Previous Part: Forgotten Tragedies
The drama that took place in the Northern Urals took place at a difficult time.
“The late 1950s and early 1960s were indeed rich in information about UFO sightings,” said Petr Pavlov from Kerch. - For some reason, signals about them were sent to us, to the KGB. In those years, I worked as the head of the operational department of the KGB of the Yakut ASSR, so I know about them firsthand. There were no instructions from the Center to keep the information about UFOs secret. Also, we did not ask anyone to send information to us, that is, to the state security bodies. Nevertheless, all the information, which at that time was of a sensational nature, came to us … The initiative of people who sent information of various content forced me to instruct Captain NS Nesterov to systematically generalize these materials.
Only a few facts remain in memory.
Over the village of Chersky, on the banks of the Kolyma River, in the summer, when the sun did not sink below the horizon, 5 or 7 “flying saucers” hung motionless for more than a day at a high altitude, unattainable by the then fighter-interceptors. The "plates" stood in one line, observing the alignment, and left in the same formation.
Once, a signal was received that a UFO was landing beyond the Arctic Circle, on the banks of the Lena River. Captain Nesterov was sent there. He interviewed 5-6 people from local residents who saw this object themselves. According to eyewitnesses, an unknown object with luminous windows sank noiselessly onto the snow. The snow cover acquired a reddish tint for a few moments. Without lingering for a long time, the object also, without noise, blinking several times with reddish light flares, rose and disappeared. We sent information about this episode to the USSR Ministry of Defense. Soon a group of senior officers arrived to us. Accompanied by Captain Nesterov, they went to the UFO landing site, where they met with eyewitnesses.
In the winter of 1960 in the village. Tiksi showed me photographs showing the same object - a polar meteorological station in the polar night. The pictures were taken from one point, only with a time difference of a few seconds, to transfer the film. In the pictures, a diamond-shaped object was clearly visible low above the horizon, moving in space. The nose is lighter and the tail looks like a bell with a lubricated cut, possibly with exhaust fumes. The diamond-shaped object appeared to be rotating about its longitudinal axis. The light halo of large diameter was clearly visible. The photographer did not see any object on the horizon. It manifested itself only on positives.
Based on the materials about UFOs that we had accumulated, we wrote a special message and, attaching the indicated photographs, sent one copy to the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and the other to the editorial office of the Ogonyok magazine.
Promotional video:
2-3 weeks later, in Pravda, then in Izvestia, Komsomolskaya Pravda and other newspapers, articles by famous scientists appeared one after another, refuting the data on the appearance of "flying saucers" in the sky of the Soviet Union. In one of the articles, we received a reproach that we even sent a photograph of "UFO".
The content of the speeches of the central newspapers was reduced to one thought: no UFOs exist. Eyewitnesses are mistaken, taking for a UFO what in nature is called optical illusion. Science can artificially reproduce the effect of this optical illusion.
I still don’t understand why the respected scientists were deliberately deceiving the people. Who needed these experiments with an attempt to influence the public consciousness of people in the direction someone needed?.."
Pyotr Semenovich, apparently, did not know that all more or less significant topics in Soviet propaganda were put on shelves. Regarding the "flying saucers", the instruction was as follows: you need to write that the bourgeoisie in America dreamed of God knows what from fear, but in the country of victorious socialism nothing flies and cannot fly.
On November 6, 1952, member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU M. G. Pervukhin at a solemn meeting in Moscow on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of the October Revolution said:
“The huge US billionaire propaganda machine artificially inflates war psychosis … The results are evident. Many Americans have lost their peace of mind. Every now and then they peer into the sky, and some of them began to see strange objects in the sky resembling huge “flying saucers”, “frying pans” and “green balls of fire.” American newspapers and magazines widely publish stories of all kinds of “eyewitnesses” who - have seen these strange objects and claim that they are Russian mysterious shells or, in extreme cases, aircraft sent from some other planet to observe what is happening in America! How not to recall here the Russian folk proverb "Fear has big eyes."
The next day these lines appeared in the Pravda newspaper.
The right tone was set. The Soviet astronomer Boris Kukarkin repeated after the official: "Flying saucers" is an optical illusion on the basis of an obvious military psychosis incited by those who want war. "Moscow radio in those years claimed that" … flying saucers were invented by the Western military-industrial complex for so that taxpayers swallow a heavier military budget."
They were once again explained to those who were especially dull in the Tekhnika - Youth magazine: “The myth of the 'flying saucers' was needed to divert attention from the real danger posed to the peoples of the world by the military preparations of the imperialist aggressors, the organization of military atomic and missile bases, the testing of new types weapons of mass destruction.
Feel the iron notes? A Soviet person who dared to hint that he saw a UFO, at best, automatically fell into the ranks of "distributors of pseudoscientific inventions", and at worst - seemed to be an agent of "bourgeois mystifiers, instigators of military psychosis." And for those who would still risk turning to scientists with their observation, standard replies were prepared in advance. In them, UFOs were attributed to "experiments carried out to measure the density of the atmosphere at high altitudes, with the launch of a sodium cloud."
In 1960, cadets of the Higher Military Order of Lenin Aviation School named after I. V. Stalin, which was located in Yeisk, turned to the newspaper of the USSR Ministry of Defense "Krasnaya Zvezda" (Fig. 9, 10):
“We ask you to explain this unusual phenomenon,” two cadets, Valery Kozlov and Igor Barilin, wrote on behalf of the whole group. - In August 1960, the passage of a celestial body was accidentally observed twice. On September 9 at 20.15 (Moscow time), it again passed from west to east. A medium-sized luminary. The travel speed is less than the speed of the satellite. The passage time is 8-12 minutes.
Unusual: 1) passes away from the observer; 2) flickering light; 3) curvilinear movement.
What could it be? Can we watch him yet?"
The editors sent a letter from the cadets to the Moscow Planetarium, where the instructions for fooling UFO eyewitnesses were carried out without question. They wrote to “Comrades Kozlov and Barilin” that this was “one of the experiments on the study of the upper atmosphere” (Fig. 11, 12).
Although there was nothing to read about UFOs in the newspapers, the censorship wall began to reel on the other side. In the 1950s, one of the pioneers of Russian ufology, a teacher at the Moscow Technological Institute of the Food Industry, Yuri Fomin, began giving lectures on UFOs.
“In the mid-1950s, I was instructed to read through the Knowledge Society (at that time it was called the Society for the Dissemination of Political and Scientific Knowledge) public lectures on space topics in various mailboxes, KB and other organizations,” he recalled Yuri Alexandrovich - At that time this topic was very fashionable, and it was given a great political meaning …
In 1956, in foreign magazines, I came across reports of UFO sightings. At that time, we did not write anything about this … I began to collect materials on this matter and process them. In the end, I decided to mention the UFO problem in my lectures. I did it very carefully. I usually started with the phrase: "But the foreign press claims …" - and then a brief overview of foreign reports was presented. And at first I did not give any critical assessment of the information, I just stated the fact of its appearance.
The lectures were very popular. My phone was torn with orders for lectures. As a rule, they asked for more details about the UFO problem. During 1956-1960, at Moscow enterprises, I read several hundred similar lectures. The most interesting thing was that some of the lectures were attended by witnesses and eyewitnesses to the appearance of UFOs. These were not only random citizens, but also such specialists as pilots, radar operators and other competent persons who worked in "mailboxes", military organizations, etc. In most cases, witnesses refused to give their names and positions, or asked not to mention them in public lectures, fearing the reaction of their superiors … "42
This continued until January 1961, when the Central Committee of the CPSU decided to put an end to the ideologically unrestrained lectures and, in general, any talk about aliens. An exemplary lesson for those who still had confidence in Soviet science and reported their observations to someone was organized in the main Soviet newspaper.
“There is not a single fact that would indicate that mysterious material objects are flying over us, which are called“little plates”or“saucers,”said academician L. A. Artsimovich. - All conversations about this, which have become so widespread in recent years, have the same source - unfair and unscientific information, which is contained in reports read in Moscow by some completely irresponsible persons. These reports told fantastic tales, borrowed mainly from the American press and relating to the time period when flying dishes were the main sensation in the United States …
An additional element that heightened interest in "flying saucers" was a photograph of a saucer taken in one of the northern regions of the country (Fig. 13). As laboratory work at the IPG of the USSR Academy of Sciences showed, this photograph is also the result of an optical effect … It's time to end the distribution these fairy tales, no matter how exciting they may seem … ".
The photo mentioned by Lev Artsimovich was the one that the Chekists sent to the USSR Academy of Sciences. Here the academician didn't even need to mislead everyone: the picture from Tiksi really turned out to be an optical effect! But about the UFO landing and other much less explainable observations Artsimovich prudently chose to remain silent …
The story of the ill-fated photograph was told on the same day by another newspaper. This is hardly a coincidence: the joint duet of the editorial staff suggests a command from above to “slam down” the seditious theme.
“It happened in Tiksi on November 21, 1959,” said A. Mikirov, Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. - At about 9 pm E. Murashov, an employee of the polar station "Stolb", photographed the meteorological site. He filmed with the "Start" apparatus, which was loaded with a highly sensitive film (130 GOST units). But since it was very dark, the exposure was still equal to one minute.
Having taken the first picture, Murashov decided to duplicate it. Having developed the film, Murashov discovered an extremely strange object of unusual shape in both photographs. It looked like a drawing of some fantastic aircraft and was surrounded by a halo.
Comparison of the images showed that the mysterious object was moving in space, and this movement occurred from west to east. Murashov himself did not notice anything unusual in the sky during photographing. He explained this by the fact that all his attention was focused on the camera.
The pictures, which Murashov himself jokingly called a photograph of a "flying saucer", became the subject of countless conversations and disputes. Many began to reprint these pictures and pass them off as proof of the existence of "flying saucers" …
On the meteorological site at the bottom right, there were quite bright light sources. Whether these were spotlights or just lighting lamps, it is difficult to tell from the picture, and there is no need for it.
The light from these sources, falling on the lens, was partially scattered and partially reflected. Reflection came from both the lenses and the lens frames. Since each lens is a part of a sphere, and the frame is a circle, the reflected light came in a diverging beam. The lens, collecting this light, formed a body of rotation. Since there are a lot of lenses and frames in the lens and they are quite close to each other, we got several bodies of revolution, which formed the image of a "flying saucer" in Murashov's photograph …
Thus, the lens captures the image that it creates itself. Naturally, Murashov did not see anything at the meteorological site, since there was nothing to see …”.
Although no specific surname was named in Lev Artsimovich's article, everyone understood perfectly well who they were talking about. Fomin got the most:
“I was urgently summoned to the party bureau of the institute, although I was never a communist or even a Komsomol member, and an uncompromising study and fundamental condemnation of my activities began …
Soon a similar procedure followed in the Leningrad district party committee of the city of Moscow, and representatives of many technical and scientific organizations of the district were gathered there. I was asked to read a lecture in front of the audience again, including about UFOs, and then a complete critical defeat was supposed. But it didn't work out. The invitees did not criticize and even noted that the ideas expressed are original and deserve additional research and detailed discussions.
This position angered the secretary of the district committee, who chaired the meeting. He said that the audience did not understand for what purpose they were invited to the district party committee to discuss the acute signal of the central party organ. They should have angrily condemned anti-scientific, and therefore anti-party fabrications and not try to look for some kind of rational grain in them.
The next event in this cycle was my expulsion from the Znaniye society at a special city meeting of the presidium of the society. After that I was invited to the city party committee, where two journalists from the newspaper Vechernyaya Moskva were present. After a lengthy purge and raid, I was asked to sign a letter of repentance to the newspaper, the text of which was to be written for me by the invited journalists. I only had to give them some facts to make the article appear believable.
But I refused such an offer. As a result, at the end of January 1961, a devastating article appeared in Vechernyaya Moskva, written without my help and my participation. As I found out later, this newspaper was posted at those enterprises where I had lectured before …"
The ill-fated lecturer was summoned to the Central Committee of the CPSU, where they showed a typed samizdat record of one of the lectures. Central Committee workers tried to find out whether he had anything to do with the production and distribution of samizdat.
“This whole epic ended with a summons to the Ministry of Higher Education, where an unpleasant conversation took place,” Fomin said. - In addition, at the institute there were changes in the leadership of the department where I worked, not related to the events described. As a result, the situation at the institute worsened, so at the end of February 1961 I left it of my own free will.
After the article in the Pravda newspaper and the subsequent events, I naturally did not give public lectures, but continued to work on the analysis of the collected materials …”.
And there were a lot of materials. To the chagrin of party leaders, the 1960s proved to be extremely fruitful for UFO visits. I will cite just a few observations that occurred a year before the massive newspaper attack on "unfair and anti-scientific information."
On January 27, 1960, a "fireball" appeared over the Lithuanian city of Kapsukas.
“In the morning at 7.20, on the way to work on the southeastern side of the sky, a brightly glowing red star appeared, falling down, becoming brighter,” wrote A. Chuplene to the Vilnius Observatory. It sank rather low, as it seemed, almost to the level of buildings, becoming a bright red fireball the size of a soccer ball. Then the object changed direction and turned to the northeast side, it began to rise up and gradually disappeared into the sky.
In April 1960, a pilot met with a UFO - albeit while on the ground. It happened in the city of Dzhankoy, Crimean region at about 3.50 am. He was returning from the city to the airfield, located about 4 km away, hurrying for morning flights.
Suddenly, in the direction of the airfield, the pilot saw in the air, at about an altitude of 560 m, a white dome, which he initially took for a parachute. But then the dome alerted him: it hung motionless in one place. The pilot went faster through the forest, as he lost sight of the object behind the trees. When he climbed the hillock and began to go out to the edge, he saw that the object was already in the shape of a ball, and not a dome. A sphere with a diameter of 15-20 m hung at a height of 3-5 m above the ground, and a brighter glow was going to the ground. The ball shone with a matte, soft, white light. The distance to the ball at that moment was about 700-800 m.
He was in a hurry and suddenly felt that he could not go further: he completely lost control over his body, it seemed to be absent, only thought was working. Some kind of, in his words, "alarming and terrible state" arose. I only realized that I was lying face down on the ground. How he went to bed, he doesn't remember anything - he passed out …
The pilot came to his senses. I got up, looked around - everything is in order, nothing hurts anywhere, consciousness is working normally. And then he again saw the ball, which hung calmly, did nothing. Then the ball began to move away from the eyewitness at an angle of 120 degrees, slowly gaining altitude. When the UFO was at an altitude of about 50 m from the ground, it instantly picked up tremendous speed, turned into a point and disappeared almost instantly. After that, he lost consciousness. I woke up face down a few meters from the edge of the forest, my ears ringing from everything I had experienced. Everything was restored at once, but he rose carefully, uncertainly.
He was able to inspect the place where the object was hanging only after lunch, when he was freed from work. In this place the grass was crumpled and withered - it looked like autumn, although there was bright spring greenery all around. He did not experience any harmful consequences of this incident, continuing to fly as before.
“In the summer of 1960, I was visiting my grandmother in the village of Lazarevskoye, near Sochi,” said Evgeny Shcherba from Voronezh. - Once at ten o'clock in the evening I was in the courtyard of a house and noticed in the sky an object in the form of a ball of red, glowing like an electric light bulb in full heat. The balloon moved at an altitude of 300 m in an easterly direction and had a diameter of about 80 m. During the flight, the balloon produced a barely audible rustle similar to that which accompanies the electrostatic effect.
I asked my grandmother to explain what I saw. She replied that this was probably one of the satellites that she often observed here. According to her, they sometimes have the shape of a saucer and can not only fly, but also hang motionless in the sky."
A saucer-shaped satellite! However, this naive explanation was no worse than the "sodium cloud" of astronomers …
“In 1960, I worked at the Pobedit plant, in workshop No. 3, and usually went to work on foot,” T. Semyonov from Vladikavkaz recalled today. “And in the early morning, in the summer, as usual, I went to work, looked at the sky hoping to see the satellite with the dog Laika. After all, it was such a big event then. When I approached the intersection of Markov and Chkalov streets, I saw a bright star flying in the sky. It moved strictly from north to south. At the tram stop stood several people, apparently after the night shift. I could not resist and shouted: "Satellite! Satellite!" People raised their heads and watched too.
And suddenly the unexpected happened. The flying satellite directly above us stopped and hovered in the sky, like an ordinary star. I was puzzled. After all, the satellite cannot stop, the meteorite too, the plane - even more so, and it did not look like an airplane. And the "star" continued to "stand" in place. After waiting 8-10 minutes, I went on, looking at a strange “star.” And again I saw a miracle. The star flew, but not to the south, but to the other side, to the east. Then it began to move vertically upward until it dissolved in the higher …
There was a time when it was forbidden to print such messages, there was a time of various refutations that, they say, these are all fictions. But I didn’t believe it, because I saw a miracle with my own eyes …”.
In the same summer, AB Sheinin, the head of the modeling laboratory of the Gipronickel Institute, was on a business trip in the village of Kadamzhoy, not far from Fergana:
“It was 11 o'clock in the morning when I left the factory and went out into the street. My attention was attracted by a luminous object that was approaching from the side of the Fergana Valley. Before reaching me a few kilometers, he stopped, reaching a size half the size of the moon. It was clearly visible and had a typically metallic sheen. The object resembled a disc with two rods like antennas. The rods appeared to be made of silvery metal, the ends were matte. Suddenly, literally in 1-2 seconds, the outlines of the object lost their sharpness, blurred, and this foggy spot suddenly disappeared."
Mikhail Gershtein