PARAPSYCHOLOGY IN THE USSR.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: STARGATE
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP96-00792R000500210001-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: November 4, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 5, 2000
• Sequence Number: 1
• Content Type: OUTLINE

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I. Reports of studies of psi in the USSR go back to the mid 19th
century. According to MARTIN EBON, in his book, "PSI IN THE USSR,
RELIGION WITHOUT A CROSS" (see Appendix 1, Reference Literature),
Russian scientists and laity have been researching various
parapsychological phenomena for decades befor.e the 1917 October
Revolution.
- From 1857 to 1867, the newspaper "WESTNIK EUROPY" in Petersburg
appeared, which dealt with mediums and other openly unexplainable
phenomena.
- The medium phenomenon was reexamined for its veracity around 1860 by
a special committee of the Physical Society of the University of
Petersburg, which was founded just for this purpose, and a dispute
developed between Mendelejev and the then-prominent spiritualist
A.N. Aksakov over the presumptions and methodologies of the study.
Mendelejev had openly exposed fraudulent mediums.
- The oldest known report of telepathy experiments in Russia
describes, as does EBON in his book, telepathy experiments in
Tashkent through Alexander Wilkins around 1870, and was published in
Paris in the "Annals of Physical Science".
- The Russian Society for Experimental Psychology was founded in 1891.
It was interested in clairvoyance, psychometry and poltergeist
phenomena. Materialism led to a search for new, new, no longer
religious truths. Hypnosis, seances, with their connections to
ghosts, and a string of unexplainable, supernatural phenomena such
as thought transference and other related areas were popular.
- So, research in parapsychology in the USSR was about the same as in
the USA and other European countries up until the time of the
industrial revolution.
II. EBON lists other scientists and works in parapsychology which
occurred between the 1917 October revolution and the mid 'SOs:
- VLADIMIR M. BECHTEREV (Leningrad): mental communication between dogs
and humans.
- P.P. LAZAREV (1922): published "Psycho-chemical Principles of the
Higher Nerve Energies", in which the possibility of telepathic
communication due to neurological functions was studied.
- B.H. KASCHINSKI: conducted other pertinent studies of mental
telepathy with dogs, and published a book on thought transference in
Moscow in 1923.
- LEONID L. VASILIEV (died in 1966). A student of BECHTEREV, joined
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the Institute for Brain Research in Leningrad in 1921, and became a
member of the committee to study mental suggestion (the expression
for telepathy at that time).
- 1924: The 2nd All-Russia Congress for Psychoneurology recommended a
joint-work of the Russian scientists and the International Committee
for Parapsychological Studies.
- About 1925: The selected Committee for the Study of Mental
Suggestion came about through the Society for Neurology,
Reflexology, Hypnosis and Biophysics was ended.
- 1928: The Institute of Brain Research in Leningrad began a study of
the possible practical factors of telepathic phenomena from person
to person, resulting in the conclusion that the phenomena of thought
transference do not rest on "electromagnetism".
- 1959: Soviet parapsychology received strong impetus through the
french publication of supposed american ship-to-shore telepathy
attempts with the atomic submarine Nautilus. These attempts were
officially denied by the Americans.
- In April, 1960 L.L. VASILIEV, according to Shiela Ostrander and Lynn
Schroeder in their book "PSI" (see Appendix 1, Reference
Literature), reprimanded soviet scientists, referring to these
Nautilus reports, for their considerable number of ESP and telepathy
studies which were carried out under Stalin's regime, but were as
yet unpublished. He stressed the need to shake off the prejudices
against parapsychology. He is convinced that the discovery of ESP
energy will be of the same significance as atomic energy.
+Jvi. L.L. vasiiiev received the leadership of the first ESP
laboratories sponsored by the soviet administration; the Special
Laboratory for Parapsychology at the University of Leningrad.
After Vasiliev's death in 1966, the center of soviet
parapsychological research partially shifted from Leningrad to
Moscow, where IPPOLIT KOGAN, Director of the Section for
Bioinformation on the totally soviet scientific and technical A
S
.
.
Popov Institute for Radiotechnology and Electrical Communication was
located.
EDUARD K. NAUMOV and KARL NIKOLAEV were known at this time through
telepathy experiments which were conducted over the distance of
Moscow to Leningrad.
- In the summer of 1968 a conference in Moscow on "Technical
Parapsychology" took place.
- NINA KULAGINA and WOLF MESSING are the two most famous soviet
"stars" of this time with supposedly especially great
parapsychological talent. N. KULAGINA fascinated onlookers with
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psychokinetic abilities, in which she made compass needles and other
articles move with an energy which seemed to radiate from her hands.
W. MESSING held large crowds of spectators with his telepathic
exhibitions in Bann.
- In July, 1970, the russian newspaper "Radio-Technika" published
research results of the above mentioned professor KOGAN in Moscow,
which had supposedly convincingly proven the existence of telepathic
possibilities through statistical methods.
S. OSTRANDER and L. SCHROEDER in their book "PSI" maintained that
while, by 1970 there were already more than 30 centers in the USSR
for the study of paranormal phenomena, and that by 1967 there were
already yearly budgets of at least 13 million rubles had been put at
their disposal for these studies, and parapsychology in the USSR
enjoyed official sanction, VLADIMIR LVOV's article in the newspaper
LE MONDE (4 AUG 76) denied its (official) recognition in the USSR.
He logically pointed out in his article that it is a mistake to
accept that parapsychology enjoyed official recognition in the USSR.
Moreover, the truth was simply that, parapsychology in the Soviet
Union was not recognized as an official branch of science. No
institute and no research center in the Soviet Union devoted itself
to telepathy or psychokinesis, etc., but there were simply a group
of amateurs who associated themselves with the paranormal.
According to EBON, this opposing opinion makes clear the
unpleasant situation in which parapsychology found itself in Russia
at this time. It held no official status, but individuals and
private groups could carry on such studies without special official
intervention.
Further examples of the historical development of soviet
parapsychology are found listed in Appendix 1, Reference literature of
western authors. The book "PSI" by S. OSTRANDER and L. SCHROEDER
contains an extensive source of proof.
III. A literature search on the theme, made in open-source databanks
in December, 1990, for the time around 1968, turned up 27 institutes
and/or centers in which researchers were occupied with paranormal
phenomena, in the widest sense of the term (see List of Institutes,
Appendix 2).
Here were explored practically all aspects of parapsychology, such
as the general concept "ESP" (in German, ASW), and the subject reports
of telepathy, telepathic hypnosis, clairvoyance, as well as the concept
of "psychokinesis" (the physical influence of man over matter), which
encompasses the study of the human biofield, the application of the
KIRLIAN effect, and healing through laying on of hands.
There appear to be the reports of telepathy and telepathic hypnos
like hypnosis per se, which the most basic research and the widest
development of reports of soviet parapsycholo
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SG1 E
In 1962 L.L. VASILIEV, in his book on experimental studies of
"mental suggestion", showed the advanced position of (such) pertinent
research in the USSR. Efforts toward the aimed telepathic manipulation
of human consciousness seem to have played a large role in telepathic
hypnosis. Research and application of hypnosis is wide spread in the
USSR. It is used in medicine, psychotherapy, physiology, psychology,
psychiatry, and in experimental education. Also the possibility of the
development and application of drugs for the augmentation of hypnosis
was researched.
Soviet scientists such as L.L. VASILIEV, IN. KOGAN, V. MUTSCHALL,
V.F. BASSIN, M.V. AVAKUMOV, I.D. DUBROVSKI, V.L. RAIKOV and P.A.
SLOBODYANIK, with their co-authors have made names for themselves in
the above named reports for the timespan of 1968 on. The exceptional
works published just in the 3 years 1969-1971 by S.A. EGOROV, P.V.
ZAGRYADSKI, F.D. MORDVINOV and N.B. YAKOVETS and their co-authors from
the Kirov Military-Medical Academy in Leningrad, fall especially into
the area of psychophysiological research in connection with
ergonometric questions, and only peripherally have something to do with
parapsychology (see also Appendix 3, Author list).
III. It was reported again and again in the rainbow press that the
military and the secret police were behind the russian efforts to get a
scientific grip on parapsychology.
The contents of these statements could never be substantiated and
the soviet open-source literature on parapsychology also gives no
reliable evidence. Certain revelations in the past years in the USSR
have made assumptions that research has been done here - but these and
the research results were and will be held in secret.
Signs of the efforts of soviet parapsychologists to use telepathy as
a world-wide telecommunications system for cosmonauts between one
another and between earth and the cosmonauts in space were already
visible in the 50's. In 1967, the russian trade paper "Marine Report"
wrote that cosmonauts in space can "get together (mentally) with each
other easier than with people on earth. Psi-training was said to have
been taken up on the cosmonauts training program. Supposedly,
phenomenal psi experiments between soviet cosmonauts and scientists on
the earth were said to have been conducted. The dates and results of
these experiments, however, were not published in open-source
literature, so a firm evaluation of these efforts is not possible.
In a purely news-report fashion, the subject-complexity of
parapsychology in the USSR and its application by the military and the
KGB is contradictory, based on, in part, conflicting rumors:
In 1977 a specialist in Psychiatry from the Serbski Institute in
Moscow, with a good possibility of insight into the situation
declared in an article named "CONTROLLED BY THE KGB"
which appeared in "Der SPIEGEL" (4 JUL 77), that Psi in the USSR was
an unrealistic sensationalism of half-truths and the fantasies of
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Journalists. Parapsychology was not a recognized science in the
USSR. The arrest of the American journalist TOTH at that time
didn't reveal that parapsychology in the USSR could have been seen
as a state secret. It could have dealt with a completely normal
paper of the KGB which a western journalist took from a soviet
citizen.
SG1 B
In the USSR, "Psi capabilities of biological systems" is the
theme of exhaustive studies. The buzz-words for it are "Bioenergy"
and "Hypersensitivity". In the area of the so-called EMV-/EMC
research a newly named scientific trend, under the buzz-word
"Psychotronic", shall be researched (to see) if it is actually a
latent human possibility to be able to activate one's bioelectric
field to join with distant objects and subjects.
The principal of "Laying on of the hands" as a diagnostic tool for
the sick will be conducted in the Poly-clinic of the State Planning
Committee of the USSR in Moscow, which is situated directly under
the Health Ministry.
To the list of institutes which are occupied with the problem of
"the nature of the biological energyfield" belong, among others:
The Institute for Psychology, Moscow, 37a Vavilova St. (Director,
B.F. Lomov), fields of study: research of the material basis of the
Psyche; psychological problems in its relationship to the driving of
modern technology; Psychophysiology of the brain. These take place
in cooperation with work in "the laboratory for cell physiology and
synaptic control" of the "Institute for Higher Nerve Activity and
Neurophysiology", Moscow, and with the "Department of Kinetics
Chemical and Biological Processes" of the Institute of Chemical
Physics (N.N. Semenov)", Moscow.
This project also addresses research into the "KIRLIAN-effect", the
physical proof of "finger radiation", which, for example, might
allow lay practitioners to make diagnoses, to achieve healings with
this particular process, triggered on the skin of the human body or
on the surface of various plants. Equipment necessary for the proof
of the "KIRLIAN-effect" was developed and built in the "Special
Construction Bureau" for the "biological apparatus building" in
Puschtschino. Connections with the application of psychoparmacopia
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as a stimulation for the PSI ability should be undertaken at the
Pacific Institute for Bioorganic Chemistry" in Vladivostok.
It is interesting that "materialistic science" (tries) first of all
to prove that all events are physically explainable. On this basis,
the proof of the appearance of "rays" which come from living things
demands a great deal of dedicated research. By the same token, it
is also interesting to find out the possibilities of strengthening
and making this type of "rays" useful for various applications.
The applications span from medical fields, like diagnosis and
healing in a relatively simple (and cheap) way by influencing of the
"psychically sick" (as it is officially called), to the
communication between living beings over short or long distances,
without tapping into or disturbing such a communications system.
In November 1986 a western scientist with the opportunity of good
insight into the research and application of medical hypnosis in the
USSR transmitted the following details:
Medical hypnosis is used intensively in the RGW field in the USSR.
The primary work "Chemical and Experimental Hypnosis" by WILLIAM S.
KROGER serves as the groundwork for the basis of corresponding
intended research. The basic research for the subject area of
"medical hypnosis" is carried out in the USSR at the Pavlov
Institute and the Institute of Psychology in Moscow, as well as in
"some branches" in Siberia. It deals with a known discipline within
"psychosomatic medical word", and this hypnosis will be inserted
into several areas of operative medicine, but also therapy for the
alleviation and elimination of pain, as it deals with neurologically
conditioned pain. Beyond that, various groups have been schooled in
the basis of the so-called "hypnotic Influence", such as a scientist
to whom important assignments have been given, or those appointed to
special interest organizations in western countries, and also
cosmonauts taking a 3-month hypnosis training course. That means
that if the person tries to gain a "photographic memory", it enables
him to faithfully recapture visuals, audials, and even after a
longer time, pictures and letters.
Insofar as the above contents of these "service reports" which refer
to the tangle of military or KGB interests, are whole, but also only
partly proven, they cannot be judged as undoubtable.
APPENDIX 1 contains a reference list of western authors and a
bibliography of their related works.
APPENDIX 2 contains a reference list of soviet institutions with
contributing authors and the titles of their works.
APPENDIX 3 contains a reference list of soviet authors and a
bibliography of their related works.
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