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seven secretaries on permanent duty (at least two of whom were answerable to the KGB). Sergei Yegupov headed the operation with two principal aims in mind: first, to help Gagarin with his workload; second, to keep an eye on any sensitive matters that might crop up. His duties are more politically relaxed now, and the world’s fascination with cosmonauts has faded, but he still runs the department. ‘Most often the letters were addressed to “Gagarin, Moscow”, or “Gagarin, the Kremlin”. In the end it was decided to give him a special post code, “Moscow 705”. Over the years, I think we must have received at least a million letters.’

Most of the letters – but by no means all of them – expressed joy, wonder, admiration and pride at Gagarin’s achievement. Yegupov does not like to acknowledge that some of these letters must have been ‘difficult’ in some way. ‘We still keep the entire archive at Star City, and everybody can get access to them. You will see, there are no bad letters anywhere in the correspondence.’ It seems reasonable to assume that some of them must have been weeded out, but a great many distressing pleas for help still remain. ‘About ten or fifteen per cent of the correspondence contained various requests from ordinary citizens asking for better housing, the installation of water supply points, an increase in pension payments, and applications for kindergartens – incidentally, that was a pretty complicated issue in those days.’

The most sensitive letters came from prisoners asking for their cases to be reviewed. Fyodor Dyemchuk remembers a particular incident involving a young man harshly sentenced for a first offence. ‘Gagarin said, “What shall I do? I have to help, because if we save this boy it’ll be so much easier and simpler. If he goes to prison he’ll simply be lost for ever into the crime system, and he’ll never make it to become a man.” He went everywhere and visited everybody’s offices. He really pushed, and I think he got some positive results.’

One can only imagine Gagarin’s anxiety when faced with requests like these:

Esteemed Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin,

A First Class Navigator who served with the Air Force for nineteen years requests you to receive him. The life of my son depends on this . . .

Yuri Alexeyevich, Hero of the Soviet Union,

My daughter has been refused entry to the university because of my Jewish background. Please can you . . .

Dear Comrade Gagarin,

Citizen Danilchenko asks you to consider helping to obtain a reservation for his daughter at an invalid’s residential home, since she is mentally unwell . . .

Yegupov pulls out other typical examples from the archive. ‘Here’s a letter asking for better housing for the Kurdyumov family, nine people living in a single room, sixteen metres square, in an old house with damp running down the walls. Here’s another request for better housing from citizen Morazova, and meanwhile she has a child with an inborn heart deficiency; or this one, where prisoner Yakutin says he was wrongly convicted, and requests the verdict to be cancelled.’ Somehow Gagarin managed to answer almost all the letters, showing great concern, and even folding a particularly heart-breaking example into his wallet as a spur to his conscience. He was, however, entirely unmoved by some of the pleas he received:

Dear Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin,

Please allow me to congratulate you on your great feat. Please allow me also to ask a great favour on behalf of the distilling firm of Richter & Co., and that is to be so kind as to allow us to use your well-known and respected name for a new product, ‘Astronaut Gagarin Vodka’.

‘Why did you have to show me this?’ he complained to Yegupov. ‘I’ve wasted three minutes on reading it.’ Then he spent a good half-hour phrasing a careful and warm reply to a 15-year-old boy from Canada who had politely written in for career advice.

As often as not, people would actually accost the First Cosmonaut in person with their pleas for help. Alexei Leonov says that whenever Gagarin visited his family in Gzhatsk, he would find various local