[andyk]

IIRC, now the Russian space program has a beter safety record that us.

Overall, I'd say probably not. More recently, that's probably true. For the first twenty to thirty years, their program was highly secret, and failures were not made public. Only recently have we become aware of some of the tragic losses of the Soviet space program.

[RussianJew]

Overall, I'd say probably not. More recently, that's probably true. For the first twenty to thirty years, their program was highly secret, and failures were not made public. Only recently have we become aware of some of the tragic losses of the Soviet space program.

Cosmonauts losses:

In space: 1+3=4 cosmonauts (during athmosphere reentering). This tragedies were well known to the Soviet public.

On earth: 1 cosmonaut (blast of pure oxygen in the prototype capsule, the same that happened to Apollo - 1 ?).

Gagarin, the first man that was in the space, died during the training flight on MIG jet.