1 Rouble Gagarin's Spaceflight

Issued to mark the twentieth anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's April 1961 Vostok 1 flight, this rouble appeared in 1981 as part of the Soviet commemorative programme that had been running since the 1965 Lenin centenary issues. Two die varieties exist — Y#188.1 and Y#188.2 differ in the alignment of the reverse lettering relative to the state emblem — and both circulated alongside ordinary one-rouble pieces without any premium attached in the domestic economy.

Gagarin himself had been dead for thirteen years by the time the coin was struck, killed in a MiG-15 training crash in March 1968 under circumstances that remain disputed.