Life and death of Yuri Gagarin

Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin was born on 9 March 1934 in the village of Klushino, 160km west of Moscow. His father, Alexei Ivanovich, and his mother, Anna Timofeyevna, worked on a collective farm - he as a storesman, she with the dairy herd. Yuri's brother Valentin was ten years older, and his sister Zoya, seven years his senior. A younger brother, Boris, was born in 1936. Despite hardships, the family was reasonably content, given the harsh conditions of the prevailing Stalinist regime and the occasional frightening disappearances among their neighbours.