Space is not the limit

Sergey Beletsky, Dr. history Sciences, leading researcher at the Institute of the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences, professor at the Department of Museum Studies at the St. Petersburg University of Culture and Arts (SPbGUKI), told TrV-No on the memorable day of April 12, 1961.

I remember Gagarin’s flight very well. I was in 1st grade then. I remember how, right during the lesson, the head teacher came into the class and said that Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin, a Soviet pilot, became the first person to fly into space, became the first cosmonaut. We were released from classes. I ran home (we lived then next to the Hermitage, on Palace Embankment). The newspapers that day were delivered late, but they already had a photograph of Gagarin on the first page. My father [1] came - he and my mother worked in the Hermitage, and getting to the house was a matter of five minutes - crossing the courtyard of the Hermitage Theater.

My father and I cut out a photograph of Gagarin from a newspaper, pasted it onto a sheet of drawing paper, and my father drew around it in watercolor the contours of a red pennant with a yellow fringe. I ran to school with this sheet and hung this homemade poster in the lobby. They say that later the district committee expressed gratitude to the school for the prompt appearance of visual propaganda (but I don’t know this for sure).

Then several classmates and I ran to Palace Square. There were a lot of people there. In fact, spontaneous festivities began. I remember that two or three people carried the fourth around the Alexandria pillar, and he, this fourth, wrote on the pillar with chalk. It seems that the phrase was: “Space is not the limit - I wanted to and flew” (however, I’m not sure).

And on the way to the square, we already saw chalk inscriptions on the walls of houses on Millionnaya Street (then Khalturina Street): “Hurray!” and “Glory to Gagarin!” By the way, I remember well that the hairstyle was very fashionable back then - two ponytails of hair above the ears, tied with ribbons. For some reason this hairstyle was called “Love me, Gagarin.”

And I also remember the story that was told about Alexandra Aleksandrovna Yablochkina. Yablochkina was invited to a banquet in the Hall of Columns on the occasion of the space flight of Gagarin and Titov. Both cosmonauts were brought to Yablochkina and introduced: “Alexandra Alexandrovna, meet us, these are our first cosmonauts - Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin and German Stepanovich Titov.” Both of them were young, handsome guys at that time. Gagarin and Titov kissed Yablochkina’s hand, she patted them both on the cheek and kissed them on the temple. After a while, drinking began, as usually happened at receptions of this kind. And at some point, when the noise died down a little, everyone heard Yablochkina’s well-placed voice: “But they never told me in which regiment these young lieutenants serve!”

Prepared by N. Demina

1. Father S.V. Beletsky - Vasily Dmitrievich Beletsky (1919-1997), an outstanding Russian archaeologist, participant in the Second World War. V.D. Beletsky was a leading researcher in the Department of the History of Russian Culture of the Hermitage. Thanks to the many years of work of the team of the Pskov expedition of the Hermitage, first headed by G.P. Grozdilov, and then V.D. Beletsky, an open-air architectural and archaeological reserve “Dovmontov City” appeared in the center of Pskov. Vasily Dmitrievich was the author of numerous works, including the books “Ancient Pskov”, “Dovmontov City”, etc. He trained generations of archaeologists, architects and restorers. (Information from the website of the scientific library of Pskov www.pskovlib.ru was used and clarified .)