Lev Danilkin

Passazhir s detmi. Yuri Gagarin do i posle 27 marta 1968 Passenger with Kids. Yuri Gagarin before and after March 27 1968
Biography. Molodaya Gvardia. Moscow 2011. 512 pages
Foreign rights: Hungary, Italy, Poland

Polls show that Yuri Gagarin is the No. 1 hero in Russian history of the 20th century. It is all the more surprising that for many years there has not been an appropriate - open, objective, biography of the first cosmonaut based on current sources in Russia. The biography of Lev Danilkin is an attempt to close all the gaps in the biography of the „red Icarus“.

This most complete chronicle of his life and afterlife to this day tries to ascertain what constitutes the myth of Gagarin. Interviews with eyewitnesses and a comprehensive review of Russian and foreign sources helped the author to answer basic questions. Is Gagarin just the figurative embodiment of Soviet design, or did he really have some unique qualities? What really happened on April 12, 1961? How did the first cosmonaut deal with the „Gagarinomania“ - his status as the most famous person on the planet? What is Gagarin: a product of the system and the era - or its mirror and justification? Was there a conflict between him and the political leadership of the USSR? What is the real reason for his premature death? Was his success just luck or the result of a deliberately designed career? Or was he a puppet in the implementation of a higher plan? What would have happe- ned to Gagarin - and what would have happened to the USSR and its space pro- gram, had the “first citizen of the universe” not died in March 1968?

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