April 12 is my red calendar day

"The main strength in a person is the strength of spirit... "

Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin

Every year April 12th is a special day for me. No, I am not an astronaut and never have been. And my family has nothing to do with space. But for some reason, on this day, April 12, I somehow feel the closeness of the stars in a special way. It's hard to explain, much less understand, but April 12 is an important day for me. This is a red day on the calendar. Day of the greatness and power of my Motherland - the USSR. The country that gave us the name of the First Cosmonaut - Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin. A country in which everyone felt important and needed by the fatherland. When everything was ours. And every success of my Motherland was a little bit of my success. Because everyone had one homeland.

Surprisingly, I am proud of the successes of the USSR, but I am not at all touched by the successes of Russia. Perhaps the fact is that Russia is no longer number one. And Russia is not at all interested in being first. Nowhere. And I so want to be the first, the first together with the Motherland. And when there is a gap in the consciousness that you and the Motherland are two different things, when you realize that your Motherland no longer exists, but there is a country in which you live, it is very painful. And it’s bitter when a country that considers itself the legal successor of the USSR forgets its heroes. Forgets who was first. We built the ISS, which is controlled from Houston and speaks English, but sank the Mir, which speaks Russian and is controlled from Baikonur. We launch satellites into deep-sea orbit with enviable consistency, without investing at all in the development of domestic science.

Even the 50th anniversary of the first space flight, which the whole world celebrated on April 12, 2011, was not interesting to our Motherland. Yes, friends, the main celebrations took place in the Canary Islands, in Tenerife. It was important to them that back in 1961, man first went into space. And this man was a Russian cosmonaut. For some reason, this is not important to our country, although many people beat themselves on the chest and call themselves patriots. Neither the Kremlin nor big capital were interested in this. No one. However, it was to Tenerife that all the astronauts and cosmonauts, scientists, leading scientists and space popularizers flew to Tenerife. It was for this holiday that directors from Hollywood staged it completely free of charge, and the musicians of our “potential enemy” performed in front of Leonov. For some reason this was important to everyone except Russians from Russia. This was important to Garik Israelyan, an Armenian who has lived in Europe for a long time, the head of the laboratory of the chemical evolution of the Universe from the European Northern Observatory, the ideological inspirer and organizer of the international Starmus festival in the Canary Islands - a unique scientific, artistic and musical celebration, the likes of which have never been seen in the world before. dedicated to Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin.

And who after this has the right to call himself a Russian person? A Russian living in Russia? Or an Armenian who hasn’t forgotten “Let’s go!”? Or perhaps David Gilmour and Brian May, famous American musicians who said “let’s do it” and made this festival? And together with the Armenians, British, French, and Japanese they made a holiday dedicated to cosmonaut No. 1, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin? For them it is a matter of honor. And for us?