Yuri Gagarin, Soviet star: First in space, first in the hearts of his countrymen

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MOSCOW - Strapped inside a cannonball-shaped capsule atop a modified nuclear missile, Yuri Gagarin exuberantly cried "Poyekhali!" - "Off we go!" The ground shook with the rocket's thunder, and the world shook when it heard of his feat.

In 108 minutes on April 12, 1961, 27-year-old Gagarin made humanity's first trip to space. His one orbit of Earth was an achievement that Russians recall happily 40 years later - when the country's space program is in doubt following the dumping of the Mir space station.

Gagarin became an icon of pride for Soviets. But the blue eyes and easy smile that warmed hearts at home seemed to mock the United States, already humiliated by a series of Soviet space firsts. As Gagarin circled the globe, the American space program was dithering over whether it was safe to send a man on a mere 15-minute suborbital lob.

'We were first in space!'

Americans' sheepishness was aggravated by the unexpectedness of Gagarin's flight. He and the other five in the first Soviet cosmonaut team had trained in secret, unlike the American squad who were lavishly feted and adoringly profiled in magazine articles even before they blasted off.

The contrast brings a delighted smile to Pavel Popovich, another of the original cosmonaut corps, 40 years later.

"The United States was a rich country, a developed one - but we were the first in space!" he exulted.

Gagarin's mission underscored the brute will that the Soviet Union could apply in competing with its privileged rival. Compared with the aerodynamic Mercury space capsule that the United States was developing, the outside of Gagarin's craft bristled with conduits and switches, looking like the crude product of a basement workshop. Its electrical equipment used vacuum tubes.

And its name had an ominous ring: Vostok I - The East, the monolith of severe terrain and strange ways that haunted the thoughts of America, whose astronauts rode capsules bearing more optimistic names such as Friendship and Liberty.

'Yuri was lovable'

Gagarin himself was potent propaganda. As a carpenter's son raised on a collective farm, he had the perfect background for a system that lauded common workers. He also had an inborn charm and natural smile that confounded Western stereotypes of dour, crude Soviets.

"Out of the six of us, Gagarin rose up most of all. He was so very communicative, affable, very curious and merry ... his famous smile," Popovich said.

Gagarin's humble roots helped him narrowly edge out Gherman Titov, whose intellectual family and penchant for spouting poetry seemed to make him too bourgeois for a Soviet hero.

"Yuri was lovable, but no one could love me," Titov said in an interview shortly before his death last year.

Those qualities were put to the test after Gagarin's return to Earth, ejecting from the capsule and parachuting to a field near Saratov in southern Russia.

He quickly was inundated with adulation. A six-hour parade before a cheering and happily weeping throng in Red Square was just the beginning. He became a member of the Supreme Soviet legislature and a prestigious central committee member of the Young Communists' League, Komsomol.

"He was 27, a young age, and the pressure was heavy, very heavy. But it didn't turn his head," Popovich said. "He remained a fine, attentive friend."

America plays catch-up

Twenty-three days after Gagarin's flight, Alan Shepard became the first American in space, but his flight was suborbital. And the Soviet program racked up further firsts:

But Popovich suggests Gagarin's mission signaled a change in the competitive atmosphere because he was the first to understand the planet's wholeness.

From space, Gagarin said, "Borders are not visible, or religions or nationality. This is a great advantage to mankind."

A hero dies - or does he?

Gagarin had only seven years in the limelight.

On March 27, 1968, while test-flying a MiG-15 fighter plane near Moscow, he told ground control that he was on a compass heading of 220 degrees. It was the last time his voice was heard. About 45 seconds later, the plane smashed into the ground.

That month, he had celebrated his 34th birthday. He left a wife and two daughters.

"For many years, for very many years, I could not believe he was dead," Popovich said.

He was not alone. Rumors persist that Gagarin is not dead, but was spirited off somewhere for unclear but devious reasons. Others maintain that he was killed on Kremlin orders because he had begun to doubt communism, and even that he was kidnapped by space aliens.

The wild theories reflect not only shock at the untimely death, but also suspicion over the government's failure to explain the cause of the crash.

One theorist, former air force Gen. Yuri Kulikov, suggested Gagarin died like the protagonist of a Greek tragedy, brought down by his own hubris. Gagarin was unprepared to fly the sophisticated MiG-15, he said: "On the day of the tragedy, the level of Yuri's preparedness could be compared only with a final-year air student."

A need for heroes

The 40th anniversary of Gagarin's flight comes at a key time, just as the original event did.

In a country battered by a decade of upheaval since the Soviet collapse, undisputed heroes are in short supply, as is the pride that Gagarin inspired.

So officials have set about trying to recreate some of that mood by remembering Gagarin with ceremonies and exhibits and feting those few who remain of the original cosmonaut corps.

The situation in Russia now is not unlike it was 40 years ago, when the scars of World War II and of dictator Joseph Stalin's purges had yet to heal.

Handsome, quick-witted and just sufficiently self-deprecating, Gagarin was the perfect figure to bring the nation together and turn people toward the future they were meant to be building.

On trips abroad where musicians, politicians and movie stars jostled one other just to shake his hand, he smashed the Western stereotype of the crude, backward Soviets.

In a moment captured in one famous photograph, actress Gina Lollobrigida planted a kiss on Gagarin's cheek, fulfilling a personal ambition.

He was not quite the perfect hero.

Soviet officials frequently complained about drinking binges, and tales of adultery had to be hushed up, including an incident where he was caught by his wife with another woman and injured himself leaping from a hotel balcony.

But those problems have done little to tarnish Gagarin's image.

"There's never been another hero like him and there never will be," insisted Dasha, a 13-year-old girl, during a visit to a Moscow museum where relics of Gagarin's flight are kept.

"We don't really have any kind of heroes today, but Yuri Gagarin was one that we can always remember."

Information from Reuters was used in this report.