WORLD, Page 52Elvis Spotted in Estonia!Glasnost goes bonkers as extraterrestrials, video healers andAbominable Snowmen distract comrades from everyday woes
The extraterrestrial not only phoned, it arrived at the
appointed meeting place on time. Hardly believing his luck, the
Soviet reporter flipped out his notebook and, in the finest
tradition of glasnost, shot out a question: "And what were your
feelings on your arrival, comrade spaceman?"
"I couldn't believe my three eyes," said the alien, a
9-ft.-tall assemblage of humps, arms and legs, outfitted in silver
overalls and bronze boots. "This planet is so much like my own.
When I landed in my pink space ball, the sunset lighted up tall
nonnatural structures that resembled the state housing collectives
back home. I've gone through your papers and read all about the
two-headed Abominable Snowmen and the psychic cures for arthritis
-- Oh, the secret balsam-water diet that lets you lose 40 lbs. in
two days and prevents tooth decay? Leonid wants me to bring the
details back for him."
No. This story has not quite appeared in the Soviet media. But
a report carried by the news agency TASS last week told of a
similarly dressed, three-eyed space creature landing in late
September in the town of Voronezh, 300 miles southeast of Moscow.
There it zapped a 16-year-old boy with a gun that made him
disappear temporarily. Pelted with questions from skeptics, TASS
stood by its story. Said an agency official huffily: "It is not
April Fools' today." Sovietskaya Kultura, a Communist Party paper
dedicated to the arts, ran the story, claiming it was following
"the golden rule of journalism: the reader must know everything."
Freed by Mikhail Gorbachev to report on the corrupt and famous,
Soviet journalists are busy pushing glasnost toward its tabloid
outer limits -- tracking down space visitors and exploring psychic
mysteries. Science takes a whirl with fantasy. Fiction runs away
with the facts. Humanoids abduct humans.
Earlier in the year, the newspaper Socialist Industry reported
an "encounter" between a milkmaid in the region of Perm and a
cosmic creature that looked like a man but was "taller than average
with shorter legs." Last week the Soviet newspaper Komsomolskaya
Pravda declared that not only had an Abominable Snowman been caught
stealing apples in the Saratov region but researchers had
"registered the influence of energies" at a site in Perm, leading
a geologist to conclude that they had discovered a landing field
for flying saucers. The same story transcribed a telepathic
discourse between Pavel Mukhortov, a journalist from Riga, and an
all too knowing extraterrestrial.
"Where are you from?" asked Mukhortov.
"The Red Star of the Constellation of Libra is our home."
"Could you shift me to your planet?"
"That will mean no return for you and danger for us."
"What danger?"
"Thought bacteria."
To the chagrin of Soviet scientists, the thought bacteria are
everywhere. Following the evening news on TV, hypnotist Anatoli
Kashpirovsky holds seances to heal broken limbs, scars and
blindness. Kashpirovsky claims to have helped hundreds of people
through surgery without anesthesia and to have mesmerized others
into losing up to 60 lbs. The Ukrainian has thousands of fans,
apparently even among the bureaucracy. Last week, under official
auspices, Kashpirovsky held a briefing at the Foreign Ministry
Press Center. "People sometimes see me and idolize me," he said,
adding that he could treat AIDS. "Give me 500 or 600 patients in
a hall. I am sure that several months later some will be cured."
Another superstar is Alan Chumak, psychic-in-residence of 120
Minutes, the Soviet equivalent of the Today show. Chumak can
transmit his curative powers to heal the sick not only through live
TV but even on videotape. Viewers can place glasses of water or
jars of cold cream next to their sets to absorb his telepathic
healing charges. Chumak has promised to solve the country's chronic
food problems by energizing seeds, compelling them to produce
larger crops. When Chumak was yanked off the air by skeptical
superiors, a popular outcry brought him back. A Siberian fan in
Bratsk wrote to a newspaper, "Here we can't buy medicine and we
have no hope left for the Soviet health system. Don't criticize
those who are trying to relieve our sufferings."
For many Soviets, however, the fascination with the magical and
the extrasensory is a distasteful reminder of the final years of
the Russian empire -- with its demagogic holy men and a royal
family under the sway of Rasputin. "It's deplorable that the
state-run media would contribute to this hysteria," said Dr. Yakov
Rudakov, a leading psychotherapist with the Institute for
Physical-Technical Problems. Even the obsession with UFOs may be
a projection of Soviet anxieties, a pseudoscientific distraction
from the increasing economic and political burdens of daily life.
Enraged that TASS publishes such reports, one Muscovite said, "It's
a reflection of a country falling apart."
A disillusioned party member views state sponsorship of psychic
and UFO studies as a new sort of official opiate. Says he: "They've
been feeding us rubbish about the dream of Communism for years, and
we now see they were lying. At least this gives us something new
to dream about." So the next time aliens approach and ask for
directions, point them toward Moscow. The Soviets need them more
