Perhaps one of the greatest strides in the history of mankind will forever belong to the workers of the world and nobody else

  • Rod_Blagojevic [none/use name]
    ·
    4 years ago

    :yuri: The son of a peasant (so I've heard), went from the field to the cosmos. Absolutely amazing. I get emotional thinking about this. 20 years earlier his homeland was being destroyed in history's most horrific pogrom. They went from one of the lowest moments in human history to transcending the limits of earth in approximately 20 years. How can you not want to cry from the feelings that story inspires.

    • LoremIpsum [none/use name]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Just going to paste this from w*kipedia

      Yuri Gagarin was born 9 March 1934 in the village of Klushino,[1] near Gzhatsk (renamed Gagarin in 1968 after his death).[2] His parents worked on a collective farm[3]—Alexey Ivanovich Gagarin as a carpenter and Anna Timofeyevna Gagarina as a dairy farmer.[4][b] Yuri was the third of four children. His older brother Valentin was born in 1924 and by the time Yuri was born was already helping with the cattle on the farm. His sister Zoya, born in 1927, helped take care of "Yura" and their youngest brother Boris, born in 1936.[6][7]

      Situated along the path of several invasions into Russia, Gagarin's hometown has been the site of many wars and conquests from foreign nations.[8] Like millions of Soviet Union citizens, his family suffered during the Nazi occupation of the Soviet Union during World War II.[9] During the German advance on Moscow, Klushino was captured on 18 October 1941. On their first day in the village, the Germans burned down the school, ending Yuri's first year of education.[10] A German officer took over the Gagarin residence. On the land behind their house, the family was allowed to build a mud hut measuring approximately 3 by 3 metres (10 by 10 ft), where they spent 21 months until the end of the occupation.[9]

      During this period, Yuri became a saboteur, especially after one of the German soldiers, who the children called "the Devil", tried to hang his younger brother Boris on an apple tree using the boy's scarf. In retaliation, Yuri sabotaged the soldiers work; he poured soil into the tank batteries gathered to be recharged and randomly mixed the different chemical supplies intended for the task.[11] In early 1943, Gagarin's two older siblings were deported by the Germans to Poland for slave labour. They escaped and were found by Soviet soldiers who conscripted them into helping with the war effort. They did not return home until after the war in 1945.[12][13]

      The rest of the Gagarin family believed the older children were dead and Yuri became ill with "grief and hunger";[14] he was also beaten for refusing to work for the German forces and spent the remainder of the war at a hospital as a patient and later as an orderly. His mother was also at the same after a German soldier gashed her leg with a scythe. When the Germans were routed out of Klushino on 9 March 1944, Yuri helped the Red Army find mines buried in the roads by the fleeing German army.[14]

      :yuri: fighting nazis as a 8 year old