Several questions about Soviet involvement in the space race (mainly ones about race to the moon landing)

by Careless_Vertox

Hello, I'd like to ask you all a bunch of questions about space race, namely:

  • Did the Soviets care about landing on the moon before the Americans? If yes, how much?
  • How did the Soviet attempts to land on the moon look?
  • Should the space race be viewed as one race with the moon landing as its finish instead of multiple, smaller races to different "firsts" in the space? Therefore, should Americans be considered winners of the space race when Soviets did much more?
Dicranurus

Thanks to /u/Georgy_K_Zhukov for the heads up!

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I have addressed some of these questions here, but the short answer is that the USSR was invested on landing on the moon, and had attemped to do so; technologically the Soviet Union was probably several months behind the US, and in the run-up to the American moon landing was plagued by several significant setbacks.

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As you attempt to crown the "winner" of the Space Race, I think there is probably a considerable case to be made either way. The US did land on the moon, after all; but you rightfully note the dozens of Soviet achievements, persisting into the 1970s (consider the Soviet Venera program, for example). Politically, however, I think that the case probably falls to the United States, given the symbolism of the successful manned lunar mission.