Russian Cosmism: Alien visitations and cosmic energies in contemporary Russia

Abstract

This article is about a cultural-philosophical movement called Russian cosmism ( Russky kosmizm ) and its current status in the Republic of Kalmykia, southwest Russia, home to Buddhist Kalmyks, a people of Oirat-Mongol origin. Emerging in Russia in the early twentieth century and suppressed during the Soviet period, this movement proliferated openly across Russia with the beginning of perestroika. Promulgated as an original product of the Russian mind, cosmism positions itself as a ‘science of the truth and soul searching’ and purports to address various issues, including—but not limited to—the spiritual, psychic, and paranormal anxieties that are on the rise in Russia. Although Russian cosmism is an all-encompassing movement combining various elements of theosophy, philosophy, poetry, theories of evolution and energy, astrology, cosmology, ecology, and even science fiction, this article focuses upon its more cosmic topics—that is, those that are related to outer space, cosmic energies, and alien visitations, as well as responses to these ideas in Kalmykia. The story of Russian cosmism is not just a story of this particular movement, but also that of science in Russia.

Full text

Russian Cosmism: Alien visitations and cosmic
energies in contemporary Russia
BAASANJAV TERBISH
Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit, Department of Social Anthropology,
University of Cambridge
Email: bt@cam.ac.uk
Abstract
This article is about a cultural-philosophical movement called Russian cosmism
(Russky kosmizm) and its current status in the Republic of Kalmykia, southwest
Russia, home to Buddhist Kalmyks, a people of Oirat-Mongol origin. Emerging in
Russia in the early twentieth century and suppressed during the Soviet period, this
movement proliferated openly across Russia with the beginning of perestroika.
Promulgated as an original product of the Russian mind, cosmism positions itself
as a ‘science of the truth and soul searching’and purports to address various
issues, including—but not limited to—the spiritual, psychic, and paranormal
anxieties that are on the rise in Russia. Although Russian cosmism is an all-
encompassing movement combining various elements of theosophy, philosophy,
poetry, theories of evolution and energy, astrology, cosmology, ecology, and even
science fiction, this article focuses upon its more cosmic topics—that is, those that
are related to outer space, cosmic energies, and alien visitations, as well as
responses to these ideas in Kalmykia. The story of Russian cosmism is not just a
story of this particular movement, but also that of science in Russia.
Introduction
As a movement, Russian cosmism (Russky kosmizm) emerged in Russia in the
early twentieth century, a time when an idealistic belief in the omnipotence
of science was spreading fast among scholars, scientists, writers, political
elites, and the general public. Marked by ground-breaking scientific
discoveries such as radioactivity, superconductivity, the theory of special
relativity, continental drifts, the discovery of new galaxies, and so on, not
to mention break-neck developments in technology, this period also saw
social unrest and revolutions that swept across Europe and beyond. This
included, of course, the two Russian revolutions of  and  which
Modern Asian Studies ,() pp. –. © Cambridge University Press 
doi:./SX First published online  August 

of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

ushered in Russian society’s transition to industrialized capitalism and
socialism. On the waves of the scientific, cultural, and social revolutions
that opened up new horizons and expanded the universe beyond all
recognition, Russian cosmism emerged to deal with a host of
scientific-philosophical questions. Those concerning the cosmos and the
fate of technologically advancing humankind within it are of central
importance in this article.
The relationship of Russian cosmism to the mainstream scientific
community generally, and the Russian state in particular, was always
fraught with controversy. Despite the movement’s claim to be a
‘science’, from the late s, when the Soviet state imposed its strictly
materialistic understanding of science, many of the ideas promulgated
by Russian cosmism—especially those related to the occult, the
resurrection of the dead, and ‘intelligent’cosmic layers and waves—
were incompatible with the Soviet doctrine and were denied. However,
some of the movement’s less controversial ideas concerning scientific
progress were incorporated into Soviet philosophy, art, and literature.
Denied its ‘proper scientific’status and driven underground, Russian
cosmism as a whole came to constitute what the Soviet philosopher
Vladimir Filatov calls an ‘alternative science’.
1
It operated in opposition
to mainstream Soviet science, or Marxism-Leninism, which purported
to explain everything by constructing a ‘super-science’, as it were, out of
all legitimate disciplines.
2
One can argue that this was symptomatic of
wider developments that took place in the Soviet Union when all
political and economic power became centralized in the Kremlin. In
this climate, no rivals or alternatives were tolerated. Banned for most of
the Soviet period, Russian cosmism, however, survived in the shadows
in many guises: in the secretive healing practices of psychics who used
cosmic energies, in stories about UFO sightings, in underground circles
discussing the paranormal, in samizdat manuscripts, in artworks, and in
1
Filatov, V. P., ‘Ob idee al’ternativnoi nauki’,inZabluzhdayushiysya Razum? Mnogoobrazie
Vnenauchnogo Znaniya, I. Ti. Kasavin (ed.), Moscow: Nauka, , pp. –.
2
In the Soviet Union, Marxism-Leninism was taught as a comprehensive ‘super
doctrine’comprising three main parts—philosophy, political economy, and the theory
of scientific socialism. The engine of the philosophy consisted of two powerful theories
of dialectical and historical materialism that were regarded as the foundation of the
whole doctrine. They were conceived of as being applicable to all scholarly disciplines,
from the humanities to the sciences. In this sense, Marxism-Leninism was perceived as a
single ‘super-science’that was capable of explaining the general laws of motion and
development in nature, society, and human thought.
BAASANJAV TERBISH
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

the names of the movement’s founding fathers who happened to be the
leading philosophers of the Soviet space exploration project.
It was not until the beginning of perestroika, marked by
decentralization, relaxation of religious beliefs, and the consequent
repudiation of Marxism-Leninism as a dominant scientific paradigm,
that Russian cosmism re-emerged in all its occult diversity. Not only did
it aim to reclaim its status but also to explain the essence of everything
by uniting science with dukhovnost’.
The term dukhovnost’derives from dukh meaning ‘soul’and is often translated
into English as ‘spirituality’, but in Russian this term has several overlapping
meanings. First, it connotes that which is intangible or invisible, that is, in our
psyche or thoughts. Hence the expression dukhovnaya kul’tura is translated into
English as ‘intangible culture’(which includes folklore, music, and so on).
Second, dukhovnost’implies one’s eagerness to learn the truth about the
workings of the universe and to live accordingly. Such people are said to
be interested in existential questions such as ‘Who am I?’,‘What is the
meaning of life?’,and‘How should I live?’This search does not necessarily
lead to God. Hence a dukhovnyi chelovek is not necessarily a religious person
but one who thinks about existential questions, seeks the truth, and wants
to improve themselves. Its third meaning is religious—it connotes a ‘moral’
life that is believed to be guided by the Holy Spirit.
Unlike spiritual movements that emphasize inner well-being and passive
commemoration, Russian cosmism, which positions itself as dukhovnaya
nauka (which can be translated as ‘science of the truth, of soul-searching’),
puts a strong emphasis on thought as a call for action to radically transform
humanity on a global scale.
3
Russian cosmism’sambitiontoprovide
answers to questions about all that is ‘out there’, both visible and invisible,
by uniting all ‘legitimate’explanatory methods, is nothing new in Russia,
given the Soviet experience of trying to establish a single super-science that
purported to be capable of explaining everything there is. In fact, Russian
cosmism’s over-arching ambition and its ‘call for action’predate those of
Soviet ideology, or science, and it is still an open question as to the extent
to which the former influenced the latter. It is worth noting that some of
the most prominent early Soviet scientists, as will be discussed, were
cosmists. The story of Russian cosmism—with its persecutions, hidings,
transformations, survival, and eventual proliferation—is as much a story of
scienceinRussiaingeneralasitisatale about this particular movement.
3
Young, G. M., The Russian Cosmists: The Esoteric Futurism of Nikolai Fedorov and his
Followers, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ,p..
RUSSIAN COSMISM 
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

This article is about Russian cosmism and its current status in Kalmykia,
a small Buddhist republic in southwest Russia. Today Russian cosmism is
an all-Russian cultural-philosophical movement engaged in all areas, from
icon painting to yoga, to Kantian philosophy, to ethnic questions, to the
ozone layer.
4
It combines various elements of theosophy, philosophy,
poetry, theories of evolution and energy, astrology, cosmology, ecology,
and even science fiction. In this article I will focus upon its more
central, cosmic topics—those related to outer space, cosmic energies,
and alien visitations—as well as local responses to these ideas in
Kalmykia. In particular, I will discuss how Russian cosmism has been
perceived and practised by some high-ranking politicians, intellectuals,
and religious practitioners in this part of Russia.
Russian cosmism, as many cosmists contend, cannot be described as a
religion in the conventional sense of this term—hence it lacks the concepts
of hell, paradise, angels, divine punishment. Its dukhovnost’component, or
ceaseless search for the ultimate cosmic truth and morality (which at the
same time legitimizes mystery and the idea of the ‘unknown’), attracts
‘soul-searching’people who are not difficult to find among politicians,
artists, poets, religious practitioners, or simply curious individuals. Russia
has a long tradition of ideas about ‘soul-searching’and an ‘eternal
spiritual journey’as attested to by the works of great Russian writers,
artists, and musicians such as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Rachmaninov, and
others. Encompassing a wide variety of research concerning humanity and
its dukhovnyi well-being, Russian cosmism employs a host of ways in which
to analyse reality. Having developed, as Kurakina points out, various
levels of attaining sensual reality through ‘biocosmism’,‘energocosmism’,
‘anthropocosmism’,‘astrocosmism’,‘teocosmism’,‘sofiocosmism’,
‘hierarchocosmism’,and‘sociocosmism’,
5
Russian cosmism offers a
planetarian concept to address the global threats and challenges that
humanity faces, including economic, political, and spiritual crises;
ecological catastrophes; and terrorism.
6
Despite its ambition to create a
comprehensive ‘scientific’paradigm that reconciles modern science with
4
Hagemeister, M., ‘Russian Cosmism in the s and today’,inThe Occult in Russian
and Soviet Culture, Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal (ed.), Ithaca and London: Cornell
University Press, ,p..
5
Kurakina, O. D., ‘Russky kosmizm i nookosmologichesky vzglyad v budushchee’,
,at:http://cosmizm.ru/co-d-kurakina-russkij-kosmizm-i-nookosmologicheskij-
vzglyad-v-budushhee/, [accessed  April ].
6
Sazonova, E. V., ‘Mirovozrenie Russkogo kosmizma i global’nye problemy
sovremennosti’,Voprosy Upravleniya,(), , pp. –.
BAASANJAV TERBISH
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

dukhovnost’, the movement does not present a unified system of ideas, theories,
or methods. In fact, owing to its expansive and eclectic character, many of the
movement’s adherents do not agree with each other on a host of issues, with
some even arguing that cosmism is myshlenie,‘awayofthinking’, and not
dvizhenie,‘a movement’. It is also prone to generate bizarre offshoots, some
of which will be discussed later in the context of Kalmykia.
7
Aiming to engage with the topic of Russian cosmism within the narrow
context of stories of alien visitations and cosmic energies, this article opens
with an account of the first reports of alien abductions and visitations in
Kalmykia, then discusses the founding fathers of Russian cosmism,
Eurasianism as a theory of cosmic energies, UFO sightings and the
revival of Russian cosmism in Russia, and concludes with cosmism in
post-Soviet Kalmykia.
First alien abductions and visitations in Kalmykia
In Moscow in  a high-profile politician shocked the political
establishment and the whole of Russia with the incredible claim that he
had been abducted by aliens. Here is his account of the abduction as
told to the popular Channel One Russian television host Vladimir
Pozner on  April :
7
Russian cosmism is relatively unknown outside Russia. Except for a book and several
articles by George M. Young and Michael Hagemeister, there is practically no other work
produced by Western scholars. See, for example, Young, The Russian Cosmists, and Young,
G. M., ‘Fedorov’s transformations of the occult’,inThe Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture,
Rosenthal (ed.); Hagemeister, ‘Russian Cosmism’. In Russia, by contrast, the movement
has already produced a sizeable literature: Kurakina, O. D., Russky Kosmizm: K Problem
Sinteza Nauki, Filosofii i Religii, Moskva: n.p., ; Dudenkov, V. N., Russky Kosmizm:
Filosofiya Nadezhdy i Spaseniya, Saint-Petersburg: I. K. Sintez, ; Linnik, Yu. V., Russky
Kosmizm i Russky Avangard, Petrozavodsk: Svyatoi Ostrov, ; Kaznacheev, V. P.,
Intellect Planety Kak Kosmichesky Fenomen, Novosibirsk: I. D. Altmilla Co. Ltd, ;
Dmitriev, A. N., Ob Efirnoi Material’nosti, Tomsk: Znamya Mira, ; Pyurveev, J.,
Arhitektura Mirozdaniya, Moskva: Izd-vo PKTs Al’teks, ; and others. In addition,
conferences and workshops are regularly organized to popularize its ideas. In Kalmykia
there are several individuals who write on global cosmic topics, but the movement’s
status in the republic has not been described by anyone, not even Kalmyks themselves.
The only article that touches upon this topic is by Caroline Humphrey, in which she
discusses the ideology of Kalmykia’s president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and the practices of
some Kalmyk religious figures in the context of cosmology and Eurasianism. See
Humphrey, C., ‘A politico-astral cosmology in contemporary Russia’,inFraming
Cosmologies: The Anthropology of Worlds, Allen Abramson and Martin Holbraad (eds),
Manchester: Manchester University Press, , pp. –.
RUSSIAN COSMISM 
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

In September  I was planning to go back to Kalmykia and in the evening
returned to my flat, it is on the Leontevsky Alley, here in Moscow. That
evening I read a newspaper, watched TV, went to bed. And later on, perhaps,
I had already fallen asleep and felt that the balcony opened and somebody
was calling me. I approached and saw a half transparent tube. I went into the
tube and saw humanoids in yellow spacesuits. I am often asked, ‘What
language did you speak?’Perhaps telepathically, for I felt an oxygen shortage
[…] Then they showed me around the spaceship. They even told me, ‘We’ll
have to take samples from one planet.’Then we had a conversation. [I asked]
‘Why don’t you appear on live channels and tell that you are here? Look, [you
should] communicate with us.’[They] replied that, ‘We are not ready for the
contact’, and then returned me [to Earth].
The victim of the abduction was Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the eccentric
president of Kalmykia (see Figure ). The Kalmyks, numbering fewer than
, and the titular population of the republic, are a Buddhist people of
Oirat-Mongol origin. They settled in the region of the Lower Volga and
established the Kalmyk Khanate at the beginning of the seventeenth
century, having migrated from Dzungaria (today the northern half of
China’s Xinjiang province, western Mongolia, and eastern Kazakhstan).
Having served as vassals to the tsar, the Kalmyks were soon incorporated
into Russia following the abolition of the Khanate in .Accordingto
Ilyumzhinov, following the incident, he approached Russia’spresident
Boris Yeltsin and was advised to keep the story low profile and carry on
working. Despite his superior’s advice, Ilyumzhinov relayed his story to
Russian and foreign journalists, including those from The Independent and
The Guardian in the United Kingdom and TIME magazine in the United
States. When Ilyumzhinov appeared on Pozner’s television programme in
April , a concerned Russian MP, Andrei Lebedev, wrote a letter to the
then-president of Russia Dmitry Medvedev urging him to investigate
Ilyumzhinov’s claims and look into the possibility that he had revealed state
secrets to the aliens. The letter also enquired about official guidelines for
what high-ranking officials should do if they were contacted by aliens. In
 Medvedev himself made the following strange comments to a Russian
reporter who asked him about aliens, which was not broadcast on
state-controlled TV channels but found its way onto YouTube:
I am telling you this the first and the last time. Along with the briefcase with
nuclear codes, the president of the country [Russia] is given a special
top-secret folder. This folder in its entirety contains information about aliens
who visited our planet.
8
8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwOmsNvdjo, [accessed  April ].
BAASANJAV TERBISH
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

Although many Russian viewers regarded it as a joke and mocked the
president, many cosmists took Medvedev’s comments at face value.
ThetaleofIlyumzhinov’s historical abduction did not occur out of the blue.
Prior to this, one evening in May  an extraordinary thing happened in the
eighth micro-district of Elista, the capital of Kalmykia, which was witnessed
by several people. One of them was Valery Dorzhinov, a Kalmyk man
in his mid-thirties, a construction worker by profession. Here is his account:
It was the third week of May, , Friday. It was calm. May was nearing its end.
I came home after the working day, changed my clothes, and looked into the
kitchen. My wife was preparing dinner. While waiting for dinner, I laid down
on the bed with a newspaper in my hand. From the open window came the
voices of neighbours […] All of sudden my daughters—thirteen-year-old
Tanya and seven-year-old Toma—rushed into the flat.
‘Papa, papa! Hurry up, let’s go outside,’called out Tanya, ‘There, aliens have
arrived’.
‘Hurry up, hurry up! Quickly put on clothes and let’s go, otherwise you’ll miss
them, they will flyaway,’my youngest was urging me.
Having put on a shirt, I rushed out of the flat into the street. Once on the
street, I lifted my head and started looking for the alien guests. And above a
five-storey residential house number , I saw a huge globe of
yellowish-greenish-bluish colour. At that moment, the globe started moving
away, gradually disappearing, and in six or seven minutes it completely
disappeared. I could only see it off with my eyes […] I turned to look at the
reaction of my neighbours. They had already come to their senses from the
shock and started a discussion […] I looked at my watch; it was : pm.
9
According to Dorzhinov’s account, after this extraordinary event he began
travelling with the aliens to different galaxies and receiving important
information about the origin and the future of humanity. He shared his
revelations with his friends and co-workers. This story would probably
have been forgotten sooner or later, had Dorzhinov not begun publishing
articles about his telepathic, intergalactic journeys and about imminent
physical contact with the alien ancestors in the state-controlled newspaper
Hal’mg Unn (Kalmyk Truth). The same year, he even wrote a best-seller
entitled Visits to the Motherland of Ancestors.
10
Not surprisingly, excited
citizens soon began sighting UFOs all over Kalmykia. Thus, in the article
‘Did the aliens visit us? It seems that thousands of people in Kalmykia
witnessed UFOs’, the correspondents write:
9
Dorzhinov, A., V Gosti na Rodinu Predkov: Mif ili Real’nost’[Visits to the Motherland of
Ancestors: A Myth or Reality], Elista: Libon, .
10
Ibid.
RUSSIAN COSMISM 
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

In response to our article ‘In the night sky above Elista’published on June, all of
a sudden our newspaper office was flooded with telephone calls from the readers.
In order to process all the incoming information, our workers had to wait at the
phone machine in turns. Being in a hurry to share what they saw, people phoned
us not only from Elista but also from the remotest corners of Kalmykia. And this
in spite of the high cost of intercity calls! Thank you, dear friends! From all the
stories we have recorded so far, we tried to select the most, in our view, interesting
and colourful ones.
11
Figure . Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, former president of Kalmykia and president of the World
Chess Federation (FIDE).
11
‘Did the aliens visit us? It seems that thousands of people in Kalmykia witnessed
UFOs’,Izvestiya Kalmykii (Kalmyk News), June .
BAASANJAV TERBISH
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

The article published  eyewitness accounts of UFOs. This mass
excitement, no doubt induced to a large extent by Dorzhinov’s
sensational publications, affected not only ordinary citizens but the
leaders of the Republic as well. Having discussed the situation with
Dorzhinov, on  November , in an interview with Izvestiya,
President Ilyumzhinov announced that the world was on the eve of
meeting with aliens. Two years later, his prophecy was fulfilled and he
was abducted by extra-terrestrials while on a business trip in Moscow.
Founding fathers of Russian cosmism
Ideas about the existence of extra-terrestrial civilizations and the
connection of humanity with outer space have long been a topic of
discussion among prominent Soviet philosophers and scientists
associated with Russian cosmism. Concerned about the fate of
humankind in the cosmos, Hagemeister notes that this movement’s
particularity is its holistic and anthropocentric view of the universe, in
which human beings appear destined to become a decisive force in
cosmic evolution, that is, a source of collective cosmic self-consciousness,
active agent, and potential perfecter.
12
Filled with an endless variety of
life forms, evolution in the universe is dependent upon human action
and, by failing to fulfil its fated cosmic role, humankind dooms the
world, as well as itself, to catastrophe.
Cosmism, which reflects an idealistic belief in science and the power of
humankind to tame and change nature, has deeper and older roots in
traditional folk cosmology and the occult. As in folk cosmology,
cosmism offers its own explanation of the workings of the universe and
astral objects from a perspective in which humans are of central
importance. Both traditions are also moralistic in the sense that they
teach about morality and duty. Although both assume the world to be
a rational entity, they differ. Whereas in folk cosmologies supernatural
beings—gods, angels, spirits, and demons—control everything (and
demand offerings, rituals of subordination, and so on), in cosmism these
supernatural powers are replaced by physical laws, cosmic energies,
vibrations, extra-terrestrial beings, and human intellect that render the
world a meaningful, interconnected, and controllable place. Since,
according to cosmism’s mechanistic vision, there is no divine plan for
12
Hagemeister, ‘Russian Cosmism’, pp. –.
RUSSIAN COSMISM 
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

saving the universe, cosmists acknowledge the threat of humanity’s
self-destruction and strive to define the role of humankind in this
profane cosmos. By appointing itself the ‘perfecter of the universe’and
endowing itself with powers of creation and destruction, humanity—
whose ‘cosmic duty’it is to pursue scientific progress by eradicating
disease, freeing itself from biological limitations, and attaining
immortality—takes up the role ascribed in folk cosmologies to gods. By
worshipping humanity and its science (instead of gods), cosmism is
essentially a humanistic movement. Hence, according to cosmism, it is
not gods but human experiences that endow the cosmos with meaning.
This is not to say that cosmism is a science, as the term is generally
understood, for it does not utilize experimental methodology (involving
control groups, equipment, and the like) and its underlying belief in the
omnipotence of science and technology, as Hagemeister points out, is
rooted in the idea of the magic power of occult knowledge. The cosmist
idea of the realization of immortality and the revival of the dead, with
the help of science, for example, has a long occult and Gnostic
heritage, aside from the fact that the conceptions of the cosmists
contain theosophic and pan-psychic influences.
13
Although many cosmists trace the genealogy of cosmic views to Russian
sources—hence cosmism’s self-propagation as otechestvenny or a ‘domestic,
patriotic’movement—during its formative years in the early twentieth
century, the movement was influenced by many foreign sources,
including the theosophic writings of Madame Blavatsky and her
followers. These were translated into Russian by the Russian
Theosophic Society based in Kaluga, a provincial town that happened
to be the place where some of the early cosmists lived. No wonder then
that the main theosophic tenets—including its vision to create a
universal brotherhood of humanity, encouragement to study both
science and spirituality/religions, exploration of unexplained laws and
powers, speculations about the latent human abilities, and so on—were,
in one form or another, incorporated into cosmist ways of thinking and
practices. But, most importantly, theosophy’s attempt to create a single
science (by bridging the abyss between science and religion, between
reason and faith) was in tune with cosmism’s own mission to establish a
universal science of the truth. According to cosmism, humans, who
constitute a universal wholeness with the cosmos, are interconnected
with each other and outer space via all sorts of intelligent energies,
13
Hagemeister, ‘Russian Cosmism’,p..
BAASANJAV TERBISH
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

waves, and rays that permeate the very fabric of the universe. Many
cosmists say that this claim is supported by modern quantum physics,
astronomy, and related disciplines which they hold in high regard. In
cosmists’vision, through their power to create technology, humans are
destined to attain omnipotence and control all biological as well as
non-biological processes.
The fundamental ideas of Russian cosmism can be traced in the works
of the founding fathers of the movement who were all polymaths with odd
personalities, including Nikolai Fedorov, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (who
held Madame Blavatsky’sSecret Doctrine in high regard), Vladimir
Vernadsky, and Alexandr Chizhevsky, on whose theories and
speculations the post-Soviet cosmists build their explanatory models. As
mentioned, these founders’ideas should be understood in the context of
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when great discoveries
were made in many fields, the full significance of which was far from
clear. Also, startling discoveries that are all but invisible to the human
eye—including X-rays, wireless telegraphy, evolution unfolding over
generations, galaxies spiralling millions of light years away, elements
forming out of dying stars, and continents shifting over millions of
years—only convinced the early cosmists that there is more to the world
than the eye sees. This period, characterized by the growing cult of
science in Russia, was also a time of diminishing belief in traditional
religions, on the one hand, and increasing occultism, humanism (that is,
worship of humanity), belief in telepathy, growing nationalism, and
millennial intellectual outpourings, on the other, that sought rational
explanation. The genius of the founding fathers of cosmism was that
they offered seemingly rational, systematized answers to these diverse
phenomena from a particular global, or cosmic, angle. In place of
diminishing religious morality and God’s authority, the movement also
offered its own alternative—to build an ideal society and give the
super-interconnected universe a new meaning by means of upgrading
humanity to an immortal, godly status. Russian cosmism was born from
these complex encounters and systematizing ideas in which the appeal
to science and technology was its primary legitimizing strategy. In this
sense, cosmism can be seen as a techno-philosophy or even a
techno-religion in the making.
Nikolai Fedorov (–), regarded as the father of the Soviet space
project and a precursor of transhumanism, was one of the most enigmatic
cult figures in pre-revolutionary Russia. An illegitimate child of a Gagarin
prince and an unknown neighbour, Fedorov, a deeply pious Orthodox
Christian, grew up on both sides of the Russian social divide. After
RUSSIAN COSMISM 
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

leaving his paternal home, he lived his life as an ascetic bachelor in a small
room, wore the same shabby clothes in both winter and summer, ate
poorly, and was easily mistaken for a tramp by strangers. Well-read,
erudite, quarrelsome, and eccentric, he was known among a small but
influential circle of Russian intellectuals, including the writer Nikolai
Tolstoy. Having served as a school teacher in various locations in
Central Russia, Fedorov worked for many years as a librarian in the
Rumyantsev Museum (today the Russian State Library) where he met
and took under his tutelage the young Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who
came to study there. Opposed to the idea of the ownership of books
and intellectual ideas, Fedorov rarely published during his lifetime, and
what little he published was all written either anonymously or under
pseudonyms. His main articles were published posthumously by his
followers. Among Fedorov’s ideas that were most ridiculed during his
lifetime include the gradual prolongation of human life and his call for
space travel.
14
Fedorov’s main philosophical idea is as follows. Via its shared
knowledge, scientific methods, and hard work, humanity is destined not
only to design its own evolution but to actively change nature itself. By
controlling ‘all atoms and molecules of the world’and mastering ‘the
forces of decay and fragmentation’, the human race will resurrect the
dead, colonize the cosmos, and attain cosmic immortality, while
changing the cosmos itself. While the role of science and technology is
of paramount importance in Fedorov’s vision, the most important
‘common task’of humanity is to improve and perfect human
intelligence and the body. In Fedorov’s imagination the perfect future
human is a self-nourishing, upgraded, immortal organism that has a
perpetual mode of energy exchange with the environment. Fedorov’s
post-human is as different from us as we are from amoebas.
Fedorov’s follower Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (–), who is regarded
as the founder of Soviet rocketry and astronautic theory, was the first to
use the term ‘cosmic philosophy’in Russia. His work influenced the
leading Soviet spaceship builders Sergei Korolyov, Valentin Glushko, as
well as cosmonauts, including Yury Gagarin. A recluse by nature and
seen as a strange figure by the townsfolk, Tsiolkovsky spent most of his
life in poverty and oblivion in his provincial town of Kaluga. During his
lifetime, he published more than  works on aerodynamic and rocket
theory, space travel, intelligent forces of the universe, and related
14
Young, ‘Fedorov’s transformations of the occult’, pp. –.
BAASANJAV TERBISH
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

subjects. The Bolshevik Revolution of  was a turning point in his life.
For his support of the Revolution, Tsiolkovsky was elected a member of
the Socialist Academy in  and in  he was even granted a
lifetime pension. In the s and s, the Soviet propaganda
machine turned the Kaluga eccentric, who happened to have a
convenient proletarian background, into a national hero. In  he was
awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour, the highest civilian
order of the USSR, and in  a museum of the history of
cosmonautics in Kaluga was named after him. Apart from his great
accomplishments as a scientist, Tsiolkovsky speculated extensively about
man’s relationship to the cosmos and believed that humanity was
spiritually and biologically connected to an outer space supposedly
teeming with extra-terrestrial forms of life. He also defended the idea
that all matter in the universe is not only interconnected but also has a
mental aspect and sensibility.
15
In his article ‘Cosmic philosophy’
Tsiolkovsky writes:
At least a million billion planets have life and intelligence not less advanced than
[that on] our planet […] In a thousand million years nothing imperfect, such as
contemporary fauna, flora and human beings, will be existing on Earth. Only the
best will remain, [and] our intelligence and its power will ultimately bring us [to
this perfect state] […] On [other] developed, mature planets, evolution goes a
million times faster than on Earth. By the way, this is regulated according to
will: if a perfect population is needed—it is produced quickly and in any
number. Visiting neighbouring infantile worlds with primitive life forms, they
[i.e. developed civilizations] destroy them as painlessly as possible, and replace
[them] with their own perfect species. Is it good, and not cruel? If it was not
for their intervention, then the painful self-destruction of animals [on various
planets in the universe] would have continued for millions of years, just as it is
happening on Earth […] What does it mean? It means that in the cosmos
there is no place for imperfect, suffering life: intelligent and advanced planets
annihilate such life forms.
16
Tsiolkovsky, who called himself a biocosmist, referred to the cosmos as
an ‘animal being’(zhivotnoe) and saw it as an enormous, soul-endowed
organism. He also promulgated the idea that all nations should become
a single political system governed by the most advanced specimens
of humanity.
15
Golovanona, L. and Timoshenkova, E. (eds), K. E. Tsiolkovsky: Geniy Sredi Lyudey,
Moskva: Izd-vo Mysl’,, pp. –,–. Sazonova, ‘Mirovozrenie Russkogo
kosmizma i global’nye problemy sovremennosti’, pp. –.
16
Golovanona and Timoshenkova (eds), K. E. Tsiolkovsky, pp. –.
RUSSIAN COSMISM 
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

Tsiolkovsky’s idea of the conscious universe is complemented by the
notion of ‘noosphere’(noosfera) propounded by cosmist Vladimir
Vernadsky (–), another intellectual giant of the early Soviet
scientific establishment. He was a founder of the Ukrainian Academy of
Sciences and of ecology, a holistic discipline that studies interactions
between organisms and their environment. Lectured by such great
Russian minds as Dmitry Mendeleev and Alexander Butlerov at St
Petersburg University, Vernadsky started his career as a mineralogist.
Having acquired from these men the idea that the earth is in constant
flux, its elements flowing and spiralling through its crust, he came to
the realization that minerology, as a science of change and energy
transfer, could connect cosmic history with the history of life itself.
17
Vernadsky argued that living organisms were the geological force that
shaped Earth. According to him, Earth’s biological life, or the
biosphere (biosfera), developed from inanimate matter or, in other words,
from the geosphere (geosfera). The biosphere is irreversibly entering into
the third phase of the earth’s development—the noosphere or the
‘sphere of intelligence’(geosphere ⇒biosphere ⇒noosphere). Just as
the emergence of life fundamentally changed the geosphere, the
emergence of human civilization and powerful technology
fundamentally transformed the biosphere into the noosphere. In this
sense, by changing the earth’s ecosystem, human cognition is a
geological force that is ushering the planet into a new state of existence.
The noosphere, according to Vernadsky, is a state in which humanity
has total power over nature and is able to control the weather, change
landscapes, and manage the evolution of all living organisms on a
global scale. The chaotic evolution of life on earth will be replaced by
an orderly one controlled by human intelligence. In Vernadsky’s
noospheric view, not only are such natural phenomena as ‘life’,
‘matter’,‘radiation’, and ‘energy’all interconnected, but humans, who
are an important part of Earth’s ecosystem, are responsible for all that
is happening on the planet, including earthquakes, droughts, and
hunger. Although arrested several times by Soviet secret services and
suffering at their hands, in  Vernadsky was awarded the Stalin
Prize, the Soviet Union’s state honour. Subsequently, his notion of the
noosphere in its strictly materialist sense was successfully integrated into
17
Ings, S., Stalin and the Scientists, A History of Triumph and Tragedy –, London:
Faber and Faber, ,p..
BAASANJAV TERBISH
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

mainstream Soviet philosophy. In his foreword to Vernadsky’s collection
of articles, the influential Soviet academician Aleksandr Yanshin writes:
The teachings of V. I. Vernadsky about the ultimate transformation of the
biosphere of Earth into […] the noosphere—a sphere rebuilt by collective
intelligence and labour of humanity to satisfy all its needs—fits in its
scientific-historical aspect the teachings of Marxism-Leninism about the
ultimate construction of the communist society on Earth.
18
Apart from the official Soviet interpretation, the notion of ‘collective
intelligence’has several metaphysical meanings, one of the most
popular being the idea that the noosphere is a higher ‘intelligent’
energetic field, or sphere, that floats around the earth and uploads
human thoughts, memories, and other information. Some cosmists also
argue that it is in the noosphere that ‘universal wisdom’(razum) dwells.
To use a modern computer metaphor, the noosphere can be imagined
as a natural cloud technology that does not need computers and
programmers to run. According to cosmism, people who are connected
to this boundless source of intelligence and collective wisdom tend to
be geniuses.
The biophysicist, painter, and poet Alexandr Chizhevsky (–)
established another branch of cosmist enquiry and is regarded as the
founder of solar-earth research. Throughout his life, Chizhevsky was
noted not only for his many talents, but also for an exceptional
sensitivity to the weather, vibrations, and fluctuations in the natural and
social atmosphere. According to his autobiography, he had a constant
sensation of fever, a burning as if of an inner sun, which he directed
outwards in a never-ending passion to learn about society, including the
study of solar and other cosmic influences on human behaviour.
19
Born
in the town of Tsekhanovets, Chizhevsky spent his childhood and
teenage years in Kaluga where he met Tsiolkovsky with whom he later
worked in the Soviet experimental field of space biology (which is the
study of the origin and evolution of life in the universe). Chizhevsky’s
main contribution to Russian cosmism was his theory of the influence
of cosmic solar radiation on the behaviour of organized human masses
as well as on universal historical processes. In  Chizhevsky
presented his doctoral thesis on universal history in Moscow where he
defended the idea that the sun’s activity has an effect on many
18
Vernadsky, V. I., Trudy Po Vseobschei Istorii Nauki [Works on the Comprehensive History of
Science], Moskva: Izd-vo Nauka, .
19
Young, The Russian Cosmists,p..
RUSSIAN COSMISM 
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

phenomena in the biosphere, including changes in crops, diseases, and
human psychology. In his ‘sunspot cycle’theory, the change in solar
activity was identified as the main trigger of historical events, including
political and economic crises, wars, and revolutions. Chizhevsky later
published his theory in the book Physical Factors of the Historical Processes
(), which brought him fame. But as his ideas contradicted Soviet
theories of the reasons for the Russian revolutions of  and ,
Chizhevskiy was denounced in  and sent to gulag. After spending
 years in prison camps and exile, he was released and never again
wrote on solar cycle theory, but he made his name with other theories,
the most important being that of aero-ionization and hemodynamics.
20
Cosmic concepts such as the ‘noosphere’,‘cosmic philosophy’,
‘evolution of cosmic life’, and ‘solar-earth unity’opened up a space for
several important ideas to develop. These included cosmic energy
(kosmicheskaya energiya that transfers various miraculous properties, defines
human lives, and connects them with the universe), cosmic ethics
(kosmicheskaya etika that describes our role and moral duty in controlling
and perfecting the universe and not destroying or harming it), and the
unity of humanity with both the earth and the limitless expanses of
outer space inhabited by innumerable alien civilizations. By upgrading
our bodies and achieving a godly status of immortality in the
technological age of the noosphere, humankind—homo immortalis—is
destined to unite politically, establish paradise on earth, and give a new
meaning to the universe. In the early decades of the Soviet Union,
when the Bolsheviks were still experimenting with all sorts of ideas, it is
not difficult to imagine that cosmism’s activist approach to all life’s
problems and its way of thinking—full of idealism, zeal, and energy—
offered a source of inspiration to early Soviet literature, poetry,
21
philosophy, art, and even science (see Figure ). But as scientificdisciplines
quickly consolidated under the umbrella of Marxism-Leninism, the occult
and pseudo-scientific side of cosmism was suppressed by the state.
Nevertheless, the fathers of the movement were heroes of Soviet
propaganda for other reasons and some of their idealistic ideas about
the possibility of conquering the cosmos and the power of collective
20
Gagaev, A. A. and Skipetrov, V. P., Filosofiya A. L. Chizhevskogo, Saransk: Mordovia
State University Publishers, .
21
Great poets, including Alexander Blok, Andrei Biely, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Sergei
Esenin, Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, Andrei Platonov, Nikolai Zabolotsky, and
Boris Pasternak, all exhibited, to one degree or another, cosmist concerns in their
works. Young, The Russian Cosmists, pp. –.
BAASANJAV TERBISH
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

intelligence to change the world were incorporated into Soviet
mainstream thinking, albeit under different names. Forced into an
underground existence, Russian cosmism as a whole not only mixed
with and developed many themes analogous to other alternative
movements, it also influenced them, including Eurasianism (Evrazystvo), a
pseudo-science offering a continental, if not global, perspective on the
fate of Russia-Eurasia/the Soviet Union.
Eurasianism as a theory of cosmic energies
Any discussion of Russian cosmism would be incomplete without an
account of the idea of Eurasia popularized by the dissident Soviet
historian Lev Gumilev (–). Gumilev’s account has its roots in a
theory of Eurasia first proposed by Russian émigrés in Sofia, Bulgaria,
in the s. The first proponents of this theory, who fled Russia after
the Bolshevik Revolution and rejected Europe’s individualistic and
materialistic spirit,
22
argued that Russian civilization did not belong to
Figure .‘New Planet’by Konstantin Yuon () shows the  Revolution as the result
of a cosmic catastrophe. This painting is on display at the New Tretyakov Gallery
in Moscow.
22
Glebov, S., ‘The Mongol-Bolshevik revolution: Eurasianist ideology in search for an
ideal past’,Journal of Eurasian Studies,(), pp. –.
RUSSIAN COSMISM 
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

any ‘European’category but is a unique civilization in its own right. It is
neither European nor Asian but something in-between—Eurasian. The
Eurasianism of the émigrés—also referred to in the literature as
‘classical Eurasianism’—was a system of ideas based on the argument
that Russia-Eurasia is a unique civilization shaped by its ‘homogeneous’
geographical location.
23
Owing to this geographical unity, Eurasia,
which encompassed myriad peoples with different languages, cultures,
and histories, was historically predestined by nature itself to form a
single civilization, a single state unit. By using the notion of
geographical causation to theorize the behaviour of various populations
inhabiting a vast territory, the Eurasianists set out to explain not only
the evolution and character of Russia-Eurasia but also to predict its
future in order to determine imperatives for Russia’s development. In
their view, geography, human psychology, and history were inseparable
categories. Being opposed to militant atheism and Bolshevik ideas, the
majority of them nevertheless saw the  Revolution as a necessary
reaction to the rapid modernization of Russian society and firmly
believed that, in time, the Bolshevik government would evolve into a
new national, Orthodox-Christian government. Being an emotional
rather than an intellectual movement that wished to see Russia-Eurasia
as a religiously regenerated, non-European, and non-Bolshevik country,
Eurasianism had lost its appeal by the time the Bolsheviks emerged
from the Russian Civil War as the absolute victors. Impatient to meet
the future, little did the early Eurasianists know that it would take
another  or so years for their dream to be fulfilled.
This movement’s ideas about geographical determinism, however, were
later picked up and developed in the Soviet Union by Gumilev in his
theory of Eurasia. Gumilev, who also saw the Soviet Union as neither
European nor Asian but a unique Eurasian civilization, argued, in the
spirit of classical Eurasianism, that the defining element of human
groupings in Eurasia is not so much genetics as their link with
landscape or geography. Nevertheless what sets Gumilev apart from the
classical Eurasianists is his concept of ‘passionarity’(passionarnost ) which
explains the genesis and evolution of ethnoses in the context of
geographical determinism. In his view, the history of Eurasia and its
diverse peoples are part of an uninterrupted process in which energy,
called ‘passionarity’, gives birth to new ethnoses and civilizations;
23
Savitsky, P. N., ‘Geografichesky obzor Rossii-Evrazii’,inRossiya: Osobyi Geografichesky
Mir, Prague: Evraziiskoe knigoizdatelstvo, , pp. ,.
BAASANJAV TERBISH
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

ultimately, when the energy is depleted, the ethnos/civilization dies out,
giving way to the next. In his book, Gumilev explains ‘passionarity’
as follows:
Usually, people, like other living organisms, have as much energy as is needed for
sustaining life. If a person is able to ‘absorb’energy from the environment more
than is ever needed, then that person forms bonds with other people, which
allows [him/her] to use this energy in any direction [he/she] chooses […]
Using this excessive energy in organizing and managing their compatriots at all
levels of social hierarchy, they [i.e. passionarians, or people who have
‘super-abundant’energy], though with hardship, set up new stereotypes of
behaviour, forcing others to adopt it, and in this way bring into existence a
new ethnic system, a new ethnos.
24
In its turn, ‘passionarity’, according to Gumilev, originates from cosmic
rays which are absorbed by a landscape. In other words, it is cosmic
energy from outer space that ultimately shapes terrestrial
human civilizations:
During its geological existence, our planet has been enriched with energies,
absorbing: () solar energy; () atomic energy of radioactive decomposition
inside Earth; () cosmic energy […] from our Galaxy […] Therefore, our
planet gets from the cosmos more energy that is needed to sustain an
equilibrium in the biosphere, which leads to excesses that bring about […]
passionarian pushes, or ethnogenesis [i.e. birth of new ethnoses].
25
Passionarity is not equally distributed across the globe. According to
Gumilev, Western Europe and the Atlantic powers (including the
United States) not only have low levels of passionarity, but are also
constantly losing this vital energy, while Russia-Eurasia and the Middle
East are blessed with rising passionarity. Gumilev shares his
predecessors’anti-Western prejudices, but, unlike them, he is close
enough to the Russian cosmism movement for his theory of
ethnogenesis and passionarity to be described by some scholars as a
‘biocosmic theory’.
26
What Gumilev did was to ‘energize’human
history and trace the energy stored in the landscape (which unites
various peoples and brings about civilizations) back to its cosmic origin.
Influenced by cosmism, in his works Gumilev draws upon the theories
of some important cosmists, including Vernadsky’s ideas of the
24
Gumilev, L., Ot Rusi do Rossii:Ocherki Etnicheskoi Istorii [From Rus to Russia], Moskva:
Izdatelstvo Zakharov, , pp. –.
25
Gumilev, L., Etnogenezis i Biosfera Zemli, Moskva: AST, .
26
Hagemeister, ‘Russian Cosmism’,p..
RUSSIAN COSMISM 
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

biosphere and noosphere, and Chizhevsky’s thoughts about the influence
of solar energy on human history.
27
Although Gumilev’s ideas about geographical determinism and a
landscape which absorbs excessive and transformative cosmic energy were
rejected as ‘unscientific’and most of his monographs were banned from
official publication, he attracted much publicity in the perestroika years, as
did various scholars of Russian cosmism. Following the collapse of the
Soviet Union, his ideas, as Humphrey notes,
28
became very popular in
many parts of Russia, especially among ethnic minorities, not least
because Eurasianism offered them a new post-Soviet identity and
non-Marxist ways of reimagining their past, present, and future.
In Kalmykia, Gumilev’s books, along with those of the rediscovered
Kalmyk Eurasianist Erenzhen Khara-Davan,
29
have achieved huge
popularity among people from all walks of life. ‘Eurasia’,‘Eurasian
civilization’, and ‘passionarity’became widely used terms in official
speeches and everyday parlance alike. Seeing themselves as neither
Soviet nor European, nor even Asian, many Kalmyks not only
embraced their new identity as a unique Eurasian people but were also
inspired by the expectation of a ‘passionarian push’(passionarnyi tolchok)
that would initiate the development of the Kalmyk nation within
Russia. In the strict Gumilevian interpretation, for a passionarian
development to occur, what was needed first of all was a leader with
‘super-abundant cosmic energy’or passionarity. That, at least, was the
way in which many Kalmyk cosmists and philosophers interpreted the
situation. This leader was found in the person of Kirsan Ilyumzhinov
who was elected the first president of post-Soviet Kalmykia in  on a
wave of popular Eurasianist-cosmist euphoria.
27
Young, The Russian Cosmists,p..
28
Humphrey, C., ‘Eurasia, ideology and political imagination in provincial Russia’,in
Postsocialism: Ideals, Ideologies, and Practices in Eurasia, C. M. Hann (ed.), London:
Routledge, .
29
Born in Kalmykia, Khara-Davan emigrated to Europe following the Bolshevik
Revolution where he joined the Eurasianist movement. Along with other prominent
Eurasianists, he popularized the idea that Chingis Khan was the first emperor of united
Eurasia who succeeded in carrying out the historic task set by nature itself. In light of
this interpretation, Russia-Eurasia, or the Soviet Union, was reconceived as an organic
continuation of Chingis Khan’s empire. In  he crystallized his ideas in his book:
E. Khara-Davan, Chingis-Khan Kak Polkovodets i Ego Nasledie: Kul’turno-Istorichesky Ocherk
Mongol’skoi Imperii XII-XIV Veka [Chingis Khan as a Military Leader and His Heritage: The
Cultural-Historical Outline of the Mongolian Empire in XII-XIV], Belgrade: published by the
author, .
BAASANJAV TERBISH
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

UFO sightings and the revival of Russian cosmism
In his influential book Flying Saucers, Carl Gustav Jung argues that the
UFO phenomenon is a myth-in-the-making and a projection of modern
technological and salvationist fantasies.
30
The UFO phenomenon,
according to Jung, is connected with universal anxieties generated by
the mechanized conflicts of the Second World War and the Cold War.
It has become a psychological substitute for God in secular Western
societies in which religious belief has diminished or become lost. People
in these technological societies have become sceptical about
supernatural beings, as depicted in traditional myths and holy books,
and have been inclined to interpret the signs in the sky as machines
from a world with technology more advanced than ours. Jung also
notes that the first ‘flying saucer’stories appeared in  in the United
States, two years after the end of the Second World War and the
beginning of the atomic era. Perhaps not coincidentally, the most
important of the early UFO stories emerged near Roswell, New
Mexico, not far from Alamogordo where the first atomic bomb was
tested. Such stories intensified in the United States as tension with the
Soviet Union grew and the fear of war grew ever greater. In the first
UFO stories from the early Cold War period, the extra-terrestrials were
usually benevolent and there was the hope that they might bring peace
to our world.
Meanwhile in the Soviet Union—a country which had developed the
largest and best-funded scientific establishment in history and was taking
huge strides in developing rocket technologies—stories about
unidentified flying objects or apparatuses rarely appeared in the
state-controlled mass media. The founding fathers of Russian cosmism
focused more on ideas about humans visiting other planets or advanced
alien civilizations controlling evolution in the universe. Nevertheless,
during the Soviet period, occasional stories in the media about ‘flying
saucers’and ‘flying pans’were treated either as bourgeois propaganda
31
or explained away as atmospheric phenomena or folklore-based mass
fantasies.
32
That said, with differing degrees of scrutiny, the Soviet
30
Jung, C., Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, .
31
Ramet, S. P., ‘UFOs over Russia and Eastern Europe’,The Journal of Popular Culture,
(), pp. –.
32
Saranov, V., ‘On the nature and origin of flying saucers and little green men’,Current
Anthropology,(), pp. –.
RUSSIAN COSMISM 
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

authorities always kept an eye on such reports. During the Khrushchev
Thaw, marked by the general relaxation of censorship, which coincided
with the beginning of the Soviet space exploration programme, scientists
felt relatively free to discuss various topics. For example, in  Felix
Zigel, a professor at the Moscow Aviation Institute, was permitted to set
up a group consisting of top Soviet scientists and cosmonauts who were
interested in UFOs. However, censorship was reintroduced at the
beginning of the Brezhnev era (–) and in the ensuing years
UFO sightings were mentioned in the media only to debunk the
possible extra-terrestrial origins of the flying objects.
33
But this does not mean that the authorities did not study the
phenomenon behind closed doors, with various theories in mind. The
first Soviet state-sponsored programme to study ‘paranormal
phenomena’in the skies was approved in  at the level of the
Council of Ministers of the USSR and was included in five-year
research plans. Special teams were set up at the Soviet Ministry of
Defence and the Soviet Academy of Sciences with three major lines of
investigation: the possibility of UFOs being a product () of human
activity and technologies (rocket launches, enemy aircraft, etcetera), ()
of atmospheric processes, and () of extra-terrestrial origin. Although
this research was highly classified, public interest in UFOs and in
cosmic topics in general did not diminish, not least because of how
information was collected in the Soviet Union. In the case of Soviet
military intelligence-gathering, any personnel who witnessed an
inexplicable phenomenon in the skies was obliged by a directive from
the Ministry of Defence to write a report to the head of their unit. In
some urgent cases such reports bypassed normal bureaucratic
procedures to end up on the table of the chief of general staff himself.
Stationed in all parts of the Soviet Union and with obligatory
conscription, Soviet armed forces not only provided a large-scale
observational capability but also proved to be a significant source of
various cosmic rumours when soldiers left the army and returned to
civilian life. The Academy of Sciences also cast a wide net, gathering
information from meteorological stations dotted across the country,
research institutes, eyewitness accounts, and various publications.
During the  years of the programme, which was closed down in ,
the Academy of Sciences, for example, had independently collected
33
Ramet, ‘UFOs over Russia and Eastern Europe’, pp. –.
BAASANJAV TERBISH
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

, related reports, of which  were labelled ‘extraordinary’
and ‘paranormal’.
34
While the UFO phenomenon was secretly studied by Soviet scientists in
two state organizations and discussed in closed circles of cosmists, psychics,
and other interested parties, the first serious works chronicling
extra-terrestrial visits only appeared on the shelves of bookshops from
the beginning of perestroika and glasnost, a development accompanied
by mass sightings of UFOs in many parts of the Soviet Union. As in
the United States, UFOs also seemed most likely to be sighted near
military bases, atomic electricity plants, and other strategic locations.
Spectacular landings of UFOs in Voronezh near a major Soviet
military installation in , a UFO sighting over Leningrad’s Sosnovy
Bor nuclear power station in , a similar sighting over the
Chernobyl atomic plant in , and a report of UFOs flying over
Chelyabinsk, a Soviet military bomber training base, are probably the
most celebrated incidents disseminated through central news agencies
and newspapers across the Soviet Union. The Telegraph Agency of the
Soviet Union (TASS) reported on the Voronezh incident in its 
October  issue in sensational terms:
Aliens visited the place [a park in Voronezh] after dark, at least three times, locals
report. A large shining ball or disc was seen hovering above the park. It then
landed, a hatch opened, and one, two, or three creatures similar to humans
and a small robot came out. The aliens were three or even four metres high,
but with very small heads.
Many local newspapers also reported sightings in small and not very
strategically important localities in increasing numbers. Simultaneously,
the number of open UFOlogy groups mushroomed across the Soviet
Union. A survey conducted in the early s revealed that  per cent
of respondents believed in UFOs.
35
It would not be too far-fetched to
assert that the first reported UFO sightings and abductions in Kalmykia
were bound to occur sooner rather than later.
The beginning of perestroika was also a turning point for these hitherto
suppressed ideas and movements, including Russian cosmism which was
revived and then openly proliferated. Although cosmist ideas had
invariably circulated among various underground circles involved in all
34
Platov, Yu. V. and Sokolov, B., ‘History of UFO state research in the USSR’,Bulletin
of the Russian Academy of Sciences,().
35
Stephens, H., ‘The occult in Russia today’,inThe Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture,
Rosenthal (ed.), p. .
RUSSIAN COSMISM 
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

sorts of ‘alternative’practices, including astrology, extrasensory
perception, paranormal phenomena, sorcery, and even alternative
historiography (recall that the dissident historian Lev Gumilev was
influenced by cosmist ideas), during perestroika cosmist ideas reached
and resonated with a wider audience. Given the popularity of
cosmos-related topics and projects in the Soviet Union—not to mention
the widespread anxiety caused by Ronald Reagan’s‘Star Wars’
initiative
36
—the ideas of Russian cosmism fell on fertile soil and quickly
captured the public imagination. During this period, when the state’s
hold on religion was relaxed and a revived spirituality swept across the
country—and when science as such was still broadly respected—
cosmism came to be promulgated as dukhovnaya nauka (‘science of the
truth, soul-searching’), and purported to address hitherto suppressed
psychic, spiritual, and paranormal issues and anxieties from a global,
cosmic perspective. The fact that the movement was also propagated as
a unique product of the Russian mind—hence the label ‘Russian
cosmism’—only helped sustain its popularity against the backdrop of
growing nationalism that swept across the country. Beginning in ,
conferences and seminars on Russian cosmism became regular and a
substantial literature has since emerged.
Cosmism in post-Soviet Kalmykia
Perestroika and the subsequent demise of the Soviet Union opened the
door to a variety of ‘alternative’movements, ideas, and practices,
including theosophy, agni-yoga, psychics, energy vampirism,
demonology, sorcery, astrology,
37
neo-paganism, cosmism, Eurasianism,
not to mention traditional religions. One of the first cosmism-related
groups to emerge in Kalmykia was the so-called Eurasian Academy of
Life established in Elista in  by enthusiasts comprising Eurasianists,
cosmists, historians, psychics, and fortune-tellers. A discussion club
called Aribut was founded by Valery Dorzhinov following his famous
36
Formally known as the Strategic Defense Initiative (STI), this project envisaged
advanced ground- and space-based systems to protect the United States. The STI led
the Soviet Union to reallocate unsustainably high amounts of funding into the space
and defence industries from the by-then faltering economy. Many commentators,
including David Gergen, a former aide to Ronald Reagan, later claimed that the STI
hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union.
37
Stephens, ‘The occult in Russia today’.
BAASANJAV TERBISH
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

encounter with aliens in . He later also organized a series of
exhibitions of his cosmic paintings, thereby contributing to the
proliferation of cosmism in Kalmykia. Other notable names worth
mentioning in this regard are the famous Kalmyk artist Dmitry
Sandjiev, a self-proclaimed alien abductee who paints cosmic art (see
Figure ); the architect Jangar Pyurveev, who has edited several books
on cosmism;
38
and Zoya Boschaeva, professor of economics at Kalmyk
State University, who writes on solar-earth theory. Like many cosmists,
these individuals claim to be connected to the noosphere from where
they say they receive novel ideas, visions, and the truth about the
cosmos. Dmitry Sandjiev explained to me:
There is cosmic energy and there is the noosphere about which Vernadsky talked,
right? I think that all ideas that I receive [from the cosmos] come from the
noosphere. It is where all human thoughts have been deposited for many
centuries. I have a small antenna in my head and that is how I receive the
information. [As a result] I have no problems whatsoever with coming up with
new ideas regarding my artwork. All [novel] ideas come to me momentarily.
39
The former anaesthetist Alexei Nuskhaev, who was a state ideologist in
Kalmykia until around , deserves special mention. Having worked at
the reanimation unit in a hospital in Elista, in  Nuskhaev was made
redundant. This enabled him to pursue his interests. Being a curious,
spiritually tormented, and poetically inclined man, he came to be
interested in many previously suppressed movements, including
cosmism, Eurasianism, and especially Russian neo-pagan ideas.
40
38
Pyurveev, J., Arhitektura Mirozdaniya [Architecture of the Universe], Moskva: Izd-vo PKTs
Al’teks, ; Pyurveev, J. et al., Cosmoplanetarian Integration of Earth, Moscow: Mirozdanie
Ltd, ; Pyurveev, J., Velikoe Sokrestie Kontinentov—Strategicheskaya Model’Kosmoplanetarnoi
Integratsii Planety Zemlya v Noosfere [Great Crossing of the Continents—A Strategic Model of the
Cosmoplanetarian Integration of Earth in the Noosphere], Moskva: SofiPrint, , to mention
just a few.
39
Personal communication, June , Moscow.
40
Russian neo-paganism is a branch of contemporary Russian nationalism which
glorifies the pre-Christian past and accuses Christianity of the brutal destruction of the
legacy of the Great Ancestors. Advocates of Russian neo-paganism assert that Russia’s
misfortunes in the last millennium are the result of the betrayal of the ‘original’
pre-Christian Slavic treasury of ancestral wisdom. Influenced by Western New Age and
‘Vedic’ideas, and anti-Semitism, this movement prophesises the coming of a Golden
Age when humanity will be rescued from catastrophe and global Jewish dominance.
Neo-paganism is also distinguished by its imperialistic goal of rescuing and restoring the
‘Russian empire’which encompasses vast territories of Europe and Asia. Shnirelman,
V. A., ‘Russian neo-pagan myths and anti-Semitism’,Acta (Analysis of current trends in
RUSSIAN COSMISM 
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

Influenced by Russian neo-paganism in its most mystical and occult form,
he talked and wrote extensively on the ‘deep’prehistoric past, on the
‘Vedic’wisdom of the ‘Great Kalmyk Ancestors’,onflying Vedic
pyramids and extra-terrestrials, and on the ways in which
Russia-Eurasia could be preserved. When the Eurasian Academy of Life
was established in Elista, Nuskhaev joined its team in the capacity of
‘Great Teacher’to conduct research into the history of two Eurasian
peoples—the Russians and the Kalmyks. In the best tradition of
Russian neo-paganism, in which personal spiritual experience is
considered an important technique for studying the world, Nuskhaev
‘spiritually’researched dark, unknown pre-history by using his
imagination and by discovering ‘glorious facts’in Russian and Kalmyk
folklore. He also claimed to be connected with cosmic aliens.
Impressed by his Eurasian-Russian patriotism, occult knowledge, and
cosmic ideas, in  President Ilyumzhinov invited Nuskhaev to
become his personal adviser and for this purpose created the post of
state secretary for ideology (Gossekretar po Ideologii). The former
anaesthetist accepted the offer and set about resuscitating the spiritual
energy of the Kalmyk nation instead of the unconscious bodies of
mortals. Given Russian cosmism is an action-oriented world view,
Ilyumzhinov tasked his state ideologist with helping him to formulate a
new state ideology that would transform the Kalmyks from a peripheral
people into the banner holders of Russia and humanity as a whole. In
his pamphlet Nuskhaev writes:
In recent times President [Ilyumzhinov] has often talked about the planetarian
way of thinking ( planetarnoe myshlenie)[…] Further economic development, its
perspectives, viability as well as a modern way of thinking cannot progress in a
state of territorial borders. The final phase of this process will be the
liquidation of all borders all over the world […] A thought is a stream of
energy. The energy of thought does not accept limited space and [therefore]
naturally our thoughts are what the planetary energetic space—i.e. the [noo]
sphere of Vernadsky—consist of. The thoughts of the Kalmyks, who live in
Kalmykia but who think in the united energetic space, automatically enter the
planetary energetic space through ‘energy [carrying] arteries’and become its
structural component. In other words, planetarian thinking will inevitably lead
any leader to achievements in economy, information, politics and culture at a
global level.
41
anti-Semitism: A special research unit of SICSA, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem), no.
,.
41
Nuskhaev, A., ‘Nasha zadacha—formirovanie novogo myshleniya’[‘Our Task—The
Formation of a New Way of Thinking’], in Vybor Kalmykii, Elista: APP Dzhangar, pp. –.
BAASANJAV TERBISH
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

During his career as state ideologist, Nuskhaev produced a long list of
works, about  short books in total. This pleased Ilyumzhinov, who
often boasts of his own ability to utilize ‘planetarian thinking’.
Ilyumzhinov was in charge of Kalmykia from  to . During his
tenure, he never stopped amazing citizens not only with his ‘excessive
cosmic energy’—which he claims to absorb from the surrounding
landscape in Kalmykia in the best tradition of Gumilevian
neo-Eurasianism—but also with his projects, each more bizarre than
the last. Some examples include: a project to build a space launch
facility in Kalmykia; the reburial of the stuffed carcasses of the first
Soviet canine cosmonauts Belka and Strelka in the Central Buddhist
Monastery in Elista; and the building of a mausoleum in Elista in order
to repatriate Lenin’s mummy on the grounds that his grandmother was
a Kalmyk. In Ilyumzhinov’s words, his interest in the supernatural and
‘alternative ideas’first developed in the late s when he was studying
at university in Moscow. But unlike other like-minded individuals in his
position, Ilyumzhinov did not set up a spiritual community but went
further. After his success in the Kalmyk presidential election in ,he
officially reunited religion and state, thus constitutionally enabling
himself to conduct realpolitik with the help of astrology and cosmic
energy. To the Steppe Code (new Kalmyk Constitution) Ilyumzhinov
added a Vernadskian-type clause that ‘all citizens of Kalmykia are
responsible for what is happening on Earth’. According to Ilyumzhinov,
all Kalmyks, including ‘children are responsible for hunger in Africa, a
tsunami in Indonesia, the ozone hole over the Antarctica’, because ‘we
are all Earthlings, children of the cosmos’. Imposing new global
responsibility on ordinary Kalmyks was not his only strategy. ‘You
know, no matter what I say to [local] people, I hypnotize them at the
unconscious level. I do the same with Russians from other regions.
Around the republic I create a positive extra-sensorial field, and it helps
me in all I do,’Ilyumzhinov boasted to an Izvestiya correspondent in
.
42
Below is an extract from another interview he gave in :
Correspondent: Do you have astrologists?
Ilyumzhinov: Both in Moscow and here [in Kalmykia] I have dozens of them. All
come to me: communists, anarchists, and those who are connected with the
42
Izvestiya, November .
RUSSIAN COSMISM 
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

cosmos. I always receive them. Baba Vanga
43
is an honorary citizen of Kalmykia.
She foretold how many factories we would build. She also showed where would be
a petrol-processing plant: she is blind, but like this she was drawing with a pen on
the map and put a dot. Later on, scientists discovered that she got it right. Baba
Vanga’s niece is a professor-parapsychologist, she opened the biggest windmill
here.
Correspondent: Who is that strange man who has just left your office?
Ilyumzhinov: He is Aizen, a French offspring from Chechnya, and he is a new
messiah. In a month or two he will announce about himself to the world. Over
there is Ivan Yakovlevich from Rostov oblast. Would you like to see him?
(Correspondent’s observation): Ivan Yakovlevich, a man with a mysterious, drunken
look, is laying out on the table some shabby papers on which are drawn circles
and arrows. He confides that this system was given to him from above. ‘He is
enlightened, a Teacher descends upon him from the skies,’explains the
president. Mid October, according to the clairvoyant, is an auspicious time
for elections.
44
On the advice of Ivan Yakovlevich, Ilyumzhinov—to universal
puzzlement—announced a new presidential election to be held on 
October , although his first term had two more years to run.
Making sure that he was the only candidate to run for the post,
Ilyumzhinov effectively re-elected himself for another seven years,
45
thus
securing his presidency until . In fact, in that same year
Ilyumzhinov was busy arranging another election, this time to FIDE
(the World Chess Federation). According to Ilyumzhinov, Baba Vanga
also foretold that he would become the president of FIDE:
43
Baba Vanga (–) was a blind Bulgarian clairvoyant who firmly believed in
aliens and who gained immense popularity in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union.
According to the Russian writer Svetlana Kudryavtseva, Vanga’s guests included many
prominent Russian politicians, including President Boris Yeltsin’s press secretary, as well
as aides to the leaders of various Russian political parties such as Zhirinovsky (Liberal
Democratic Party of Russia), Zyuganov (Communist Party of the Russian Federation),
and Yavlinsky (Yabloko Party). Kudryavtseva, S., Fenomen Yasnovideshchei Vangi:
Proritsaniya, Predskazaniya, Zagovory, Moska: Izd-vo Ripol Klassik, .
44
Moskovsky Komsomolets,September .
45
Ilyumzhinov personally reveres the number seven. In his book he writes: ‘Seven
Buddhas, Seven Creators, Seven Spirits. is the beginning of the world. Therefore,
people of the first epoch of humanity revere ’: Ilyumzhinov, K., Za Vlast’Razuma na
Velikoi Rusi: Ideologiya Razuma [For the Power of Universal Intellect in Greater Russia: The Ideology
of Universal Intellect], Jangar: Elista, , pp. –.
BAASANJAV TERBISH
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

Everything that she [Baba Vanga] had foretold was realized. For example, half a
year prior to my being elected President of FIDE, in April  she said, ‘I see
two Kirsan [Ilyumzhinovs]’, and laughed. [Then] she said, ‘So tiny, thin, but
you are sitting on two arm-chairs, two presidents, [you] became double’[…]
In November I became President of FIDE, and now, as an exception, occupy
two posts at the same time.
46
Following his claim that he was abducted by extra-terrestrials, in 
Ilyumzhinov made a sensational announcement in TIME magazine that
earth was set to collide with the planet Nibiru, killing everyone, unless
people cleansed their aura by playing chess, which he claims to be a
game of extra-terrestrial origin. Not coincidentally, Ilyumzhinov made
chess a compulsory lesson in secondary schools in Kalmykia. For him, a
planetary perspective is useful not only for understanding global
problems and threats but also for the micromanagement of his small
republic. When Ilyumzhinov was asked by a journalist about how he
planned economic policy, he replied:
I meditate. By meditation I gradually rise up to the astral level of the cosmos. As I
rise up everything gets smaller, the people, the houses, become tiny, I see the land
and then the continent, and from up there I look down on the planet Earth.
Everything then becomes clear and understandable.
47
Having ruled Kalmykia for  years, in  Kirsan Ilyumzhinov had to
resign from his post. This was not because of his occult ideas or his cosmic
mismanagement of the republic, which, according to Russian surveys, is
one of the poorest places in the country, but because of a new law
passed by then-president Dmitry Medvedev prohibiting regional leaders
from staying in power for too long. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov is a well-known
figure in Russia due to his media appearances during which he often
talks about his cosmic experiences.
Today Russian cosmism is a diverse, eclectic, and growing movement
with increasingly blurred boundaries, producing strange offshoots in
various places across Russia. Posing as a movement to unite science with
dukhovnost’(the intangible, soul-searching), it parallels Marxism-Leninism in
terms of its all-encompassing vision, ambition, and readiness to act. Fields
in which cosmism is said to be applicable range from the economy to
arts, from sciences to politics and ecology, albeit with no guaranteed
success, as seen in the case of Kalmykia. Having a firm footing in the
46
Vzglyad,August .
47
Humphrey, ‘A politico-astral cosmology in contemporary Russia’, pp. –.
RUSSIAN COSMISM 
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

realm of the intangible, Russian cosmism, which positions itself as a
non-religion, can even influence religions.
In Kalmykia many folk healers, who practise folk Buddhism, extensively
use various energies in their healing practices, including cosmic energy
(kosmicheskaya energiya) which they claim to absorb from their
environment or receive from Buddhist gods. Some even say that they
receive this energy directly from the cosmos and are connected with
intelligent extra-terrestrial beings. The most prominent belong to a
community called Vozrozhdenie (Revival), led by a charismatic folk
healer, Galina Muzaeva, who appropriately describes her belief as
‘cosmic Buddhism’(kosmichesky Buddhizm). Apart from healing sick
people by means of traditional methods (such as reading Buddhist
mantras, using herbs, and so on), the community, which consists of 
‘cosmic Buddhists’, carries out cosmic projects in collaboration with
extra-terrestrial powers. Members of the community communicate with
the cosmos and receive celestial maps, diagrams, and instructions on
how to create ‘energy corridors’(energeticheskie koridory) for UFOs to beam
down cosmic rays. Once these spots have absorbed sufficient cosmic
energy, Galina Muzaeva assured me, they would begin to radiate with
enough power to turn the entire planet into an earthly paradise where
diseases would be eradicated and all religions and nations united in a
‘cosmic union’under the leadership of the ‘spiritually powerful’
Figure .‘Chess duel’() by the Kalmyk artist Dmitry Sandjiev depicts aliens playing
chess. Source: Reproduced with kind permission of the artist.
BAASANJAV TERBISH
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

Kalmyks. In the early s, Galina performed a series of ‘cosmic rituals’
for President Ilyumzhinov in order to connect his body to ‘intelligent’
energies, or the noosphere, floating in outer space. Galina told me that
the rituals were successful, which hardly seems surprising, given
Ilyumzhinov’s subsequent cosmic claims and projects.
Conclusion
It is a scientific fact that our planet is closely connected with the cosmos.
Few would deny the benevolent effects of solar warmth on life, or the
influence of the moon on the earth’s tides, or the harmfulness of cosmic
radiation on living organisms. The list can be easily expanded. While
such earth-cosmic connections may not be very obvious, most of us are
sure about these pronouncements because that is what modern science
teaches us. In Kalmykia, as in other parts of Russia, many people take
this one step further and believe that the universe, with its uncountable
galaxies and life forms, is more interlinked than mainstream science
acknowledges or is capable of verifying. According to this view, the
universe consists of energy flows and humans are intimately connected
not only with their planet but with the endless expanse of the universe
through myriad cosmic energies and waves that transfer not just heat
but many other miraculous qualities such as collective intelligence,
memories, wisdom, healing powers, and even sensibilities. Some even
believe the universe to be a gigantic living organism. Although the
majority of such energies are yet to be discovered by science, according
to the cosmist view we need to use all available methods and sources at
our disposal, including those that are controversial—and even personal
experience—in this endeavour.
In Kalmykia, as elsewhere in Russia, believing in ‘alternative’ideas does
not necessarily contradict what one learns from mainstream science.
Furthermore, many in Kalmykia even say that these two paradigms
complement each other. This favourable attitude towards ‘alternative’
knowledge stems partly from a particular Soviet experience of science
after Marxism-Leninism failed in its promise to construct a
‘super-science’that would explain everything. The repudiation of
Marxism-Leninism as a dominant explanatory paradigm resulted not
only in the blurring of the line between science and its alternatives, but
it also shattered a firm belief in the omniscience of the mainstream
science with which Marxism-Leninism tried so hard to associate itself.
RUSSIAN COSMISM 
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

As a result of this paradigm shift (which led to the creative reinterpretation
of science itself, not to mention the opening up of the hitherto banned
areas to ‘scientific’investigation), a variety of alternative belief systems
emerged to assert their ‘scientific’credentials. In popular understanding,
science is that which correctly describes reality. A strategy to enhance
legitimacy by appealing to the authority of science is peculiar not only
to religious movements,
48
but also to a wider range of alternative
knowledge systems that purport to describe reality in all its
manifestations, both visible and invisible, known and unknown. One of
them is Russian cosmism, a movement that positions itself as dukhovnaya
nauka,or‘a science of the truth, of soul-searching’, which emphasizes
that throughout the cosmos much more is unknown than known, and
more is invisible than visible. This accounts for the movement’s
openness to all sorts of research methods, both pseudo-scientific
and modern.
Apart from its self-proclaimed ‘scientific’credentials, Russian cosmism,
which is in a perpetual state of inventing itself, owes its growing popularity
to its promotion as an original product of the Russian mind as opposed to
‘Western-Atlanticist’one. Staunchly nationalist, many Russian cosmists
are also openly anti-Western. In fact, such sentiments are widely shared
by many movements that are gaining popularity in today’s Russia.
Another major factor that makes cosmism attractive is its association
with the names of its founding fathers, who have acquired celebrity
status. Fully rehabilitated, Fedorov, Tsiolkovsky, Vernadsky, Chizhevsky,
and others are more popular in Russia today than ever before. Many of
their works and ideas that were suppressed during the Soviet period—
especially those related to the occult and pseudo-science—have become
popular knowledge and their names have been given to institutes,
funds, organizations, and museums. For example, the Fund of
V. I. Vernadsky, established in , is one of the biggest charity
organizations in Russia to support ecologically oriented educational
projects. The Fund organizes competitions, study groups, and seminars,
often in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and the Russian
Academy of Sciences. The Russian Academy of Cosmonautics, named
after Tsiolkovsky, was also founded in . In Kaluga the annual
48
Zeller, B. E., Prophets and Protons. New Religious Movements and Science in Late
Twentieth-Century America, New York and London: New York University Press, .
Lewis, J. R. and Hammer, O. (eds), Handbook of Religion and the Authority of Science,
Leiden, Boston: Brill, .
BAASANJAV TERBISH
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

Tsiolkovsky Lectures have become a platform to discuss his ideas as well as
theories connected with pseudo-science and the occult. In 
Tsiolkovsky was posthumously awarded the Symbol of Science medal
for ‘the creation of the basis for all projects related to the exploration of
new cosmic spaces’. Chizhevsky and Fedorov have also been honoured
in Russia: a science centre bearing Chizhevsky’s name and a
museum-library named after Fedorov were opened in Kaluga and
Moscow respectively. Conferences, lectures, and exhibits are also
regularly organized to popularize their ideas, which are often reported
in major Russian newspapers and broadcast on television.
The founding fathers of Russian cosmism should, first of all, be
understood in the context of their time, an era characterized by the
growing cult of science and humanism. What they did was to attempt
to systematize new ground-breaking discoveries (concerning the tiniest
particles, such as atoms, to the largest, such as galaxies, and everything
in between) and offer a new unifying account. In place of diminishing
religious authority and values, cosmists also offered a new source of
meaning and authority: human experiences and feelings. According to
them, the universe was to derive its meaning not from the dying gods
but from humanity itself. Given the circumstances of the time, their
knowledge and explanations were bound to be as speculative as they
were emotional. It is no wonder then that Russian cosmism emerged as
a cultural-intellectual movement that promulgated speculative ideas
about the nature of humanity, its projected evolution, and its place in
the universe—and this trend continues to this day. Although attaining
immortality is seen as a task for all humanity, this endeavour has to be
managed by strong leaders. In Federov’s vision this leading role is assigned
to ‘a Russian autocrat’; in Tsiolkovsky’s and Vernadsky’s views, to
‘a team of leading scientists’. According to other cosmists, it has to be
‘the godman’himself that must direct the masses—a view that seems to
be in tune with the political preferences of many Russians. Due to its
open-ended, eclectic, and all-embracing nature which seeks to connect
anything with everything else, cosmism attracts all sorts of intellectuals,
including nationalists, scientific immortalists, conspiracy theorists,
religious critics, spiritualists, environmentalists, not to mention eccentric
people who are simply open to ‘alternative’ideas. That said, some of
the ideas associated with cosmism have proved to be truly inspirational
and ahead of their time. The science of ecology was first conceived in
Russia by Vernadsky who also developed the concept of the ‘noosphere’
to denote an idea that we live in a new epoch marked by human
activities on the planet, long before Eugene F. Stoermer proposed his
RUSSIAN COSMISM 
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

‘anthropocene’in the s, denoting essentially the same idea.
Vernadsky’s notion itself found its way into intellectual circles in the
West via the French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin who has
had a profound influence on New Age movements. Fedorov is regarded
as a precursor of transhumanism, which today is also an international
intellectual movement that aims to enhance human physiology with the
help of modern technologies, with the ultimate aim of attaining
immortality. Inspired by developments in genetic engineering,
nanotechnology, regenerative medicine, and similar fields, ambitious
life-extending projects are gaining pace, with Google alone investing
millions of dollars in this vision. Not only did Tsiolkovsky put the
foundations in place for the Soviet space exploration programme, he
also influenced Wernher von Braun who is acknowledged as the father
of space science and rocketry in the United States, a country whose
rivalry with the Soviet Union pushed space exploration forward.
Russian cosmism first emerged as a movement purporting to explain,
transform, and bring universal order to a world in which the power of
the gods was diminishing. Owing to the socially transformative period
in which an idealistic belief in science, humanity, and utopian
expectations of social justice prevailed, in the early twentieth century
the movement focused more upon its ideas of (r)evolutionary
transformation and human domination of the cosmos. Having survived
an esoteric and pseudo-scientific underground existence during the
Soviet period, in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union,
Russian cosmism became more fixed in its ideas about maintaining
cosmic order, harmony, and averting catastrophes and regression. As
the country is still undergoing deep transformations, this trend
continues in Russia to this day. The Kalmyk cosmist Jangar Pyurveev
reflects this spirit, maintaining that:
Humanity is changing the face of the planet because the actions of people, which
are full of anthropocentrism, are already affecting the Solar system, pushing it to
catastrophe […] Perhaps we still underestimate our link with the universal
intellect (razum), with the universal cosmic space, which tries to help us out, to
make us change the pace of evolution on Earth which we have
distorted ourselves.
49
His solution to this existential problem is:
49
Pyurveev, J., Arhitektura Mirozdaniya, Moskva: Izd-vo PKTs Al’teks, ,p..
BAASANJAV TERBISH
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

Humankind, burdened by its past, has to set itself free from the past and take on a
new [body]—not a local geopolitical, but a planetarian-noospheric body […]to
integrate [itself] into a single planetarian system […] In order to get out of the
deadlock, what is urgently needed are constructive ideas on a planetary scale
as well as leader-countries capable of uniting the whole of humankind for the
collective and purposeful realization of these ideas.
50
In Kalmykia solutions to this challenge have been offered not only by
philosophers (such as Pyurveev) and politicians (President Kirsan
Ilyumzhinov and his secretary for ideology Alexei Nuskhaev), but by
religious specialists as well. Vozrozhdenie, whose members identify
themselves as followers of ‘cosmic Buddhism’, perform special rituals to
heal the earth and unite its inhabitants by means of cosmic energy that
they claim to receive directly from UFOs and deposit in Kalmykia’s
landscape. Given the high number of UFO sightings and healing rituals
involving cosmic energies, it can be said that in post-Soviet Kalmykia,
where the former president happens to be a famous cosmist himself,
certain aspects of Russian cosmism have become part of popular culture.
By positioning itself as a universal ‘science’, Russian cosmism also has
parallels with other ambitious, all-embracing movements that are rising
from the ashes of Soviet science and totalitarian ideology. One of them
is Eurasianism, which offers a systematized explanation of the fate of a
large territory which coincides with the border of the former Soviet
Union and which is inhabited by myriad sedentary and nomadic
peoples with different languages, histories, and cultures. Whereas in the
Soviet period this political-geographical union was legitimized by the
Marxist-Leninist theory of social evolution by stages, today its most
promising substitute is Eurasianism, which postulates the idea of fixed
primordial civilizational clusters that exist in opposition to one another,
rather than social evolution. By emphasizing the uniqueness of
Russia-Eurasia, Eurasianism is also an anti-Western world view. Despite
being based on an esoteric Gumilevian idea of passionarity
(passionarnost )—that cosmic energies absorbed by the landscape bring
about strong leaders who then unite various peoples and shape
civilizations—Eurasianism, in its ideological and most pragmatic sense,
has attracted the attention of the intelligentsia and nationalists as well as
that of powerful politicians. The most prominent among them is
President Putin who supports the idea of Eurasian civilization and is
himself a banner holder of the Eurasian integration project. On 
50
Ibid., pp. ,,.
RUSSIAN COSMISM 
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms

September , he gave an open day speech for pupils in secondary
school in the town of Yaroslavl which was broadcast by the main TV
channels in Russia. In a bid to inspire and energize the younger
generation, the president gave them the following task:
Your task is not only to make something new but to take a principally new step.
Look at how the world develops today. There are countries that have
incommensurably larger populations than ours. There are states that have
technologies and modern ways of management that far surpass those of ours.
But a question arises: If we [Eurasian people] have existed for more than a
thousand years and have been actively developing and strengthening ourselves,
does it not mean that we have something that is conducive to this? This
‘something’is the ‘nuclear reactor’inside our people—[ethnic] Russians [and]
people who are Russian [citizens]—that allows us to move forward. This is
passionarity that Gumilev wrote about, which pushes our people forward. And
all of you, who are starting an active life, need to take this into account and
achieve qualitatively better results.
In the Soviet Union, the cult of science laid the foundation of Soviet
rule. In post-Soviet Russia, many ideas inherited from the previous
period still have a powerful appeal, and science as such still enjoys
enormous popularity. It remains to be seen whether Russian cosmism
or Eurasianism—or any other system of ideas—will attain proper
‘scientific’status (that is, will be taught as reflecting the infallible laws of
nature and the universe) and where this will lead.
BAASANJAV TERBISH
of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17001123
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Cambridge, on 17 Jul 2020 at 18:28:38, subject to the Cambridge Core terms