Valentina Ivanovna, wife of Yuri Gagarin, was faithful to her husband even after his death. She lived the remainder of her life in the same place she was living with her husband – Zvyozdny gorodok (‘Star City’) in Moscow Region. She never remarried. According to her daughters, Yelena and Galina, the death of her husband brought her such grief that she almost never spoke of it.
The widow of the first cosmonaut led a reclusive lifestyle and never gave a single interview. However, she later wrote a book in the memory of her husband – ‘108 Minutes and a Whole Life’. Valentina Ivanovna died on March 17, 2020, in the 85th year of her life.
The eldest daughter was only 11 when her father died. She remembers him fondly; according to her, it was him who instilled in her a love for art. “He belonged to the generation that had very little opportunities [Gagarin and his family lived under German occupation], so, after the war, they were thirsty for everything,” Yelena once said about her father in an interview; aside from space, her father was also a fan of history and art. “One of his friends told me that, when my father was in Moscow, he would attend art lectures at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts.”
This, most likely, impacted Yelena’s future choice of profession – she decided to become an art historian.
Right after she graduated from her university, she worked at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in the Russian capital. Her first position was the curator of English graphics. She dedicated 20 years to English art of the 18th century.
To this day, her career is connected to art, history and art-management – for more than 20 years, she has held the position of the general director of Moscow Kremlin Museums. Aside from that, Yelena is a member of the Commission of the Russian Federation for UNESCO and a member of the Patriarchal Council for Culture.
She also has a daughter named Ekaterina from her first marriage with cameraman Elizbar Karavaev.
Galina was only 7 when her father passed away. Speaking about him, she, first of all, remembers their trips outdoors, as well as his love for animals. “If there was a free Sunday, we would go to the forest: searching for mushrooms or simply walking around. We liked to go and ride a motorboat (it was presented to my father in Sweden) and have picnics at Khimki Reservoir,” Galina said.
After school, she received an education in economics, then she became a Doctor of Economics. Currently, Galina works as the head of the Economics Department at the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics; she’s also an Honored Worker of Higher Education of the Russian Federation.
In 2011, Galina applied to register the name of her father – ‘Yuri Alexeevich Gagarin’ – as a trademark. “I don’t see anything shameful in it, when everyone is making money off the name of Gagarin’. Why can’t his family do the same?” she said. Experts valued the ‘Gagarin’ brand then at 1 billion rubles (approx. $33 million).
Galina is married to Konstantin Kondratchik, an oncologist and a hematologist, and they have a son named Yuri.
The granddaughter of the first man in space decided to follow in the footsteps of her mother and graduated from the Faculty of History of Moscow State University. After that, like her mother, she, for a long time, worked at the Moscow Kremlin Museums. Today, Ekaterina is married to diplomat Pavel Vnukov and lives in London.
The only son of Galina was named in honor of his grandfather; however, he decided not to accept the famous last name, since, according to him, he doesn’t really like to publicize his relation to the first cosmonaut and always tries to avoid publicity.
“I admit, when the time came to receive my first passport, I had such thoughts [to take the last name ‘Gagarin’]. But, I decided against it. I thought that it would be too much to call myself Yuri Gagarin when I’m asked to introduce myself,” he said in a rare interview.
Yuri calls himself a “grounded” person, unlike his grandfather. In his childhood, he wanted to become a doctor, but, in the end, decided to follow his mother and also received an education in economics. However, his later career was still linked to the sky – he headed the Khabarovsk international airport. Yuri also tried his hand in politics by running for a deputy seat, but was unsuccessful.
Currently, he is the general director of his own concession company that is involved in road building.
Recently, Yuri and his wife welcomed a son, so now the great cosmonaut even has a great-grandson!
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