I don't know how many of them remain, but when I was a correspondent in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, there wasn't a single city, town or even village across the entire 11 time zones that didn't have a Gagarin Street. Many also had Gagarin Squares, quite a few had Gagarin Institutes or Gagarin Schools, and many had Gagarin statues. Moscow's was a particular atrocity: a stainless steel Flash Gordon atop a soaring column in the center of a smoggy traffic circle.
No Soviet figure, except the deified Lenin, was more exalted in the Soviet firmament than Yury Gagarin, the first man in space. A major part of his allure for the creators of official myths, of course, was that he was not a political figure, and so not subject to retroactive debunking, like every Soviet ruler after Lenin.
I mulled all this as I followed the brief odyssey of Lieutenant Colonel Yang Liwei, the first man sent into space by China. I suspect the Chinese leaders will try to make him into a Chinese Gagarin, creating a glowing biography of a loyal son of the state and the party, issuing photos of him with a modest smile, giving him wholesome things to say about the greatness of Chinese achievements. So far, to be honest, his major pronouncement, "I feel good," doesn't quite have the terse eloquence of Gagarin's "Poyekhali," or "Let's go."
That's not the only difference, of course. However tacky and concocted the Soviet propaganda about his feat, Gagarin was a genuine pioneer and a genuine hero, who became, at only 27, the first human being to orbit Earth, and that at a time, 42 years ago, when it was not at all certain that he would survive. Spaceflight was still the stuff of Jules Verne and Buck Rogers, and now a real man had gone up, in a real space helmet.
I remember clearly how astounding it seemed and how that flight stunned America. It was the peak of the Cold War, when every "first" symbolized ideological and technological supremacy. Three and a half years earlier, the Kremlin had sent up the first satellite, and now the first man. "Let the capitalist countries try to catch up," Nikita Khrushchev said, gloating in the Kremlin.
China's Divine Vessel 5 is no doubt an impressive capsule, and further evidence of China's steady ascent up the ladder of economic and technological prowess. There will be military implications to ponder but, to be frank, it is hard to get too excited. Several hundred people have already been there and done that, and China is simply not the threat the Soviet Union was, ideologically or militarily.
Still, I can't help suspecting that the Communist rulers in Beijing launched Yang into space for many of the same reasons that the Kremlin sent Gagarin up. Authoritarian regimes are forever in search of spectacular displays to assert their greatness and legitimacy, and to divert people from whatever subversive complaints and frustrations they may harbor. The vast squares, grandiose monuments, huge demonstrations and endless self-praise are as much a fixture of these regimes as secrecy and intolerance. China's rulers probably expect some tangible economic and military benefits from manned flight, but I would bet that their primary hope is to lift their standing at home and with the world.
Apart from the deja vu of it all, they might ponder what good it did the Soviet state or Gagarin. He was killed in a jet fighter accident just seven years after his spaceflight, and, in the peculiar fate Russians reserved for official heroes of Soviet propaganda, his legend was systematically taken apart piece by piece in the streets. According to "firm" reports, he crashed because he was drunk, or because he was trying to shoot deer from his MiG, or because he had smuggled a woman into his cockpit. However personable or heroic he may really have been, entry into the Soviet propaganda pantheon spelled death in the streets.
I don't wish this on Yang, a 38-year-old air force pilot. I will always be in awe, and jealous, of anyone who can say what Gagarin said: "I can observe Earth. ... One can see everything." It has to change your life, no matter how often it is done. That's something Yang will want to hold onto, so perhaps he should ask President Hu Jintao and the others to build their statues to themselves.
Serge Schmemann is a senior writer at The New York Times, where this comment first appeared.
No Soviet figure, except the deified Lenin, was more exalted in the Soviet firmament than Yury Gagarin, the first man in space. A major part of his allure for the creators of official myths, of course, was that he was not a political figure, and so not subject to retroactive debunking, like every Soviet ruler after Lenin.
I mulled all this as I followed the brief odyssey of Lieutenant Colonel Yang Liwei, the first man sent into space by China. I suspect the Chinese leaders will try to make him into a Chinese Gagarin, creating a glowing biography of a loyal son of the state and the party, issuing photos of him with a modest smile, giving him wholesome things to say about the greatness of Chinese achievements. So far, to be honest, his major pronouncement, "I feel good," doesn't quite have the terse eloquence of Gagarin's "Poyekhali," or "Let's go."
That's not the only difference, of course. However tacky and concocted the Soviet propaganda about his feat, Gagarin was a genuine pioneer and a genuine hero, who became, at only 27, the first human being to orbit Earth, and that at a time, 42 years ago, when it was not at all certain that he would survive. Spaceflight was still the stuff of Jules Verne and Buck Rogers, and now a real man had gone up, in a real space helmet.
I remember clearly how astounding it seemed and how that flight stunned America. It was the peak of the Cold War, when every "first" symbolized ideological and technological supremacy. Three and a half years earlier, the Kremlin had sent up the first satellite, and now the first man. "Let the capitalist countries try to catch up," Nikita Khrushchev said, gloating in the Kremlin.
China's Divine Vessel 5 is no doubt an impressive capsule, and further evidence of China's steady ascent up the ladder of economic and technological prowess. There will be military implications to ponder but, to be frank, it is hard to get too excited. Several hundred people have already been there and done that, and China is simply not the threat the Soviet Union was, ideologically or militarily.
Still, I can't help suspecting that the Communist rulers in Beijing launched Yang into space for many of the same reasons that the Kremlin sent Gagarin up. Authoritarian regimes are forever in search of spectacular displays to assert their greatness and legitimacy, and to divert people from whatever subversive complaints and frustrations they may harbor. The vast squares, grandiose monuments, huge demonstrations and endless self-praise are as much a fixture of these regimes as secrecy and intolerance. China's rulers probably expect some tangible economic and military benefits from manned flight, but I would bet that their primary hope is to lift their standing at home and with the world.
Apart from the deja vu of it all, they might ponder what good it did the Soviet state or Gagarin. He was killed in a jet fighter accident just seven years after his spaceflight, and, in the peculiar fate Russians reserved for official heroes of Soviet propaganda, his legend was systematically taken apart piece by piece in the streets. According to "firm" reports, he crashed because he was drunk, or because he was trying to shoot deer from his MiG, or because he had smuggled a woman into his cockpit. However personable or heroic he may really have been, entry into the Soviet propaganda pantheon spelled death in the streets.
I don't wish this on Yang, a 38-year-old air force pilot. I will always be in awe, and jealous, of anyone who can say what Gagarin said: "I can observe Earth. ... One can see everything." It has to change your life, no matter how often it is done. That's something Yang will want to hold onto, so perhaps he should ask President Hu Jintao and the others to build their statues to themselves.
Serge Schmemann is a senior writer at The New York Times, where this comment first appeared.
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