• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Yaroslav Golovanov adds his contribution to the story. ‘Eventually the KGB recovered their prize, and the unhappy fisherman could only fidget and say, “I’m sorry, but the boat is dilapidated, ripped apart.” The KGB officers wanted to correct the fisherman’s false ideas. “The boat is fine. Nothing has been torn,” they said.’

Apparently the KGB officers did not want to tell their superiors that various historic items from the First Cosmonaut’s equipment had been tampered with, before they could collect them all.

Gagarin’s social responsibilities began the instant his feet touched the ground. The old woman and the little girl needed reassuring that he was not an enemy spy. He really wanted the farm lads from Smelkovka to be rememembered, because they had been so friendly. Now the military was all over the place, and the officer on the scene, Major Gasiev, came up to him. Gagarin saluted smartly and said, ‘Comrade Major! USSR Cosmonaut Senior Lieutenant Gagarin reporting!’

‘Listen, you’re a Major too. Don’t you know? You were promoted during your flight,’ said Gasiev with a big grin. They embraced amicably, officers of equal rank, and of course Gasiev had a hundred questions.2

Then there was the question of the Altitude Record. The sports official Ivan Borisenko needed Gagarin to sign some documents. In a 1978 account Borisenko described ‘dashing up to the descent module, next to which stood a smiling Gagarin’. This seems unlikely because the capsule was at least two kilometres away, and Borisenko must have rendezvoused with the cosmonaut at his separate touchdown site, or else in another field on the outskirts of Smelkovka, where a large helicopter was sitting ready to take Gagarin to the nearby Engels airbase. Some time very soon after his landing, the First Cosmonaut blithely put his signature to a sheaf of Borisenko’s off-white lies.3

In the helicopter, Gagarin politely and enthusiastically answered all the questions that his military escorts threw at him. What was the earth like? The weightlessness? He was learning that all the questions would be similar, wherever he went. But at one point he went quiet for a moment. According to Golovanov, he said, ‘You know, I never got to see the moon through my porthole . . . Never mind, I’ll see it next time.’ With that, he brightened up and took more questions.

General Stuchenko, his career resting safe for today, met Gagarin on the tarmac at Engels and immediately posed another complex social challenge for the space traveller, as witnessed by Golovanov. ‘Yuri Alexeyevich, in the battles to liberate the Gzhatsk district, there was only one commander. You must remember me?’

‘No, I don’t.’ This was not such a good reply. Stuchenko looked absolutely crestfallen, and Gagarin had to think fast. ‘I mean, I don’t remember your face. But I remember there was a commander. So that was you? How wonderful! You must be my double godfather. Once you rescued me from the Nazis, and now you’re meeting me on my return from space!’4

This response proved more satisfactory. Then Stuchenko asked, ‘How would you like it if we sent a plane to Moscow to fetch your wife? Valentina could come here and then you could fly home together.’

Another awkward problem: how to refuse such a kind offer from a superior officer, and a General, no less. ‘Thank you very much for the thought, Comrade General, but I’m afraid it wouldn’t do. Valya’s nursing our newly born daughter at the moment.’

Stuchenko escorted Gagarin into the airbase’s officer’s quarters, where he had an opportunity to call his family and report his success to the First Secretary on a secure phone link. Gagarin spoke carefully, knowing full well that his every word would be written down for posterity.5

‘I’m glad to hear your voice, Gagarin Alexeyevich.’

‘Nikita Sergeyevich, I’m glad to report that the first space flight has been successfully completed.’

Khrushchev continued in an official vein for a while, but he could not long resist the ordinary