From the start, the Soviet human space program had an identity crisis. Were cosmonauts heroic pilots steering their craft through the dangers of space, or were they mere passengers riding safely aboard fully automated machines? Tensions between Soviet cosmonauts and space engineers were reflected no[...]
Despite the wealth of information and archival material that has become available in the years following the fall of the USSR, the history of the Soviet space program has been dominated by the accounts of a select few, such as the recent four-volume English translation of Russian rocket designer Bor[...]