I tried asking this in /r/askscience but with no luck, so I'm trying it here.
So I've been reading up on space-history, reading about several "firsts" like the sputnik and Salyut programs.
I know I have quite a bit of reading ahead of me but it would seem to me that the USSR was well underway at winning the space-race.
Then America comes with Apollo and soon after the moon landing,
Was it just that America got more serious? Started spending more money? Did the USSR had economic trouble that prevented them from going to the moon? Did I miss some historic events that explain it better?
I would say two of the contributing reasons was that the Vostok Launcher was over engineered and not tested enough, and Sergey Korolev, the soviet chief rocket engineer, died during development of their moon lander.
Edit: Vostok, not Soyuz
http://davesweb.cnchost.com/Apollo1.html
Be sure to read all the way through him listing the impressive Russian achievements. Why did they give up? Russians didn't have a Hollywood...