[GauntletWizard]

Plenty of Americans in reasonably cosmopolitan areas reacted poorly to space-related uncertainty. Grover's Mill[1] is within walking distance of Princeton campus.

People didn't know what to think, and the Soviets were far more secretive of their space program than the Americans were - Their successes were announced after the fact, their failures were quiet. I would not have blamed anyone in rural Siberia for not recognizing a cosmonaut in a spacesuit/jumpsuit as "human".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grovers_Mill,_New_Jersey

[SkittyDog]

That is a pretty good counter-example, I have got to admit... I'm not convinced, but yeah, you got a hell of a point there.

I think the US in 1938 was maybe in a distinct situation, though... For one, the US in the 30s may have been primed to thoughts of space aliens by the consumption of mass quantities of SF--radio serials, films, books, etc.

Also, the real-world news in 1938 was pretty tense, and very heavy on the specific theme of invasion... WWII was already swinging in the Pacific, and everybody in Europe was expecting the shooting to start soon. Here in the US, there was a general sense that we'd get violently drawn into it, sooner or later.

So I dunno... You definitely moved the needle for me on this one, but I'm still pretty skeptical that some isolated Siberian farmers in the 1960s would go straight for the "space aliens" explanation. Maybe I'm just rationalizing my earlier post--I'd be the last to know.

[justsomehnguy]

Just look at [0]

There is no doubt those people saw StarWars in some way or the other and they definitely saw stormtrooper armour in some time in their lives. Yet...

[0] https://globalnews.ca/video/6908239/woman-in-star-wars-storm...

[SkittyDog]

We could imagine an infinity of possible theories that might explain why these Russian people reacted with fear at Gagarin's landing. But being possible doesn't mean something is correct, or even plausible.

Rather than space aliens, I find it far more compelling to consider that:

• Russia had been severely traumatized by WWII, less than a generation earlier. Tens of millions died in combat and of starvation.

• After WWII, Russia awas again severely traumatized by Stalinism and his political purges. For a decade, anyone who was even suspected of stepping out of line was oiable to get imprisoned or just executed.

• During the 1950s and early 1960s, the CIA was attempting to train Russian expatriates in the West to return to Russia as spies and organizers of underground resistance in the event WWIII broke out. The program was a complete disaster... The CIA trained and equipped dozens of young men, and then PARACHUTED them into Eastern Bloc countries,after which none of them were ever heard from, ever again. (It's assumed they were all immediately caught and executed.)

So in the early 1960s, when some dude in a parachute lands in your village, I think it's far less speculative to assume that they were afraid Yuri Gagarin might be a Western spy.

No need for space aliens... And no need to insult the intelligence of these Russians by lumping them in with ol' Karen up in Lethbridge, who was such a simple rube that we all laugh at her for calling the police on a Stormtrooper.

Honestly, I see why the "space aliens" narrative is appealing: It's funnier! It's hilarious to imagine old timey Russian villagers, hiding in fear of space invaders.

Unless anybody reading this happens to be Russian, in which case we'd be making up silly stories that mainly serve to depeict their parents or grandparents as a bunch of simple, stupid, gullible pigeons.

And I just don't see the point in that whole line of thinking, when we already have much more plausible theories, already.

[justsomehnguy]

Occam demands not to dig deeper than it should be enough.

Bunch of people, who lives in the deeps of an agrarian country (and TV isn't available yet), sees something extremely out of regular order of things. And that is coming for them! Of course they would be afraid of this totally unfamiliar experience.

Some notes:

I'm not sure how far those people were from the point where Gagarin ejected, but they probably heard some strange sounds before the encounter.

Parachutes were a known thing by that time, though if you never seen it on the ground before you probably wouldn't recognize it as such.

Pilots were still flying in a pilot's flight gear[0], at least in the collective consciousness. Someone/something in a big round helmet and a bright orange suit doesn't register as a pilot's flight gear nor as something have seen before. You can see how (a decade before) some people perceived the "space suits", unsurprisingly - just a like a winter soldier gear. *grin*

By the '60s the understanding on how a space suit should look emerge, but it still was quite off the real deal: [2] (Be sure to check mini-Godzillas attack at ~1:00!)

As you can see [3] there were a bright red CCCP label on his helmet. Looks like that didn't helped much.

[0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pilot_Boris_Safonov....

[1] https://youtu.be/Q59hwGqL3Q4

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjnZ3Nc8VZ4

[3] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gagarin_suit.jpg

[retrac]

For what it's worth, when I was writing my post I was trying to empathize with them, not make fun of them. Space aliens is honestly something I would think of myself in that situation, I think, at least fleetingly. We're not all so down to Earth, so to speak. :)