The death of the great Russian scientist Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev, who, among many others, studied the physiology of higher nervous activity, is still surrounded by a veil of secrecy.
He died on December 25, 1927, from canned food poisoning. This ridiculous and sudden death caused many rumors and legends. According to one of them, Bekhterev was specially poisoned by the NKVD, since shortly before that he examined Stalin and diagnosed him as "paranoia." A completely different version of Bekhterev's death was expressed by writer Gleb Anfilov in an interview with Rudolf Balandin, a correspondent for the Tekhnika Molodezhi magazine.
According to his hypothesis, Bekhterev's death was directly related to his work in the field of creating "ideological weapons." It all started with experiments on animals conducted by Bekhterev together with the famous trainer Durov. These experiments consisted of the animals fulfilling the Experimenter's mental desires. Scientists then tried to find a certain radio wave, which "controls" the transmission of thoughts. Therefore, the first experiments were not particularly successful. However, later Bekhterev managed to combine his own developments in the field of "crowd psychology" with the latest achievements in engineering. This happened in 1925.
As Bekhterev established, in the team there is an increase in the effect of suggestion, and, moreover, the most successful influence is carried out on emotions. Here the case brought Bekhterev together with Bernard Kazhinsky, the author of Biological Radio Communication. In the conversation, Kazhinsky took from Bekhterev the idea of emotional control of the crowd, and, in turn, gave him the idea of technical amplifiers of mental signals. Just at that time, Bekhterev had the opportunity to develop this line of research with the participation of the State Experimental Institute. The group included two engineers from this institute - Astafiev and Arenberg, as well as another engineer from his institute and a friend of Kazhinsky's older brother. This Someone, of German descent, often traveled to Germany on business trips and brought from there first-class radio equipment, ostensibly for medical experiments. There is every reason to believe that he worked for German intelligence, which was very interested in Soviet experiments in the transmission of thoughts.
According to Anfilov's hypotheses, based on conversations with former employees of Bekhterev, two directions quickly emerged in their group. One of them is the transmission of thoughts and emotions at a distance, that is, telepathy, which was headed by Kazhinsky. Here we managed to achieve some success, mainly in the translation of emotional states.
Another direction was headed by Someone. Here, an ordinary radio network or microphone was used for suggestion. Complex radio signals of a certain rhythm were revealed, causing the listeners to be mildly hypnotic, increasing the degree of suggestibility … At first, only a few, the most malleable, react to these hidden signals, and then the process of mutual induction, typical for the crowd, is already underway. Thus, people are brought into a spellbound state, which Bekhterev called "hypnotic charm." After a while, the nature of the signals changed so that the suggested ideas were fixed in the subconscious. Therefore, this method was used in a similar way in the demonstration of sound films.
The resulting "ideological weapon" was to be used internally. If usually psychological weapons are aimed at suppressing and disorganizing the enemy, then this, on the contrary, had to mobilize and inspire its own. In fact, it was a weapon to conquer their own people. It did not create not only obedient crowds, but also the image of an insane - just insanely, an adored leader. Bekhterev did not even think about such an application at first. But already with the first successes, one of the employees reported to the competent authorities. The ideologues were quick to appreciate the opportunities that had opened up.
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At the beginning of 1927 Someone unexpectedly disappeared, most likely, fled to Germany, taking with him the secret of the company. This, in any case, explains a lot in the similarity of the political situations of Russia and Germany at that time.
Bekhterev found himself under the gun of the NKVD. In addition, the authorities no longer felt the need for it, since the method had been worked out and tested. It only remained to implement it in life. Most likely, Bekhterev opposed this. Then it was removed..
The version about the secret weapon of Bekhterev makes it possible to clarify a lot in the history of the 20th century. Of course, in the old days, mass psychosis occurred more than once.
The personality cult is also a fairly widespread phenomenon. But how could it happen that at the same time in two neighboring states among peoples who are not very similar to each other, the cult of two dictators, extremely different in manners, character and convictions, rapidly took root? And is it not a clue that during the period of their ascent to power successful experiments were carried out in the field of collective reflexology, biological radio communication, hypnotic telepathy. Moreover, almost all of the participants in these works either mysteriously disappeared, or were repressed or simply killed.
It was from that time, as if under the first volleys of psychological weapons, first in individual cities, and then in vast areas, that a manic epidemic of the personality cult began. Are there too many coincidences to be considered random?