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Titov and several of the other cosmonauts from the first group attended the celebrations in plain clothes. They did not get to stand on top of Lenin’s Mausoleum alongside Gagarin and the top brass, but had to stay at ground level. ‘I saw this sea of people, not a sea but an avalanche of shouting, smiling people. They were lifting children onto their shoulders to let them have a look. Yura was standing on the Mausoleum among the government members,’ says Titov. ‘It was astonishing to see him there. It was only then I realized the importance of the event which had moved all the people. Everyone was glad. The whole world was glad because a man had gone into space. It was extraordinary.’

Gagarin made a speech from the podium: the usual sentiments that one would expect on such as occasion, but delivered with his own particular cheerfulness and sincerity, so that all the platitudes about communism, the Motherland, the Party, seemed for a moment genuinely to come alive. In conclusion Gagarin said, ‘I should like to make a special mention of the fatherly love shown to us, the Soviet people, by Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev . . . You were the first to congratulate me warmly on the success of the flight a few minutes after I landed . . . Glory to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union lead by Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev!’

Lest any of his enemies be waiting in the wings for signs of weakness, Khrushchev flaunted his invincibility, his intimate connectedness with today’s triumph. Gagarin’s speech of gratitude – delivered with tact and sincerity to an immense and exultant crowd – was precisely what the First Secretary wanted to hear. The young cosmonaut became a firm political favourite from that moment. Bursting with pride and happiness and wiping tears of joy from his eyes, Khrushchev repeatedly hugged Gagarin, then made a hefty speech, to which the crowd listened with rapt attention, interrupting him at frequent intervals with long bursts of heartfelt applause.

One has to imagine that on April 14, 1961 the Soviet Union truly believed in itself, in no small part because Khrushchev understood how to win the loyalty of his people with an ebullient brand of showmanship. For now, at least, the blood-soaked struggle of the socialist revolution seemed to have taken flight under his more optimistic style of leadership. Joseph Stalin had instilled obedience on pain of death, but Khrushchev was immeasurably less terrifying in his desire for affection won without duress. On coming to power he had gone so far as to denounce Stalin’s cruelties. This was a tremendous political risk, given that many surviving administrators from the old regime were still pulling the Party strings and did not want to be told that their travails under Stalinism had amounted to a terrible mistake; but today, with Gagarin’s world-shattering achievement under his belt, Khrushchev was unassailable. For now.10

Of course the young man who had helped deliver him this wonderful victory would benefit from the First Secretary’s warmest and most personal gratitude in the coming months and years. Unfortunately, winning Khrushchev as a friend also meant gaining his rivals as enemies. When Khrushchev’s deputy Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev congratulated Gagarin at Vnukovo Airport and treated him as a lofty equal atop the Mausoleum in Red Square, he did so with all due comradeship and sincerity, but his body language – preserved in the documentary films of the event – betrays his lack of real warmth. In October 1964 his deference towards the First Cosmonaut would vanish overnight, along with Khrushchev’s hold on power.

In the evening there was a celebratory dinner in the huge Georgyevsky Hall of the Kremlin. It was supposed to have been a luncheon, but the Red Square celebrations had lasted for a good six hours. The crowds’ enthusiasm and proud patience seemed limitless, and Khrushchev had milked the day for all its glory.

At the dinner, a hungry and footsore Valentin tucked into all the food and booze with hearty enthusiasm. ‘There was a huge round table – an entire delicatessen,