Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin

Autograph manuscript signed in Russian, 1 page (148 × 107 mm), [Moscow], 4 April 1963; photograph portrait (248 × 170 mm), inscribed and signed, Sergeev's studio stamp on verso.

Autograph manuscript signed in Russian, 1 page (148 × 107 mm), [Moscow], 4 April 1963; photograph portrait (248 × 170 mm), inscribed and signed, Sergeev's studio stamp on verso.
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Two years after Vostok 1, Gagarin looks forward to man's landing on the moon.

Gagarin's text was written to commemorate the launch of the unmanned Soviet moon probe Luna 4 two days earlier: "The Soviet Union has made yet another giant step toward mastering space.  The Luna 4 unmanned station has been sent to the Moon, which will enrich our knowledge of this nearest neighbor of our planet.  We hope that, before long, man's foot will step on the Moon's surface."  Unlike her predecessors, Luna 4 had a successful launch, but her flight path missed the moon by 5,300 miles.  Gagarin's encomium was intended to be published in Pravda, but was evidently suppressed when the mission failed.  A.N. Sergeev, a photographer for the newspaper who had met Gagarin two years before, obtained the discarded manuscript.

Following the successful lunar landing of Apollo 11 in July 1969, the Soviets not only jettisoned their own plans to land on the moon — they denied that a lunar landing had ever been one of the objectives of their space program.  In 1981, James Oberg labeled the question of whether or not the Soviet Union wanted or tried to send men to the moon "the knottiest problem in a quarter century of space history" (Red Star in Orbit 112).  Oberg's own conclusion was clear from the title of his seventh chapter — "The Moon-Race Cover-up" — and while his viewpoint is now an accepted fact (see lot 49, lunar spacesuit), this previously unpublished statement by the first man in space provides additional evidence that the Soviet space program had lunar designs from the very beginning.

The accompanying photograph of Gagarin was taken by Sergeev on 15 May 1961 at the official press conference held at Moscow's House of Scholars following the flight of Vostok 1.  Later that month, Sergeev was assigned to photograph the departure ceremony before Gagarin's trip to Czechoslovakia.  At the Sheremetyevo ceremony, Sergeev gave the cosmonaut several prints of the portrait he had made, and Gagarin signed the present copy, inscribing it "To the author of this photograph," and returned it to Sergeev. 

The lot is accompanied by separate autograph statements signed by the photographer, 19 March 1993, explaining the geneses of the Gagarin manuscript and the photograph portrait.