Approved For Release 2000/08/15 : CIA-RDP96-00792R000500210001-9 PARAPSYCHOLOGY IN THE USSR. 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 before the 1917 October Revolution. II, 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, EBON lists other scientists and works in parapsychology which occurred between the 1917 October revolution and the mid ’50s: 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.B. 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 Approved For Release 2000/08/15 : CIA-RDP96-00792R000500210001-9
Approved For Release 2000/08/15 : CIA-RDP96-00792R000500210001-9 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 sclentists, 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. ~ 1961: L.L. Vasiliev 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 2 Approved For Release 2000/08/15 : CIA-RDP96-00792R000500210001-9
Apptuved For Rele P96-00792R000500210001-9 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. ~ 8. 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 occupled 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 hypnosis, like hypnosis per se, which the most basic research and the widest development of reports of soviet parapsychology. Approved For Release 2000/08/15 : CIA-RDP96-00792R000500210001-9
SG1E Approved For Release 2000/08/15 : CIA-RDP96-00792R000500210001-9 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, I.M. 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). ITI. 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 i arapsychologsy. 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 4 Approved For Release 2000/08/15 : CIA-RDP96-00792R000500210001-9
Approved For Release 2000/08/15 : CIA-RDP96-00792R000500210001-9 Journalists, Parapsychology wag 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, SG1B 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 5 Approved For Release 2000/08/15 : CIA-RDP96-00792R000500210001-9
a Approved For Release 2000/08/15 : CIA-RDP96-00792R000500210001-9 43 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 ig 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 containg 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. Approved For Release 2000/08/15 : CIA-RDP96-00792R000500210001-9