teen-ager; he was later drafted into the Soviet military, which taught him to fly a MiG. At the time Gagarin was serving, the Soviets had begun their search for pilots for their space program. The diminutive Gagarin (five feet two inches tall) was among around twenty pilots chosen for the initial training who went through extensive physical and psychological testing before being narrowed down to just two men—Yuri Gagarin and German Titov, both short men who were better able to fit into the Vostok capsule. Gagarin would go on to make history.

 

The Vostok-1 Capsule.

On April 12, 1961, the Soviets launched Vostok-1 into space, with 27 year-old Yuri Gagarin on board. The Vostok capsule was hurled into space at a speed of about 5 miles per second. Gagarin orbited the earth one time, his entire flight lasting a mere 108 minutes from beginning to end. He described seeing rivers and geographic terrain from space and commented on the odd feeling of weightlessness. The capsule had been packed with supplies in case Gagarin landed somewhere far away from civilization and had to walk back.   

The Space Race had begun. Yuri Gagarin returned to earth a national hero deemed too valuable to the Soviet Union to be risked on any further flights. Gagarin traveled the world and graciously accepted the cheers of adoring crowds. Always a social drinker, Gagarin at some point developed a problem with alcohol, drinking heavily, even by Russian standards. In 1968, Yuri Gagarin was killed during a training flight, an incident that has become the focus of speculation and conspiracy theories. Gagarin left an incredible legacy behind, including a pre-flight tradition that continues on to this day. 

At the last minute, Gagarin hopped off the transport on the way to the capsule, wanting to relieve himself one more time before leaving earth. To this day, departing (only male) space explorers (of all nationalities) get off the bus and take a quick moment to grace the back tire of the vehicle with urine before continuing on to the launch pad. If you don’t believe me, you can see a photo of this tradition. 

Yuri Gagarin is among the great travelers of history, the very first earthling to have seen our big blue marble from the perspective of space.

Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down!

By Kelly Raftery

The last Romanov Rulers,
Nicholas II and Alexandra
at a fancy dress ball.

Today, there is a place called the Russian Federation. Before the Russian Federation, there was a place called the USSR and before there was the USSR, there was something called the Russian Empire. I know, super confusing. It gets worse when you realize that cities, towns, and other geographic features were renamed along with the political changes. To start at the beginning, the Russian Empire was ruled by a royal family, the Romanovs. These rulers of Russia were called Tsars or occasionally, Tsarinas (female rulers). Russian society was comprised of a small stratum of wealthy individuals and a huge mass of the very poor. Tens of millions of Russians were essentially enslaved to wealthy property owners to work the land, under a system called serfdom, which was only abolished in 1861. Former serfs migrated from the country into the cities, where they took up factory jobs. These new industrial workers (like many others worldwide during the Industrial Revolution) worked long days in deplorable conditions with no protections under the law. In labor disputes, it was the Tsar’s army that came to quell workers’ strikes with rifles and sabers. Urban poverty grew, Russia entered World War I and the situation was ripe for revolution.

No one monolithic organization overthrew the Russian Empire. In fact, even after Tsar Nikolai II was deposed in February 1917, his government remained at least partially in power, trying by half-measures to stem the rising tide of rebellion. Ultimately, a coalition of various Socialist factions united and took power in what was referred to as the “Great October Socialist Revolution.”  (To make things even more confusing, today the anniversary of the Revolution is celebrated on November 7^th.)  The Civil War followed hard on the heels of the Revolution and lasted for half a decade more. Reds (Socialists) battled Whites (Tsarist supporters) throughout the Empire from Ukraine to the Russian Far East, Novgorod to Bukhara. In Central Asia, a resistance group called the basmachi was not completely put down until 1934; seventeen years after the Revolution had begun on the streets of St. Petersburg. 

Let’s please take a moment to discuss definitions. The Soviet Union was never a Communist country, though it was ruled by an organization called the Communist Party. “Communism” and “Socialism” were theoretical stages of evolutionary economic development as outlined by Karl Marx, but whose theoretical roots lay further back with thinkers such as Thomas Moore in the 16^th Century England and Jean Jacques Rousseau in 18^th Century France. In theory, Communism was a more evolved form of society in which the means of production and distribution (e.g. land, factories, shops, etc.) were placed in workers’ hands. This more equitable distribution of resources would then eliminate poverty and industrial abuses. Socialism was the middle stage between Capitalism and Communism. The Soviet Union never “achieved Communism” but always strived towards it as a Socialist state. 

Propaganda poster reading,
"Long Live Equal Rights for Women of the USSR!"

Many of the men and women of the Revolution were idealists, dreamers who sought to bring about a more just, fair society for all citizens. Among the articles of the 1936 Soviet Constitution were: equal rights for women, the right to non-discrimination on the basis of race or nationality, the right to an education free of charge, the right to a workplace, the right to a limited hour workday and annual paid vacation time, the right to maintenance in old age, sickness or loss of capacity to work, free medical care and the guarantee of freedom of speech, press, assembly and protest.

Then, at some point along the way, the idealistic goals and heady dreams of the revolution–fair distribution of wealth and resources, equal rights for all citizens, collective ownership of farms, factories and shops and a better life for everyone got perverted. Some say that the entire theory is erroneous; some say it was Lenin’s (the first leader of the USSR) fault. Many more point to the Stalin era (1928-53) as the point at which the ideals of the revolution were warped by a tyrant who was willing to claw his way to the top of a towering pile of corpses to achieve his goals. 

"We live more happily with each day!"

At the end of Stalin’s time in power, the central government (not the workers) had control of all means of production and property, any opposition (real or imagined) was forcibly silenced and the Soviet Union was a modern, multicultural state. Tens of millions of men, women and children were killed under Stalin either through direct means like a bullet to the back of the head in the basement of KGB headquarters, or indirect methods such as starving to death as the result of harsh policies to wrest private farms away from “wealthy” peasants.  I wrote a bit about this time in "A Soviet Secret."

Double-headed eagles take the place of
USSR after 1991.

Under Socialism a person was born in a state-run hospital, educated in a state-run school, grew up and worked at a state-owned job and when he retired, he was provided with a pension from the state as well. Salaries were steady and adequate; the Soviet ruble was never floated on the international currency markets, thus did not suffer from value fluctuations or inflation. For thirty years, between 1961 and 1991, a ride on the metro cost 5 kopecks. It was not the workers’ paradise that had been promised, but there was no unemployment, no hunger, no homelessness and everyone had enough to live. There were no great upheavals, life was predictable. A person could plan for the future, save money for special occasions and provide for his children.     

When I taught Russian Pop Culture of the 20^th Century, I did an exercise with my students. Sometime about two-thirds of the way through the semester, I entered the room and put index cards on each desk. As my students filed in, I looked at them quite sadly. I then informed them that the Department of Foreign Languages had decided that they were not pleased with how I was running the class and therefore were terminating me immediately. The entire course would be restructured, all the work they had done to that point was no longer valid and a new instructor would arrive shortly and give them a new syllabus, texts and assignments. I reemphasized that everything they had done to this point was worthless and would be discarded. They would need to meet their new instructor and start all over again.

Once the hubbub died down, I asked my students to write on one side of the index card I had placed on their desks how that announcement made them feel. I then asked them to turn the index card over and write on the other side how they would feel if that happened to their country.

It has been over twenty years since the Collapse of the Soviet Union when one country became fifteen and the U.S. “won” the Cold War. A whole generation of children has grown up never knowing the Soviet Union at all. But, take a minute today and think about that time when everything people had known was destroyed – their currency, their government, even their belief system was negated, what they believed to be true, all plans for the future rent asunder and before them stood a great abyss of uncertainty and chaos.

Now how does that make you feel?   How would you feel if that was your country?