The Italian Recordings were made from Sputnik-7 (if we're thinking of the same ones that Chertok mentions in his autobiography). But of course, that was the failed first attempt to launch their first Venus probe.
The Westerners got a little crazy about Sputnik-7 because it weighed 7 tons, the biggest object ever put in orbit then. They didn't realize they were seeing the fourth stage of the Molniya rocket, which was designed to launch a spacecraft from orbit -- also something that had not been done by anyone yet.
There have even been claims that the Lunokhod rovers were operated by communist dwarves, who volunteered (or not) for a suicide mission. That's my personal favorite of the phantom cosmonaut myths.