Thread: Вид глаголов

I'd say it should be perfective, as each activity is a single concluded activity per person. If I'm not mistaken*, then with imperfective verbs it would refer to an ongoing activity (they were all shaking hands, embracing and wishing success for a while), but it should be more like "each of them shook his hand, embraced him and wished him success", each being a single and completed activity.

* ) Which I frequently am regarding Russian verb aspect...

If we are talking about what happened before the first enter of Gagarin into the Vostok. I would use perfective aspect: Каждый пожал космонавту руку, обнял, пожелал успеха.

But if there were a lot of persons who shook Gagarin's hand and every shaking took a long time the imperfective aspect is also acceptable: Каждый пожимал космонавту руку, обнимал, желал успеха.

However, the perfective aspect is more suitable here.