I feel like at least in the US very little is known about the Venera missions (and Venus landings, there were several; 2 of the motherships then also approached

I feel like at least in the US very little is known about the Venera missions (and Venus landings, there were several; 2 of the motherships then also approached a comet using Venus' gravity assist), and Buran, which has flown and landed only once, but fully autonomously in 1986 (something we haven't seen until Boeing X-37 24 years later). The UK might have a more balanced view of events as a non-participant of the hotly contested space race. Hardly anyone in the US today knows about Gagarin (first man in space), not to mention Leonov (first spacewalk) or any of the other Soviet "firsts" besides Sputnik. Which, to me, is understandable, the Moon landings were such dramatic overkill that they loom large in the public consciousness and overshadow all the other "firsts", even now after five decades, and rightly so.