“I remember the excitement that greeted Yuri Gagarin’s flight into space so well: a mixture of astonishment at the achievement, tinged – in some quarters anyway – with apprehension that Soviet science was ahead of America’s. Certainly in Russia it was a moment of glorious triumph. Alexander Urnov was then a bright young student in Moscow. Fifty years on, I thought I saw tears in his eyes as he recalled that week. “Something really great for everyone had happened,” he said, “and perhaps a little hope that new times would start.” Read More
