Vladimir Komarov went on a space suicide mission to save his best friend, Yuri

Hmm, I've read A Man on the Moon and Failure is not an Option and I don't recall any inaccuracies in the Apollo 13 movie. According to the wikipedia there were a few but it mostly seems like simplifications, not embellishments:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13_(film)#Technical_a...

FWIW, the Russian Wikipedia mentions the following: during descent the drag parachute failed to deploy the main parachute, either because they screwed up during manufacturing (there was supposed to be some paper between the parachute and the box which it was in, and instead the box got hot, the paint melted, and the parachute stuck to it; a hypothesis - there is no evidence - but a plausible one), or because of thermal protection, or because the walls of the parachute compartment caved in because of pressure differential. The main parachute did actually deploy later, but got tangled up in the straps of the drag parachute which was supposed to be blown off by an explosive device, which didn't fire.

It is true that the flight was in response to the increased number of US flights over the preceding year. But I wouldn't necessarily say the catastrophe was caused by the rushed schedule here (remember, this was the _very first_ manned flight of the Soyuz), nor would I say that anyone was "saving" anyone else, or that Komarov knowingly embarked on a death mission. To say so would imply mind-reading powers, and I don't know anyone who possesses them, least of all some American dudes who wrote the book to make a buck.

The Wikipedia article also says the Soviets stopped manned flights for a year and a half after this disaster. All three of the hypothetical flaws in the parachute system were preemptively addressed, the Soyuz was considerably re-designed to improve safety, and six additional unmanned flights were carried out to make sure shit like this never happens again.

To this day, only two of Soyuz capsules resulted in crew loss out of 142 launches, and Soyuz is considered the world's safest manned space platform, and also the only one that's operational at the moment.

To "embellish" a tragedy like this is extremely disrespectful and irresponsible. I lived in the Soviet union in 1986 and remember when Challenger blew up Russians reacted with shock and commiseration, not some bullshit "embellishment" that invents astronauts "cursing" as they plunge to their death.

The capsule doesn't even have radio during the stage of the descent, where it is claimed Komarov cursed everyone, especially if it's spinning, as Soyuz-1 was, and there was no recorder left after the hydrogen peroxide fire. From this I conclude that everything that's not supported by the Soviet archive documents is total made up bullshit.

In this case the craft was not ready, it seemed to be widely known that the person who took that spot would die. I think that is an important contrast compared to "everyone sent into space"

Note the subtle difference between "sending people to space" and "sending people to die in space". (As explained in the thread, Soyuz-1 was hurried to launch for political reasons despite being unspaceworthy)

Thank you, that's a good description of how it plays out. I hadn't heard that term for it before.