The Nuclear Age of the Space Race

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=Analysis=

The Research Question
When trying to determine whether this project as a whole succeed in answering the question posed, it is hard to come up with an absolute answer. An integral piece of the research, was finding the opinions of and amount of information presented by both the United States and the USSR. This process was plagued with many problems, some of which have their own roots in the Cold War, others were simply due to finite resources and a limited research period. The original plan was to find information through newspapers from both factions discussing the events, and their respective attitudes. Due to the lack of direct contact with the information, I was unable to substantialyl provide an adequate discription of the Soviet mind set. On the American side, there is an excess of information, a virtual treasure trove, though this information may not always be free (see below for advise). This obvious difference in the amount of information readily available speaks a great deal about time period and how it has effected even smaller more obscure parts of life today.

Pravda, the source I would try, semi-successfully to find has a history as interesting and heated as any other part of the Cold War. It was THE official newspaper of the U.S.S.R. and the Communist party, and while other papers where aloud to exist, they were smaller branches off the paper or localized forms of it. It would even be mandatory for many government agencies and individuals to subscribe to the paper, and it would serve this role until the end of the Soviet Union. It was at this point that the paper went into turmoil, the property, names and archives of the paper was bought by an Italian company, though the hearts of the writers were not as only a rough 10% of the original staff accepted the move. The vast majority would, after some legal disputes, go on to found ''Pravda Online. ''I was unable to find out further information on how to access the archives, though to those of you are researching a similar project I may have some helpful information bellow.

Finding the Pravda (at a cost)
The following link should give you a some help...should you be willing to pay for it. I was not able to get in touch with the site to discuss prices, but it does at least advertise as having the entire collection available for sale (digitally of course), making this a "Holy Grail" for this research project.

http://www.eastview.com/Files/EastViewPravdaDigitalArchive.pdf

Finding American News Sources (free)
One thing that might help those trying to do a similar project, that only needs front pages is to search for this "day in history" or specific newspapers followed by something such as "on this day". While it doesn't grant you access to full digital copies, it may offer the front page. The following links are examples of this type of work around in my own research.

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0720.html#article

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/991004onthisday_big.html