April 12, 2021 - 7:00am
Sixty years ago today, we became a spacefaring species. It was, of course, Yuri Gagarin who took that giant leap — becoming the first human being to reach outer space.
It wasn’t a long trip. Lift off was at 6.07 am and he landed back on Earth less than two hours later. However, during his time away he orbited the planet, endured eight gees of acceleration (without blacking out) and completed the last ten minutes of his journey by parachute (having ejected four miles up).
What did you do before breakfast?
His achievement surely places him among the great explorers. However, if he were a Columbus, a Livingstone, or a Lewis and Clark, you can be sure that today there’d be an effort to ‘contextualise’ Gagarin and the Vostok 1 mission.
And by contextualise, I mean problematise. We’d expect some committee of eminent persons to sit in judgement upon Gagarin and the programme he was part of. They’d then take the necessary steps to remind us of any deviation from contemporary ethical standards.
As far as we know, outer space has no indigenous life forms. Therefore, the explorers of the high frontier cannot be accused of exploiting them. However, if one wanted to take away from Gagarin’s achievements there’s plenty else you could get him on.
He was after all, the servant of a murderous totalitarian regime. After his groundbreaking flight, he was a deputy in the Supreme Soviet, to which elections were hardly free and fair. His trips abroad had enormous propaganda value for the Kremlin — so much so that President Kennedy barred him from visiting the United States (an early example of deplatforming).
Gagarin was even dragged into the regime’s renewed anti-religion campaign. A Soviet propaganda poster shows a cosmonaut floating in space looking for God and gleefully not finding Him. (Ironically, there’s evidence that Gagarin was a religious man.)
One might also note that the Baikonur Cosmodrome, the literal launchpad for the Vostok 1 mission, isn’t in Russia, but southern Kazakhstan — a non-European land colonised by the Russian Empire and then by the Soviet Union.
But, of course, there’ll be no handwringing revisionism in this case, because the achievements of the USSR do not count as western achievements. Gagarin’s statues — including the one unveiled ten years ago in London opposite the monument to Captain Cook — will be entirely safe from the woke iconoclasts.
As important as it is to tell the whole truth about humanity’s greatest feats, let’s not imagine that the current vogue for accentuating the negative is an objective endeavour. It is a specifically anti-western project.
Maybe, one day, we’ll contextualise that.
Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.
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“Contextualization” is just another part of a ceaseless campaign that has been going on for decades, to make white British people feel such guilt, shame and self-loathing by implicating them in the deeds of others long gone, that they remain silent and comply while their society and culture is radically transformed for the worse around them.
The National Trust will “contextualize” a great country estate by telling us about the fact that aristocrat who built it got rich through slavery. “Contextualization” by relating the stories of the poor working class who worked for a pittance and lived lives of grinding poverty no better than slavery, who actually built the estate, is omitted. Telling white people that the vast majority of them are decedents of people who were treated no better than slaves and who were exploited by the same ruling class that benefitted from slavery and colonialism is unhelpful to the mission of creating white guilt.
Yes!
Let’s vote the Poles out! As Farage used to say we have a racist migration policy.
The woke are of the left so why would they criticise the left? You only have to see how time they spend castigating Hitler yet when it comes to mass murder he was an amateur compared to Stalin or Mao.
Well obviously it’s an anti western project. Our woke friends aren’t tearing down statues of marx or ghandi, both of whom were clearly racist.
Can you really perceive no difference, beyond country of origin, between a rich Bristol slave trader and the man at the head of the peaceful campaign for Indian Independence? Is achieving self-determination for a nation no more worthy of a place in history than making a profit from selling one’s fellow humans?
And before you start, I’m not advocating tearing down statues of anyone who ever put a foot wrong (however left or right wing they may have been).
Yes, I can perceive the difference. Then again, I can see the difference between the rich Bristol slave trader on the one hand, and a Lincoln or a Wilberforce on the other. The fact that Gandhi is not likely to be cancelled, and that the other two are, speaks volumes to me about the anti-Western nature of these protests. Would you agree with that?
I haven’t seen any calls to cancel Wilberforce. Is that a serious thing, or just tabloid (or activist) trolling?
For the record, that would be silly.
Sorry to be a little critical, but this is a strange way to pursue the argument. Tom points out they have something in common – an undesirable attitude towards black – and you then wonder if he thinks they are the same?
I suppose in very simple set theory he is pointing out an intersection : X and Y contain a common element. It does not imply X is the same as Y.
If only there was even the slightest effort to “contextualize” history, just to spare the wokerati from looking even more ridiculous than they already do. Few things show more evidence of an inability to think than judging people and events of the past through the moral prism of the present. Not only does that approach fail to see things within their time, it purposely ignores any changes that have occurred since then. Purposely.
Marvellous, needed saying.
Gagarin came to Manchester soon afterwards, and was made a Freeman of the City.
Can we hound the living relatives of those who agreed this calumny? Can we throw tiny tins of Hunbrol paint at Russian dolls and yell at Russian salad dressing as and when we see it?
Or do we just suck it up?
And how about that poor dog Laika that they sent to her death too at that time?
Come on your greeny leftards? Maybe a sponsored clear up of space detritus with your motorbike helmets on might help please Gaia?
Certainly would please us, you thick Muppets!
I am quite sure that if we tried hard enough we could find ways to problematise and thereafter cancel Florence Nightingale, Mother Terasa and Desmond Tutu.
Ok, and??
The position of the Gagarin statue in the Mall was temporary. It’s now at the Old Royal Observatory, Greenwich.
And if you’re going to write about GANDHI, start by learning how to spell his name!
It was a phenomenal achievement to have a man orbit the earth for the first time ever. Gagarin’s statue should remain in England forever. I would strongly recommend any visitor to Moscow to see the Museum of Cosmonautics there. I saw it about twenty years ago. It was pretty small for the immensely important subject it dealt with. It could easily have been expanded and maybe now it has been. However, everything on display was fascinating. I will never forget the borscht that cosmonauts could squeeze from a tube.
Not to mention that one of the few examples of slavery in the twentieth century was the Soviet labour camps.
I don’t think you’ll find anyone in British politics, on the left or the right, who thinks that the Soviet Union was an enlightened beacon of liberty and freedom.
This whole article seems like whataboutery of the first water.
The Soviet Union was not a good place to live if you disagreed with the orthodoxy, or liked decadent western music or luxuries. Many of their leaders were reprehensible human beings. But some of our heroes had feet of clay too. I don’t think it’s wrong to allow a fuller understanding of our historical figures – warts and all, as Cromwell put it. Contextualise that!