Jamie Doran - Starman - The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin

By 1964 the space effort was securely established on both sides of the superpower divide. In August the Politburo approved development of the N-1, as well as two competing projects generated by Korolev’s rivals in other sectors of the Soviet space industry. Ultimately this confusion, and Korolev’s early death in 1966, would doom the Soviet moon programme to failure, but in the summer of 1964 almost all the cosmonauts were gearing up for ever more elaborate flights, with real hopes of planting their feet in lunar soil. To his dismay, Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin found that he was no longer qualified to join in the fun.

It was not merely that his public duties were taking him away from his real work at Star City. Back in 1961 he had done something very foolish, only a few months after his historic flight, when he took a holiday and fell from grace.

Crimea is almost an island. It juts out into the Black Sea, connected to the Ukraine by two peninsulas as delicate as veins. The northernmost territories of the island are pleasant but dull. The south is a different matter. There are beautiful mountains, sun-dappled forests, sheltered beaches speckled with palms. The weather is still fine in October, and the almond trees are back in bloom by February.

The surrounding Black Sea has never been quite so private a lake as Moscow might have liked. The southern half belongs to an old enemy, Turkey. Russia bears a grudge: at Balaclava in the Crimea, Lord Cardigan’s Light Brigade charged into the Valley of Death, cannons to the left of them, cannons to the right of them… but Russia eventually lost that war, in part because of the Turkish contribution. From Sevastopol, the Black Sea Fleet’s rusting hulks still maintain a wary watch on Turkey and its NATO allies.

At the Crimean port of Yalta, Churchill and Roosevelt made their uneasy wartime accommodation with good old ‘Uncle Joe’ Stalin; and in Foros, just along the coast to the west of Yalta, Nikita Khrushchev kept his dacha . Modern leaders still spend their summers here, though they can never be sure what their enemies might be planning while they are relaxing the best part of a thousand kilometres from the Kremlin. In August 1991 Mikhail Gorbachev was caught napping at his dacha high up on the cliffs, from where his view of the horizon obviously was not quite clear enough.

In its 1960s heyday, the Kissely dacha at Foros was a luxury sanatorium complex designed to accommodate only the most privileged group bookings. Warm seas, fresh meat and fruit, fine wines, perhaps a certain freedom from everyday restraints: all of these pleasures were available, and more. It was not expected that officials would record too closely how the guests at Foros enjoyed themselves.

The first cosmonauts and their associates also came to Foros for their holidays, with their wives and families in tow.

Call her ‘Anna’; perhaps there were two Annas. Anna Rumanseyeva, a young nurse, was on duty at the Kissely Sanatorium on September 14, 1961, when Gagarin and his cosmonaut comrades came to stay. She speaks with intimate knowledge of another nurse called Anna, also working at Foros when Gagarin came to stay. Maybe the two Annas are one and the same person? It is not important. Today Anna Rumanseyeva is a married woman, a respectable grandmother and professional medical practitioner.

‘There are some people in life, especially men, who are constantly looking for adventure,’ she says. ‘I would say, Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin was this kind of person. There was a small episode, a jump from a terrace – we can tell a short version of the story, yes? – I don’t think he wanted to hide anything from his wife, Valentina. No, he was simply showing off, being childish, just to say to her, “You were mistaken, thinking I was in there, doing something wrong.”’

The longer version of Anna’s story is more revealing.

There were twenty-eight people in the group. Yuri and Valentina arrived at the sanatorium with their second daughter Galya, nine months old and still in need of her mother’s constant attention. Gherman Titov was there; Alexei Leonov; the journalist Yaroslav Golovanov; a large crowd of cosmonauts; some technical people; even the dreaded Nikolai Kamanin, sharing a friendly drink with the boys, taking a rest from being (as Golovanov puts it) a ‘complete Stalinist bastard’.

Kamanin noticed that Yuri and Valya were not getting along. He was rude, distracted and paid her very little attention. She would sit sulking in the car while her husband strode off to see the sights or meet with local Crimean dignitaries for a drink. Sometimes he behaved so unpleasantly that Valya burst into tears. Kamanin and his wife Maria were shocked and surprised at Gagarin’s behaviour. A few days into the vacation, Kamanin took him aside. As he noted in his ever-vigilant diary, ‘I said to him, “This is the first time I’ve ever felt ashamed for you. You’ve offended Valya deeply.” Gagarin admitted he was at fault and promised to mend his ways.’ [1] Kamanin’s diary entries, September 14–October 3, 1961.

Titov’s behaviour at Foros was hardly any better. The discipline so much admired by Kamanin in the lead-up to the first Vostok flight seemed largely to have evaporated by now. Kamanin felt the need to warn both his prime cosmonauts that they were ‘slipping onto a dangerous path’.

Gagarin’s conduct did not improve, and he seemed desperate for distraction. In the second week he took some of his companions out to sea in a small motor boat. The Foros staff pleaded with him: it was against the rules, he did not know the local conditions, the wind was offshore, the weather could be difficult, he should not go. But he went anyway, taking the boat far from shore and driving it recklessly, making tight turns to splash his passengers with spray. The swell picked up, just as he had been warned. [2] Kamanin’s diary suggests that Gagarin went out in a motor boat and ‘experimented with sharp and dangerous turns’. Anna Rumanseyeva and others remember him going out in a rowing boat, which would explain why he could not easily get back to shore. The boat was carried over the horizon and out of sight of the shore, and a larger motorboat had to be sent out to make a rescue. When they hauled him back ashore, Gagarin went to the medical station for assistance. In the rough conditions he had turned the boat’s steering wheel so hard that his hands were bloodied and cracked. But the pain, and the unpleasantness of his foolish adventure, did not entirely divert his attention from the pretty blonde-haired nurse who attended to his blisters. ‘Yuri Alexeyevich was a very nice person, merry and cheerful,’ Anna admits. He asked whether she worked there? ‘Yes,’ she said.

The next day Titov, Kamanin and ten others of the group packed their kit bags for departure first thing the following morning. Of course, on their last day of freedom from care they celebrated hard. ‘Then, in the evening, they celebrated some more,’ Anna recalls drily. Kamanin described quiet games of cards and chess in his diary entry for that day, but this well-behaved tableau seems improbable, given the general pace of drinking and rowdiness established over the preceding fortnight.

The journalist Golovanov’s version of events on October 3 is that ‘Gagarin was a guest of the sailors in the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol. I was with him and Gherman Titov. Then we returned to Foros, and the next day we set off to the local Pioneers [the Russian equivalent of boy scouts] near Yalta. Then we visited the vineyards at Massandra. Basically we came back from there quite warmed up. Yuri decided to visit a lady friend. But we have to say something about his good character…’ Golovanov re-directs the thrust of his story for a moment. ‘You know, his wife Valentina was quite a complicated woman. She protected Yuri from every kind of temptation which came as a result of his position… Anyway, Valentina discovered that the First Cosmonaut had disappeared, and she decided to find out where he was, and he showed the true colours of goodness and of a gentleman. He showed genuine nobility and jumped out of a window on the second floor.’