Materialist nonsense watch: Gagarin probably never said "I don't see any God up here" - was likely a Christian

According to an ENI article by Jonathan Luxmoore,

The world's first person in space, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, publicly advocated rebuilding Moscow's destroyed Christ the Saviour basilica despite being depicted as a committed atheist by the Soviet regime, a former friend has revealed.

"Like every Russian, Gagarin was baptised - and, as far as I know, he was a believer," said Colonel Valentin Petrov, an associate professor at Russia's Gagarin Air Force Academy. "Gagarin's motive was very simple: patriotism cannot be promoted without knowledge of one's roots."

Most interesting is this comment:

"The cosmonaut was often quoted as stating "I don't see any God up here" after exiting the earth's orbit, although the remark did not appear in verbatim transcripts of his flight."

Assuming this checks out, and I don't know a good reason to doubt it, as the entire Soviet regime was built on lies, it's going to take a long time, I suspect, to dematerialize our culture. So much that we think we know probably AIN'T so.