Leonid Vladimirov - The Russian Space Bluff - The Inside Story of the Soviet Drive to the Moon (1973).pdf

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Vladimirov, a Russian popular science writer who defected in 1966, offers a novel perspective on the space race. His temperately presented thesis is that the vaunted Russian technoscientific superiority of the '50's and early '60's was a carefully nurtured myth. He argues that the U.S.S.R. is a ""technologically backward"" country whose space accomplishments were the result of the application of unlimited resources and the genius of a few scientists, notably Korolyov, the ""Chief Designer"" whose identity was hidden for many years by a paranoid bureaucracy.