THE KREMLIN AND THE COSMOS

Daniloff's elementary political history of the Soviet space program aims at stripping away the ""layers of secrecy"" though time after time he is forced to whine that needed information ""still lies buried in the unfathomable files, archives, and official secrets."" In fact this is no more revelatory than Evgeny Riabchikov's sanitized Russians in Space (p. 996) and a good deal less informative about technological and administrative aspects of the Soviet space operation. Daniloff concentrates on the development of the space race and Russo-American attempts at cooperation, tossing out such previously orbited gossip as the CIA warned Ike and the National Security Council as early as 1955 of the possibility of a Russian satellite launch; in addition there are hush-hush generalizations about the Soviets' commitment to the moon race (Daniloff here constructs an elaborate, imaginary interview with Khrushchev after which he says ""Khrushchev's remarks sound quite reasonable""). Toward the end, Daniloff casually throws in a chapter on the press in the Soviet Union (he was UPI Moscow reporter for several years); not surprisingly, it's the most successful section of this dull book.