On the 60th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s landmark trip around Earth, RT publishes unique footage of his speech from the first anniversary of this flight – renewed and coloured using modern neural-network technologies.
“I am grateful to those who put their hearts, souls, skills, and hard work to fulfil this great mission,” Gagarin said in a speech that was first broadcast by Soviet television back in 1962, exactly one year after he became the first human ever to fly in space.
The first Soviet cosmonaut expressed his admiration for the Soviet scientists and engineers who made his flight possible by calling them “miracle workers.” Yet, he was equally welcoming to other nations’ efforts in space exploration. He symbolically greeted a US astronaut, John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, and welcomed him to the international “family of cosmonauts.”
“We know that our family of cosmonauts will grow bigger and bigger by the year and we will have more and more members joining,” Gagarin said in a speech that was originally recorded on 35-milimeter black-and-white film.
The first man in space also used the occasion to send a powerful message of peace as he said that cooperation in space between the US and the USSR “would open the way to stopping the onerous and pointless arms race as well as to channelling the joint efforts of both superpowers towards new scientific breakthroughs in space exploration.”
Transcript of the video
Yuri Gagarin – Congratulations on the 1st Anniversary of the Day of Cosmonautics
Dear friends, today is the day of the first anniversary of
the first, in the history of mankind, flight of man into Space.
I want to sincerely greet you from the bottom of my heart
and share with you some thoughts on this matter.
Over the past year, since the day of the flight of the Soviet space ship “Vostok-1”
carrying a Soviet person aboard,
I, a participant in this flight
and a witness of an enthusiastic attitude to this great event by our Soviet people,
the people of the entire globe,
I want to simply and sincerely thank all those who took part
in the creation of the powerful rocket that took me to orbit,
in the creation of wonderful systems and the “Vostok-1” spacecraft itself,
those who put their souls, hearts, skills,
their work into this great event, into this great deed,
which was carried out on the 12th of April last year.
Glory to you, wondrous scientists, wondrous masters!
The flight of the Soviet ship “Vostok-1” revealed not only new faith in the development of Space,
it was a messenger of peace and benevolence of the peoples of our Motherland,
building Communism, towards all the peoples of the Earth.
After the successful flight into space of two Soviet people –
my flight and the flight of German Stepanovich Titov,
which lasted more than 25 hours and flew more than 17 times around the globe,
the family of astronauts has grown by another cosmonaut –
the American cosmonaut, John Glenn,
who made his orbital flight around the globe,
completing 3 turns and staying in space for about 4.5 hours.
And, we know and believe that the family of cosmonauts
will continue growing with every year,
and there will be more and more of them.
Soviet people are peaceful people, both on Earth and in space.
Quite recently, this was emphasized with a new force
in the message of Nikita Sergeevich Hrushchev
to the President of the United States, Mr. Kennedy, on the issue of study and use of Space.
These clear proposals of the head of the Soviet government
found a hot response from all peoples.
After all, their implementation would open the way to stopping
the onerous and pointless arms race
to faster channel the joint efforts of the great superpowers
towards new scientific breakthroughs in Space.
And I would like to say one more thing, dear friends,
on this significant day, of happiness to live and work in my Fatherland,
together with you, my compatriots,
to build the brightest, most beautiful society on Earth,
to build Communism.
Glory to our great Motherland! Glory to our Party of Lenin!
Glory to the Soviet people,
the creator of all our victories on Earth and in Space!
Long live peace!
A copy from Defensa Critica:
RT’s original, “freedomofspeeched” by YouTube: