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		</div><p>Russians are commemorating the achievements of Yuri Gagarin, the cosmonaut who became the first person in space 60 years ago.</p>
<p>Gagarin’s 108-minute mission on April 12 1961 took the Space Age to a new level and marked a historic achievement for the then-Soviet Union, which beat the United States in a tight race to launch a man beyond the Earth’s atmosphere.</p>
<p>For the Soviet people, Gagarin’s spaceflight was a triumph comparable to the victory over the Germans in the Second World War.</p>
<p>It has remained a source of national pride in Russia ever since, a symbol of the country’s bravery and technological prowess.</p>
<p>Gagarin died just seven years after he orbited the planet, but the first monuments glorifying him and his pioneering achievement were erected while he still was alive.</p>
<p>There are dozens of monuments and memorials dedicated to the cosmonaut across Russia, from a giant statue towering over Moscow to a more modest monument on the Sakhalin Island in the Pacific Ocean.</p>
<p>A titanium obelisk depicting a starting rocket and dedicated to the first Soviet cosmonauts was unveiled in Moscow in 1964.</p>
<p>Standing 107 metres high (351ft), it includes a Gagarin relief.</p>
<p>The Cosmonauts Alley near the Conquerors of Space monument which opened in 1967 features bronze busts of Gagarin and other Soviet cosmonauts.</p>
<p>Another towering monument built in 1980 also became a Moscow landmark: a titanium statue of Gagarin standing on a pedestal formed to resemble rocket exhaust. It is 42 metres (138ft) high and weighs 12 tonnes.</p>
<p>After Gagarin died in a training jet crash in March 1968, he was buried near the Kremlin Wall alongside former Soviet leaders.</p>
<p>The field near Moscow where his plane crashed also has a memorial.</p>
<p>Other Gagarin monuments include a statue in Star City, home to the spaceflight training centre just outside the capital where Gagarin and many other cosmonauts lived.</p>
<p>Dozens of others are spread across Russia, including one in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, on the far-eastern Sakhalin Island.</p>
<p>A statue of Gagarin also marks the Baikonur space launch facility, the place he blasted off from in then-Soviet Kazakhstan.</p>
<p>After the Soviet Union’s collapse, Russia leased Baikonur for both piloted space missions and satellite launches.</p>
<p>A field near the Volga River where Gagarin landed after his historic 1961 flight bears an obelisk, and a Gagarin statue added later.</p>
<p>A theme park was set up there to mark the 60th anniversary of his flight.</p>
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