The first man to go into space and come back alive.

Yuri Gagarin, the Russian country-boy with the invincible smile, was not allowed to become famous until his flight and safe return were guaranteed. The press release appeared only after he had arrived back home. Speculation is that he was not the first man in space. He was the first man who went into space and lived to tell the tale.

Vostok 1 was actually Vostok 3KA-3. It officially became Vostok 1 when it landed safely, to become the first manned Soviet ship that didn’t kill its pilot. That was April of ’61. Cosmonauts were sent into space like soldiers into battle. Only about half were expected to survive. Russian roulette with three rounds in the chamber. It was an honor to die for Mother Russia, comrade.

Yuri survived. That explains the big smile. His next mission was not an easy one. He had to be an international hero and a spokesman for Soviet communism, living proof that the culmination of the Hegelian historical process was at hand. Yuri was eyewitness to the New Red Dawn of humankind in the post-capitalist era, the grandeur of what would necessarily occur when the common people became the proprietors of the means of production through conquest and revolution, comrade.

Yuri died in March of 1968. He was flying a MiG-15 training jet and it crashed. He was 34. Hero or not, he was still cannon fodder. And he knew secret stuff. His silent ashes are now buried in the walls of the Kremlin on Red Square. He spent one hour and forty-eight minutes in space. He was the first human to orbit the earth. He loved ice hockey and basketball. He was survived by a daughter who became a professor of economics in Moscow.

The scar over his left eye was not a battle scar. Well, in a way, it was. He got that when his wife caught him in a hotel room with another woman. Launching his crotch rocket for the glory of Mother Russia. He tried to escape by jumping out the window. He was drinking perhaps a little more vodka than usual right then. Celebrity can be stressful, comrade.

Yuri never flew in space again, after his hour and forty-eight minutes. He coached other pilots, and he was the back-up pilot for Soyuz 1 in 1967. The first-string pilot was his friend, cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. Yuri had made a few observations about important safety features and procedures that were lacking. His observations were not well received.

Soyuz spacecraft is perfect spacecraft, comrade, because Soviet system is perfect system.

No more question. 

Soyuz 1 crashed on reentry. The parachute failed to open, and Comrade Vladimir was crushed to a bloody pulp. The Party banned Yuri from participation in further space flight, training or testing. For having been right about the inadequacies of the ship. Safety was not first, comrade. Loyalty to Mother Russia was first. Loyalty to the Party and all its leaders. Loyalty to the lie. Yuri was famous, and he was becoming a problem. In one-party systems, you don’t keep accidents from happening. You keep them a secret when they do.

Yuri was not a secret. Yuri was a rock star. He couldn’t even get extra-matrimonially laid without it being a hot international news item. He had become more famous than the Wise Men who had created him. In Russian, they said, muzhik. Yuri thought that would keep him safe. On the contrary, it put him in growing peril.

Monkeys are safe, comrade, because they are kept in cages. Yuri was becoming a free radical. In need of a new job. Yuri Gagarin began training to requalify as a fighter pilot to defend Mother Russia from Western aggression. He had an accident. A Texas-style accident.

Dead heroes are the best. You can put their faces on postage stamps and monuments. You can give them posthumous medals. Best of all, they keep quiet about all the things they could have told us if they had lived. They become extraordinarily insignificant and, therefore, invincible.

The Soviet space program was first with most things. The first satellite, the first animal in orbit, the first man in space, the first man-made object to escape earth’s gravity and the first moon probe, all before 1960. All, thanks to an austere economy, no Ivy League schools, byzantine bureaucracy, weak science programs, land-locked geography and poverty of resources. Maybe that was why it seemed feasible to Sorensen that Rice could beat Texas. It made no sense at all.