The personal file of the first cosmonaut presented at the Presidential Library

Declassified and digitized materials from the personal file of Yuri Gagarin were presented at the annual conference "Cosmonautics Day in the Presidential Library". The event took place on April 12.

The personal file of the first cosmonaut of the planet was transferred to the Presidential Library for digitization by the Roscosmos State Corporation as part of a cooperation agreement signed in March 2023. The materials are now available in the Presidential Library.

Gagarin's personal file includes a questionnaire, a detailed table on the passage of active military service in the Soviet army, a list of positions in the cosmonaut corps, from a student to a pilot-engineer-cosmonaut, information about marital status, characteristics from the place of study and other documents.

Many facts of Gagarin's biography are widely known, but the personal file contains some interesting details. For example, that he had the second sports category and the first judicial category in basketball. No less interesting is the autobiography written by Gagarin himself.

The conference participants not only learned about the new information about the man who first conquered space. The event program included speeches on the history and prospects of Russian cosmonautics. Thus, veterans of the space industry talked about the beginning of the space age. Crew members who worked on the ISS shared their experience. The history of manned space stations, the Baikonur Cosmodrome, the preparation and launch of the Vostok spacecraft, the Buran reusable transport spacecraft, the latest space developments, space-themed postage stamps and even space perfume were the topics of separate speeches.  

The event was attended by cosmonauts, representatives of the Roscosmos State Corporation, Energia Society, the North-West Interregional Public Organization of the Cosmonautics Federation of the Russian Federation, the V. P. Glushko Museum of Cosmonautics and Rocketry, the Kosmicheskaya Samara Museum and Exhibition Complex, teachers, students and cadets of higher educational institutions of St. Petersburg. Participants from other cities of Russia connected to them via the video conferencing mode.

The conference is available on the institution’s Rutube-channel.

The Presidential Library’s portal features the electronic collection Outer Space. It includes fragments of newsreel, research, periodicals, documentaries, video lectures, postcards, commemorative medals and badges that spotlight various milestones in the development of astronautics.