Moon landing the first Soyuz flight in 1967, the co-ordination of the Soviet Moon landing program quickly unraveled. The Soviets built a landing craft and selected cosmonauts for the mission that would have placed Aleksei Leonov on the Moon's surface, but with the successive launch failures of the N1 booster in 1969, plans for a manned landing suffered first delay and then cancellation. A program of automated return vehicles was begun, in the hope of being the first to return lunar rocks. This had several failures. It eventually succeeded with Luna 16. But this had little impact, because the Apollo 11 and
Russia (USSR) vs Rest of the World two matches. As the 20th century entered its final third, it was already apparent to chess historians and enthusiasts that the USSR had raised standards to a level to which other nations could only aspire. The USSR had produced an uninterrupted line of world champions stretching from 1948 to 1970. Since its earliest participation, the USSR had completely dominated team chess events such as the Chess Olympiad and European Team Championship. So pronounced was the gulf between the Soviet national side and their closest competitors, a sterner challenge was required to gauge the full extent of their supremacy. Such a