Starman_ The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin - Jamie Doran [1]
I discovered that – even after all these years – many people who worked alongside Gagarin at the height of the Soviet space effort in the 1960s were unwilling to discuss their experiences, or to share their memories of the man himself. They were still afraid, I think, that some anonymous squad of men in heavy overcoats might turn up at their apartments in the early hours of the morning to arrest them for speaking out of turn. Perhaps more importantly, Westerners are still too foreign to be trusted with personal intimacies about old friends – and people who spent their entire careers in the Soviet military-industrial complex do not easily surrender their most sensitive technical secrets to outsiders.
Patiently, and I hope with tact and diplomacy, I persevered. I found that several key people were willing to speak, so long as they could give their testimony directly to fellow Russians rather than Western journalists. In this regard, my good friends Igor Morozov, Valerie Gorodetskaya and Maria Semenov were invaluable. They knew what was required and surpassed my greatest expectations. Morozov is a veteran of difficult, in-depth reporting from the old Soviet days. Gorodetskaya and Semenov have an astonishing ability to relax their interviewees while getting right down to the truth of the matter in hand. Gradually a degree of trust was established, and there was a ‘snowball’ effect, as reluctant witnesses took heart from the openness and enthusiasm of those who had spoken before them. An incredible amount of information emerged, and in this area we extend our thanks to Sergei Kuzhenko and Boris Malakhov for their invaluable help.
Inevitably the interviews had to be shortened, if the emerging television documentary was to fit into its standard 52-minute slot. I felt uneasy about wasting any of the stories entrusted to us by so many people who had been persuaded that we were going to make good use of their testimony. I decided that a book was needed, in addition to the film. Writer Piers Bizony joined our research team to co-write the book with me. It was a gamble, taken at short notice. Would we get along? Could we two very different characters, very much in control of our own different styles of storytelling and ways of working, collaborate on the same narrative without conflict?
Yes, we could. From the first, we saw exactly the same story, and the strength of our working relationship added to the strength of the book. I know something of Russia and its people, while Piers knows about their early rockets and the mind-set of the engineers who built them and the young pilots who flew aboard them. Together we explored fascinating and hitherto unknown aspects of Gagarin’s life and work that surprised and moved both of us, and gave us an overwhelming sense that we were bringing to light a truly important story.
But no amount of teamwork could easily overcome the problems of searching for facts, documents and people in a country so vast and complex as Russia. The old bureaucracies no longer fly the hammer and sickle above their rooftops, yet they remain as impenetrable as ever. Money is now the dominant preoccupation. Certain things are possible for the right price. No one in particular is to blame for this; it is simply a basic fact of life in the ‘New Russia’. The other problem is accountability. Who is in charge of any particular organization? Whom should we approach for access to buildings, for permission to use photographs or rights for film clips?
There are substantial historical archives in Russia, yet few people know exactly what they contain, because there simply is not the money available to catalogue and store them properly. Certain enterprising academics will search through them, for a price, but merely locating a particular resource does not