MHM Forum

Juriy Gagarin became a real icon not only in the Soviet Union but all over the world. He was chosen to the flight as a person whom the Soviet Government could fully trust.
He was welcomed by Khrushchev, by Castro, kissed by Gina Lolobrigida.
His success set up the American trials to decrypt the Soviet Union system.
Symptomatically enough, Soviet Government kept on importing food and corns from the USA, and at the same moment as a poor country kept on invading the Space.
Gagarin's success was met with enthusiasm of many people- also in Poland, where he was welcomed and where many schools, squares and streets took his name.
He was full of natural behaviuor, so for the propaganda's reasons his election to the role of the 1st astronaut in the Space was not by the accident at all.
Even, the Queen Of Great Britain Elizabeth II welcomed him during the traditional tea service in the Buckingham Palace, resigning from the full etiquette.
The conjunction between truth and mythology was really vast.
After his success however, Gagarin became a victim of the Soviet Union's political regime and routine. He became a real national treasure, although before the Soviet Governments was worrying about whether Gagarin could choose an opportunity of escaping to the West.
Before his flight, Gagarin was being very oppressed, he was put to many painful psychological tests, long- term isolation in very artificial conditions, many medical experiments were carried out on him. It was just a routine in the Soviet Empire, where a human being's life did not have any meaning.
He was even put to the long term oxygen starvations and so on.
After his coming back on the Earth he was announced by Khrushchev as the evidence of the communism's global victory and the prediction of the Soviet domination in the Space and their special rights.
His success became the beginning of his tragedy, however- because he could not make a move without Soviet Union Government's control. He started to drink alcohol extensively, as he knew he would not fly to the Space again. His life became too precious for the Kremlin, on the other side he started to know much more than before about Soviet Union’s immorality and constant lies, so he could lose all the positive illusions connected with the Communistic State.
He started to notice that the flies were not prepared properly, because the point was that the Soviet Union’s propaganda needed new and new successes without presuming any included excessive dramatically costs. He noticed many symptomatic tragic  accidents of his friends. It is a famous anecdote that after such an accident of his friend Komarow, he poured his vodka on Brezniev’s face .
Later, he became a pilot of a regular fighter. On the 27th March of 1968 he collapsed deadly by Moscow, however nobody was ready to believe in the meteorological grounds in respect to that death. His brother hanged himself, and father escaped to alcohol. His wife objected to meeting with journalists, she still lives in Moscow in extreme poverty.
Very important word spoken by Gagarin after his coming back from the Space remain: Our planet seen from the Space is so beautiful that it is necessary to protect it from any disaster. He became devoid of ideology and started to see everything in new ethical perspective which was very powerful against the general political credos of communism. When spying the Russian astronauts, the American understood that they were just the same people. It was very innovatory in those days and maybe such revelations finally contributed to escaping from the vision of the final deadly global military confrontation.
Gagarin all the time became the hero of the flesh and blood, he used to “disload� his stress in a typical Russian way, he was psychologically prescribed to the Slavonic civilization and that could be also a very emotive function of his success’ consuming in a social sense.
It is worth adding that the Polish side opposite to the Russian treated to much extent equally the race in the Space, and Poland was the only state of the Eastern Block where the transmission of the American landing on the Moon took place. In the USSR the Gagarin’s success was treated as a Soviet human being’s success and American landing was announced not as an American deed , but the Earth’s citizen’s one.