Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency JPRS report, dated 1 August 1990, translates an interview with cosmonaut Maj. Gen. Aleksey Leonov from the Soviet journal Aviatsiya i Kosmonavtika. Leonov describes the Soviet manned lunar program, its L-1 and N-1 failures and crew training, and criticizes Soviet secrecy and economic policy. Asked whether Apollo 11 astronauts saw extraterrestrials, he says UFO watchers took a remark out of context, since "they" meant Earth.
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## Document 2 of 8 'elimination of unpromising villages,' the 'redirecting of the courses of the northern rivers,' and other pitifully memorable projects. And to this day, there is no economic mechanism to encourage enterprises to adopt new products or technologies that, in abundance, lie unclaimed in the space sector, for example. That is where the talk of the poor profitability of space comes from. But that's not the space program's fault--it's the space program's misfortune. 27. I remember how we were asked to monitor farm lands from space. In a matter of days, we produced a mountain of information; but it differed by 25-30 percent from the amount issued by Goskomstat [State Committee for Statistics]. And they refused our services. We explained that many of the fields are either smaller than indicated by the data of the Agroprom, or are not being used, and therefore were not included in the reckoning. The results of mismanagement are also very visible from space: pastures trampled down, rivers and ponds ruined, the air in cities polluted. We can talk about all the outrages committed on Soviet soil, for example, by the Ministry of Land Reclamation and Water Resources. There's a lot of talk today about the Aral Sea and Lake Balkhash. And yet, the cosmonauts were the first to sound the alarm, 15 years ago. I myself went to Pelsha, the chairman of the Party Control Committee of the CPSU Central Committee, and told him what was happening on the Baykal-Amur Railroad and at the Aral Sea. Although certain decisions were made with regard to the Baykal-Amur Railroad, nothing has been done for the Aral. 28. It seems that no one has any use for our information. I personally feel that it is primarily the economists who should be reproached for that. And here the press should place the emphasis where it belongs. Good communications are needed, in both directions, and then there will be an economic impact. 29. And the last question, often asked by the readers of our journal: Do you think those of us living today will witness the realization of a Soviet lunar program? 30. No such program is envisaged before the year 2000. After that, we shall see.
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 6 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.