Russians on Monday celebrate the 60th anniversary of the first manned flight to space carried out by cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin as the Soviet hero remains one of the most admired figures in the country.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is due to travel to Engels, a city in the south of the country on the banks of the Volga river, to the site of the cosmonaut's landing where a memorial stands to honour the historic flight.

The anniversary of the spaceflight is a "day of national pride" for Russia, Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday.

On April 12, 1961, Gagarin's Vostok spacecraft took off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, then part of the Soviet Union, as the 27-year-old cosmonaut exclaimed his iconic catchphrase "Let's go!".

His flight lasted just 108 minutes, the time it took to complete one loop around the Earth, before returning to home soil.

The legend of the man who rose from humble beginnings to become a Soviet hero lives on today and the day of Gagarin's flight is celebrated every year in Russia as Cosmonautics Day.

His now rusty Vostok capsule is on display at Moscow's Museum of Cosmonautics where an exhibition dedicated to Gagarin is set to open on Tuesday.

Visitors will be shown documents, photos and personal belongings of Gagarin, some dating back to his childhood and school years.

"This is probably the only surname that everyone knows, from four-year-old children to people over 80," Vyacheslav Klimentov, historian and the museum's deputy director of research, told AFP.

"I would say that Gagarin's feat, that saw a man go to space for the first time, bonds all Russians together," he added.

- National pride -

Gagarin's flight remains a source of national pride in Russia and a symbol of the Soviet Union's dominance in space during that era. Four years before Gagarin, the USSR had already become the first country to send into orbit a satellite, called Sputnik.

Sixty years on, Russia continues to frequently send its cosmonauts to the International Space Station (ISS). On Friday, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, honouring the anniversary of Gagarin's flight, blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome with two Russians and a US astronaut on board.

But the anniversary also comes at a difficult time for Russia's space industry, which has suffered a number of setbacks recently, from corruption scandals to an aborted take-off endangering a manned mission in 2018.

Russia's ageing Soyuz rockets are reliable and allow Moscow to remain relevant in the modern space industry, but the country is struggling to innovate and keep up with other key players.

In a major blow, Russia last year lost its monopoly for manned ISS launches after reusable rockets from Elon Musk's Space X, carrying NASA astronauts, successfully docked at the space station.

Together with reduced funding, this could mean hard times for Russia's space agency Roscosmos even though its chief Dmitry Rogozin continues to promise ambitious projects, including a mission to Venus and a station on the Moon.

In Russia, the legend of cosmonaut Gagarin lives on
Moscow (AFP) April 12, 2021 - Sixty years after he became the first person in space, there are few figures more universally admired in Russia today than Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.

His smiling face adorns murals across the country. He stands, arms at his sides as if zooming into space, on a pedestal 42.5 metres (140 feet) above the traffic flowing on Moscow's Leninsky Avenue. He is even a favourite subject of tattoos.

The Soviet Union may be gone and Russia's glory days in space long behind it, but Gagarin's legend lives on, a symbol of Russian success and -- for a Kremlin keen to inspire patriotic fervour -- an important source of national pride.

"He is a figure who inspires an absolute consensus that unifies the country," says Gagarin's biographer Lev Danilkin.

"This is a very rare case in which the vast majority of the population is unanimous."

The anniversary of Gagarin's historic flight on April 12, 1961 -- celebrated every year in Russia as Cosmonautics Day -- sees Russians of all ages lay flowers at monuments to his accomplishment across the country.

The enduring fascination comes not only from his story of rising from humble origins to space pioneer, or even the mystery surrounding his death.

Gagarin, says historian Alexander Zheleznyakov, was a figure who helped fuel the imagination.

"He transformed us from a simple biological species to one that could imagine an entire universe beyond Earth."

- Humble beginnings -

The son of a carpenter and a dairy farmer who lived through the Nazi occupation, Gagarin trained as a steel worker before becoming a military pilot and then, at age 27, spending 108 minutes in space as his Vostok spacecraft completed one loop around the Earth.

He was lauded for his bravery and professionalism, an example of the perfect Soviet man, but his legend was also imbued with tales of camaraderie, courage and love for his two daughters and wife Valentina Gagarina.

Long a secret, Gagarin wrote his wife a poignant farewell letter in the event that he died during his mission.

"If something goes wrong, I ask you -- especially you -- Valyusha, not to die of grief. For this is how life goes," he wrote, using a diminutive for Valentina.

In an interview with AFP in 2011, cosmonaut Boris Volynov recalled a man who, despite sharing privileges of the Soviet elite, spent hours on the phone to procure medicine or a spot in a hospital for his less well-off friends.

On his return to Earth, Gagarin found himself at the centre of a propaganda campaign on the superiority of the Soviet model.

Biographer Danilkin says Gagarin was used by authorities as an example to the rest of the world, but also to convince Soviet citizens, who had endured World War II and Stalin-era repressions, "that the sacrifices of the previous decades were not in vain".

President Vladimir Putin, he said, has co-opted that legacy to cement his own hold on power, promoting Soviet victories to encourage support for his 20-year rule.

"The current authorities methodically appropriate popular cults: first that of victory during World War II, then the conquest of space," Danilkin says.

- Tragic hero -

Like all great Russian heroes, Gagarin is a tragic figure.

His death during a training flight in 1968 at the age of 34 remains a mystery because authorities never released the full report of the investigation into the causes of the accident.

Partial records suggest his MiG-15 fighter jet collided with a weather balloon, but in the absence of transparency, alternative theories abound.

One holds that Gagarin was drunk at the controls; another that he was eliminated by the Kremlin which feared his popularity.

More than 40 years later, many Russians have yet to come to terms with his death.

"How could the top cosmonaut, such a young and kind man, die like that so suddenly?" says historian Zheleznyakov.

"People are still trying to get over it."

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