Starman_ The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin - Jamie Doran [65]
Valentin noted to his satisfaction that sensible supplies of good vodka accompanied all the place settings, for the men at least. ‘There was a bottle of Stolichnaya by everyone’s side – not the modern stuff, but the kind you drink and then want to drink more of. There was also cognac, wine, and three glasses. I wasn’t sure which glass to take, so I decided to copy Father. He took the middle one and I did the same. When I’d drunk from the glass, I asked, “How much are non-Party members allowed to drink?” Everyone went quiet. Only then did I realize my mistake. Father replied, “That’s right, Valentin Alexeyevich. These days, Party members get to drink twice as much as non-members!” Everyone started to laugh and the tension disappeared.’
Valentin had another tot to recover from his embarrassment, and kept an amused eye on a group of Muslim delegates from the southern republics. ‘You know, they were especially drunk. They have total abstinence, don’t they? But here the drink was free of charge. They were great fun, and so were the Yugoslavs. The Poles also drank quite well. Some people were carried out by their elbows and put in their cars.’
Unfortunately, getting at the food was more of a problem than obtaining drink. ‘There were no waitresses to serve us. So it was just like communism. You can sniff it and look at it, but you can’t touch it or eat it. Furthermore, Khrushchev was shouting all the time that true universal communism was just on the horizon.’
Indeed, a triumphant Nikita Khrushchev was by now well into one of his noisy table-thumping routines. Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov recalls the mood of optimism. ‘He announced that our generation was going to live in true communism. We were all hugging, applauding, screaming “Hooray!” And we really believed him, because at that time the success of our country was obvious to the whole world. It was only much later, when we grew up and learned a little about economic realities, that we realized Khrushchev’s announcement was a little premature.’
By the end of April Gagarin’s arduous routine of foreign travel was under way, with a trip to the ‘democratic’ satellite socialist countries of Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria, then on to Finland. In June 1961 he arrived back in Moscow for some much-needed leave with Valya and the children, although he took the time to be interviewed by yet more journalists, ferried from place to place as always by his driver Fyodor Dyemchuk. The Indian writer Khwaja Ahmad Abbas observed of Gagarin:
He was widely hailed as the Man of the Moment, but when I came face-to-face with him the meeting began with an anticlimax. The door opened and the world’s most publicized man stepped in, but I failed to recognize him. Even while shaking hands with him I was uncertain that this slightly built young man could be the great Hero of the Space Age. Even in his smart uniform he looked like a junior officer coming in as an advance guard to announce the real hero.11
As usual, Gagarin’s charm quickly won the day and Abbas’s approach soon became more complimentary. The journalist may have felt an initial twitch of disappointment, but the First Cosmonaut’s essential normality was the whole point. If Khrushchev and his advisors had wanted a super-hero to represent the Soviet Union in space, they would have chosen another candidate.
The British journalists Wilfred Burchett and Anthony Purdy met Gagarin at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Moscow on June 9, and were instantly impressed by his enthusiasm, his firm handshake and confident responses to their questions. They told him they were writing a book about his exploits, and he flattered them by saying that if their determination as authors was anything