With the change in political priorities, many documents from the secret archives of the KGB are now in the public domain.
But how much can you trust them? Any state security officer will confirm: business papers are rarely declassified in their original form.
They are preliminarily "cleaned out" by removing information that this department does not want to disclose for one reason or another.
And yet, such documents can provide researchers with interesting information - in particular, about the problems of aliens and UFOs, which, it turns out, were being dealt with by our special services.
KGB is the State Security Committee, which operated from 1954 to 1991. The main functions of the KGB were foreign intelligence, counterintelligence, operational-search activities, guarding the state border of the USSR, protecting the leaders of the CPSU and the Government of the USSR, organizing and maintaining government communications, as well as combating nationalism, dissent, crime and anti-Soviet activities.
Double standarts
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For many years, the USSR had a double policy in relation to unidentified flying objects. It was explained to the population that no UFOs exist, they say, it is hostile propaganda, and the celestial bodies that citizens observe from time to time are simply technical devices of NATO states designed to spy on our country.
Enthusiasts who distributed "samizdat" materials about UFOs or aliens were intimidated by accusations of anti-Soviet agitation.
At the same time, many UFO eyewitnesses gave written testimonies, which were carefully kept and systematized in the archives of the KGB. That is, the department itself fully admitted that such facilities exist - and may even threaten the country's security.
An interesting story is associated with the activities of one of the founders of Russian ufology Felix Siegel (1920-1988). In November 1967, his speech on central television marked the beginning of a massive collection of information about UFOs. Several hundred documentary evidences came to the address of the scientific group he created at the USSR Academy of Sciences. But it was not possible to study them - the group was disbanded, and all its materials were transferred to the KGB.
Blue folder
Igor Sinitsyn, assistant to the head of the KGB Yuri Andropov, in an interview with the Observer magazine told about how he saw in his boss's office an extensive dossier on the UFO phenomenon.
This happened in 1977 - after an incomprehensible huge object appeared in the sky over Petrozavodsk. Sinitsyn's duties included tracking publications in the foreign press, so he brought Andropov a translation of an article from Stern magazine about the case in Petrozavodsk.
The head of the KGB carefully studied the material, then took out a blue folder from the table and invited Sinitsyn to familiarize himself with its contents.
The folder contained reports from counterintelligence officers about UFO encounters. Andropov asked to take all the materials to the chairman of the Military-Industrial Commission A. P. Kirilenko. He left the documents with him.
Soon, on the orders of Andropov, a program was developed that obliges every serviceman to report all UFO sightings. The most interesting information fell into the "blue folder", the contents of which were reviewed by the country's top leadership.
In 1991, at the request of pilot-cosmonaut Pavel Popovich, then president of the All-Union UFO Association, the "blue folder" was placed at her disposal. There were 124 pages of printed text: reports, reports on encounters with unidentified objects.
Failed to shoot down
Here are the contents of some of the documents stored in the mysterious folder.
On July 28, 1989, mysterious disks appeared over missile depots located northeast of the city of Kapustin Yar in the Astrakhan region. The numbers of the military units in the documents are smeared with black ink, but the notes of the Chekist who reported on this situation are left.
The servicemen of the transmitting center observed three objects, and one at the liquidation base. UFOs were discs with a diameter of 4-5 meters with a hemisphere at the top. They shone brightly, silently moved, sometimes dropping and hovering above the ground. The fighter called by the command (the number of the flight unit was also smeared with black ink) did not manage to fly close to any of the objects, they constantly left it.
Reports from Captain Chernikov, Warrant Officer Voloshin, Private Tishaev, and others indicate that the flying object emitted light signals that resembled a flash.
Other blue folder documents describe a 1984 UFO encounter over Turkmenistan. The air defense system noticed a spherical object flying along the coast of the Caspian Sea at an altitude of 2000 meters towards the state border.
He did not respond to inquiries. Two fighters were raised into the air, but all attempts to shoot down the UFO failed. Moreover, when they began to shoot at the object, it dropped sharply to 100 meters above the ground - to a height that did not allow the fighters to fire further at it.
There are several dozen such cases in the "blue folder". This documentary evidence points to two facts: firstly, UFOs existed, and secondly, despite their official denial, the KGB was actively engaged in the collection and systematization of information regarding unidentified objects.
Now the documents from the "blue folder" are stored in the archives of the UFO Committee of the Russian Geographical Society.
Letters from another planet
But the KGB would not be itself without secrets and hoaxes. Western researchers consider the so-called Ummite letters to be one of them. In the 1960s-1970s, letters were sent to people in Spain (and partly France) in different languages with elements of a previously unknown speech. The senders presented themselves as inhabitants of the planet Ummo, inhabited by intelligent inhabitants who flew to Earth.
The total number of letters was more than 260 copies, their volume exceeded 1000 typewritten sheets. Each page of these documents was marked with a special purple pictogram.
In the messages, the “Ummites” described the history of their stay on Earth. They flew here in 1950 in three spaceships, six of them, including two women, they are exploring and analyzing our life.
Photo of the "Ummo ship", published June 1, 1967
The French journalist R. Marik, who studied these letters for many years, came to the conclusion that their creators were the workers of the KGB of the USSR themselves. His arguments: the social system of the planet Ummo described in the letters is very similar to the communism promoted in the USSR.
The "Ummites" did not hide their sympathy for political figures of the Marxist trend. Their views on the arms race faithfully echoed the classic themes of Soviet propaganda.
But the main thing is that in all European countries there were already legal communist parties, and in Spain the dictator Franco ruled and the Communist Party was banned. In 1975, Franco died, Christian Democrats came to power in the country, and the Communist Party became legal. And the flow of letters stopped! Have the Ummites achieved their goal?
Did the USSR have its own alien?
In the West, the topic of a flying saucer of extraterrestrial origin shot down by the USSR air defense system and the study of the corpse of the humanoid who controlled it, which was comprehensively investigated at the Semashko Institute, is periodically raised. A UFO was shot down in 1968 in the Urals near the city of Berezniki. Now everyone who is interested in ufology knows that this is nothing more than a hoax.
The footage of the "UFO shot down in 1968" and the "alien autopsy" are widely recognized as fake, but is it really so?
However, not so long ago, a certain P. Klimchenkov, who introduced himself as a former KGB officer, gave magazine and television interviews on this topic in the United States and showed his identity card on the air.
His words are confirmed by an article from the newspaper "Vecherny Sverdlovsk" dated November 29, 1968. In it, witnesses to the incident claimed that before their eyes, some shiny disk fell on a steep snow-covered slope. Then the military arrived at the scene and thoroughly combed the area.
P. Klimchenkov claims that the operation to detect and capture the UFO was codenamed "Myth". Further anatomical dissection of the dead humanoid convinced scientists that he was not human.
How reliable is this information?
Neither the "blue folder", nor in other released KGB documents says anything about her. But the documents shown by Klimchenkov give the impression of being genuine. For example, the order of the Minister of Defense A. Grechko to the commander of the Ural Military District A. Ponomarenko that the KGB officers be present at all stages of UFO detection.
Their reports, according to Klimchenkov, were promptly placed at the disposal of the head of the scientific department of the KGB, Colonel A. Grigoriev. In the documents shown, not only the scientific institution where the autopsy of the humanoid was carried out is named, but also the names of the doctors - Kamyshov, Savitsky and Gordienko. For unknown reasons, they all died suddenly on the same day, a week after the autopsy was completed.
All three were true luminaries of science - and the KGB would hardly have dealt with the first people of domestic medicine. The death of doctors still raises many questions.
Some foreign journalists claim that the information leaked about the activities of the former KGB was deliberate. But then for what purpose? In response to a similar story about the UFO capture and humanoid autopsy in the US? As you know, in 1995, many American media accused the CIA of a long-term concealment of this fact, but the official authorities announced that there was no UFO capture.
Perhaps the mercantile interests of the former employees of the once formidable department played a role? The American television company TNT does not hide the fact that documents and videos about the "Soviet alien" were bought in Russia from retired KGB officers.
In particular, photographs of an autopsy of a humanoid were purchased for 10 thousand dollars. Naturally, the TV company did not name the names of the employees who sold the materials.
The activities of the KGB have long been overgrown with rumors and legends, which cannot be dispelled even if the archives are declassified. And it is extremely difficult to separate the truth from controlled disinformation. The existence of UFOs continues to affect the interests of state security, which means that some documents are unlikely to ever be published.
Nikolay MIKHAILOV
