Starman_ The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin - Jamie Doran [82]
Russayev confirms this. ‘Yuri was a completely honest guy. He was the first cosmonaut in space, he did so much for his country, and you should see the place that Valya lives in today. Instead of a decent dacha, it’s a hen-house. Yuri worked hard for the good of his native land, not for his own wealth.’5
Inevitably there were darker jealousies working against Gagarin’s peace of mind, and not just about the material fringe benefits that he was assumed to be enjoying. Sergei Belotserkovsky observes, ‘Even Korolev couldn’t have anticipated the avalanche of problems that would hit Gagarin when he had to represent his country abroad. He made many enemies because he behaved with more charm, and could talk more wisely and honestly, than the official Soviet heads of foreign delegations. Superiors never forgive you for something like that.’
Russayev worked hard to protect Gagarin from such dangers. ‘He always said that politics seemed hard and intricate. I told him, “Politics is a dirty business. You should stay out of it. You’ve got your country, your family. Enjoy what you’ve got, and don’t get involved in the politics.”’
Russayev remained with Gagarin until 1964, when Khrushchev’s administration was toppled by Leonid Brezhnev. After that, the KGB’s relationship with all the cosmonauts would become very different. In March 1967 Gagarin would turn to Russayev one last time for some much-needed political guidance. By then it would be too late in the day for both of them.
10
BACK TO WORK
To their mutual surprise, Russian and American space medical experts had discovered by 1963 that the hardships of flight into space amounted to no more than a collection of minor irritations: nausea, vertigo, a heavy feeling in the head, a dryness in the throat. All these symptoms were uncomfortable, but any conventionally fit human could survive a trip into orbit. From now on the emphasis was on training not just the right bodies, but the right minds and intellects for working aboard an ever more complex succession of spacecraft. Korolev, Kamanin and other senior figures in the Soviet manned rocket programme re-examined the personal files of sixteen promising cosmonaut candidates previously rejected by the medical boards in 1959. They decided to give them another chance, because their engineering and academic skills were now regarded as more important than extreme physical fitness. By May 1964 this fresh cosmonaut squad had been supplemented with ten non-pilot technical specialists from within the space community itself. They were, in fact, talented engineers from within Korolev’s OKB-1 design bureau. Meanwhile most of Gagarin’s old friends and colleagues from the original 1959 group of twenty, including Gherman Titov, Alexei Leonov, Vladimir Komarov and Andrian Nikolayev, were studying very hard to maintain their superiority over the twenty-six newcomers.1
On December 21, 1963 Colonel Gagarin was appointed Deputy Director of the Cosmonaut Training Centre, reporting directly to Nikolai Kamanin. To a large extent this new job was a means of promoting him without putting him in harm’s way. During the last three years he had fallen behind in every aspect of space training, and he had not been allowed to fly jet fighters because of the risks involved. Unlike a normal combat pilot, he was not expendable, but had to be preserved in one piece as a diplomatic and social symbol; even if he had been able to return to space-flight status at a moment’s notice, the qualities that had made him so ideal for Vostok were no longer so important. It was not enough just to be a fit young pilot with the right attitude and background. If Yuri wanted to board a spacecraft again he would have to study orbital mechanics, flight systems, computer control and space navigation, then convince his superiors to put him back on the ‘active’ flight list. Korolev certainly wanted