Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin (50th Anniversary Edition)

⁹ THE FOROS INCIDENT

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]

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] 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.’

Anna Rumanseyeva recalls, ‘To avoid watching them playing and joking at the party, “Anna” had to leave the building. She said she went into a room and sat on a sofa. Yuri Alexeyevich – I don’t know what was on his mind. He was drunk. Perhaps he wanted to talk? I don’t think he had any other thoughts. Anyway he went into the room. He closed the door but didn’t lock it with a key. Valentina Ivanovna went into the room immediately after him. The door opens… Perhaps he wanted to say that she was mistaken, or perhaps he wanted to hide? I don’t know.’

After the incident Nikolai Kamanin interrogated various members of the sanatorium staff, including Anna, and decided on his own version of events:

Perhaps there was an unpleasant discussion between Yuri and Valentina, or perhaps she burst into the room and found no sign of him, just a breathless and dishevelled Anna. Perhaps Valentina demanded to know where her husband was, so that Anna had to tell her he was hiding on the balcony. Anna’s accounts of the scene are many and varied – necessary interpretations rather than outright falsehoods – but of course both women leaned over the balcony’s edge to take a look, as they had to, and saw Gagarin sprawled on the ground, motionless. ‘At that time, there were wild grapes growing on the balconies,’ Anna Rumanseyeva explains. ‘They may have caught him as he jumped. He hit a kerbstone with his forehead. It was not a good landing. On his return from space he landed successfully. Here, unsuccessfully… I learned this from “Anna”. Her name was also Anna. She told me.’

Nikolai Kamanin’s first reference to the incident in his diary is brief and to the point:

Kamanin was among the first to reach Gagarin where he had fallen. He was not best pleased at the cosmonaut’s condition. There was so much blood that he imagined for a moment that Gagarin must have shot himself. Meanwhile Valya had run downstairs to see what had happened. She screamed at Kamanin, ‘Don’t just stand there! Help him! He’s dying!’

Immediately, doctors from a field station at Sevastopol were summoned. Meanwhile, the Foros medical personnel provided some basic first-aid; they checked for feeling in Gagarin’s limbs, then decided it was safe to put him on a folding cot, which someone brought to the scene from indoors. Then they took him inside, where the doctors applied local anaesthetic to his brow. Some of the bone in his forehead was chipped. When the Sevastopol surgeons arrived, they cleared out the fragments, effected temporary repairs and stitched the wound. Gagarin held someone’s hand throughout. He made no sound whatsoever, but his nails left livid marks, so tight was his grip.

The enormity of Gagarin’s blunder seemed to catch up with him. He looked up at the nurse Anna for a moment and she remembers him asking her just one question. ‘Will I fly again?’

She said, ‘We’ll see.’

Anna Rumanseyeva was grateful that Gagarin took the trouble even now, in his pain and discomfort, to protect ‘Anna’ from the authorities. ‘He asked for one of the sanatorium directors, and he said, “Of course you know it wasn’t her fault.” And it was so. She was moved to a different building, but she continued to work in the sanatorium.’

A special private medical facility was established in the main wing of the sanatorium. Anna and another nurse alternated their duty rota, keeping Gagarin under permanent observation, while Valentina spent many hours at his bedside. All things considered, she was remarkably friendly towards Anna. ‘She recalled how they lived before Yuri went into space. She explained how he studied hard, and she did regret that life sometimes.’

At the scene of Gagarin’s accident, the doctors feared that he might have sustained concussion injuries. Afterwards, Yuri insisted that he had never actually lost consciousness, but a strict regime of bedrest was ordered nevertheless. After three days of inertia, he was propped up on his pillows, complaining to Anna, ‘I’m fed up. I want to do something. Anna, please close the door. I want to do some hand-stands.’

‘Yuri Alexeyevich! If the doctors find out, I’ll lose my job!’

‘Don’t worry. I’m feeling healthy. I just want to do something.’ He stood on his hands, larking about and feeling fine, but bored to hell. Anna persuaded him to get back into bed. He said, ‘People will talk about this for the next hundred years. One day, when you’re a grandmother, you can tell your grandchildren how you once took care of Yuri Gagarin.’

But he knew he had done a foolish thing in jumping from the window. Perhaps this adventure was unlucky for him. Behind the jokey smile and his irrepressible self-confidence, Gagarin brooded about his future.

Nikolai Kamanin was also concerned. He was responsible for maintaining discipline among the cosmonauts. In his diary he noted:

Three days later a Chaika limousine arrived to take Gagarin to the Party Congress. He was carried on a stretcher, although he was up and about by now, and found the whole process absurd, laughing out loud. They took him to Sevastopol and put him on an aircraft to Moscow. On arrival he was not permitted to speak for too long at the Congress, or to mingle afterwards with the other delegates. The official records tell of his fully active participation, despite Kamanin’s conviction in his diary entry that Gagarin was in no fit state to attend and did not take part. Golovanov explains, ‘Actually he did turn up, but only on the fifth or sixth day after the opening of the session, and the photographer kept taking pictures of his profile so that the wound on his brow wouldn’t be seen.’ Meanwhile the newspapers put out a story to deter the curious. ‘I remember they said Yuri was holding his baby daughter when he tripped, and so that the baby didn’t get hurt, he sacrificed himself and hurt his brow. That’s how they explained the wound.’ In another version for Izvestia, Gagarin dived into the Black Sea to save his baby girl from drowning and banged his head on some rocks.

The doctors who had treated Gagarin were awarded commendations and promotions. Nikita Khrushchev was annoyed that his favourite cosmonaut could not give a proper performance at the Party Congress, but more than that, he was concerned for his young friend’s safety. The moral aspects of the drama at Foros did not seem to concern him particularly. Khrushchev’s advisor, Fyodor Burlatsky, says, ‘In spite of the Party morality, which was supposed to be very strong, everybody thought it was a funny story. Khrushchev laughed. Maybe his wife didn’t… But I think there were some Generals, high-level military people, who didn’t have such easy relations with Gagarin. I think they were jealous because he was so close to Khrushchev.’ These resentful rivals did not find the story quite so amusing, Burlatsky suggests. They noted Gagarin’s behaviour with distaste, and remembered it.

Of course Nikolai Kamanin was severely criticized for his failure of supervision at Foros. At a special meeting in Star City on November 14 he had to explain Titov’s and Gagarin’s behaviour in the best possible light:

Kamanin persuaded the meeting to judge that his adulterous First Cosmonaut had merely been teasing his wife in a childish hide-and-seek game, while his drunken understudy Titov had been led astray by non-cosmonaut companions. Everyone knew that these were white lies, but tidy official versions were agreed, with the help of hand-written notes of apology from the cosmonauts themselves. Kamanin noted, ‘I’m sure Gagarin had a different motive for visiting that room, but I won’t press the matter, in case it causes discord in his family.’

Kamanin was lenient, but during the December resumption of Gagarin’s world tour, he found to his great frustration that the First Cosmonaut’s behaviour still was not improving. On December 14 he wrote in his diary:

He also observed that ‘Titov, recently returned from his tour of Indonesia, is starting to think no small beer of himself.’ Evidently Kamanin felt that he had another wayward cosmonaut on his hands. But one has to keep in mind that his personal diaries are private expressions of annoyance, as much as accurate historical records. There is scarcely a single person within the Soviet space effort (not even the great Chief Designer) whom he does not criticize at some point – often unfairly – and just as often prior to a complete reversal of opinion a few days later. Even Khrushchev comes in for flak. Perhaps Kamanin’s administrative tensions after the Foros incident can explain an extraordinary outburst of contempt in his diary about the Party Congress – the one at which Gagarin’s muted appearance had caused so much embarrassment. At the Congress Nikita Khrushchev had proposed that Joseph Stalin’s body be removed from the Mausoleum in Red Square. On November 5, 1961 Kamanin raged:

The irony is that no one in Stalin’s time would have dared put such words on paper, for fear of being found out and shot. It can be assumed that Khrushchev’s officials blamed Kamanin for not keeping his cosmonauts in order, so he vented his feelings in the pages of his diary; but he was not alone in his political opinions. It is hard for Westerners to understand the extent to which Stalin’s memory was revered. Kamanin may have had a variety of reasons for his bitterness in October 1961, but he was broadly correct in his assessment. First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev was heading for a fall, and so was Yuri Gagarin.

By December 1961 the world tour had resumed, with Gagarin’s slight scar carefully disguised by make-up. Delhi, Lucknow, Bombay, Calcutta, Colombo, Kabul, Cairo… Onwards, ever onwards. During the Ceylon visit, Gagarin carried out fifteen separate speaking engagements in one day. In Cairo a newspaper announced that he was nominated for election to the Supreme Soviet as a representative of the Smolensk region.[4]

Athens, Nicosia, Tokyo – and a loaded question about toys. A Japanese journalist wanted to know why Gagarin had bought a load of Japanese stuffed toys for his children. Could it be that Russian toys were not available back home? Gagarin replied, ‘I always bring presents back for my daughters. I wanted to surprise them this time with Japanese dolls, but now this story will be all over the newspapers and it’ll take away their surprise. You’ve spoilt a joy for two small girls.’ He made this speech with the most charming smile and the questioner conceded defeat. The other journalists in the room buzzed their approval. Game point to Gagarin.

Valya came along on this leg of the tour, but it was not easy to combine foreign trips with childcare. She preferred to stay at home in Moscow while her husband travelled. She was shy, and found her occasional public appearances very difficult. This was not the life she had expected.

Fyodor Dyemchuk drove Valya around while Gagarin was abroad. He could hardly fail to notice her intense dislike of publicity. If her occasional foreign trips were a strain, then the streets and shops of Moscow were no less of a burden to her. Dyemchuk escorted her during household shopping trips, and Valya would always take her place in the inevitable queues like an ordinary Muscovite, but the other women in the line usually recognized her straight away. ‘She would immediately turn around, get back in the car and say, “Let’s go. They recognized me.” Everyone would tell her to come to the front of the queue, but she would modestly come back to the car and go to a different shop.’

Nikolai Kamanin accompanied Gagarin on several more foreign trips. On December 4, 1961, during the visit to India, he wrote in his diary:

By December 9, Gagarin, Valya and the accompanying entourage were in Colombo, Ceylon. Gagarin told Kamanin that he was ‘close to wearing out’. The Soviet ambassador in Colombo insisted on his making as many appearances as possible. Kamanin could not help but note:

By now Kamanin was growing concerned about Gagarin’s alcohol abuse and Valya’s increasing inability to deal with the stress of public appearances. Kamanin, Golovanov and other close colleagues have a similar view about this. It seems that Gagarin was a sensible drinker, a fun-loving man who could get drunk with the best of them but seldom drank too much when working. Unfortunately the publicity tours placed him in social situations where he was expected to drink each and every time, so as not to snub the endless toasts made in his honour. This, coupled with the emotional strain of his remorseless public schedule, inadvertently led him towards excessive drinking. Gagarin’s personal KGB escorts and speech advisors, Venyamin Russayev and Alexei Belikov, were criticized for allowing this state of affairs to occur, although there was little they could do to prevent it.

Gagarin developed a very good relationship with Russayev, and each man worked behind the scenes to protect the other. Today Russayev says, ‘Yuri was a very pure-hearted man, often taking responsibility for problems caused by others. As for Gherman Titov, problems seemed to slide past him like water off a duck’s back. After his flight he had 20 or more serious disciplinary incidents, car crashes or whatever. People always wanted to connect these problems to Yuri, and at that point I would intervene.’

Russayev (and his colleague Belikov, an excellent linguist) sat close to Gagarin while he made presentations or spoke to journalists. ‘I wasn’t like the bodyguards; I was more an advisor and assistant. You have to imagine all the difficulties Yuri came across in his public life, and on the foreign trips. It was my job to look after him.’ Not that Gagarin was socially inept – far from it. ‘He had an excellent memory for the names of all the politicians and officials he met, quite unlike Kamanin, who came on many of the trips and was hopeless at that kind of thing… Often Yuri could play it by ear, and didn’t need guidance. I was amazed at how he could cope with so many difficult questions.’

Russayev tells a touching story. ‘Nikita Sergeyevich Khrush­ chev could get pretty tipsy on just a couple of glasses of booze, and Yura always protected him from going over the top.’ Although Gagarin quite obviously adored Khrushchev, he kept as far apart from other politicians as he could safely manage without giving offence. Sergei Belotserkovsky came to know Gagarin very well, tutoring him in aerospace studies from 1964 onwards, when Gagarin was trying to get back to serious work. ‘I think his personality began to split. On one side he was the welcome guest of kings, presidents and even the Queen of England, but on the other side he never lost his ties with the ordinary people. I think he began to sense the lower classes’ lack of rights, their hardship, and he saw the corruption of the top layers of society. He saw our drunken leaders dancing on the table and behaving badly, and that can’t have left his honest soul unwounded. I’m talking not just about the external symptoms, but also the internal corruption which was dominant among our top leadership clan.’

Quite unfairly, there was a certain degree of resentment directed at Gagarin because of all the privileges he was assumed to have accumulated under Khrushchev. True, he and the other cosmonauts were given better-than-average living accommodation, but their level of comfort was not significantly better than that of most middle-ranking officers. Titov says, ‘Honestly, we never received special benefits. People were always saying to me, “Show us, point to the place where you’d like your luxury dacha to be, and Khrushchev will build it for you straight away.” I didn’t bother, and neither did Yuri. We were just young men. What were they talking about? What did we want with dachas?’

Russayev confirms this. ‘Yuri was a completely honest guy. He was the first cosmonaut in space, he did so much for his country, and you should see the place that Valya lives in today. Instead of a decent dacha, it’s a hen-house. Yuri worked hard for the good of his native land, not for his own wealth.’[5]

Inevitably there were darker jealousies working against Gagarin’s peace of mind, and not just about the material fringe benefits that he was assumed to be enjoying. Sergei Belotserkovsky observes, ‘Even Korolev couldn’t have anticipated the avalanche of problems that would hit Gagarin when he had to represent his country abroad. He made many enemies because he behaved with more charm, and could talk more wisely and honestly, than the official Soviet heads of foreign delegations. Superiors never forgive you for something like that.’

Russayev worked hard to protect Gagarin from such dangers. ‘He always said that politics seemed hard and intricate. I told him, “Politics is a dirty business. You should stay out of it. You’ve got your country, your family. Enjoy what you’ve got, and don’t get involved in the politics.”’

Russayev remained with Gagarin until 1964, when Khrushchev’s administration was toppled by Leonid Brezhnev. After that, the KGB’s relationship with all the cosmonauts would become very different. In March 1967 Gagarin would turn to Russayev one last time for some much-needed political guidance. By then it would be too late in the day for both of them.