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At Orenburg, Gagarin met Valentina ‘Valya’ Goryacheva, a pretty, hazel-eyed medical technician one year younger than him. She worked on the Orenburg base, and came to a dance party one evening, only to find that the callow cadets with their short, bristly haircuts did not seem particularly impressive. In an interview with journalist Yaroslav Golovanov in 1978, she recalled that the civilian boys in downtown Orenburg seemed better dressed, had nicer hair and were more handsome. She never expected to find a love match at a military compound, just a pleasant night’s partying. She danced with Gagarin a couple of times, while he cheerfully asked questions about her.9

At ten o’clock precisely the music stopped. The cadets were expected to go to bed now (alone), so that they would be ready for an early start the next morning. Gagarin said, ‘Well. See you next Sunday.’ Valya made no reply. ‘Back home, I thought: Why should I go and meet that bald-headed character again? In any case, why does he behave in such an assured way? But the next Sunday we went to the cinema. We had a difference of opinion about what we saw. Then afterwards he said, “Well. See you next Sunday.”’

And he did. Valya’s parents, Ivan Goryachev and Varvara Semyonova, lived in Chicherin Street, Orenburg. Valya had never known any other home town, but for Gagarin this place was entirely new and unknown. Valya’s parents, along with her three brothers and three sisters, quickly became fond of him and their house became a kind of second home. Ivan cooked for the local sanatorium and applied his considerable chef’s talent at home. No great fan of the dull food at the flying school, Gagarin ate well during his many off-duty visits to Chicherin Street. According to Valya, when she was interviewed in 1978, there was only one serious problem on Gagarin’s mind at that time: ‘His parents were having a hard time making ends meet, but how could Yura help them in any way from his small cadet’s pay? He said it would have been better if he had gone back to Gzhatsk as soon as he’d finished at the Technical School so that he could earn a living in the profession he had learned, as a foundryman.’ But Gagarin persisted with his training at Orenburg, achieving the rank of Sergeant in February 1956, and making his first solo flight in a MiG-15 jet on March 26, 1957.

On October 4, 1957, the Soviets launched the world’s first artificial satellite. The cadets at Orenburg rushed around in great excitement when they heard the news. Gagarin’s best friend on the base, his namesake Yuri Dergunov, ran towards him on the tarmac shouting ‘Sputnik!’ at the top of his voice. Gagarin was excited too, but the moment did not immediately change his life, as some accounts have suggested. He was much more concerned with his pending final exams at the Pilots’ School, and with his growing love for Valya. The date for their marriage was already set for October 27. He recalled that at the time the wedding arrangements seemed far more pressing to him than any thoughts of flying into space; besides, the idea of sending people into the cosmos still seemed a distant abstraction. He never imagined that he would be in orbit in three-and-a-half years’ time.

Valya had no idea that rocket travel would feature in her husband’s life. She married a charming but essentially ordinary young military flier, not some future space hero. She must have known the risks involved, even in this simple relationship: that she would end up moving from one strange town to another as Yuri moved between different air stations; that he might set out to work one morning and not come back in the evening . . . Obviously she made these accommodations. She was entitled to expect that the military would assist with housing, health care, pensions and schooling for any children she and Yuri might raise. In return, she knew that she might have to grieve silently and without fuss if her husband was killed flying in his jet plane. Many other wives in her position shared the same burdens, the same nagging