CUBA

In a recent memoir from a New York Brighton Beach emigre Russian paper a former member of the CPSU (Communist Party Soviet Union) recalled Gagarin in Cuba. (Trans. by author).

Editor's note: While the following interview cannot be regarded as overly reliable, it does provide one of the few written references of Gagarin's time in Cuba.

"I remember him (Gagarin) in Cuba and let me tell you - fish out of water. It was true - Castro had taken over but the Soviet Communists that had gotten permission to travel to Latin America were the worst sort: Apparatchiks, arms suppliers and party dilettantes that only an ideology that has lost any and all idealism can produce. I am still trying to forget the minor Russian officials' wives who had come over on the pretence of becoming translators of Neruda and Borges. The kind of women that we say should never marry but have duped some luckless fellow on some dark night. Bleeding the country of it's natural resources. At any rate, I was so astounded when I saw Gagarin there. Gagarin, a man of the people! He really was out of place. Also, Valentina, his wife, was conducting herself a bit too freely within Gagarin's purview for my liking. Who was watching their child? I recall I saw Gagarin at one of the nightclubs with this hang dog expression. Not a place for him at all. The club was full of that vicious mix. God, awful! To see our national hero - there. A man of courage, in that farmer's slough? And if Gagarin had descended to this, where was I? And yet, I felt it wasn't entirely his fault. He had been somehow led to this untenable position but why and to what end?. . .

If you really want to get a feel for that place I remember a film there and Gagarin waving them away, embarrassed (ed.note, Kalatozov's, "I am Cuba"). Who wouldn't be? He didn't wish to be seen. I remember thinking, where were his senses? Did his wife not know it was her duty to watch over our national treasures at times like that?

. . .Recently a friend of mine in St. Petersburg sent me a tape Mosfilm had made regarding Gagarin's first flight. I couldn't watch past the initial launch without thinking about the dirty business. What had our man who had ascended so high for our country descended to?

(Novoe Russkoe Slovo, New York, June 1998)