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Eight cosmonauts arrived in Washington, D.C. on February 7th, 1975 to start their final training session in the U.S. as the technical specialists argued whether the spacecraft was ready or not.
ASTP Cosmonauts visit Disney World
Leonov enters the Apollo Command Module
ASTP Soyuz Spacecraft being readied for the mission
I’m not a big fan of Proxmire, but shockingly enough I do think he was generous in his assessment of Soyuz missions up to that point.
Soyuz-1: Crew lost.
Soyuz-2: Nominal, but uncrewed.
Soyuz-3: Failed to dock with Soyuz-2, crew landed safely.
Soyuz-4 & 5: Service module on Soyuz-5 failed to detach on reentry, pilot nearly killed.
Soyuz-6: Nearly depressurized during welding experiment
Soyuz-7, 8: Failed to dock; both landed safely.
Soyuz-9: Long duration mission, cosmonauts unable to walk for a week.
Soyuz-10: Failed to achieve hard dock.
Soyuz-11: Crew lost.
Soyuz-12: Nominal
Soyuz-13: Nominal
Soyuz-14: Nominal
Soyuz-15: Failure to dock
Soyuz-16: Nominal
Soyuz-17: Nominal
Soyuz-18A: Crew used escape system on ascent.
Soyuz-18: Nominal.
So in the first 18 launches, I count ten cases where the mission failed, or the crew died, or came close to it. Soyuz had a very dangerous teething period, and ASTP came along just as Soyuz came into its own.
Admittedly, not to impressive.