RUSSIA

Spiritualism was first introduced in Russia by people who had been introduced to the subject abroad, witnessing manifestations of psychic phenomena and acquaintance with the works of Allan Kardec, the French exponent of Spiritism.

The new doctrine found its followers chiefly among the members of the professions and the aristocracy, finally including the reigning monarch of that time, Alexander II. Members of his family and entourage also became devoted adherents. Because of the immense influence of such converts, the progress of Spiritualism in Russia was made smoother.

Much of the spiritualist propaganda, manifestations, and publications were conducted under various ruses and deceptions such as the circulation of a paper entitled "The Rebus," professedly devoted to innocent rebuses and charades and only incidentally mentioning Spiritualism, the real object of its being.

Among the distinguished devotees of the subject was Prince Wittgenstein, aide-de-camp and trusted friend of Alexander II, who not only avowed his beliefs openly but arranged for various mediums, including D. D. Home, to give séances before the emperor. The Czar was impressed, and, from that time onward he consulted mediums and their prophetic powers as to the advisability of any contemplated change or step in his life.

Another Russian of high position socially and officially was Alexander N. Aksakof, who interested himself in Spiritualism, arranging séances to which he invited the scientific men of the University, editing a paper Psychische Studien, translating into Russian the works of Emanuel Swedenborg and various French, American, and English writers of the same subject, thus becoming a leader in the movement.

Later, with his friends Boutlerof and Wagner, professors respectively of chemistry and zoology at the University of St. Petersburg, he specially commenced a series of séances for the investigation of the phenomena in an experimental manner and a scientific committee was formed under the leadership of Professor Mendeleyef, who afterward issued an adverse report on the matter. This accused the mediums of trickery and their followers of easy credulity and the usual warfare proceeded between the scientific investigators and spiritual enthusiasts.

At the other extreme of the social scale, among the peasantry and uneducated classes generally, the grossest superstition existed, a profound belief in supernatural agencies and cases were often reported in the columns of Russian papers. Stories abounded of wonder-working, obsession and various miraculous happenings, all ascribed to demoniac or angelic influence, or in districts where the inhabitants were still pagan to local deities and witchcraft.

The final years of the Romanov dynasty were dominated by the strange charismatic figure of the monk Rasputin, murdered shortly before the outbreak of the Russian Revolution of 1917. Grigory Yefimovich, was a Siberian peasant who had entered a monastery at 18, but left, married and had 4 children. He became absorbed in a peculiar sect that promoted licentious behavior—"Rasputin" was the nickname he was given because it means, "debauched one." Rasputin entered the royal circle in 1903 in the height of the popularity of the occult among the socially elite. He did not meet the royal family until 1905, but quickly gained favor particularly with the Czarina because he was able to help control the young Alexander's bleeding due to his hemophilia. Evidence suggests that Rasputin engaged his hypnotic prowess to calm the child which resulted in easing the bleeding.

During the same period, Russian philosopher and mystic, Peter Demianovitch Ouspensky, (1878-1947) who was a disciple of Georgei Ivanovitch Gurdijeff in connection with the Theosophy movement of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky began to rise to prominence in small elite circles of Europe. According to Peter Washington in his 1993 book, Madame Blavatsky's Baboon, "The self-taught Ouspensky was tempted more by Luciferean visions of self-transcendance, dreaming of a humanity remade in the image of gods by its own strenuous efforts." Ouspensky was never officially a member of the Theosophical Society, which was banned in Russia until 1908. By 1914 when World War I began and the revolution in Russia became imminent, Ouspensky moved away from Theosophy. He was in an ongoing search to raise consciousness—his own and others—in order to understand why, as was his belief, humans continued to relive past lives, and past mistakes.

In the modern era, especially during the 1960s, there was widespread modern interest in parapsychology in the USSR. Its popularity emerged again after the ultraconservative science of the Stalin era. One of the pioneers in this psychic renaissance was Leonid L. Vasiliev (1891-1966), who helped to establish the first parapsychology laboratory in the Soviet Union, at Leningrad. His book Mysterious Manifestations of the Human Psyche (1959) was published in the United States under the title Mysterious Phenomena of the Human Psyche (University Books, 1965).

One possible stimulus for Soviet interest in extrasensory perception (ESP) was the belief that ESP might have military significance. In 1959, a story was leaked in the French press that the United States Navy had experimented with telepathic communication between the atomic submarine Nautilus and a shore base.

Another surprising Soviet interest was disclosed in the readiness of the authorities to permit lectures and demonstrations by Hindu hatha yogis. This had nothing to do with prerevolutionary bourgeois cults of mysticism, but rather indicated willingness to learn about the alleged paranormal physical feats claimed for yoga. Russians have always placed great importance on physical training and sport. In addition, any system of physical culture that promised unusual feats of endurance or control of automatic nervous functions might also have relevance to the physical stresses involved in space travel.

By 1966 the Soviet Union was financing more than twenty centers for the scientific study of the paranormal, involving an annual budget of around 12 to 20 million rubles ($13 to $21 million). Soviet parapsychologists studied reports of such American psychics as Edgar Cayce, Jeane Dixon, and Ted Serios, as well as the parapsychological research of J. B. Rhine and his colleagues.

Throughout the 1960s, Soviet parapsychologists investigated the phenomena of their own sensitives in such fields as dowsings, psychokinesis, telepathy, psychic healing, and eyeless sight. Soviet individuals such as Nina Kulagina in psychokinesis and Rosa Kuleshova who claimed abilities such as fingertip vision (eyeless sight) became widely known and discussed even outside the Soviet Union.

Perhaps because of such international publicity, Soviet authorities sporadically suppressed information on parapsychological research, while a backlash of dogmatic conservatism impeded parapsychology studies. The essentially practical investigations into paranormal faculties by Soviet scientists did hold out hope through the 1970s that they might achieve a real breakthrough in such fields of study.

In his book Psychic Warfare: Threat or Illusion? (1983), Martin Ebon claims that in the early 1970s the KGB took over extensive parapsychological research to attempt to identify psi particles in order to discover unknown communication channels in living cells for the transfer of information and to conduct follow-up studies on such subjects as hypnosis at a distance. On a popular level, interest has grown in such areas as thoughtography and UFOs.

In the book Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain (1970), Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder revealed the wide range of Soviet research in parapsychology. Much of their book was based on firsthand interviews and observations during visits to the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries. The book is useful as a record of information on individuals and organizations at the peak of Communist psychic research.

Eyeless Sight and Psychokinesis

Rosa Kuleshova, exponent of fingertip vision or eyeless sight, reportedly suffered from overexposure of her talent and for a time was accused of cheating before her strange abilities were reasserted. Meanwhile, Abram Novemeisky at the Nizhnig Tagil Pedagogical Institute in the Urals experimented with graphic arts students; he claimed that one in six individuals could distinguish between two colors by fingertip vision.

Yakov Fishelev of the Sverdlovsk Pedagogical Institute confirmed such findings and also experimented with subjects at the Pyshma school for the blind, starting with fingertip color recognition and then developing the ability to distinguish shapes of letters. S. N. Dobronravov of Sverdlovsk reported that he had found "skin sight" potential in 72 percent of children, mostly between the ages of 7 and 12.

At the Filatov Institute Laboratory of the Physiology of Vision, in Odessa, an experiment was conducted by Dr. Andrei Shevalev. His subject was Vania Dubrovich, an eight-year-old boy blind from early childhood, whose eyes and optical nerves had been removed. Shevalev attached a lens to Vania's forehead, and the boy learned to distinguish degrees of light through the lens. This experiment claimed to open up new possibilities of "skin glasses."

In the field of psychokinesis (PK), the unusual ability of Nina Kulagina to move small objects at a distance without contact was first discovered by L. L. Vasiliev, after Kulagina had demonstrated a talent for "skin vision." Vasiliev found that she could influence a compass needle by holding her hands over it. In further PK tests it was discovered that she could disturb or move objects at a distance. Film records were made demonstrating her PK ability. Among other feats Kulagina apparently changed the flow of sand in an hourglass and made letters appear on photographic paper by mental force. In early reports, her identity was at first hidden under the pseudonym Nelya Mikhailovna.

In March 1988 Kulagina won a libel action against the magazine Man and Law, published by the Soviet Justice Ministry. Two articles by Vyacheslav Strelkov published in the magazine described her as "a swindler and a crook." The Moscow court ruled that Strelkov had no firm evidence on which to base his allegations, and the magazine was ordered to publish an apology. In a subsequent appeal to the Moscow city court, the district court's ruling was upheld: "the articles published by Man and Law besmirch the honor and dignity of Nina Kulagina and…it must publish an apology."

Recent Developments

In the freer atmosphere of public debate and expression of opinion arising from the Mikhail Gorbachev policy of glasnost, public support and discussion of psychic matters increased. Psychic healing received much attention, and the healer Barbara Ivanova treated many prominent officials. She has also undertaken distant healing through the telephone.

In the field of dowsing and radiesthesia, Soviet scientists like G. Bogomolov and Nikolai Sochevanov have collected data to support the reality of such phenomena. With recently developed techniques and apparatus, dowsers have been used to locate damaged cables, water pipes, and electrical lines, as well as underground minerals and water. One series of dowsing tests suggested that women dowsers have a higher ability than men. Dowsing and radiesthetic work is now reported as the "biophysical effect."

Soviet experiments in telepathy are well advanced. Vasiliev studied spontaneous telepathy for nearly 40 years and collected hundreds of circumstantial accounts. In 1967 Yuri Kamensky in Moscow claimed to successfully relayed a telepathic message to Karl Nikolaiev in Leningrad; the message was in a form of Morse code. Other telepathy experiments involved the transmission of emotions, monitored by EEG records. A number of experiments were conducted to ascertain optimum conditions for telepathic transmission, involving a complex of touch, visualization, and thought.

Sometimes a biological sympathy between sender and receiver (heartbeat, brain wave, and similar synchronism) was found to facilitate transmission. Even the influence of highfrequency electromagnetic waves on telepathy was studied, while the neurologist Vladimir Bekhterev experimented with telepathy between human beings and animals.

One development in Soviet parapsychology claiming a significant amount of attention in the 1970s was Kirlian photography, developed by Semyon D. Kirlian and Valentina C. Kirlian, as a method of photographing a corona discharge in human beings and other objects both living and inanimate. It was hoped that an auralike phenomena had been discovered, but the effects reported early in experimentation were later shown to be an effect of differential pressure placed on the film by objects being photographed.

In 1960 the Soviet Academy of Sciences declared that the search for UFOs was "unscientific." However it seems that reports of UFOs were closely studied, a matter of control of Soviet air space, and some Soviet researchers were prepared to consider the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligences.

Over the past two or three decades, there have been many reports of UFO phenomena from the USSR. On October 9, 1989, the Soviet news agency, TASS, astonished the world by reporting claims that a UFO had landed on the evening of September 27, 1989, in a park at Voronezh, a city of 900,000 inhabitants some three hundred miles southeast of Moscow, and that the UFO occupants had walked about and been seen by many people (cf. Flying Saucer Review, vol. 34, no. 4, 1898).

The practical and scientific investigations of Soviet scientists into every major aspect of the paranormal was in sharp contrast to the more romantic interest of Western countries, where psychics demonstrate for entertainment. The down-to-earth Soviet approach into the how and why of the paranormal appeared to be yielding results with clearly practical applications.

The strong, and long-held folk traditions of the Russian people are expected to emerge as the country re-shapes its identity. In his book, The Russian Challenge and the Year 2000, Russian ex-patriate Alexander Yanov, living in the United States since 1975, discussed the issues facing the country since the fall of the Soviet Empire. He noted that, "Orthodox marxisim has been exhausted as an ideological resource for the system, just as the ideology of tsarism was exhausted at the beginning of the twentieth century. Alternative ideological resources are needed to enable the empire to survive a 'systemic' crisis." Published two years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Yanov's book offered an interesting perspective while reform was anticipated. As Russians continue to pursue a free, elective government as a commonwealth, political reform will begin to shape other apsects of Russian life, as well. The curiosity that they have demonstrated for centuries regarding the inner workings of their consciousness—throughout artistic, cultural and religious pursuit especially—could evolve dramatically in the area of parapsychology, as well. While continuing in the economically stressed atmosphere of the demise of the USSR and the emergence of the Commonwealth of Independent States, parapsychology has suffered and its future is as yet not discernible.

(See also Slavs)

Sources:

[Note: For an authoritative survey of Soviet research in parapsychology and psychotronics, see the journal Psi Research, edited by Larissa Vilenskaya, published quarterly by Washington Research Institute and Parapsychology Research Group, San Francisco, California.]

Berger, Arthur S., and Joyce Berger. The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical Research. New York: Paragon House, 1991.

Ebon, Martin. Psychic Discoveries by the Russians. New York: Parapsychology Foundation, 1963. Reprint, New York: New American Library, 1971.

——. Psychic Warfare: Threat or Illusion? New York: McGraw-Hill, 1983.

Hobana, Ion, and J. Weverbergh. Unidentified Flying Objects from Behind the Iron Curtain. London: Souvenir Press, 1974. Reprint, London: Corgi, 1975.

Ostrander, Sheila, and Lynn Schroeder. Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970. Reprint, New York: Bantam, 1971. Washington, Peter. Madame Blavatsky's Baboon. New York: Schocken Books, 1993.

Yanov, Alexander. The Russian Challenge and the Year 2000. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987.