Perhaps one of the greatest strides in the history of mankind will forever belong to the workers of the world and nobody else
:yuri: The son of a peasant (so I've heard), went from the field to the cosmos. Absolutely amazing. I get emotional thinking about this. 20 years earlier his homeland was being destroyed in history's most horrific pogrom. They went from one of the lowest moments in human history to transcending the limits of earth in approximately 20 years. How can you not want to cry from the feelings that story inspires.
Just going to paste this from w*kipedia
Yuri Gagarin was born 9 March 1934 in the village of Klushino,[1] near Gzhatsk (renamed Gagarin in 1968 after his death).[2] His parents worked on a collective farm[3]—Alexey Ivanovich Gagarin as a carpenter and Anna Timofeyevna Gagarina as a dairy farmer.[4][b] Yuri was the third of four children. His older brother Valentin was born in 1924 and by the time Yuri was born was already helping with the cattle on the farm. His sister Zoya, born in 1927, helped take care of "Yura" and their youngest brother Boris, born in 1936.[6][7]
Situated along the path of several invasions into Russia, Gagarin's hometown has been the site of many wars and conquests from foreign nations.[8] Like millions of Soviet Union citizens, his family suffered during the Nazi occupation of the Soviet Union during World War II.[9] During the German advance on Moscow, Klushino was captured on 18 October 1941. On their first day in the village, the Germans burned down the school, ending Yuri's first year of education.[10] A German officer took over the Gagarin residence. On the land behind their house, the family was allowed to build a mud hut measuring approximately 3 by 3 metres (10 by 10 ft), where they spent 21 months until the end of the occupation.[9]
During this period, Yuri became a saboteur, especially after one of the German soldiers, who the children called "the Devil", tried to hang his younger brother Boris on an apple tree using the boy's scarf. In retaliation, Yuri sabotaged the soldiers work; he poured soil into the tank batteries gathered to be recharged and randomly mixed the different chemical supplies intended for the task.[11] In early 1943, Gagarin's two older siblings were deported by the Germans to Poland for slave labour. They escaped and were found by Soviet soldiers who conscripted them into helping with the war effort. They did not return home until after the war in 1945.[12][13]
The rest of the Gagarin family believed the older children were dead and Yuri became ill with "grief and hunger";[14] he was also beaten for refusing to work for the German forces and spent the remainder of the war at a hospital as a patient and later as an orderly. His mother was also at the same after a German soldier gashed her leg with a scythe. When the Germans were routed out of Klushino on 9 March 1944, Yuri helped the Red Army find mines buried in the roads by the fleeing German army.[14]
:yuri: fighting nazis as a 8 year old
Space exploration under capitalism is a depressing nightmare. All of the beautiful cosmos only matters insofar as it can generate a profit someday. Maybe one day the rich will get to destroy Mars in addition to Earth!
Space exploration under communism was aspirational. It was a goal rooted in exploration and discovery. The development of the technology necessary to survive the harshness of space was supposed to benefit all Earthlings. It represented hope for the future that through our struggle we could build a better world and someday a better universe. Imagine the first settlements on Mars being a Soviet Republic. Communism on the red planet.
Now it might end up becoming Ancapistan. I look forward to the day Elon Musk dies in a space travel disaster.
Hell yeah. I wish I'd thought of that the other night when my friend was arguing that the vaccine rollout could only have happened so quickly under capitalism. Obviously that's a stupid argument... The Moderna vaccine was produced from 100% public funded research and capitalism incentivizes the companies to not share their best practices with each other... But I kind of blanked on real life examples.
lmao, the vaccine rollout only even needed to happen so quickly because capitalism fucked up the response from the very beginning
Also true. And because capitalism relies on getting people vaccinated to continue their wage slavery.
bit idea: a :yuri: emote but it's just Alan Shepard and it's called :yaoi:
