I understand they had to handle Gagarin quite carefully after that, since he was quite bitter for such a public figure.
...
He was very photogenic and personable. The Soviets made great use of him for publicity by sending him on tours. Too bad he died a few years later in a senseless plane crash.
The first cosmonaut to die in the Soviet space program was because of alcohol too.
He was in a pressurized O2 chamber, and used an alcohol wipe to clean off the residue from an adhesive sensor on his skin. He tossed the pad, and instead of in the trash can, it landed on a heated, electric hot plate.
He had no chance.
Like G Larry, I always wondered about his plane crash.
Flying is dangerous enough as it is, so a plane crash is not in and of itself suspicious.
Unless you are a Soviet public figure who is on the verge of being a loose cannon. But I don’t have any proof of that, so that is as far as I take it.