I have a book (in french) written by Leonov in 1970 (Pieton de l'espace - Spacewalker) and on the page about his re-entering the capsule, he writes about doing it head first,slowly threading his way , carefully, inside the hatch-- !! Nothing about depressurizing his suit; nothing about the capsule tumbling, about the cable during re-entry, the stuck hatch on the ground, nothing about his worries and concerns and only awe, amazement, delight (I bought that book in a second hand bookshop in the late seventies).

The fact that the Soviets were hiding information must have helped rumors about what happened in their space program.

I'm sure you remember Pierre Kohler's book "La derniere Mission" (and his chapter 7 "cosmic love") about the rumored sex in space (and e-mail exchanges about it from Friends and partners in space). I bought and read the book and e-mailed him that for a number of reasons, this never happened (we're in 2000) ; he didn't deny it never happened.
Another info I keep finding in french books (rumor feeding rumor) and his too, was about Chretien breaking the spacewalk duration record on december 12th 1988; (6 hours). While it was the Soviet record, it wasn't by far the US record!! Even discouting moonwalks, several US spacewalks in 1985 had exceeded 7 hours.

Another time, a journalist had written that a Bulgarian cosmonaut named Alexander Alexandrov had been 4 times in space and spent months with also spacewalks up there. I wrote to the guy that there is anothe Russian cosmonaut who has exactly the same first and last name and he thought it was only one guy (This actually helped me getting closer to astronauts during a visit the STS45 crew made in Belgium in september 1992-Journalists have always great contacts:). And as I'm no journalist, I often get the info after the event (like when Cernan came to Belgium and was interviewed by Christian Du Brulle; I do post info to him and he seems grateful and we've become friends but will he tell me when the next moonwalker comes here...?)
In 1998, during the ASE events, that's when we met Leonov, I couldn't help but notice how his stories change with time... We were only 25 in the room and I have no idea how many in the audience believed what he said when he told us in 10 years, humans will go to Mars.

Raoul