Rocket Man:
Yuri Gagarin & the Soviet/Post-Soviet Memory
Kami McDaniel
Spring 2020
University of Colorado at Boulder
This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with a Bachelor
of Arts in History with honors
Committee Members:
Dr. David Shneer, History, Thesis Advisor
Dr. Myles Osborne, History, Honors Council Representative
Dr. Garrett Bredeson, Philosophy
McDaniel 2
Introduction
On April 12, 1961, with the launch of the Vostok 1 mission in Baikonur, Kazakhstan,
Yuri Gagarin became the first human being to travel into outer space. On March 27, 1968,
Gagarin died nearly seven years later in a flying accident. He remains a household name in the former Soviet bloc to the present day.
Gagarin was born in 1934 in Klushino, a small village over one hundred miles to the west of Moscow, to working class parents. He was raised on a collective farm until World War II, during which Nazi forces occupied Klushino, placing Gagarin’s older siblings in hard labor camps, and leaving the remainder of the family to survive in a small mud hut they had been forced to construct themselves. After nearly two years of brutal treatment at the hands of the
Nazis, the war ended, and Gagarin resumed his education in addition to working in order to help support the family. At twenty-three years old, Gagarin entered the Soviet Air Force as a lieutenant. Six years later, he would make history as the first person in outer space. He was chosen for this honor due to a combination of determination, physical fitness, favorability with his peers, and his small stature which made it possible for him to fit into the Vostok 1 shuttle comfortably.
Writing about the early days of Gagarin’s involvement with the space program, Asif A.
Siddiqi states:
By all accounts, he was a very likable and intelligent individual, and he had
fortuitously made an extremely favorable impression on Korolev [the head of the
Vostok 1 project] the first time the cosmonauts had met the chief designer in mid-
1960. Although there has been a tendency to hero-worship the young man, even
those less prone to hyperbole had nothing but positive things to say about him. McDaniel 3
Cosmonaut Khrunov later remembered that ‘Gagarin was extraordinarily focused,
and when necessary, very demanding of himself and of others. Which is why I think
that concentrating on that famous smile of his might miss the mark entirely and
might even diminish the image of who he really was.’1
Siddiqi goes on to quote a commission of Soviet Air Force doctors who examined Gagarin,
[m]odest: embarrasses when his humor gets a little too racy: high degree of
intellectual development evident in [Gagarin]: fantastic memory, distinguishes
himself from his colleagues by his sharp and far-ranging sense of attention to his
surroundings, a well-developed imagination, quick reactions, persevering, prepares
himself painstakingly for his activities and training exercises; handles celestial
mechanics and mathematical formulae with ease as well as excels in higher
mathematics, does not feel constrained when he has to defend his point of view if
he considers himself right, appears that he understands life better than a lot of his
friends.2
Despite all of the aforementioned positive feedback bestowed upon Gagarin, Siddiqi concludes that “[a]part from his high qualifications, he also satisfied the Communist Party’s unwritten criterion that the first Soviet person in space be from a completely Russian and working-class background.”3 These accounts would indicate that before even his fellow hopeful cosmonauts and assessors in the space program knew that Gagarin would be the first man in space, that those who knew Gagarin sensed something different about him, a character that distinguished him from his peers.
1 Siddiqi, Asif A., Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945-1974. (Washington D.C.: NASA History Division,) 261. 2 Ibid, 262. 3 Ibid, 262. McDaniel 4
During Gagarin’s seven years of international celebrity status, he was touted as a symbol of the USSR’s scientific atheism, and not surprisingly, victory in the “space race.” In this way,
Gagarin, despite being well received across Western Europe and the United States after his historic first flight, was a deeply political figure at the height of the Cold War.
However, as is made clear by the impression Gagarin made on his peers and superiors, there must have been something different about Gagarin that endeared him to the people he interacted with, without the help of the Soviet government. If Party leadership in Moscow were searching only for an ethnic Russian from a working-class background to be the first person in space, then they were very fortunate to find Gagarin, who met those needs in addition to the natural charisma and popularity he possessed.
Even to this day, there is the common perception in the former Soviet Union that Gagarin was the ideal Soviet man, a belief that is predicated on information given to the public about
Gagarin by the Soviet government, which was whole-heartedly invested in keeping the good name of their hero, the new face of the Soviet project and scientific atheism, untainted. Despite
Gagarin’s well-hidden flaws, he remains a figure of adoration across political lines. This much is clear when one examines the numerous statues erected in Gagarin’s memory in former Soviet countries and capitalist superpowers like the United States and England (or so it would seem, at first glance.) There is certainly something to be said about the pressure of international celebrity, which Gagarin arguably succumbed to before his fateful death. There is more to say about the way in which celebrities who pass “before their time” become immortalized in our memories.
Gagarin’s death long-precluded the fall of the Soviet Union by two decades, and yet his positive reputation has outlasted the very system which gave him the capability to achieve his historic first flight. The Communist project in Eastern Europe has come and gone; yet Yuri McDaniel 5
Gagarin retains his celebrity status even outside of the former Soviet bloc. In this way Gagarin remains a Soviet superstar.
McDaniel 6
Chapter One:
“What is to Be Done?”: Cultural Movements in the Early and Pre-Soviet Era
Indeed, there is nothing manifestly unusual about [Yuri] Gagarin. There must
be millions of young men like him in Russia, with fair hair and blue eyes, and
if he put on civilian clothes and a hat I doubt if even today he would be
recognized in a Moscow street. Not only is there nothing extraordinary about
his personality but there was nothing very spectacular or dramatic about the
manner in which he carried out his world-shaking mission. He wrote no will,
not even a letter of farewell to his wife- he was quite confident about his safe
return. He carried no charms, offered no prayers, didn’t pay heed to any omens
- the first man to explore the heavens neither sought nor feared any heavenly
intervention.
- Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, Till We Reach the Stars: The Story of Yuri Gagarin
In order to understand Yuri Gagarin’s meteoric rise to super-stardom, I argue that it is first important to understand some of the cultural movements that informed the Soviet mindset before Gagarin’s first flight into space in 1961. As the study of celebrity has grown tremendously in recent decades, it has become increasingly apparent that celebrity is informed by the conditions of the culture in which the phenomena of fame occurs. It does not take a great deal of thought to understand how celebrity is a commodity in the West as it follows naturally from the very basis of how U.S. society operates economically. Although the Soviet economy, and therefore the way in which Soviet people perceived of commodities, is inherently different from the Western model, Gagarin became a hot-ticket item subject to manipulation by the Soviet McDaniel 7 government all the same. However, this commodification of Gagarin would not have been possible if it were not for the cultural moment Gagarin was born into. As Gayle Stever asserts in
The Psychology of Celebrity, “1. Celebrity is associated with meanings./ 2. Meanings are associated with products./ 3. Consumers take in these meanings by purchasing and using these products.”4 Being the first person to travel into space gives Gagarin not only monumental meaning to the Soviet Union, but to the world. As for points two and three, the enormous supply and demand for Gagarin memorabilia are evidence enough of Gagarin’s material legacy. This celebrity as a reflection of the Soviet and post-Soviet self is the core of this thesis’ argument. The primary cultural movements discussed in this chapter are: the aesthetic known as Socialist
Realism, the occult imagery of Cosmism, and the state of religion in Russia at the time of the
Russian revolution and after. Once it has become clear the influence these factors had on
Gagarin’s potential for fame, one will be able to start at the beginning, and understand Gagarin’s life in the precise moment at which it was happening.
Socialist Realism, put simply, was the state-mandated genre of artistic works in the
Soviet Union beginning in 1920 and lasting, in one form or another, until the fall of the USSR in
1991. Socialist Realism as a genre became implemented by the Soviet government in order to advance three principles which were key to the Soviet project in matters of art: narodnost’ (class awareness and inspiration), klassovost’ (class accessibility), and partiinost’ (party function).5
Narodnost’ dictated that art should appeal to the masses, its storylines easy to follow, and relatable to the common person. Moreover, advocates of Socialist Realism believed that art should not only be accessible to the common person, but should be inspired by them, rather than taking inspiration from the intelligentsia. Klassovost’ encouraged artists to show the reality of
4 Gayle Stever, The Psychology of Celebrity, (New York: Routledge, 2019,) 37. 5 C. Vaughan James, Soviet Socialist Realism, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973,) 1. McDaniel 8 class struggle through their works, while avoiding broadcasting middle- or upper-class attitudes towards the people, a characteristic of Eastern European literature before the advent of the Soviet
Union. Finally, partiinost’ asserted that all art served some social function, and in the Soviet
Union, the social function that all art should ideally serve is the betterment of the working class through the promotion of the Communist Party.
Naturally, in order to achieve these standards, Socialist Realism as an art form relied heavily on similar tropes throughout the genre. These tropes are best seen through works of
Socialist Realism themselves, such as Volga-Volga, a musical comedy released at the height of the Stalinist purges in 1938. The plot of the film is this: a talented young peasant girl (nicknamed
Arrow) from a small village leads her neighbors and friends to tremendous success at an international talent competition in Moscow, despite the bungling of the town’s local bureaucratic official, who is unable to see the incredible musical talents of the townsfolk because of his preoccupation with moving up the social ladder. Consistently throughout the film, honest, hard- working peasants become derailed from achieving their dream of performing in this talent contest by egotistical and dishonest members of the bureaucratic class who are not using their positions of power to serve the people, but rather, to serve themselves. It is easy to see all three qualities of narodnost’, klassovost’, and partiinost’ in Volga-Volga, although partiinost’ becomes most evident in the film’s final moments, during which the peasants warn the audience about the evils of the bureaucratic class through song over the credits, advocating for the ousting of said bureaucrats from society for the benefit of all working class people.6
The film’s heroine, Arrow, is clever, musically talented, and determined to show the party officials in Moscow how special her village truly is. Throughout the film, she faces
6 Volga-Volga. Directed by Grigori Aleksandrov. Moscow: Artkino, 1938. McDaniel 9 obstacle after obstacle, the pretentious attitude of her middle-class boyfriend, the indifference of her village’s bureaucratic representative, being unable to read music, and ultimately having her song stolen. In the face of adversity, Arrow persists tirelessly, finally leading herself and her compatriots to a victory at the talent competition in Moscow, where they receive adoration from representatives from countries across the Soviet Union. The message is clear: particularly for the working class, despite one’s natural talent and ability, obstacles will rise, but will ultimately disappear with determination and hard work. In the end, when the Socialist Realist hero/heroine achieves victory, it is a testament not only to their ability, but the glory of the Union. The work ethic that underlies most, if not all, Socialist Realist works appears even in what is frequently argued to be the first major work of the genre, published in 1925: Cement by Fyodor Gladkov. In the opening pages of the novel, Gleb, notes while returning to his hometown after fighting for three years in the Russian Civil War: “Splendid! Once again, machines and work. Fresh work.
Free work, gained in struggle, won through fire and blood. Splendid!”7
This sentiment is tremendously important in regards to Gagarin’s rise to fame: with the production of Socialist Realism, the Soviet people began to see overwhelmingly portrayed in all forms of media, the idea of the home-grown hero, someone who could come from nearly nothing, and through hard work, ability, and perseverance, achieve something amazing. It is not difficult to see how potent this idea becomes when the “something” your home-grown hero is accomplishing is something as monumental as space travel. Reflecting on the influence of
Socialist Realist artists and their works, Evgeny Dobrenko and Natalia Jonsson-Skradol state,
“the stronger the national cultural heritage, the more powerful the impact of literati and artists on institutional changes,” and with a culture as deeply literature-centric as the Soviet Union’s, it
7 Fyodor Gladkov, Cement, trans. by A.S. Arthur and C. Ashleigh (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co.,) 2. McDaniel 10 takes no stretch of the imagination to see how easily these widely used tropes can take hold in the Soviet mind as something tangible and real.8
Cosmism
Noted scientist Nikolai Federov pioneered Cosmism, a pseudo-scientific, pseudo- religious movement in the late 1880s.9 George M. Young in The Russian Cosmists writes that
“Cosmists offer far-sighted and carefully considered answers to the most frequently asked question in Russian intellectual history, ‘chto delat’’- ‘what is to be done?’ The answer to this perennial Russian question is inevitably a ‘plan,’ and the plan offered by the Cosmists is, if no more workable or realizable, at least bolder and more comprehensive than those offered by most other thinkers at most other times in Russian history.”10 Cosmism, as a scientific pursuit, was incredibly groundbreaking: Federov and his students were doing research into realms of the human experience that had before seemed entirely separate from science, existing only in the realm of religion, including the resurrection of the dead. Federov hoped to bring these two seemingly opposite practices, religion and science, into harmony. For the Cosmists, this project manifested in the colonization of space, where Federov and his followers believed that the souls of all beings who had once lived existed, and were ready for harvesting.11 While the very idea may sound more like the plot of a science fiction novel than the genuine belief of Soviets,
Cosmism found itself poised perfectly between the deep religious and esoteric traditions of the region, in addition to the scientific possibilities of the upcoming twentieth century. For many years, occultism and religion kept a strong hold over the population of Eastern Europe, and
8 Socialist Realism in Central and Eastern European Literatures: Institutions, Dynamics, Discourses. Edited by Evgeny Dobrenko and Natalia Jonsson-Skradol, (London: Anthem Press, 2018,) 344. 9 George M. Young, The Russian Cosmists: The Esoteric Futurism of Nikolai Federov and His Followers, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012,) 12. 10 Ibid, 6. 11 Ibid, 80. McDaniel 11 finally, there resulted a project to bring the two forces together in conjunction with new-age science. Cosmists believed that humanity would achieve peace through this colonization of space, and the reanimation of our ancestors, the culmination of all human knowledge combined to create the perfect society, not on Earth, but in the cosmos.
This ideology also spoke powerfully to Russians in particular due to the notion of
Russia’s unique destiny, a concept that has been debated in Russia for hundreds of years.
According to George Young, Federov was also deeply affected by this idea: “As a desk clerk in the hall of archives for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs [...] he transformed his actual humble duties into a project for discovering and preserving documents pertaining to present worldwide disunity and future, Russian-directed worldwide unity. In the records of Russia’s foreign relations, he found innumerable confirmations of his conviction that Russia had a special destiny in the world. [...] Russia’s history was the world’s history: dividing all in history as fact, uniting all in history as project.”12 It is hard to fathom a greater destiny than this: to unite all of the human race, both living and dead, to live eternally and peacefully among one another in space.
Remarking on the physical and emotional effort necessary to go into space, Yuri Gagarin and
Vladimir Lebedev state: “[t]o be a cosmonaut one need not to be a superman. Cosmonauts may have to have great courage, strength, and fortitude, but nothing human is alien to them. They have the same emotions of joy, sorrow, worry, and ecstasy as anyone else. Sometimes our emotions can mobilize our spiritual powers and enable us to accomplish the seemingly impossible; at other times they have the opposite effect.”13 There could be no better turn of phrase to describe the Cosmists’ goal than the “seemingly impossible.” Yet even Gagarin, the
12 George M. Young, The Russian Cosmists: The Esoteric Futurism of Nikolai Federov and His Followers, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012,) 73. 13 Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Lebedev, Survival in Space, trans. by Gabriella Azrael (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969,) 91. McDaniel 12 face of Soviet scientific atheism argued for the importance of one’s emotions and “spiritual powers.” Although religious belief and practice carried stigma throughout the Soviet era, it is clear to see that these traditions were not so easily discouraged, particularly when this spirituality has been culturally ingrained for hundreds of years, Cosmists developed an answer to the question “what is to be done?” that was beyond belief for the time in which they were writing: even more importantly, Cosmists introduced Eastern Europe to the dream of space travel, and the peace and power that may be found within the cosmos. Space flight as a concept loomed large in the cultural landscape of the region from then on, with Konstantin Tsiolovsky proving the possibility of space travel mathematically in 1903, and the Soviet Union sponsoring its first national institute for the purpose of building rockets thirty years later.14
Religion
As briefly aforementioned, religion was the source of a great deal of social stigma in the
Soviet Union. Although never formally made illegal, as atheism became the state religion of the
Soviet Union in the 1920s, organized religion fell to the wayside as it was gradually replaced by the science of Marxism-Leninism and what Jacob Talmon describes as the civil religion of
“political Messianism,” the belief in a “preordained, harmonious, and perfect scheme of things, to which men are irresistibly driven, and at which they are bound to arrive.”15 Despite this gradual shift, at the time of the revolution in 1917, a majority of Russians in particular were
Orthodox Christians.16 As illustrated in the previous section, religion held a powerful place in the
Eastern European mindset in general, it is fair to assume that invariably this hold did not change
14 Asif. A Siddiqi, “Imagining the Cosmos: Utopians, Mystics, and the Popular Culture of Spaceflight in Revolutionary Russia” in Russian Science Fiction Literature and Cinema: A Critical Reader (Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2018,) 80. 15 Jacob Talmon quoted in “Soviet and American Civil Religion: A Comparison” by Brian Lowe. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, vol. 13 (2001): 77. 16 “Russians Return to Religion, But Not to Church,” Pew Research Center, Washington D.C. 10 February 2014. McDaniel 13 overnight based on social stigma and state atheism alone. The transitionary period after the revolution was notoriously difficult culturally, as the Soviet government sought to shift traditional cultures towards more modern ideals that seemed fitting of a socialist society.17 With the idea of space flight already intermingling with resurrection of the dead, utopia, and peace, it is no wonder that the Soviet mind stayed entranced with the idea of traveling to space, particularly once it became evident that the battle for the cosmos would inevitably arise between the USSR and the United States. Eleonory Gilburd in To See Paris and Die: The Soviet Lives of
Western Culture asserts that “Russian politicians and intellectuals have defined the country’s future vis-a-vis the West,” and if this is so, reflecting on what we now know of the unique
Russian story as believed by the Cosmists, as well as the notion of hard work overcoming the thwarting efforts of the middle- and upper-classes illustrated in Socialist Realism, then it is easy to see the importance that space travel had in the Soviet cultural mind long before Gagarin’s first flight in 1961.18
The Fortuitous Moment
During this, the time of Cosmism, Socialist Realism, and the gaping wound where religion once was held, or perhaps, was now held in private, Yuri Gagarin became a household name in the Soviet Union and beyond. As Paul Froese states in Forced Secularization in Soviet
Russia: Why an Atheistic Monopoly Failed, “[t]he Communist Party destroyed churches, mosques, and temples; it executed religious leaders; it flooded the schools and media with anti- religious propaganda; and it introduced a belief system called ‘scientific atheism,’ complete with
17 Asif. A Siddiqi, “Imagining the Cosmos: Utopians, Mystics, and the Popular Culture of Spaceflight in Revolutionary Russia” in Russian Science Fiction Literature and Cinema: A Critical Reader (Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2018,) 112. 18 Eleonory Gilburd, To See Paris and Die: The Soviet Lives of Western Culture, (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018,) 2. McDaniel 14 atheist rituals, proselytizers, and a promise of worldly salvation.”19 With this anti-religious reality, it only follows that the Soviet people should search for new figures for worship, and there could be no better God of scientific atheism than Gagarin, the peasant who became the first man to orbit the Earth, a godlike activity in and of itself. Gagarin is frequently, and inaccurately, quoted as saying “I don’t see any God up here” while orbiting above Earth. While Gagarin never uttered those words, the experience of Soviet citizens on the ground, while Gagarin traveled through space thousands of miles above them, was different. They lived in a culture that had once aspired to global unity and peace through colonization of space, were barraged with portrayals of the home-grown peasant hero who goes on to do the unthinkable, living under state- sponsored atheism for half a century despite the region’s long religious and esoteric traditions, and looked up at the sky and knew that one of their own had achieved something that was once so unthinkable. All we can say for certain is that Gagarin received the welcome of a king upon returning to Moscow, where Gagarin received the highest honors possible for a Soviet citizen, was greeted by adoring crowds, and was gifted a new flat by the Soviet government, in addition to the numerous physical landmarks and children named in his honor after the first flight.20
Now that the cultural background into which Gagarin was born, raised, and rose to fame has been solidified, one can begin to understand the man himself, and what he meant, and means to the Soviet and post-Soviet world.
19 Paul Froese, “Forced Secularization in Soviet Russia: Why an Atheistic Monopoly Failed” in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 2004, vol. 41, no. 1, 36. 20 Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, Till We Reach the Stars: The Story of Yuri Gagarin (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1961,) 15. McDaniel 15
Chapter Two:
Creating a Soviet Icon
The implacable heart and indifferent facets of society were softened by personality,
depicted in advertising and general celebrity culture, which made modern life more
than bearable, novel and exciting. […] This system was dedicated to present the
public face of leading contract players to the urban crowd in a positive, appealing
light. Long before Stalin hammered his way to power, it explored finessing the
public image of silent film stars […] by building cultic identification with a public
schooled to dream and fantasize about climbing rope ladders out of meagre
existence into the stars.
- Chris Rojek, Presumed Intimacy: Para-social Relationships in Media,
Society, and Celebrity Culture
When Yuri Gagarin was born in early March of 1934, in a small village three hours outside of Moscow, he was born into a country that was facing what might, most optimistically, be referred to as “growing pains.” The 1930s were a tempestuous age for the Soviet Union at large, as it entered the era of Stalinism and thereby faced industrialization at break-neck speeds and political purges that resulted in imprisonment or death for many Soviet citizens. Gagarin was the third child in a family of four, raised on a collective farm that would eventually be occupied by Nazi forces during World War II. The background and childhood faced by one of the Soviet
Union’s greatest heroes is one very similar to any number of common Soviet citizens raised during the devastating decades of the 1930s and 1940s. As previously mentioned, during the second World War, Gagarin’s childhood home was occupied, his two older siblings taken to McDaniel 16 work camps in Poland operated by the Nazis, and the remainder of his family forced to live in a small hut they constructed by hand out of mud for almost two years until the end of the war.
Beyond the millions of Soviet lives lost during the war, it is hard to estimate the number who suffered during the war the way Gagarin and his family did, one possible explanation for why his background resonated so deeply with the Soviet populace when Gagarin rose to fame in the
1960s.
After the war, Gagarin returned to his education, eventually attending technical school in preparation to become a smelter in the 1950s. While attending classes at technical school,
Gagarin also studied at the Saratov Aeroclub, and graduated from the Orenburg Aviation School in 1957. Gagarin served in the Soviet Air Force for two years before being selected as a candidate for the space program.21
When Gagarin became the first human to travel into space on the twelfth of April, 1961, he secured an all-important victory for the Soviet Union in the so-called “space race,” in addition to changing the world and his own life. Gagarin would die just short of seven years later, in
1968, as the result of a flying accident. This chapter will explore the way that Gagarin and his accomplishments were portrayed in images during those seven years in which he had the attention of the Soviet Union captured through analyzed images from Pravda, the Party- sponsored newspaper of the Soviet Union from the time of the revolution in 1917, until the fall of the Union in 1991.
21 Yuri Gagarin, “Yuri Gagarin’s First Speech About His Flight Into Space,” The Atlantic, April 12 2011, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/04/yuri-gagarins-first-speech-about-his-flight-into- space/237134/ [accessed on February 22, 2020]. McDaniel 17
Figure 1: “Pervomu kosmonavtu – chest’ i slava” “Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin” Pravda, April
13, 1961
This is the first image of Gagarin to be published by Pravda after his historic first flight the day before. The caption on top of the image reads: “To the First Cosmonaut – honor and glory!” The second caption simply states Gagarin’s full name – Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin. The staging of the photo, as well as Gagarin’s attire, suggest it was taken as a family portrait, or taken officially as commissioned by the Soviet Air Force, presumably before April 1961. This image will immediately strike the Gagarin fan as odd, as it does not bare the smile that endeared so many to Gagarin during his life. His smile here is understated, possibly more suited to the military regalia he was sporting. A simple pin from the Soviet air force, hair neatly groomed for McDaniel 18 the photograph, and a subtle smile with a look of confidence about him. Gagarin looks not directly at the photographer; he looks slightly left. This is not yet the Yuri Gagarin who would enjoy fame and luxury after his first flight. The cartoon that accompanies this image of Gagarin, as well as the articles written for the day about the flight, shows much more bombast.
Figure 2: Pravda no. 103, April 13, 1961
When given the whole Pravda image, the faceless new Soviet man, drawn to appear physically fit, light skin, light hair, and holding some sort of baton, soars victoriously from his home nation of the Soviet Union and into the sky, facing forever forward into their new and glorious future. Lenin appears to dwell in the stars with him, although perhaps not literally, more of an approving spirit who watches and encourages the Union from the great beyond. This image evokes back to the previously mentioned cultural movement cosmism, maybe intentionally, as if this were the first step to achieving the cosmists’ goals of life in space. The message from the McDaniel 19
Soviet Union to their people, and those around the world, was clear: we have moved beyond the rest of the world, into a place where only we have set foot. The unique destiny of Russia could be no more perfectly realized: one of Russia’s own sons, representing the Slavic people, the
Communist way of life, the first to take the human race to space. The first line of Pravda that day read: “A great event in the history of humankind!”
Figure 3: Pravda no. 103, April 13, 1961, page 3
This photograph, in which the photographer appears to have arrived early to position themselves above the crowd, also printed in the first edition of Pravda after Gagarin’s first flight, depicts a square in Moscow, caught in celebration on April 12. Nearly everyone in this photograph is smiling or displaying the supportive revolutionary fist. Some people captured in the photograph appear to have been caught speaking, or even shouting. The signs read: “Gagarin, hoorah!” and “Moscow – The Universe – Moscow Hoorah.” Gagarin, as previously established, was approximately one hundred miles disqualified from being a Muscovite, and yet this celebration seems to be congratulating Moscow as well for Gagarin and the Soviet Union’s extraordinary accomplishments. It is safe to assume this focus on Moscow merely stems from
Moscow’s position as the cultural and governmental center of the Soviet Union. While McDaniel 20 photographs of celebrations for Gagarin across the Union, and particularly in regions containing ethnic minorities such as Chechnya, may have been more difficult to procure, or even less satisfying due to a smaller concentration of people in cities as compared to Moscow, it is worth noting that Pravda chose to display Muscovites celebrating as a way of showing exactly what
Gagarin had done for the people of the Soviet Union.
Figure 4: Pravda no. 104, April 14, 1961
This image of Gagarin is much more indicative of how he would come to be portrayed in
Soviet media after his rise to fame. Here, Gagarin is in motion, stepping forward, prepared for flight, and giving the camera (more likely the photographer, given Gagarin’s reputation for humility) his trademark grin. However, this photograph, much like the one first published the day before, does not yet show the deified Gagarin that we will see in subsequent analyses of monuments erected to Gagarin after his death. The caption to this photograph states: “First in the McDaniel 21 world Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin. This picture was taken on April 12, 1961.”
At the time this picture was taken, the New Soviet Man was just a man, preparing for an event that would change the world at large, and propel him into megastardom beyond that which he could have dreamed, certainly as a child living in a mud hut during Nazi occupation. The canonization of Yuri Gagarin was still yet to come.
Figure 5: Pravda no. 307, November 3, 1963
This image of Gagarin, published just days before he would become a colonel of the
Soviet Air Force, illustrates how the relationship between Gagarin and the Soviet people (and the
Soviet media) had changed in the two and a half years after his first flight. Gagarin is, once again, smiling brightly and looking off into the distance, similarly to the figure in the cartoon published on April 13, 1961. Pictures of newspapers from around the world, including the United
States, tell the reader that Gagarin is not only a hero to the Soviet people, but those around the world. Showing Gagarin as an international celebrity is a way of both flattering and inspiring the common Soviet person reading Pravda on this particular day, but also showing the glory of the
Soviet Union, which won the “space race” and gave the world a new icon of exactly what human beings could accomplish. In discussion with citizens from former Soviet countries, this is a common theme: if one should ask why exactly Gagarin became such a superstar, there is usually McDaniel 22 a comment made about Gagarin’s relative apolitical status as a hero of humankind, not only the
Soviet Union. Although the Soviet government may have wished for Gagarin to be a symbol of what Communism could accomplish, it would seem that his presence in people’s hearts and minds went much deeper than any given political system and its goals.
Figure 6: Pravda no. 89, March 29, 1968.
The above photograph was used alongside one of several articles memorializing Gagarin in the edition of Pravda published two days after his death on March 27, 1968. It is reminiscent of the portrait of Gagarin published in Pravda after his first flight, again lacking the trademark
Gagarin smile. Here, again, Gagarin is depicted in his military gear, this time adorned with numerous medals collected in the years after his rise to fame. He is neatly groomed as before, a look of humility, but kindness, apparent on his face as he looks to the right of the photographer.
It is impossible to say for certain why Pravda chose a more conservative image of Gagarin in their pursuit to memorialize the fallen hero, however, it is a possibility that this image was chosen to convey a more respectful image of Gagarin, meant to inspire respect and deference, as McDaniel 23 opposed to his typical man-of-the-people manner and bright expression. It’s possible that the
Party wanted Gagarin to be remembered like this, due to Gagarin’s private decline into heavy drinking and alleged infidelity. Gagarin is certainly present in the photograph, and yet it lacks the jovial tone of the Gagarin that Soviet citizens had fallen into obsession with, for any number of reasons.
Figure 7: Pravda no. 91, March 31, 1968.
This photograph depicts Gagarin’s funeral procession, with the photographer again placed above the crowd. Party leaders, including Leonid Brezhnev, pictured in the bottom right, helped to carry Gagarin’s urn to its final resting place in the walls of the Kremlin. Of all photographs included in Pravda of Gagarin’s public mourning from the time he died until he was buried, this photograph is particularly striking due to the involvement of prominent Party members. Gagarin’s urn is covered in flowers and decorations, including a framed photograph of
Lenin. This projects a distinct image to the public: Gagarin goes into his final resting place carried by immensely important figures of the time, adored and mourned by many, and McDaniel 24 accompanied by a photograph of one of the most influential figures of the Communist project.
Gagarin was loved by all, and in turn, he loved the Party, seemingly until his dying day. The choice to have Gagarin’s ashes carried by Party officials, as opposed to friends, or even his fellow cosmonauts, or servicemen, signifies that Gagarin’s death was more meaningful than just the death of an individual, but a death of a symbol that had done a great service to the Soviet
Union and was therefore owed respect by Party leaders. Gagarin’s very image and life were coopted in order to promote the Party’s investment in scientific atheism and technological innovation, it is only fitting that Party officials would be the ones to carry Gagarin to his
(incredibly politically symbolic) resting place. If Gagarin’s death was not monumental enough to the millions living across the Soviet Union, watching his funeral procession lead by important
Party members would have signified how gigantic of a loss this was to the entire Soviet project.
The message is clear: the death of Gagarin is impacting all of us, from his close family members, to the adoring public, to Leonid Brezhnev, arguably the most powerful man in the Soviet Union at the time of Gagarin’s death.
McDaniel 25
Figure 8: Pravda no. 37, April 8, 2016
In 2016, the above photograph was used in Pravda’s issue commemorating the fifty-fifth anniversary of Gagarin’s first flight. The headline for the day reads: “The universe begins on
Earth.” This image, depicting Gagarin in his flight gear, looking downwards and away from the camera, is another indicator of how the Communist Party of Russia even today would like
Gagarin to be remembered: about to undertake his monumental task, smiling, and yet not paying too much attention to the cameras. He is occupied only with his duty to the Party, and not his burgeoning worldwide fame. It is a simple image, only showing Gagarin’s face, otherwise almost entirely occupied by his helmet with the all-important “SSSR” emblazoned on the front. This is a subtle reminder to the reader that, even in the 2010s, Gagarin’s accomplishments were Soviet ones. Although Gagarin may still be a source of pride for many across the former Soviet states, regardless of nationality, this photograph serves as a testament to the glory of the Soviet Union, not Russia, or any other ex-Soviet state, or even the world, despite the headline accompanying this photograph.
McDaniel 26
Chapter Three:
Gagarin as Soviet Celebrity
I still recall the wondrous moment:
When you appeared before my sight
As though a brief and fleeting omen,
Pure phantom in enchanting light.
In sorrow, when I felt unwell,
Caught in the bustle, in a daze,
I fell under your voice’s spell
And dreamt the features of your face.
- Alexander Pushkin, translated by Andrey Kneller
Now that the cultural backgrounds for Gagarin’s life, as well as Gagarin’s childhood and portrayal in Soviet media both during and after his life have been discussed, some consideration is given to the way the world has chosen to memorialize Gagarin in the over fifty years since his death. This chapter compares monuments raised in Gagarin’s memory across the world in order to contrast the way in which the post-Soviet world sees Gagarin versus the portrayal of Gagarin in several countries that were not participants in the Soviet project. This is done in the hopes of ascertaining a greater understanding of what Gagarin symbolizes to the world today, and if there is any disconnect between the perception of Gagarin in the post-Soviet sphere and the rest of the world.
McDaniel 27
Figure 1: Monument to Yuri Gagarin, Moscow, Russia, July 4, 1980.
Built in preparation to host the 1980 Moscow Olympics, perhaps to welcome visitors with the king of the Soviet cosmos, the largest monument to Gagarin, “Monument to Yuri
Gagarin” stands over one hundred feet tall, weighs over ten tons, and was crafted using titanium.
This is by far the standout of Gagarin’s posthumous monuments, depicting a sort of fictionalized version of Gagarin, as opposed to the realistic and humanistic portrayals of Gagarin in the following statues. This is Gagarin fully blended with the New Soviet Man, standing proudly upright, his hands positioned as if he were preparing to fly rather than to welcome visitors. The statue almost looks as if it is prepared to go into battle, not space, with armor-like metal attachments on Gagarin’s chest and arms. The pedestal on which the monument sits mimics the exhaust of a flying spacecraft, as if Gagarin took off from Leninsky Prospect (where this statue stands) and was never to return. The statue’s substantial size is something to note, as well as its location: the intention of the Soviet government may have been to project an image of victory throughout the Soviet Union, but they saved their biggest trophy to Gagarin’s achievements for McDaniel 28
Moscow. The inscription for this monument mentions explicitly that Gagarin, the first person in space, was a citizen of the USSR.
Figure 2: Memorial of Yuri Gagarin, Baikonur, Kazakhstan. April 12, 1984.
Unlike other notable Gagarin memorials, this statue was constructed out of stone, not metal, and was created as a tribute to the Vostok 1 mission, which launched from Baikonur in
1961. The statue’s sculptor was Oleg Pesotsky. Although this statue stands in Kazakhstan surrounded by other monuments to the Soviet space program, Gagarin’s arms are extended in the air, and he bears a kindly look on his face. However, Gagarin’s outstretched arms here seem to be less of a welcoming gesture and more a declaration of victory, harkening back to the image of celebrating Muscovites and their signs reading “Gagarin, hoorah!” This monument, as well as its placement in Baikonur, signals that Gagarin was, despite his Russian origin, a hero to those across the Soviet Union, regardless of individual national background. It also would appear to McDaniel 29 acknowledge Baikonur’s place in the glory of the event that took place on April 12, 1961.
Gagarin stands victoriously for all of the USSR, not merely Muscovites or villagers in Klushino, or even party officials like Brezhnev. The message reads clear: Gagarin belongs to all of us.
Figure 3: Unnamed statue of Yuri Gagarin. Karaganda, Kazakhstan. Accessed via nasa.gov.
Another monument from Kazakhstan, this unnamed statue depicts Gagarin, unusually, in his cosmonaut gear, either prepared for flight or having recently returned. Given that Karaganda, where this statue was erected in 2014, was the site of the completion of the Vostok 1 mission in
1961, it is fair to assume that the artist’s intention was to replicate the moments after Gagarin’s landing. While Gagarin looms over the city of Moscow from Leninsky Prospect, here, he is instead depicted closer to scale, however: one of the metal beams behind Gagarin in this photograph extends far into the sky, bearing a yellow star on the tip. In this way, Gagarin remains close to the ground with the people of Karaganda, while the cosmos loom over them all,
Gagarin included. This statue takes the more humanist view of Gagarin, rather than the victorious Gagarin depicted in other monuments. This may be indicative of a differing perception of Gagarin between Muscovites, who may have felt more connected with Gagarin as a symbol McDaniel 30 due to Moscow’s positioning as the hub for Party activity, while to those living in the outskirts of the Soviet system, Gagarin may have appeared as one of their comrades who achieved something amazing, rather than a symbol for the new scientific superiority of the Soviet Union.
Figure 4: Unnamed statue of Yuri Gagarin in Houston, Texas. Accessed via nasa.gov.
This Russian celebrity icon came to Houston as a gift in 2012 from organizations such as the Russkiy Mir Foundation. In this way, the statue is reflective of the Russian memory of
Gagarin, as well as how the artist and foundations involved would like Gagarin to remain in
American memory. The statue is nine feet tall, and constructed of bronze, projecting a larger- than-life image of Gagarin with the signature smile and arms outstretched. This is a common theme in statues of Gagarin in the Western world, possibly in an attempt to portray Gagarin as a welcoming figure, or to show his openness to all that life had to offer him. The statue stands today outside of the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, next to a memorial to astronaut John Glenn, who passed away in 2016. It is worth mentioning that Gagarin is depicted McDaniel 31 here without any of his military or cosmonaut regalia, dressed in simple, civilian clothing. This strikes at odds with the photo used to commemorate Gagarin’s flight in the April 8, 2016 issue of
Pravda. Here, Gagarin is as close to a normal person as he could possibly be, a testament to the accomplishments of humankind rather than that of the Soviet Union, or the Communist system.
Figure 5: Unnamed statue of Yuri Gagarin in London, England. Accessed via bbc.com.
This statue was given as a gift from the Russian space program to the British Council in
2011, meant to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Gagarin’s first flight. It is twelve feet tall and was constructed out of zinc alloy as a replica of another statue of Gagarin by Anatoly Novikov.
Currently, the figure stands at the Royal Observatory, in Greenwich, London. Again, Gagarin is positioned as a welcoming figure, one arm outstretched, and the other waving outwardly.
Gagarin has his left foot extended out, his right following behind him, as if walking forward.
This could be perceived as an allusion to Gagarin walking the world forward into the future as the first man in space. Gagarin also stands atop a globe, as if a conqueror of the world by nature of having traveled through space. This statue sees Gagarin as both a kind figure, and one who stands above the common person, having achieved something that most can only dream of. Like McDaniel 32 much of the Soviet coverage, this statue sees Gagarin walking the line between humility and greatness.
Figure 6: Unnamed bust of Yuri Gagarin. Belgrade, Serbia. Accessed via theguardian.com.
The least extravagant monument I discuss in this chapter, this bust to Gagarin was scheduled to be unveiled in Belgrade on April 12, 2018, exactly fifty-seven years after Gagarin’s first flight. However, the statue was dismantled before it could be unveiled due to immediate controversy. The monument is plain, with brief information about Gagarin and his achievements carved into the pedestal, and a small bust of Gagarin’s head, complete with cosmonaut helmet, sat on top. Potentially a tribute to Gagarin’s reputed humility, the statue was immediately ridiculed by Belgrade residents due to its small size, particularly the size of Gagarin’s head as opposed to the pedestal. City officials dismantled the monument with the promise to construct a new monument that would pay due deference to Gagarin’s contributions to space travel and humankind. Perhaps more than any other monument, ironically enough, this example speaks to
Gagarin’s celebrity status in the post-Soviet world: Serbia was never a member of the USSR, and yet, residents of Serbia’s capital felt this monument did not pay enough respect to Gagarin’s McDaniel 33 accomplishments. This is one indication that Serbia, feeling ostracized by Western European institutions such as the European Union, may again be looking to put itself in tandem with
Russia culturally and politically. What better way to show Russia that Serbia is fully invested in
Eastern European unity than producing an (albeit underwhelming) statue to one of the Soviet
Union’s greatest heroes. At the time of writing, no such replacement as spoken about by
Belgrade city officials has been erected.
At first glance, the Western mind may choose to see Yuri Gagarin’s fame as merely another extension of Soviet propaganda, a political tool to display the USSR’s scientific preeminence over its capitalist competitors. It is clear from Gagarin’s depiction in Soviet media that the first cosmonaut spoke powerfully to people worldwide during his life (seemingly) without influence from the Soviet government. While certainly, yes, Gagarin can be a nationalistic symbol to those across the former Soviet bloc, and particularly in Moscow, the monuments depicted above suggest something different. That in the post-Soviet memory,
Gagarin may have indeed become an apolitical figure, a symbol instead of what humankind is capable of, rather than a comment on the capabilities of the Communist system. This is only evidenced by countries like Serbia, which was never a part of the Soviet Union and yet may have political reasons to align itself with Slavic unity and nationalism, erecting statues to Gagarin as recently as 2018. The Cold War may have ended during the fall of Soviet Union, or for some, even earlier (the fall of the Berlin Wall) yet it still strikes us as odd that a Soviet-born cosmonaut could be an apolitical figure even now. However, despite the Soviet Union having been in a state of nonexistence for thirty years, Gagarin remains a household name across post-Soviet Russia and beyond, suggesting that he has outlived (in legend, at least) the very system that bestowed him with glory and honor in Pravda all those years ago. McDaniel 34
Those monuments gifted to Western cities from Russian organizations suggest that
Russians like it this way, for Gagarin to be remembered as a diplomatic, international figure, who spread positivity towards humankind across the world. However, this version of Gagarin can appear at odds with the Gagarin who stands in Moscow, or even the Gagarin in Baikonur, who is still kind, yet victorious. It is clear that post-Soviet institutions such as the Russian space program have the intention of broadcasting Gagarin’s celebrity worldwide, perhaps because they sense a lack of global awareness of Gagarin’s notable accomplishments that should be accredited to the Soviet project. Yet, I will maintain that the intended image of Gagarin projected by the post-Soviet world is that Gagarin is a celebrity that belongs to all. Gagarin was Russian as well as Soviet, yet his flight, even today, means a great deal to people around the world for whom space travel is still a dream.
What is there to glean from this? I have chosen to analyze Gagarin through the lens of the
Soviet Socialist Realist, and yet it would be just as easy to speak about Gagarin in relation to the quintessential American dream. The promise of Gagarin is that someone who comes from nothing, even someone who has seen immense hardship such as war and occupation, can work hard and go on to do something unprecedented, unheard of. This idea is not one unique to a specific country, or political ideology. This is precisely why Gagarin is an apolitical figure in the
Soviet and post-Soviet memory, because he was speaking to a belief that is ingrained in everyone, and showing exactly what we can accomplish if we are determined enough. We see in
Gagarin not the scientific ability of a given political or economic system, but rather, what we ourselves are capable of when given the chance to rise to great opportunity. If a young boy living in a mud hut in a small village, hours away from Moscow and occupied by Nazis, watching his McDaniel 35 siblings be shipped off to hard labor camps, could become the first man in space, then who can tell us that our dreams are too large?
And yet, Gagarin’s celebrity status today exists primarily in Eastern Europe. Yuri
Gagarin is a pioneer of space exploration, with a truly historic accomplishment to his name, but many average Westerners could not tell you who he was by name or image. People who were invested in the Soviet project, in some way, can. It is my belief that this remains the case precisely because the West perceived of Gagarin as a political figure. As the West’s battle for dominance against the Communist project has ended, so too, has the West’s interest in important figures of highly politicized eras like the “space race.” Gagarin has faded from Western memory just as the Cold War has, although the tension between Russia and the United States has remained. Gagarin has stayed ever-relevant in the former Soviet bloc precisely because he serves as a reminder of what the Soviet Union was capable of. Gagarin’s smiling face on magazines is nostalgia for another time, when the Soviet Union seemed closer than ever to becoming the world’s preeminent superpower. Gagarin symbolizes both what was, what could have been, and still, as we see in Serbia, what could be. The Russian government may wish to export Gagarin’s fame to the West again exactly for this reason- that the world beyond Serbia and Kazakhstan has completely forgotten the significance of these historic moments, and in turn, forgotten what the
Soviet Union could have achieved. There is certainly a deep nostalgia for the Soviet era in all levels of these interactions, from Belgrade residents who demanded that a more respectful memorial to Gagarin be built, to the Russkiy Mir Foundation generously gifting a grinning
Gagarin to the United States. It is as if to say: “Look at what he accomplished. Look at what we, too, are capable of.”
One verse of Arrow’s prize-winning song from Volga-Volga states: McDaniel 36
Sing a ringing and cheerful song
That would show how strong we are
May it reach the bright, golden sun
May it reach every person’s heart
Like my land, so free, and vast, and strong
While this verse was intended to speak to the Soviet farming class during a time of brutal industrialization, it can be applied here, too. Gagarin continues to exist in the post-Soviet sphere as a symbol of strength, persistence, and greatness in the human experience, who may not have reached the sun, but certainly had an impact on hearts around the world during his life. This is the star-power of Yuri Gagarin: through his ability, we see our own, if we too choose to rise above the expectations set for us.
McDaniel 37
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