Editing Space Race (section)

==== Soviet secrecy and obfuscation ====
{{Further|Soviet space program}}On August 30, 1955, [[Sergei Korolev]] succeeded in convincing the [[Soviet Academy of Sciences]] to establish a commission dedicated to achieving the goal of launching a satellite into Earth orbit before the United States,{{sfn|Schefter|1999|pp=3–5}} this can be viewed as the ''de facto'' start date of the space race. The [[Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union]] began a policy of treating development of its space program as top-secret. When the Sputnik project was first approved, one of the immediate courses of action the [[Politburo]] took was to consider what to announce to the world regarding their event. The [[Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union]] (TASS) established precedents for all official announcements on the Soviet space program. The information eventually released did not offer details on who built and launched the satellite or why it was launched.<ref name="books.google.com">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=W7oRuOZbb8IC|title=Into the Cosmos: Space Exploration and Soviet Culture|isbn=978-0-8229-7746-9|access-date=2016-01-19|last1=Andrews|first1=James T.|last2=Siddiqi|first2=Asif A.|year=2011|publisher=University of Pittsburgh Pre }}</ref>

The Soviet space program's use of secrecy served as both a tool to prevent the leaking of [[classified information]] between countries, and to avoid revealing specifics to the Soviet populace in regards to their short and long term goals; the program's nature embodied ambiguous messages concerning its goals, successes, and values. Launches were not announced until they took place, [[cosmonaut]] names were not released until they flew, and outside observers did not know the size or shape of their rockets or cabins of most of their spaceships, except for the first Sputniks, lunar probes, and Venus probe.<ref name="ebooks.ohiolink.edu">{{cite web|url=http://ebooks.ohiolink.edu/xtf-ebc/view?docId=tei/sv2/9781461430520/9781461430520.xml&query=&brand=default|title=OhioLINK Institution Selection |website=Ebooks.ohiolink.edu|access-date=2016-01-19}}</ref>

The Soviet military maintained control over the space program; Korolev's [[OKB-1]] design bureau was subordinated under the [[Ministry of General Machine Building]],<ref name="books.google.com"/> tasked with the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles, and continued to give its assets random identifiers into the 1960s.<ref name="books.google.com"/> Information about failures was systematically withheld, historian James Andrews notes that Soviet media coverage of the space program, particularly human space missions, rarely reported any failures or difficulties, creating the impression of a flawless operation:<blockquote>"With almost no exceptions, coverage of Soviet space exploits, especially in the case of human space missions, omitted reports of failure or trouble".<ref name="books.google.com" /></blockquote>Dominic Phelan noted in the book ''Cold War Space Sleuths'' (Springer-Praxis 2013): "The [[USSR]] was famously described by [[Winston Churchill]] as '''a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma''<nowiki/>' and nothing signified this more than the search for the truth behind its space program during the Cold War. Although the Space Race was literally played out above our heads, it was often obscured by a figurative 'space curtain' that took much effort to see through".<ref name="ebooks.ohiolink.edu" />