Originally posted by APerno
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The story sounds garbled to me. There were already rumours of lost cosmonauts virtually from the time Sputnik went into orbit, mostly due to the tight-lipped Russian policy - any mysterious launch that wasn't followed by an announcement generated speculation that something terrible had happened.
The italian brothers weren't spying for the Americans (who had their own listening stations), and the fact that nobody else detected the transmissions points to the brothers at best hearing what they wanted to hear, at worst deliberate deception (some reports say the dying female cosmonaut has an Italian accent).
In the seventies, the Russians did admit to some deaths that they had covered up at the time - notably the Nedelin disaster in which several top rocket scientists along with perhaps over a hundred technicians were incinerated when a rocket engine prematurely ignited while being fueled for launch - but I don't think they admitted faking any deaths.
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