During the heat of the space race in the early 60s, the Soviets just kept one-upping the USA. The USSR had (and still has) the distinction of putting the first living creature in space, bringing the first living creature home from space, putting the first man in space, doing the first orbit, putting the first woman in space and more. In fact, before the USA went to the moon, the Soviet Space Program had more than five times the amount of time spent in space than NASA.
But the Soviets, not exactly known for their ability to tell the truth, have been accused of fudging the facts to appear better in the race against the USA. Not that they lied about sending human beings into space, or lied about their acomplishments (as detractors of the American lunar landing believe of NASA) but rather, covered up some of the stuff they got wrong to make the stuff they got right seem fantastic compared to the Americans, whose space program encountered early setbacks and was behind the Soviets for most of the 1960s.
What exactly was covered up? Many people believe that the Soviet Space Program sent men into space who never came back.
The soviet space program was top secret, in many cases the engineers and scientists developing rockets were never credited by name until after their death. The publicized cosmonauts were not allowed to tell anyone of their space training, not even their wives - the government would put a sucessful story in Pravda after the cosmonaut was already in space.
Though the opractice of erasing a person's entire life was common in the USSR for enemies of the state, there is evedence of a number of cosmonaut photographs, where different versions contain different people present or airbrushed away.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, when all of the Soviet's secrets came out, there was still no evidence to support these rumours of dead cosmonauts, while testimonials claimed that near a dozen men and women were unaccounted for, and their space projects were nowhere to be found on record. People knew that men and women had been sent out into space, people knew that many didn't return — how they knew and what they were willing to talk about is another story.
Perhaps the most compelling pace of evidence is the radio transmission picked up by an Italian listening post. The recording a female cosmonaut's screams as she re-enters the planet's atmosphere, burning to death in the process.
five...four...three ...two...one...one
two...three...four...five...
come in... come in... come in...
LISTEN...LISTEN! ...COME IN!
COME IN... COME IN... TALK TO ME!
TALK TO ME!... I AM HOT!... I AM HOT!
WHAT?... FORTYFIVE?... WHAT?...
FORTYFIVE?... FIFTY?...
YES...YES...YES... BREATHING...
BREATHING... OXYGEN...
OXYGEN... I AM HOT... (THIS)
ISN'T THIS DANGEROUS?... IT'S ALL...
ISN'T THIS DANGEROUS?... IT'S ALL...
YES...YES...YES... HOW IS THIS?
WHAT?... TALK TO ME!... HOW SHOULD I
TRANSMIT? YES...YES...YES...
WHAT? OUR TRANSMISSION BEGINS NOW...
FORTYONE... THIS WAY... OUR
TRANSMISSION BEGINS NOW...
FORTYONE... THIS WAY... OUR
TRANSMISSION BEGINS NOW...
FORTYONE... YES... I FEEL HOT...
I FEEL HOT... IT'S ALL... IT'S HOT...
I FEEL HOT... I FEEL HOT... I FEEL HOT...
... I CAN SEE A FLAME!... WHAT?...
I CAN SEE A FLAME!... I CAN SEE A
FLAME!...
I FEEL HOT... I FEEL HOT... THIRTYTWO...
THIRTYTWO... FORTYONE... FORTYONE AM I GOING TO CRASH?... YES...YES... I FEEL HOT!...
I FEEL HOT!... I WILL REENTER!... I WILL REENTER...
I AM LISTENING!... I FEEL HOT!...
