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Russia made many great and lasting contributions to the space race and will make many more in the future. The jingonistic nature of history presented simply plays to the audience. Were the roles reversed I would expect the US achievements would be eliminated or at least downplayed.
The US believes that they invented the computer even if it was some time after the British invented one. I remember talking to a Russian scientist many years ago who told me that I had major gaps in my knowledge (nothing new there) and that they had invented the telephone, radio, and heavier than air air flight. He also claimed that Westinghouse stole the railroad air brakes from a Russian invention and that Teslar's work on AC current was based on Russian discoveries. Right or wrong, he believed these thing to be true.
Every country has its own myths about their contributions to the world. How many of our myths are true and how many are simply the result of a good marketing and public relations effort?
One of the most famous stories about General David Sarnoff, the founder of RCA, was that he was the first to receive the SOS from the Titantic while working in a display window of a large Philadelphia department store. (Radio was still a novelty then.) Over the years this myth grew to near epic proportions and was repeated in every biography of Sarnoff and every annual report by RCA. It was taught in schools and colleges. The only problem was it never happened. Someone traced the timeline for the iceberg and the possible times the SOS could have been sent and the times an SOS was recorded as being received. For all of these times the place where Sarnoff worked was closed so he could not have received the message. Finally, in letters released after his death he admitted that the first time he had heard the story was when he was introduced as a speaker at a shareholders meeting. The biographies about his continue to spread the myth.
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