It seems kind of odd to me that the statue of Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin is on display (for a year) in London England right next to British explorer James Cook. I guess the Cold War is officially forgotten.
Some people don't give a sh-t about anything and aren't afraid to express their ignorance. The Brits don't have much of a space exploration history. While the US was planting the Flag on the moon the Brits were awarding Knighthood to Beatles and fruitcakes like Elton John. I doubt if the US would unveil a statue of a Russian Cosmonaut but anything can happen during the administration that tells kids that Chairman Mao was a great hero.
Considering the conditions that Gagarin had to deal with, he deserves a statue. He got the job as first guy up on the Russian rocket because the guy who had been selected for the job burned to death when his capsule got super saturated with oxygen and caught fire. Would have been better if the poor sucker had died right away, but he lived for a week, and Gagarin was the guy who supervised his care at the hospital. He was from Volgograd and he is the local fair haired boy. The street where he grew up was named after him. There is also a park named for him there.
Nobody argues that Gagarin is a hero in Volgograd. Any cosmonaut who survived the junk that Russia was manufacturing deserved a statue. My point is why London England? What about Neil Armstrong? At least the US and the UK were allies when an American was the first human to set foot on the Moon.
Not forgotten, but a statue of a space hero hardly seems like a bone of contention. If they recreated a gulag and called it a job-training facility, maybe.