On this date in 1961, humanity first broke the bonds of Earth’s gravity and a person was able to view the stars with their own eyes.

It was not a rich man or aristocrat who took that first, incredible step, but a worker -Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin. A dedicated communist, and the son of workers; his father a brick layer and his mother a milkmaid.

Gagarin did not hesitate to say that this could only be achieved under socialism.

“To rise to the stars, it is not enough to break the fetters of earthly gravity – it was necessary first to throw off the shackles in which labor, reason, and the soul of man languished until October! It was not for nothing that the Communards were called “people storming the sky”… The storming of space did not begin on April 12, 1961, when a person saw the open Universe, and not even on October 4, 1957, when the first satellite broke away from the Earth. It all started with the shot of the Aurora, with the assault on the Winter Palace.”

Whether one agrees with his politics, we must all recognize the colossal step that was taken all those years ago, and give thanks and hope that our destiny still lies among the stars.