On April 12, 1961, the Soviet Union achieved a significant international success, becoming the first to send a man into space: cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. The event was celebrated by Soviet propaganda, and today we can make interesting observations about how Gagarin, the hero of the moment, was portrayed and shaped.

Unlike what might have happened in the West, Gagarin was never exalted as an exceptional individual, but rather as the product of collective effort, the finest outcome born and nurtured by Soviet society. From the phone call with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, which took place the day after his spacewalk and was broadcast throughout the USSR, to the celebrations in Red Square and subsequent interviews, Gagarin's humility, dedication to the Party and Communism, and love for the Soviet motherland were emphasized. He became a star, but a star of the system and for the system.

His proletarian background (one of the reasons he was chosen for the space mission) was continually highlighted, and he always showed pride in it and in his family of Soviet workers. Gagarin, who had served in the Komsomol, was to be a model especially for young people: the image of a bright future of achievements and successes under the leadership of the Communist Party.

Gagarin also became a tool for promoting state atheism and the fight against religion within the USSR: he had neither seen nor felt the presence of any higher being in space, and posters were printed and distributed showing Gagarin in space with the slogan "There is no God." The success was attributed to Soviet science and technology, the only secular deities worthy of reverence.

Everything had to serve the ideological purposes of the Soviet state, from the life of a single man to great space achievements; everything was to be utilized for a higher purpose, always under the guidance of the Communist Party: the building of the future society, the socialist society.