(Editor's note: Filmmaker Vladimir Suvorov recorded the Soviet Union's space program from 1959 to 1969, including the April 12, 1961, launch of Yuri Gagarin -- the first man in space. In the book "The First Manned Spaceflight: Russia's Quest for Space," Suvorov's nephew, Alexander Sabelnikov, has compiled his uncle's notes into a compelling narrative of the Soviet side of the space race. The following excerpt, which describes Gagarin's flight, begins as Gagarin and backup cosmonaut Gherman Titov prepare for the historic day.)

Yuri and Gherman did morning exercises, washed their faces, and dressed. After a light breakfast they rapidly left for the [Assembling-Testing Complex]. The final pre-launch training and checking started.

Both of them have a medical examination. Everything is in order -- everything is normal. Various sensors are being attached to their bodies as they are getting dressed: white underwear; blue union suit; gray anti-G suit. We are shooting everything.

I am moving around Gagarin and Titov. Yuri is very calm, at least he looks it, and eagerly assists the people who are dressing him. There are four of them: two are dressing, the other two are supervising or checking. Now I am on the chair and shoot from there. The next moment I am on the cabinet trying to get a better view from the top. Things hum!

The dressing procedure is coming to an end. Gagarin puts on a bright-orange suit, then they put high-laced boots on his feet. Then follows the white helmet. It has an inscription in big, red letters, "CCCP." His spacesuit is now connected to the portable ventilation system and is ventilated to prevent Yuri from sweating. He is ready now! They give him his ID card and, just in the event of a landing in an uninhabited area, a pistol and a hunting knife (bears cannot read ID cards!). At this moment, [Chief Designer Sergey P.] Korolev comes swiftly into the room. He has just come from the launch site.

"How are you?" he asks Yuri cheerfully

"Excellent, Sergey Pavlovich!" Gagarin smiles.

We get into the cosmonauts' bus first. The bus moves smoothly and slowly. Gagarin and Titov are talking. I close in on Yuri, then on Gherman, then switch to panoramic view of the bus. Then comes the road running ahead of us, the sunlit steppe, and the driver of the bus. Everybody in the bus wants to be close to the cosmonauts, so I have to ask and persuade the people to move back, to the left, to the right side.

Now the bus is near the rocket. Beside the rocket there are members of the State Commission: They are all waiting for Gagarin. All of them have a red band around the right arm elbow, their distinctive mark.

Yuri and German stand up and start to say goodbye. According to an old Russian tradition, on these occasions one should kiss the [one] going away three times on alternate cheeks. It is completely impossible to do so in clumsy suits with helmets on. So they simply clang each other with their helmets, and it looks very funny.

I grab the camera and portable lights for shooting inside the spacecraft and rush to the lift. "S.P. [Korolev] says it's OK." I yell it to the guard at the lift and get in. While riding in the lift I manage to shoot the launching pad through the fenders of the service ramp. From the top platform of the service ramp everything which is taking place at the launching pad and around it is seen very clearly. There the bus with Titov is standing. At the base of the rocket among the people with red bands Yuri instantly attracts the attention by his bright-orange suit. The lift which has brought me here is at the rocket base again ready to take him to his spacecraft. Oleg Ivanovsky takes Gagarin by the elbow and helps him into the lift. I film them both and ask two technicians from the launching crew to help me.

"Light", I yell, getting instantly nervous. The guys switch on the light. Lift is at the platform. Its door opens and Yuri is standing on the platform before the hatchway to his temporary space home. His face is very calm. He looks in my direction, spots me and stops for a moment, then shakes his head as if saying "again the movies!", waves his hand to me and comes to the hatchway. My hands are busy with the camera and I cannot shake his hand in farewell. He grabs the upperside of the hatchway and after a short lag pulls himself easily inside the capsule and into the seat. I switch off the camera and check the film meter. I have shot about 50 feet of film, which means that from the moment the lift has stopped to the moment I switched off the camera, only 30 seconds have elapsed. Yuri, comfortable in the seat, looks around, switches on the radio-communication system, and starts to check it. I film from behind the backs of people gathered around the hatchway. The white helmet can hardly be seen behind them. Now the time has come to close the hatch lid. Everybody in turn wish him good luck and says goodbye. I put my camera on the platform floor and squeeze myself through the crowd to the hatchway to bid my farewell to him.

"Good luck! See you in Moscow! I will meet you there," I yell to him.

The hour countdown command has been announced a long time ago. The 30 minutes countdown has been also announced. Now the time is being counted in minutes.

Now with the service girders taken away, the rocket is shining in all its futuristic beauty among the yellow-brown and bright-blue landscape. At the rocket top, the hatch lid is glittering in the bright sun. Behind it, the first man ever going to challenge space is sitting and waiting for his mission to start. Is he destined to return to the Earth safely, or to perish in the infinity of the Universe? In any case, in human history he is already not destined to oblivion.

Could this shy man from some obscure small village near Smolensk imagine that one day he would become the first man chosen by Providence to challenge the cosmic space? His biography is amazingly short and simple. He was born in 1934, and after graduating from technical-vocational school, enrolled at the Soviet air force cadet training center at Orenburg, graduating as a fighter pilot in 1957. Two years later he joined the newly forming group of cosmonauts.

The weather today is gorgeous: not a cloud, warm and a lot of sun.

The rocket now is living a life of its own: It steams, crackles, hisses. In its "nerves" -- computers, sophisticated instruments and devices, cables, valves, and pipelines -- unseen work is being done. And above all this, in a small spherical capsule called the Vostok spaceship, the man of the hour is sitting and waiting for his destiny. Everything is going according to plan. At last Gagarin pronounces his, what became famous, "poehali" (Russian equivalent of "off we go"), and the rocket starts to climb up into the friendly sky. Will it remain friendly until the completion of the mission?

All the information about the flight comes to the communication building, where now all the members of the State Commission are present. So far the flight is proceeding normally. In the corridor of the small building, on its porch and beside the building there are hundreds of people standing, talking and passing the news to each other. Here are the people who have completed their shifts but do not want to go home, being afraid to miss history in the making. There has been no Tass report yet on the radio, but soon all radio stations in the U.S.S.R. and in the whole world will interrupt their broadcasts to announce the sensational news: the Soviet Union has successfully launched a man in space, and his name is Yuri Gagarin! It is worthwhile to live for the sake of this moment!