Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics

The Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics (IRE) of the Soviet Academy of Sciences was created in 1953. Vladimir Kotelnikov was elected a full member of the Academy that year, was named deputy director of the new institute, and became its director in 1954; his work there included the first radar mapping of planets, for which he and collaborators received the Lenin Prize in 1964.¹ The physicist Yuri Gulyaev entered its graduate program in 1958 after the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, became a corresponding member of the Academy in 1979 and a full member in 1984, and was director of the institute by 1995.² Yuri Kobzarev, the radar pioneer, worked there from 1955 part time, headed a department from 1968 and became an adviser to the directorate in 1980; a biography of him in the Heroes of the Country database states that "on his initiative" a scientific and engineering center for biomedical radioelectronics was created at the institute, "whose task was the study of the human organism by radiophysical methods."³ The physicist Alexander Taratorin, who worked in its biological-fields laboratory, wrote in 1997 that the institute had a Moscow part on Marx Prospect and a closed part at Fryazino with more than a thousand staff, and that its work covered electronics, semiconductor physics, radar of the planets of the solar system and radar mapping of Venus.⁴

Review commission of 1975 to 1978

A report of the Defense Intelligence Agency dated March 22, 1982 stated that "key members of the special review commission that recommended creation of the Bioelectronics Section are leading scientists/directors in the IRE and have leading positions with the USSR Academy of Sciences." The commission began its activities in 1975, was chaired by Kobzarev, described in a footnote as "Member, Academy of Sciences, and leading radar researcher at the Institute of Radioengineering and Electronics (IRE), Moscow," and was "under the direction of V. A. Kotel'nikov, vice president of the Academy of Science and director of IRE." Its members included directors and deputy directors of institutes, members of the Academy, and Party officials; the report concluded that its composition suggested a Scientific Problems Council appointed by the Academy or by the State Committee for Science and Technology. It spanned about three years, reviewed earlier work, in particular that of the Popov Society laboratory under I. M. Kogan, "arranged experiments and took part in them as observers," and produced documents on the validity of the phenomena, among them a statement signed by Kobzarev in 1978 and a similar one signed by Kotelnikov, Kobzarev and others affirming the reality of psychokinetic phenomena.⁵ The commission's recommendations led to a resolution of the Popov Society of October 31, 1978 (Protocol No. 14) creating a Bioelectronics Section, chaired by the philosopher and corresponding member of the Academy Alexander Spirkin, whose bureau included a representative of the missile design bureau VYMPEL and three Ministry of Defense members, two of them colonels.⁵

The same DIA report stated that the institute "became actively involved in psychoenergetics research in 1977 or 1978," that since then "IRE's main research has been centered on psychokinetic phenomena," with Deputy Director Gulyaev the principal investigator using acoustic, electromagnetic, ultraviolet and infrared sensors, and that experiments with Ninel Kulagina "and with healers (probably including Davitashvili)" were said to be positive in that sensors showed signals coincident with attempts. The intended effects included moving non-metallic objects, influencing a surface acoustic wave device and producing images on sealed photographic plates. It added that in 1977 Gulyaev visited a U.S. parapsychology laboratory and said remote viewing would also be examined at his facility.⁵ A DIA briefing for the U.S. Air Force in June and July 1987 was described in DIA's cover note as reviewing Soviet research "with emphasis on the recent integrated efforts of several U.S.S.R Academy of Science laboratories," and its slides reproduced Kobzarev's and Kotelnikov's statements on Kulagina.⁶

Laboratory of physical fields of biological objects, 1981 to 1985

The physicist Eduard Godik wrote that in the autumn of 1981 a group of ministry officials and senior scientists met in the office of Gulyaev, then deputy director, and were told of a Party instruction to look into healers and psychics; he drafted a program within a weekend, proposing to use the passive remote-sensing methods developed at the institute "under the direction of Academician V. A. Kotel'nikov" to map the physical fields and radiations of the human body in six channels.⁷ The journalist Lev Kolodny reported in 1990 and later that the program began with the support of the Gosplan chairman Nikolai Baibakov, the academicians Guriy Marchuk (chairman of the State Committee for Science and Technology) and Anatoly Aleksandrov (president of the Academy), and Kotelnikov; a Central Intelligence Agency news abstract of Kolodny's article in Moskovskaya Pravda of October 10, 1990 records that Baibakov backed the project over objections from the health minister and the president of the Academy of Medical Sciences, that Baibakov persuaded General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev the research was worthwhile, and that Dzhuna Davitashvili received permission to reside in Moscow.⁸ The abstract states that two groups were formed, one under Godik at IRE and one under Rakhimov in the physics school of Moscow State University, and that demonstrations with an infrared imager and a computer convinced Baibakov, Aleksandrov and Kotelnikov that she had infrared detection capability; an order signed by Aleksandrov and the health minister then directed Academy staff to continue the work and Academy of Medical Sciences staff to study the "D" phenomenon therapeutically. The group received equipment for measurements in seven channels (electric and magnetic fields, infrared, radiothermal, optical and acoustic radiation, and chemical fields), and the abstract states that its work was interrupted in April 1985, a suspension that Kolodny linked to the death of Brezhnev and changes in Party leadership.⁸

Kolodny quoted Gulyaev as saying that Marchuk summoned him and the physicist Yevgeny Velikhov and said Brezhnev had asked whether Dzhuna was "treating or maiming" him, that the Central Committee secretary Andrei Kirilenko asked what they needed, and that Velikhov answered "a million dollars and ten million rubles apiece," which was granted at once. Kolodny stated that the laboratory occupied a building in Starosadsky Pereulok.⁹¹⁰ Taratorin wrote in 1997 that the Central Committee call was made to Kotelnikov, that the laboratory was assigned to Gulyaev and led by Godik from room 14 of the institute's basement, that the funds were foreign currency and staff positions of about half a million dollars, and that the Politburo's assignment was to investigate Dzhuna's healing effect and report to the forthcoming Party congress. He wrote that Dzhuna was enrolled in secret as a senior researcher, the Politburo having first favored a professorship, which Kotelnikov insisted on lowering.¹¹ Kolodny wrote that she was enrolled without a dissertation at a salary of 180 rubles a month.⁹

The laboratory published an interview with Gulyaev and Godik, "Physical Fields of Biological Objects," in the Vestnik Akademii Nauk SSSR (no. 8, 1983), of which Kotelnikov was listed in his obituary as chief editor, and a paper in Doklady Akademii Nauk on the sensitivity of human skin to infrared thermal flows.¹²¹³ Kolodny wrote that the editor of the Vestnik, after visiting the laboratory, asked the authors to cut the paragraph explaining the phenomena, on the ground that readers would conclude that "science had confirmed" them, and that Dzhuna's name was left out.¹⁰ The scientific results Godik later described were that the infrared thermal radiation of the hand lies within the sensitivity of human skin, that a healer's effect could be accounted for by sensing and responding to weak signals below conscious thresholds, and, in the account of Kolodny quoting Godik's book, that after Dzhuna's passes the disturbed circulation in the feet of a patient with endarteritis was practically restored, and that in a later test patients with the same disease were treated by a qigong master who sat on a chair for half an hour, circulation in the foot being fully restored.⁷¹⁰ Godik and Gulyaev explained Kulagina's effects in terms of electrically charged sweat from her palms.¹⁰¹⁴

The newspaper Izvestiya described the laboratory in public on July 3, 1986, in an article by its science observer B. Konovalov: a laboratory of radioelectronic methods of investigating biological objects had been organized "especially," headed by the physicist E. E. Godik, a specialist in infrared detection, with an institute group under Gulyaev having studied Dzhuna Davitashvili "in greater detail in Moscow" and "willingly cooperated." It described the passive remote sounding methods the institute had used on soil moisture and the stars, and reported that in her "working regime" the physical fields near the wrists of "extrasenses, primarily Ye. Yu. Davitashvili," showed changed infrared radiation, a rise in very weak optical luminescence, an increased magnetic field and low-frequency electric oscillations; that a human hand notes at several centimeters a heat flow equal to a rise of several tenths of a degree in another person's body temperature; and that when a glass wall opaque to infrared was placed between patient and healer the patient's skin did not warm. It added that "at the beginning of 1978 a group of Moscow scientists headed by academician Yu. B. Kobzarev investigated" Kulagina, with Gulyaev detecting acoustic clicks, and closed by saying that talk of "mysticism, quackery, and the notorious biofield" at general meetings of the Academy only hampered a constructive approach.¹⁵

In September 1983 Russell Targ, Keith Harary and Targ's daughter Elisabeth visited Moscow on an invitation from the Academy, and Gulyaev received them at the institute, in an office "overlooking Gorky Park." They wrote that he and Godik were measuring the electromagnetic and visible radiation emitted by the human body and had counted photons with a spectrometer, finding "some physical evidence" for auras, and that he gave them a copy of Kogan's book on applied information theory.¹⁶ Taratorin wrote that Targ and "Edwin May" visited around 1983, that "the first department" of the institute took exception, that they were not admitted to the laboratory, and that Gulyaev and Godik steered the conversation to the physical fields around any biological object and showed two open publications in Doklady.¹¹ Taratorin also wrote that after 1983 generals and admirals visited the basement, that a colonel presented a lecture on irradiating the psyche of an enemy army with a radar antenna, and that the KGB proposed viewing the General Secretary's face remotely by infrared camera.¹¹ Kolodny described a photograph taken at the laboratory door in September 1985 of Aleksandrov, Kotelnikov and Baibakov, who he wrote were briefed for four hours on the results.¹⁷

Later accounts

At a joint session of the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Medical Sciences the physicist Yakov Zeldovich criticized the philosopher Alexander Spirkin, who had led a public laboratory studying the phenomena, saying that "scientists, especially members of the Academy, should not succumb to hypnosis even on the part of healers," and Aleksandrov added that "members of the Academy of Sciences may not support pseudoscientific directions," according to Kolodny.⁹ Godik emigrated to the United States in 1993 and Taratorin and other laboratory members went to California; Taratorin wrote that he hoped "science will someday return to research like that begun in Moscow in 1982."⁹¹¹ Kolodny wrote in 2016 that he had learned the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences consulted Gulyaev about Dzhuna and that Gulyaev stated there had been no Dzhuna phenomenon apart perhaps from an ability to influence a person.¹⁰ The engineer Serge Kernbach, in a 2013 review of Russian open sources, described a Central Committee and Council of Ministers resolution No. 137-47 of January 27, 1986 on a program for "management of living objects" and a Center of Non-Traditional Technologies formed by Decree No. 724 of December 22, 1989; he stated that the 1986 text is not public and quoted a note of May 1991 from the academician E. B. Aleksandrov to the Supreme Soviet's science committee that from the mid-1980s defense agencies and the KGB financed "disjointed pseudoscientific closed developments" on communication, weapons and drug-free influence on humans, consolidated in 1986 in a Council of Ministers document.¹⁸