Denial

Tables Turned: A U.S. Moon Landing

In the early days of the space race, it seemed that the Soviet Union had a solid lead in space over the United States. However, in 1969, eight years after Yuri Gagarin’s trip to space, and eleven years after the launch of Sputnik, it was not the Soviet flag that was planted on the Moon, but the American. On the 21st of July, 1969, Neil Armstrong, commander of NASA’s Apollo 11, took the first steps on the Moon, marking the end of the space race, crowning the United States victorious.

Soviet Denial: No Race to the Moon

Leonid Brezhnev, leader of the Soviet Union during the landing of Apollo 11

After the landing of Apollo 11, Soviet officials quickly denied having made any efforts to race the U.S. to the Moon. Due to the intense secrecy, no one at the time could be sure if the Soviets really had attempted to reach the Moon or not. Programs were kept secret and only revealed after mission success. According to Soviet officials, a Soviet lunar program did not exist and claimed

We are concentrating wholly on the creation of large satellite systems – Mstislav V. Keldysh

The Message Stuck

Soviet officials even criticized manned lunar missions as risky and worthless. These claims stuck, becoming ingrained in the ethos of space history. In fact, just five years after the landing Apollo 11, Walter Cronkite asserted

It turned out there had never been a race to the Moon.