Funnily enough at a trivia night at the local club last week the question asked was “How many Soviet astronauts landed on the moon?”. All of us who new the answer was none thought the question was stupidly easy but not everyone got it right. This thread explains why.
The “moon landing hoax” story includes the fact that the Soviets never tried because they knew that the astronauts would die if they travelled through the Van Allen Belt.
This is interesting. I have heard a lot about the Moon landings, as you might imagine, but I can honestly say I hadn’t heard that people thought the Soviets had landed men there.
And Podkayne… well, what can I say. I guess you’d know more about Mars than the Moon… 
Heh heh . . . You’re right, of course. My knowledge of your grotesquely large satellite is sometimes lacking.
Luckily, it has thusfar been simple to fool you silly groudhogs with your primitive Mars probes. There was a bit of a scare when some joker at the Main Office in Hesperia Planum let that image of the Face slip through as a gag, but we were careful to transmit the “correct” image to MGS, and the substitution seems to have fooled everyone of any importance. By the way, our school children thank you for sending the Pathfinder rover. A class of second-graders has rehabilitated it, and, how do you Earthers say? “Souped it up?” They still take it joy-riding from time to time.
When you finally get around to sending a manned mission, I suspect that we’ll have to kidnap your astronauts and brainwash them in mad alien sex-orgies to protect the secret of our existence.
I’m in! Where do I sign up?
Ah, dear, simple Terrans.
This is going to be easier than we thought.
I always thought they landed people on the moon too. Haven’t I heard the phrase, referring to the US “The first to land a man on the moon.”?
Everything you ever wanted to know about the Russian Lunar Lander (the LK) that never went to the moon.
As well as the Russian Super Booster (the N1) which never even made it out of the atmosphere…
Well, according to Chumpsky, the Soviets landed on the moon to protect the moonling workers’ rights, but the evil imperialist Americans ruined all that and set up sweatshops and fascist dictatorships.
A friend of mine is married to a woman who grew up in Hungaria. Not only does she believe that the Soviets put people on the moon but she also believes that the US did not.
Hmph. And I thought my teacher was alone in her unmitigated ignorance when she was shocked that I knew `Buzz’ Aldrin was the second man on the moon.
Ignorance has a strong foothold in the final frontier.