Cosmonauts
In 1966, two cosmonaut training groups were formed. One group was commanded by Vladimir Komarov and included Yuri Gagarin, and was to prepare for qualification flights of the Soyuz in Earth orbit and a Proton launched cis-lunar mission (Gagarin, Nikolayev, Komarov, Bykovskiy, Khrunov; Engineer-Cosmonauts: Gorbatko, Grechko, Sevastyanov, Kubasov, Volkov). Komarov later died in the Soyuz 1 spaceflight when his parachute malfunctioned causing his capsule to smash into the earth at high speed. The second group was led by Alexei Leonov and concentrated on the landing mission (Commanders: Leonov, Popovich, Belyayev, Volynov, Klimuk; Engineer-cosmonauts: Makarov, Voronov, Rukavishnikov, Artyukhin). As a result, Leonov has the strongest claim to have been the Soviets' first choice for first man on the moon.
After Komarov's death in Soyuz 1 in 1967, Gagarin was taken out of training and the groups were restructured. Despite the Soyuz 1 setback, the Soviets successfully rehearsed the automated docking of two unmanned Soyuz craft in Earth orbit in 1968 and with the manned Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 joint mission in early 1969 tested the other key mission elements.
A total of 18 missions were related to the N1-L3 project. For details, see the table at the bottom of the article.
Read more about this topic: Soviet Manned Lunar Programs