In the 1980s, the CIA elite believed that Soviet scientists had conducted “a series of successful experiments in extrasensory perception” (ESP), according to a recently declassified document at the time.
In an April 1991 memo, American spies report that they believe the Russians have made significant progress in understanding extrasensory perception – that is, information obtained not through conventional physical senses, but intuitively perceived by the mind.
According to them, one Soviet scientist, a certain Konstantin Buteyko, “improved his method in the early 1980s.”
Another Soviet scientist, Vlail Kaznacheev, is called “a renowned specialist in extrasensory perception.”
The documents were obtained by researcher John Greenewald, author of The Black Vault and a specialist in information obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
On Monday, he released his latest find: a CIA memo, declassified in November.
The four-page note examines both Soviet research on chemicals from Agent Orange and “psychic treatment at the USSR Institute of Clinical and Experimental Medicine.”
IKIEM was located in Novosibirsk, the third largest city in the country.
Buteyko, who died in 2003 at the age of 80, had previously headed the laboratory of non-traditional methods of treatment at IKIEM.
He is known for his research on deep breathing and asthma: according to a declassified document, he also researched extrasensory perception.
The CIA wrote that according to the Buteyko method, “a medical specialist tried to telepathically transfer bioenergy to patients so that they could overcome or recover from asthma, sinusitis, allergies, chronic bronchitis, pneumonia and heart disease.”
American spies noted that Buteyko “improved his method in the early 1980s.”
Volunteers sat in the middle of the room between two concave mirrors, while scientists tried to “telepathically transmit energy” to the patient.
They believed that mirrors “broadcast psychic energy.”
The Americans wrote that in the mid-1980s “a series of successful experiments on ESP” were carried out by two laboratories – IKIEM and one more in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg.
According to the CIA, Kaznacheev was in some way associated with IKIEM, but is known for his work in biology. He allegedly told the authors of the memorandum about the experiment, when scientists “tried to telepathically transmit images of geometric shapes to each other – for example, squares or circles.”
The note notes that Kaznacheev did not specify whether the Soviet military was interested in the research.
The declassified document provides further context for exploring experiments with telepathy and ESP in the USSR.
The USSR’s fascination with extrasensory perception had been known for several decades: in the late 1960s, former KGB officer and defector Nikolai Khokhlov, who fled to the West in 1954, spoke in detail about the experiments of the Russians.
In September 1966, according to the Atlas Obscura magazine, he told a conference that “there was considerable interest in Soviet Russia in research in parapsychology.”
Khokhlov said that Russian psychology has made people “especially susceptible to issues related to the mystical side of the human psyche” and “to the world beyond the sober reality of feelings.”
He then lectured the group about Russian scientists who had undertaken studies of ESP dating back to the late 1800s, telling them that the Soviet government actively encouraged such study.
Source: Daily Mail