I firstly learned about Mikhail Yangel in the late 1960s under rather curious circumstances. In those years, being just a typical Soviet schoolboy, I wrote for a copy of the magazine of the British Interplanetary Society, Spaceflight. It's necessary to say that just a few people in the USSR dared to receive foreign magazines by mail then. It was exacting and dangerous for a recipient. I would not be surprised if I was to find out that the KGB had set up a file on me then because of this! The magazine reached me with much delay. It wasn't an original one but a photocopy with many blanks - the censors had stroked out everything concerning Soviet cosmonautics. But sometimes, an oversight or because of incompetence, I came across items there which allowed me to find out some 'secrets'. So, for example, I read about Plesetsk cosmodrome for the first time ever through Spaceflight.
展开▼
