太空第一人苏联尤里·加加林的神秘之死 [美国媒体]

When Yuri Gagarin fell to Earth.​

当尤里・加加林坠向地球。

By Matt Blitz
Apr 12, 2016



On April 12, 1961—55 years ago today—Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin launched into the great beyond, becoming the first human in space. When he came back to Earth, Gagarin was looked upon as not just a hero, but the very embodiment of the Soviet Union's power. Streets were named after him. Monuments were erected. Khrushchev called him the Russian Christopher Columbus.

1961年4月12日，55年前的今天，俄罗斯飞行员尤里・加加林被发射升空，成为首位进入太空的人类。当他返回地球时，加加林不仅被当作英雄，他还是前苏联的实力的化身。街道以他命名，还有为他而建的纪念碑。赫鲁晓夫称他是俄罗斯的哥伦布。



And then he was gone.

接着他就去世了。

Less than seven years after his history-making mission, Gagarin died in a plane crash at only 38 years old. The cosmonaut and his flight instructor Vladimir Seryogin were flying a routine training exercise when they were lost, and the mysterious circumstances of the wreck have inspired a half-century of wild speculation. With little more than Soviet-sponsored reports, KGB investigations and long withheld testimony as explanations, conspiracy theories sprung up to explain why a plane piloted by two experienced Russian airmen suddenly just fell out of the sky. So what really happened to the first man in space?

他的历史性的太空任务之后不到7年，加加林死于飞机失事，年仅38岁。出事时，他与飞行教练弗拉基米尔・谢廖金正在执行一次例行飞行训练，那次空难的神秘背景引发了半个世纪的各种猜疑。由于此事的解释只有苏联的官方报告、克格勃的调查和长期未开放的证词，所以，对于为什么一架由两名经验丰富的苏联空军驾驶的飞机会突然掉下来，就冒出了很多阴谋论。那么到底太空第一人身上发生了什么呢？

In a Flash

一瞬间

There are things we know conclusively about Yuri Gagarin's final moments. He awoke early on March 27, 1968 to continue his "retraining" as a fighter pilot. (Prior to his days as a cosmonaut he had been a lieutenant in the Soviet Air Force, so this was a formality.) Gagarin was stationed at Chkalovsky Airport, about 20 miles northeast of Moscow. By all accounts, his retraining was going well. Gagarin was scheduled to fly three practice missions in a Russian-built MiG-15 training jet that day—two solo and one with Seryogin, which was the day's first flight.

关于加加林最后的时刻，有几件事是确知的。他在1968年3月27日早上醒来，继续他的战斗机飞行员的“再训练”。（成为宇航员之前，加加林是苏联空军的一名中尉，所以这是必要程序。）加加林当时部署于契卡洛夫斯基机场，地处莫斯科东北20英里。据所有人的说法，他的训练非常顺利。加加林当天的训练计划是驾驶俄制米格-15训练机飞三次——两次单人飞行、一次与谢廖金的双人飞行，双人飞行是当天的第一个任务。

"It was not their fault. They were following the instructions to the letter."

“这不是他们的错。他们严格地执行了指示。”

It was a rainy and windy morning when he boarded a bus on bound for the airfield and realized he was missing his identification. Always superstitious, Gagarin told the people around him this was a bad omen. A little after 10 a.m., Gagarin and Seryogin took off in the two-seater jet and headed to the flight zone in weather conditions that were probably deteriorating. A few minutes later, Gagarin came over the radio to say he'd completed the exercise, which included barrell rolls and vertical loops, and was heading back to base.

当天早晨在下雨，有风，加加林搭汽车去了机场，然后发现他丢了身份证。加加林很迷信，他告诉周围的人，这是一个坏兆头。早上10点过一点的时候，加加林和谢廖金驾驶一架双人座飞机起飞，飞向飞行区，这时天气很可能更糟了。几分钟之后，加加林通过电台报告他已完成训练，包括桶滚和垂直圆圈飞行，现在正返回基地。

Then, radio silence.

接着，电台中便寂静无声了。

After ten minutes of no sighting or communication with the aircraft, the base dispatched rescue teams to seek the jet. Around 3 p.m., crews found the burning, charred plane among the trees and snow of the Russian countryside. The accident looks unsurvivable. While Seryogin's body was identified, there was hope that Gagarin had ejected before impact. That hope dissipated the next day when Gagarin's remains were found not far from the plane's wreckage. His ashes were buried alongside other Soviet luminaries along the Kremlin Wall.

飞机的音信消失了10分钟之后，基地派出救援队去搜寻。下午3点，救援队在田地的积雪和树丛中发现了烧焦的飞机。事故现场看上去不可能有生还者。当谢廖金的遗体被确认了之后，大家希望加加林在飞机坠毁之前已经弹射出去了。但是这个希望破灭了，第二天在飞机残骸的不远处发现了加加林的遗体。他的骨灰与其它的苏联杰出人物一起被埋在克林姆林宫墙中。



Yuri Gagarin funeral, Moscow, 1968

1968年莫斯科，加加林的葬礼

With the world mourning, Soviet authorities hastily assembled a commission to determine the cause of the crash. In November of 1968, the USSR's State Commission filed a 29-volume investigative report that was basically inconclusive. Proposing several theories but never providing irrefutable evidence for any of them, the report said the pilots probably swerved to avoid hitting a weather balloon or a bird, which caused them to go into a tailspin from which they never recovered. In other words, it was pilot error, not a systematic or mechanical problem. Shortly thereafter, Communist party head Leonid Brezhnev closed the investigation and deemed it top secret. The people who investigated and wrote the report were told not to publish their own conclusions because it could "unsettle" the nation.

全世界都在悼念加加林，苏联政府迅速地组成了一个委员会来调查坠机的原因。1968年11月，苏联的国家委员会发表了一份29页的调查报告，但是基本上没有定论。报告提出了几个坠机原因，但对于任何一个说法都没有提供无法反驳的证据，报告称飞行员很可能是为了避免撞上气象气球或者一只鸟而改变扭转方向，导致飞机旋冲下坠，而飞行员无法将飞机拉回正常状态。换句话说，是飞行员的失误，不是系统或机械的问题。之后不久，苏共党首勃列日涅夫终止了调查，并将此事列为高级机密。调查及撰写报告的人员被告知，不得发表他们自己的结论，因为这会让国家“不安”。

Drunks, Double Agents, And UFOs

酗酒、双面间谍、UFO

A national hero dies under mysterious circumstances. The report can't pin down a reason. A restrictive government seals the results. It's the perfect recipe for conspiracy theories, and Gagarin's death inspired ideas that persisted for decades, some more plausible than others.

一位国家英雄在迷雾重重中死去。调查报告无法明确原因。政府封锁调查结果。这简直是阴谋论的完美配方，几十年来，加加林的死引发了许多说法，一些说法看起来有鼻子有眼。

One said Gagarin was drunk. Another proposed that he and Seryogin were joy-riding and taking potshots at deer below. A persistent rumor was that Gagarin was sabotaged by Brezhnev, jealous of the cosmonaut's popularity. Maybe a UFO encounter caused the crash (no doubt fueled by Gargain supposed belief in them).

一种说法称加加林是酒鬼。另一种说法则称他和谢廖金当时在空中兜风，对着地上的鹿射击。还有一个流传很久的谣言说加加林是被勃列日涅夫谋害的，因为勃列日涅夫嫉妒加加林的人气。还有说是飞机是遭遇了UFO才坠毁的（毫无疑问，据说加加林相信UFO的存在，给了这个说法灵感）。

The conspiracy theories got wilder from there. Perhaps Gagarin was poisoned by the CIA, or was a secret CIA agent himself. Or he actually survived the crash, only to be hidden out in a Soviet psychiatric ward until his real death in 1990. There are people who believe he's still alive today, his identity protected for all these decades by intensive plastic surgery. The rumors got so numerous that the KGB did its own secret investigation into the Gagarin crash, discounting each and every one.

阴谋论从这里开始越来越不着边际了。可能加加林是被中情局毒死的，或者他本人就是中情局特工。或者他其实从空难中幸存下来了，只是一直藏在苏联一所精神病院中，直到1990年才真的死去。还有人相信加加林直到今天仍然活着，几十年来通过整容隐瞒身份。谣言如此之多，以至于克格勃自己做了秘密调查。



Yuri Gagarin
As preposterous as these rumors were, they were grounded in a real place: Gagarin's troubled feelings about his own meteoric rise from farm boy to Soviet hero. Born in 1934 in the small farm village of Klushino, he was a young boy when World War II broke out. After the war, he was accepted into Air Force training school and graduated as a fighter pilot in 1957, the same year Sputnik was launched. He impressed everyone he met with his competence, likability, and persistent smile. Those traits certainly helped him in 1960, when the farm boy was chosen to make history.

虽然这些谣言非常可笑，但它们产生的基础有一点是真实的：从一个农村孩子摇身一变成为苏联英雄，加加林对于这一转变的感觉很混乱。1934年，加加林出生于克卢希诺镇，二战爆发的时候，他还是个小孩。二战之后，他进入空军训练学校，1957年作为战斗机飞行员毕业，同年苏联发射了人造卫星伴侣号。加加林的能力、可爱和微笑令每个人印象深刻。1960年的时候，这些素质显然帮到了他，这个农村孩子被选为创造历史的人。

When Gagarin ejected from the Vostok on April 12, 1961 and parachuted back down to Earth (something the Russians didn't reveal until 1971), Gargain was ill-prepared for what was waiting for him on the ground. He was propped up by the Communist Party as a superstar, a propaganda tool and a man whom a nation should look to as inspiration. This wasn't easy for Gargain.

当加加林在1961年4月12日从东方1号弹射升空，之后使用降落伞返回地球之后（这一点苏联直到1971年才公布），加加林对于在地球上等着他的东西没有准备。他被苏共一下子抬举成超级英雄，一个宣传工具，一个全国人民视为榜样的人。对加加林来说，这非常不容易。

These letters made Gagarin "realize that the Soviet Union was far from perfect"

这些信件使加加林“认识到苏联远非完美”

"He received a huge number of letters from ordinary people, many of them asking for help of one kind or another," Piers Bizony, co-author of Spaceman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin, tells Popular Mechanics. These letters made Gagarin "realize that the Soviet Union was far from perfect." As a 1999 Air & Space article explains, the cosmonaut soon became more symbol than man, ferried around the world as proof of Soviet Union's superiority. He began to drink, womanize, and take wild risks, to the point that one friend wrote in his diary in 1968 that it was all "steadily erasing his charming smile from his face." And then, about a year before his own crash, Gagarin's good friend died in a fiery accident of his own, one Gagarin became convinced was totally avoidable.

“他收到很多普通人的来信，很多人向他求助，”《加加林：传奇的背后》的合着者Piers Bizony说，这些信件使加加林“认识到苏联远非完美”。正如1999年空间与太空杂志中的一篇文章所说的，加加林很快成了一个象征，作为苏联的优势证明而满世界的展览。他开始喝酒、玩女人、寻求冒险刺激，他玩的太疯，以至于1968年的时候，一个朋友在日记中写道，“他脸上那迷人的微笑消失了。”接着，在加加林空难的前一年，他的好友死于一场激烈的事故，加加林确信，这场事故本来是可以避免的。

By 1968, though, Gagarin had stopped drinking, trying to prove to others—and himself—that he could be a pilot once again. "The superstar business had exhausted him," Bizony says, "and he was very keen to prove to cosmonaut colleagues that he was still in the game." He wouldn't get the chance.

到1968年，加加林不再酗酒了，他试图向其他人，以及自己证明——他可以重新成为一名飞行员。“超级英雄的名头让他精疲力尽，”Bizony说，“他非常渴望向他的宇航员同事们证明，他仍然能行。”可是，他没能再有机会。

Out From Behind the Curtain

走出铁幕



Yuri Gagarin stamp

加加林邮票

With the Soviet Union in the rearview mirror, we're learning all kinds of new things about the space program behind the Iron Curtain, and that including what happened the day Yuri Gagarin died.

随着苏联解体，关于铁幕时期苏联的太空计划，我们了解到各种新的东西，也包括加加林死去那天所发生的事情。

In 2003, a secret KGB investigation was uncovered that pointed to the failure of the ground crew to properly communicate information to the pilots as the cause of Gagarin's crash. According to the report, those crew provided wrong weather reports and failed to tell Gagarin and Seryogin they had wing-mounted fuel tanks, which made the maneuvers they were doing especially dangerous.

2003年，克格勃的秘密调查被公布，该调查指出，地面人员未能正确的与飞行员沟通，导致加加林坠机。根据这份报告，地面人员提供了错误的气象报告，而且没有告诉加加林和谢廖金他们有翼载油箱，这使他们的操作尤其危险。

In 2010, Russian researchers told Air & Space they believed a faulty air vent led to a quick descent and a crash. According to their findings, the pilots discovered an open air vent in the cockpit midflight. In an attempt to rectify the situation, Gagarin followed the exact procedures set forth in the airplane's operations manual. It called for a rather extreme descent to 6,500 feet, but since rate-of-descent limits was not known yet (in 1975, it was clarified to be 164 feet per second), Gagarin dove too fast. This caused both men to black out and the plane to crash. "It was not their fault," a retired Soviet Air Force Colonel told the magazine, "They were following the instructions to the letter."

2010年，俄罗斯的研究者告诉空间与太空杂志，他们相信是排气管的故障导致了飞机快速下降并坠毁。根据他们的发现，飞行员在座舱中发现了一个敞开的通气口。为了纠正这一状况，加加林执行了飞机操作手册的步骤。操作手册要求颇为极端的下降到6500英尺，但是当时还不了解下降速度的极限（1975年此极限明确为164英尺每秒），加加林降的太快了，造成两人失去意识，飞机因此坠毁。“这不是他们的错，”一名退休的苏联空军上校告诉该杂志，“他们严格地执行了指示。”

But the most recent and perhaps the most convincing development happened in 2013, when prominent Russian cosmonaut Aleksey Leonov came forward with his version of events. He was at the military airbase that fateful day, in charge of parachute training. Recruited to work on the investigation, he had access to all the findings, but was never able to explain publicly what he knew.

但是最近，可能也是最有说服力的发现是在2013年，俄罗斯杰出的宇航员阿列克谢·列昂诺夫提出了自己的观点。出事那天，他在空军基地，负责跳伞训练。他曾参与调查，可以接触到所有的资料，但一直不能公开他所知道的。

The truth, according to Leonov, was that a Soviet Su-15—a much larger aircraft than Gagarin's MiG-15—violated the smaller plane's airspace, causing it to roll and the pilots to lose control. Simulations have verified that Leonov's conclusion is possible. Other recently released Soviet-sponsored reports do, too. Bizony tells us that Leonov's account is legitimate, "It was essentially a very ordinary accident," he says. "The authorities may well have been embarrassed by the failures in close-range air traffic control, but that's about as far as any 'conspiracy' notions can be stretched."

根据列昂诺夫的说法，真相是，一架苏制苏-15——比加加林的米格-15大的多的飞机——侵入了米格-15的飞行空间，导致后者翻滚，飞行员失去控制。模拟试验证实了列昂诺夫的推论是可能的。其他于最近公布的苏联的调查报告也证明了这一点。Bizony说列昂诺夫的说法是合理的。“这本来是一个非常普通的事故，”他说。“公布出来的话，苏联政府可能会因为空中交通管理不力而丢面子，但也就不会产生那么多阴谋论了。”

Today there are more than 500,000 man-made things in space, ranging from satellites to junk to an International Space Station. On April 12, 1961, there was just one: Yuri Gagarin in his Vostok 1. While the truth about why he came crashing down to Earth may never be fully revealed, for many, Gagarin is still among the stars.

如今太空中有50万个人造物体，有卫星、垃圾，还有一个国际空间站。在1961年4月12日，只有一个：东方1号宇宙飞船里的加加林。虽然他坠机死亡的原因可能永远无法完全弄清，然而对于很多人来说，加加林仍然在空中，与繁星在一起。