This year the whole world is marking the
A long time ago, I found one very beautiful speech by Yuri Gagarin on Red Square in Moscow. Please have a listen:
A transcript for unhurried, thoughtful reading and reflection:
Our people, through their genius and their heroic labor, created the Vostok spacecraft, wonderful in the world, and its very intelligent, very reliable equipment. From launch right up to landing, I had no doubt whatsoever about the successful outcome of the spaceflight. I would like to sincerely thank our scientists, engineers, technicians, and all the Soviet workers who created such a spacecraft, on which one can confidently grasp the mysteries of outer space.
Allow me also to thank all the comrades and the entire team that prepared me for the spaceflight. I am convinced that all my friends, the pilot-cosmonauts, are likewise ready at any time to make a flight around our planet. It can be said with confidence that we will fly on our Soviet spacecraft along more distant routes as well. I am immeasurably glad that my beloved Fatherland was the first in the world to make this flight, the first in the world to enter Space. The first airplane, the first satellite, the first spacecraft, and the first spaceflight—these are the stages of my Motherland’s great path toward mastering the mysteries of nature.
By decree of the President of the Russian Federation, the year of the
Glory to Gagarin! Glory to the scientists, engineers, technicians, and all the workers! Everyone had and will have a place in the common feat.
Article about Yuri Gagarin on Wikipedia Speeches by Yuri Gagarin on Wikiquote