Background
The first space station, Salyut 1 (also called DOS-1) had been launched by the Soviet Union in April 1971. Only one mission successfully docked with Salyut 1, which was Soyuz 11, whose three person crew stayed aboard the station for 22 days in June 1971. After undocking from the station, the Soyuz 11 crew were killed during atmospheric reentry.
At the time there were competing civilian and military Soviet space programs; Salyut 1, for example, was developed as a civilian program. Other civilian stations, called Durable Orbital Stations (DOS), were considered successors of Salyut 1. These consisted of the unsuccessful DOS-2 in 1972, DOS-3 in 1974, and later the successful Salyut 4, Salyut 6, and Salyut 7.
The space stations funded and developed by the military, known as Almaz stations, were roughly similar in size and shape to the civilian DOS stations. But the details of their design, which is attributed to Vladimir Chelomey, are considered to be significantly different from the DOS stations. The first Almaz station was Salyut 2, which launched in April 1973, but failed only days after reaching orbit, and hence it was never manned.
Read more about this topic: Salyut 3
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