CIA Soviet ESP reports: primary documents

Toward the latter part of April 1963, I had an opportunity to meet and converse with Prof. D.A. Kerimov, chairman of a department at the University of Leningrad. The report which follows is comprised of the highlights of the conversation I had with Kerimov.

I should say at the outset that Prof. Kerimov's manner was cordial. He answered our questions on Soviet cybernetics research without hesitation, but often, because of his administrative position, he expressed ignorance of the detail of the work.

According to Kerimov, another area of "interesting" cybernetic work in the USSR was the research at L.L. Vasilyev on extra-sensory perception (ESP). Kerimov claimed that Vasilyev had been able to demonstrate very strong ESP with certain subjects, but only certain persons are capable of receiving the "waves." Kerimov stated that Vasilyev has been demonstrating this since 1927, but no one has taken him seriously until recently. Now he has been set up with a research group whose task it is to show what these waves are, and then to put them to practical use. Some of the ESP, in which Kerimov admittedly believed, involved not merely guessing events, but the prediction of future random events.

I asked Kerimov how ESP could be reconciled with Marxist materialism and he said that this was the problem facing Vasilyev, to show what compromises these "thought waves" or whatever they are. Kerimov went on to say that he had discussed ESP with Dr. E.M. Purcell, the Nobel Laureate at Harvard University, and learned that similar things had been achieved in the US and a book on the topic had been published.

Another project that he was only able to describe by hearsay was "tapping" messages from the central nervous system by placing electrodes on the skin of the forearm, and, conversely, "introducing" messages into the central nervous system at the same point. Signals could be recorded, he said, from the arm of a skilled pianist while he was playing. Then this recording could be played into the arm of another person who could not play the piano well. That person would then be enabled to play difficult music, but also would retain some of this skill as permanent learning. When pressed for further detail, he could not provide it, or refer to publications.

In a general evaluation of our conversation with Kerimov, I would say that at no single point, except the fairly dubious story about tapping messages from the forearm, did I learn of a single new Soviet development in advance of the US state of the art. Cybernetics in the USSR sounded to me like a sort of composite of the operations research society and the ACM and the Society for General Systems Theory in the US. It is tentative and inchoate, more of a budding license expressed in the form of a bureaucratic organization with real power, rather than an established fact.

Molchanov comes to me regularly with technical questions about his work. One of these recent visits dealt with his interest in extra-sensory perception (ESP). It was concerned with radio energy generated by the human nervous system and either transmitted or sensed by the subjects of Soviet experiments in this field. Apparently their original attempts to detect these radio frequency signals fell down, in that they did not stand out above the noise level. To get around this problem, the Soviets seem to be looking for some sort of pattern out of these several bandwidths which are all acting simultaneously. Molchanov asked me about making a correlation analysis of such several frequencies operating at once in order to determine whether there is any meaningful signal present. As described to me, this is all very obscure and presently no clear concept. It is a poorly defined problem that represents a sort of last resort approach.

ESP is not Molchanov's main concern now. It is conceivable to me that Vasilyev might have his head when Molchanov returns to the USSR. He has been thinking about ESP for some time, but it is not his main area as far as I can tell.

In the administration of Molchanov's own and Leningrad University, the apparent motivating force is Professor L.L. Vasilyev, from what he has told me. Vasilyev, apparently a sort of odd personality on a basic level, became interested in extra-sensory perception (ESP) a few years back, certainly at least two years or more ago. Vasilyev persuaded A.D. Alexandrov at Leningrad University to give him funds from the latter's personal budget for one year of ESP trial experiments. He convinced Alexandrov that positive results could come from this first year of work. I gathered from Molchanov that Vasilyev built up a set of statistics to show that this was a valid scientific program. It appears that he may be a showman in this regard.

At Moscow University, according to Molchanov, there was a good deal of fighting with E.M. Braverman and M.A. Aizerman over the question of a theoretical model of what Vasilyev wanted to investigate. Both Braverman and Aizerman, being mathematicians, felt that such a model should be set up. Vasilyev, a physiologist, held instead that some sort of results should be obtained and that the future course of the experiment should proceed from there. There was quite a fight over this, mainly on the issue of whether a theoretical model for such ESP work might be feasible.

Molchanov still seems to have his reservations about the whole ESP research question. He is impressed by it because a man of Vasilyev's stature is interested in it, however. I believe that when Molchanov has some of his own results from ESP work he will make up his mind clearly on the issue.

Molchanov does not approach problems from a broad conceptual standpoint. He would consider various aspects of the situation, however. If I were to ask him for a report on a laboratory or institute that he had visited, I would place little value on his remarks about the technology of that place. It is true that he does have ideas about experiments which involve broader concepts, especially in the area of ESP, but these are not well worked out.