 C00175715
 Page: 3     of 86
 Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1991
 Document 3 of 10                                                Page   1
 Classification:   UNCLASSIFIED       Status:        [STAT]
 Document Date:    22 Sep 90          Category:      [CAT]
 Report Type:      JPRS Report        Report Date:
 Report Number:    JPRS-USP-91-002    UDC Number:
 Author(s): KOMSOMOLSKAYA PRAVDA staff correspondent Ye. Chernykh,
 Prague: "Was Gagarin Really in Space?: Cosmonaut No. 1
 Flew Around the Planet One Time. But This Fairly Shabby
 'Canard' Is Making Its Umpteenth Orbit"]
 Headline:  Allegations Concerning Cosmonaut Losses, Gagarin's Role
 Refuted
 Source Line:  90700167 Moscow KOMSOMOLSKAYA PRAVDA in Russian 22 Sep
 90 p 3
 Subslug:   [Article by KOMSOMOLSKAYA PRAVDA staff correspondent Ye.
 Chernykh, Prague: "Was Gagarin Really in Space?: Cosmonaut
 No. 1 Flew Around the Planet One Time. But This Fairly
 Shabby 'Canard' Is Making Its Umpteenth Orbit"]
 FULL TEXT OF ARTICLE:
 1.  [Article by KOMSOMOLSKAYA PRAVDA staff correspondent Ye.
 Chernykh, Prague: "Was Gagarin Really in Space?: Cosmonaut No. 1
 Flew Around the Planet One Time. But This Fairer Shabby   anar    s --
 Making Its Umpteenth Orbit',]
 2.  [Text] The book " Gagarin--kosmicheskiy lozh?" [Gagarin--a Space
 Lie?] came out recently in Hungary.  The author, I. Nemere, alleges
 that Gagarin did not fly around our planet on 12 April 1961. The
 Vostok craft had gone into space several days earlier. In it was the
 son of the famous aircraft designer, Ilyushin. But after a difficult
 landing, he looked more like a human wreck than a Soviet "hero."
 Someone like that couldn't be shown to the world. Just the opposite,
 he would have to be kept out of sight for a long time, or better yet,
 for ever.  In that same year, Ilyushin was in a serious traffic
 accident.
 3.  An attractive fellow with an optimistic smile and excellent
 biographical particulars was quickly found from among the workers. He
 also played the role of the representative of the grandiose success
 of Soviet science and especially of Soviet policy. It is clear that a
 person with such a terrible secret could not live long.
 4.  I. Nemere, a social and political affairs writer, spent many
 years in Moscow, where he met "with knowledgeable people.- He
 concealed his authorship right up to the publication of the book,
 fearing that, even in Hungary, there would be people who would be
 Approved for Release 3Z2
 UNCLASSIFIED
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 prepared to take whatever steps were necessary to preserve the legend
 and the eternal "truths." It wasn't until a press conference at the
 end of August that journalists learned the name of the author of the
 sensational book.
 5.  They have lived for some time in the fraternal countries of
 socialism, and I can visualize the reaction. They are removing the
 statues of Lenin and defiling the memorials to the Soviet soldiers.
 Now they have even gone after Gagarin.
 6.  But it is someone "from among them" who came forward in defense
 of Gagarin--the famous Czechoslovakian journalist and author of 12
 books on the space program, Karel Patsner. His article has just been
 published in Prague by the newspaper MLADA FRONTA DNES. One detail:
 after 1968, Karel had big problems.  So, wish as you might, you
 cannot regard him as a staunch Marxist ready to defend "communist
 legends" at any price.
 7.  "To tell the truth, doubts about Yuriy Gagarin being the first
 person in space are nothing new," wrote K. Patsner.  "This began
 back in the mid-1960s. All the rumors that appeared in the Western
 press were filed by the American writer, D. Oberg, in his book
 `Secret Soviet Accidents,' published in 1988. Cosmonaut Lodovskiy
 died in 1957 while taking off from the Kapustin Yar cosmodrome. In
 that same year, Shiborin died. Two years later,    re was the d6atK----
 of Mitkov. A cosmonaut, still unknown to this day, crashed in May of
 1960. In September of 1960, while Khrushchev was giving a. speech at
 the UN, an unknown cosmonaut died, identified at one point as Petr
 Dolgov. On 4 February 1961, some Western amateur radio operators
 picked up a transmission from an astonishing Soviet satellite of the
 `beating of a human heart,' which faded away shortly thereafter.
 According to some reports, two Soviet cosmonauts were circling the
 Earth and, according to others, there were three of them: Belokonev,
 Kachur and Grachev. In early April 1961, Vladimir Ilyushin flew
 around the earth three times, but he was injured during the return.
 In mid-Hay 1961, some amateur radio operators in Europe caught a weak
 call for help coming, apparently, from two Soviet cosmonauts. On 14
 October 1961, a Soviet craft with a crew was lost in the vast reaches
 of space. In November of 1962, Italian amateur radio operators heard
 SOS signals from space. According to some sources, that's when
 Belokonev died. On 19 November 1963, an attempt to place a second
 female cosmonaut into orbit ended tragically. One or more Soviet
 experimenters, again according to the reports of Italian amateur
 radio operators, died in April of 1964.
 8.  " Oberg himself was previously engaged in military missile
 research and worked at NASA's space center. Be emphasized that all
 those reports were absolutely false.
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 9.  "However, even Oberg, although a specialist himself, could be
 wrong. But there are also other sources. Of course, one can't believe
 the official Soviet sources of the Khrushchev and Brezhnev eras. It
 is interesting, however, that an emigrant, V. Fedorov, in a critical
 article about the Soviet space program, published by DER SPIEGEL in
 1973, also refuted rumors about allegedly concealed cosmonaut losses.
 Only one name is mentioned--Yuriy Dolgov. But he, according to
 Fedorov's data, died while testing a space suit."
 10.  "It should be stated," Karel Patsner continued on, "that,
 over the 25 years that I have been traveling to the USSR, I have
 never heard anything like that from my own friends--scientists,
 cosmonauts and journalists. Even in conversations at midnight, when
 vine or cognac had loosened tongues and they talked to me frankly
 about launch delays, about details as yet unpublished about the
 deaths of the crews of the Soyuz-1 and the Soyuz-11, about the many
 accidents of rockets involving people and about the difficulties with
 the hush-hush moon project. However, there was not even a hint of
 tragedies involving unknown cosmonauts. As for accidents prior to the
 end of 1960, they can be ruled out if only for technical reasons. At
 that time, the Soviets still did not have a readied, tested
 spacecraft. In fact, the first satellite was launched in October of
 1957. But fine, assume that I had not met with 'knowledgeable people'
 and that those launches were conducted in a spe- dal, supersecret
 sector, so that my informants could not know anything about them. But
 that is illogical because a tremendous amount of money would have
 been required to carry out two parallel programs. And the existence
 of the programs cannot be kept a secret among the specialists."
 11.  Patsner reported in detail about Ya. Golovanov's book
 "Kosmonavt nomer.,odin" [Cosmonaut No. 11, published in 1986.
 Discussed in it as well were rumors about our cosmonauts'
 catastrophes. Back in the spring of 1961, in an American weekly,
 there appeared a report that, several days prior to the 12th of
 April, a person had died in space and that Yuriy Gagarin was now
 playing his role on the ground. Later, in that connection, the name
 of V. Ilyushin, the ship Rossiya and the date--the 7th of April--came
 up. But Ilyushin had been in a serious motor vehicle accident back in
 June of 1960.
 12.  Does it not seem that the Hungarian writer was raising the old
 rumors to cause.a stir?
 13.  On the other hand, Patsner still other weighty arguments. Dr. C.
 Sheldon--chief of the Research Division of the U.S. Library of
 Congress, until his death considered to be the greatest American
 expert on the Soviet space--wrote a report for members of congress in
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 November of 1967: "Up to 1967, not a single country had lost a
 single crew during a space flight.... The stories that a lot of
 Russians had died in space are difficult to refute because they are
 so persistent and supplied with names and dates. Even such a
 prominent informant as 0. Penkovskiy (an American spy--Ed.)        wrote in
 his reports about those difficulties. However, American government
 employees has assured Congress several times that the United States
 did not have any information about such Soviet losses.
 14.  Even F. Klass as well, in the book "Taynaya strazha.v kosmose "
 [The Secret Watch in Space], which is devoted to space-based
 espionage, has no doubts about Gagarin being the first. The network
 of American ground tracking stations along the' Soviet borders and the
 reconnaissance satellites make it possible to follow all the flight
 preparations in the USSR. For example, President J. Kennedy knew
 about the successful launch of G. Titov in August of 1961 even before
 it was officially announced by TASS. In 1975, a law was passed in the
 United States regarding the declassification of old information from
 the intelligence services. M. Kassut, a writer, found nine documents
 in the CIA [TsRU] archives about the training of cosmonauts for the
 years 1960-1975. And in not a single one was there even a hint of any
 suspicions by the intelligence agents about secret Soviet space
 flights and catastrophes.
 15.  " I believe that I. Nemere is one of tTiose auk rs w o ra e
 trying to acquire money and fame from the wave of anti-Sovietism
 which has flared up in the former communist countries, " wrote K.
 Patsner at the end of his article in defense of Gagarin.
 16.  "If, in 1960, you had published in the press that a cosmonaut
 training detachment had been formed and if you had given all the
 names of the candidates, is it likely that rumors would have arisen
 around Gagarin?" Patsner said to me.
 17.  "Karel, what do you mean 1960? Even in the 1980's, Komsomolka
 [KOMSOMOLSKAYA PRAVDA) could not have pushed through Yaroslav
 Golovanov's article `Kosmonavt nomer odin,' where, for the first
 time, the truth was disclosed about that detachment. And, in order to
 publish the book of the same name in 1986, in the time of glasnost,
 you yourself wrote that Yaroslav needed the personal permission of
 one of the members of the Politburo."
 18.  "In the summer of 1964, S.P. Korolev vacationed in
 Czechoslovakia. Prior to that, Gagarin was here, he liked `Golden
 Prague' very much and he talked about it a lot to.Sergey Pavlovich.
 The chief designer was here incognito.  He was not even registered in
 the guest book of the Czechoslovak Communist Party's Central
 Committee.  When he was leaving, he said then to his entourage:  When
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 I come to Czechoslovakia next time, you will know who I am.' Korolev
 was opposed to the veils of secrecy, but.... There is nothing we can
 do, both you in the Soviet Union and we have to endure what has
 already died down in the West. The preachers, who have undertaken to
 cure the masses suffering from all kinds of illnesses, and the UPOs,
 which were of interest to a lot of people there, but which are now of
 interest to only individual groups. Those same outdated
 sensationalisms....',

