The fact that the USSR had its own program of manned space flights to the Moon, Soviet citizens, with the exception of a very narrow group of initiates, first learned only during the "perestroika". The first "secrets" of the USSR's lunar program were made public in 1989, when the United States celebrated 20 years of landing its astronauts from Apollo 11 on the lunar surface. However, despite the growing flow of information, much remains unclear.
Inconclusive excuses
After the Soviet Union was the first to launch an artificial Earth satellite (the United States was four months behind us here), and then sent the world's first cosmonaut on a full-fledged orbital flight (the Americans were able to repeat this only after almost a whole year), no one in the USSR doubted that the Soviet cosmonauts would be the first on the Moon. The news that the Americans managed to fly around the moon in December 1968, and landed on it in July 1969, came as a real shock to the Soviet people. Including for specialists. No less a shock was the fact that no retaliatory steps from the USSR followed. The leadership of the USSR made a good face with a bad game, trying to convince everyone of the incredible - as if it never planned to send people to the moon.
The arguments made by officials and popularizers that the USSR was not going to spend huge amounts of money on such a space program that could not give anything to the national economy sounded helpless. After all, it was clear that the victory in the lunar race brought the United States, its science and technology, enormous prestige throughout the world. This success was a revenge for the United States, which more than covered all the first defeats from the USSR in space. And everyone knew that the USSR, for the sake of prestigious achievements, did not spend on such expenses as the USA did in the Apollo program.
The explanation seemed more plausible, which was adhered to by almost everyone, but which in the USSR could not be voiced publicly. Yes, the "experts" said, we certainly had a lunar program. But seeing that the United States was clearly ahead of us in it, it quickly turned away. Scientific results, and considerable ones, were obtained with the help of automatic stations and "Lunokhod". And sending astronauts there after the American triumph, and even at the risk of their lives, did not make sense, because nothing would give the Soviet Union in terms of international prestige.
This explanation made the Soviet leadership inadequate. After all, if the United States behaved according to this principle, then after Gagarin's flight, even after our first satellite, they should not have repeated these achievements of ours. So the motives of the USSR still remained unclear.
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The scope of the lunar program
New information from the 90s has added more confusion. It turned out that the program of manned flights to the Moon in the USSR was not terminated immediately after the Americans announced their successes. The modification of the Soyuz spacecraft, launched by the Proton launch vehicle to fly around the Moon by two cosmonauts, was carried out until 1970, and they were quite ready for the task. But the last step - a manned flight - was not given the go-ahead by the Politburo headed by Leonid Brezhnev.
To deliver a manned spacecraft to the Moon, a super-powerful launch vehicle N-1 was created. Its fine-tuning experienced great difficulties. The rocket exploded regularly at the launch pad. Nevertheless, work on it continued all the time while the Americans, according to their statements, flew to the moon. They were terminated only in 1974, after the end of the Apollo program.
Destruction of a unique rocket
Most of the rocket scientists themselves and the military involved in Soviet space, who left memories and diaries (Boris Chertok, Valentin Mishin, Vladimir Bugrov, Nikolai Kamanin), make it clear that, after the untimely and strange death of Sergei Pavlovich Korolev under the knife of a surgeon, in space an unhealthy situation developed in the USSR industry She was characterized by personal intrigue with no clear purpose. As a result, in 1974 Academician Valentin Glushko became the head of the united NPO Energia. One of his first orders was not just the termination of work on the N-1, but the destruction of two samples of this rocket already ready for testing.
Thus, the explanation disappears that work on the elements of the lunar program, after refusal to complete it, was carried out only to work out technical situations associated with new rockets, ships, engines. If this were the case, then there was no need to abandon the already scheduled tests, and especially to eliminate the built carriers without testing. Did Glushko's personal dislike for Korolev's legacy, about which everyone writes, prompted him to take such an irrational step? But after all, Glushko could not have done it without the knowledge and approval of the Politburo, especially General Dmitry Ustinov, who was in charge of the Central Committee for the defense industry.
It turns out that the matter, apparently, is not about money, because the expensive components of the lunar program were brought by the leadership of the USSR almost to completion, and the disposal of ready-made carriers was completely pointless destruction of these spent funds. And not only in the success of the United States, because the work on the program continued after it.
Double conspiracy
Obviously, the leadership of the USSR forbade mentioning its lunar program because it would not be able to clearly explain the reasons for abandoning it at the finish line. There is a version, set forth in a number of sensational investigation books (by Yuri Mukhin, Alexander Popov, and others), that the Americans actually staged a landing on the moon. The Soviet leadership knew about this and, with its lunar program, blackmailed the United States by exposing this forgery. In response, the United States made political concessions.
Late 60s - early 70s were marked by a radical "relaxation" of international tension. The USSR received a lot of economic benefits in relations with the West, including the ability to supply energy there. Receiving what they were looking for, the leadership of the USSR limited and then completely stopped their work on the lunar program. Moreover, he pledged to the United States to destroy all of its technical reserve, including finished media.
Mutual rejection of the moon as a military base
This version works even without the assertion that the Americans did not land on the moon. In the 60s, the United States developed plans to use the moon for basing strategic nuclear missiles and shelters in case of war. The Apollo program convinced the US elite that even the first steps to master the Moon would be very costly. But who knows what "these Russians" can do there? It was very important for the United States to force the Soviet leadership to abandon any plans to reach and master the Moon. And to do this regardless of whether the Apollo actually flew to the Moon or not.
On the other hand, it was also important for the Soviet leaders not to provoke the Americans to turn the Moon into a military base. The USSR would definitely not have survived such a round of the arms race.
Yaroslav Butakov