The Untold Story of Yuri Gagarin
Life after space
Yuri Gagarin’s legacy appears uncomplicated and simple to us today. He was the first man into space and had a profound effect on the world, his achievements being one of the crowning glories of the Soviet Union and bolstering the idea of Soviet superiority.
But the Soviet Union Gagarin left was not the same as the one he returned to. Life after Vostok 1 would never be the same and his life began to tailspin. When he died just 8 years later, rumours quickly began to spread that Gagarin’s death was no mere accident, but a calculated act of malice against the Soviet hero.
Yuri Gagarin
Born in Smolensk, Russia in 1934, as the third of four children and the son of a carpenter on a collective farm, Yuri Gagarin was not destined for a particularly remarkable life.
At 16 he moved to Moscow and apprenticed as a metal worker at a foundry, before continuing his schooling, and taking a flying course in his spare time. He would graduate and undertake his first solo flight in 1955, then in 1957 he joined the Soviet Air Force. That same year, a 23-year-old Gagarin met a woman named Valentia at a…
