Question: When was the first Soviet satellite launched?
About the article "Cold War", section "Sino-Soviet split, space race, ICBMs".

Candidate passages:
The first amateur radio satellite was OSCAR-1, launched on December 12, 1961, in the United States.
Other programs besides OSCAR have included Iskra (Soviet Union), RS (Soviet Union and Russia) and CubeSats. 
The first satellite television signal was relayed from Europe to the Telstar satellite over North America in 1962.
The first geosynchronous communication satellite, Syncom 2, was launched in 1963.
The world's first commercial communications satellite, called Intelsat I (nicknamed "Early Bird"), was launched into synchronous orbit on April 6, 1965.
The first national network of satellite television, called Orbita, was created in Soviet Union in 1967, and was based on the principle of using the highly elliptical Molniya satellite for rebroadcasting and delivering of television signals to ground downlink stations.
The first commercial North American satellite to carry television transmissions was Canada's geostationary Anik 1, which was launched in 1972.
ATS-6, the world's first experimental educational and Direct Broadcast Satellite, was launched in 1974.
The first Soviet geostationary satellite to carry Direct-To-Home television, called Ekran, was launched in 1976. 
Early Kosmos satellites.
Kosmos 1.
Kosmos 1, also known as Sputnik 11, was launched on March 16, 1962 at 12:00:00 UTC.
Orbital mass 285 kg.
It was the first satellite of the Soviet Earth Satellite series.
Employed radio instruments in order to study the structure of the ionosphere. 
The first satellite, BeiDou-1A, was launched on October 31, 2000.
The second satellite, BeiDou-1B, was successfully launched on December 21, 2000.
The last operational satellite of the constellation, BeiDou-1C, was launched on May 25, 2003. 
The first commercial use of satellites may have been the Telstar 1 satellite, launched in 1962, which was the first privately sponsored space launch, funded by AT&T and Bell Telephone Laboratories.
Telstar 1 was capable of relaying television signals across the Atlantic Ocean, and was the first satellite to transmit live television, telephone, fax, and other data signals.
Two years later, the Hughes Aircraft Company developed the Syncom 3 satellite, a geosynchronous communications satellite, leased to the Department of Defense.
Commercial possibilities of satellites were further realized when the Syncom 3, orbiting near the International Date Line, was used to telecast the 1964 Olympic Games from Tokyo to the United States.
Between 1960 and 1966, NASA launched a series of early weather satellites known as Television Infrared Observation Satellites (TIROS).
These satellites greatly advanced meteorology worldwide, as satellite imagery was used for better forecasting, for both public and commercial interests.
On April 6, 1965, the Hughes Aircraft Company placed the Intelsat I communications satellite geosynchronous orbit over the Atlantic Ocean.
Intelsat I was built for the Communications Satellite Corporation (COMSAT), and demonstrated that satellite-based communication was commercially feasible.
Intelsat I allowed for near-instantaneous contact between Europe and North America by handling television, telephone and fax transmissions.
Two years later, the Soviet Union launched the Orbita satellite, which provided television signals across Russia, and started the first national satellite television network.
Similarly, the 1972 Anik A satellite, launched by Telesat Canada, allowed the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to reach northern Canada for the first time.
Beginning in 1997, Iridium Communications began launching a series of satellites known as the Iridium satellite constellation, which provided the first satellites for direct satellite telephone service.