Yuri Gagarin’s Story Told in Ho Chi Minh City

On March 2, the Russian Center at the University of Pedagogy in Ho Chi Minh City hosted a meeting of students from the Russian language departments of universities in the city. The speaker was Vitaly Trunov, director of the South Division of the Tropics Center.

Following a viewing of the film Our Gagarin and a presentation by Vietnamese students, Dr. Vitally Turnov told the students about the first flight into space by Yuri Gagarin. The film and stories of Dr. Turnov generated a lot of questions among the students. When they had difficult expressing themselves in Russian, a translator was on hand to help facilitate communication.

The information on Gagarin’s flight was new to many of the students, which led to a wave of questions and enquiries. They were interested in what kind of family the cosmonaut had, who did his daughter become, how did the Americans react to Gagarin’s flight, why was he flying on the airplane that crashed and killed him, how many Gagarin monuments are there in Russia, etc.

Natalya Zolkina,
Director of the Russian Center in HCMC