Russian Cosmos

  1. Lemma
  2. Русский космос
  3. Russian
  4. Asliturk, Miriam
  5. Orthodox view on technology and engineering - Modes of interaction > Conflict
  6. 20-05-2018
  7. Крупин, Владимир [Author]. Русский космос
  8. Русская народная линия информационно-аналитическая служба. Православие Самодержавие Народность.
  9. Yuri Gagarin - Outer Space - persecution - anticlerical propaganda - Cosmonaut - intelligentsia
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    1. <p>Крупин, Владимир (2011). Русский космос. <em>Русская народная линия информационно-аналитическая служба. Православие Самодержавие Народность</em>. Retrieved from: <a href="http://ruskline.ru/analitika/2011/04/12/russkij_kosmos/">http://ruskline.ru/analitika/2011/04/12/russkij_kosmos/</a> </p>

    1. The author points out that no other celebration (except for that of May 9, 1945) can be compared to the spontaneous celebration of Gagarin’s flight on April 12, 1961. At the same time not many people are aware of the fact that it was Gagarin and his famous ‘I went to space, but did not see God’ that was the reason for severe persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union.

      While stressing that Gagarin’s answer was absolutely logical as even in the Scriptures it is written that one cannot see God (as God is within us), the author points out that such response “raised a satanic howl of the servants of the devil.” The author believes that the first flight to space boosted Khrushchev’s self-confidence and triggered the anti-religious campaign. He stresses that it was only the intelligentsia who benefitted during the so-called "Khrushchev thaw." The Church on the contrary lived through its worst times throughout the 1960s: churches were closed, destroyed or burned, some priests imprisoned. Gagarin was, however, unaware of his role in the persecution of the Church. According to the author, he was a true but simple believer, loyal and full of humility. His heroic deed is thus imperishable and constitutes a critical part of the Russian history.