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View Full Version : The KGB, Tibet, and UFOs: An article, oct 31st


Antaletriangle
10-31-2008, 02:38 AM
http://www.book-of-thoth.com/sections-viewarticle-625.html
This article reproduced with full permission from Fate Magazine September 2002

by Paul Stonehill and Phillip Mantle

When the Russian Civil War ended, the Bolsheviks assumed control over most of the former czarist empire. Their victory was assured by terror unleashed through the use of the dreaded Shield and Sword (the symbol of the secret police, well known in the West as the KGB). High intrigues, espionage, and research of the paranormal to be used for the aims of the dictatorship of the proletariat took place in Soviet Russia early on. We knew little of this until the disintegration of the USSR in 1991. Thereafter, some ”but by no means all”of the files have been released.


The VECHEKA was the forerunner of the KGB. The sinister organization went through many names as its bloody history rolled on. In May of 1921, the VECHEKA formed a special department specializing in technological activities. Its official name was the Eighth Special Department.


Gleb Bokiy


Gleb Ivanovich Bokiy was born in Tiflis (today Tbilisi, Georgia) in 1897. He later became the head of the sinister Special Department of the OGPU (forerunner of the KGB) and was acquainted with many researchers of the anomalous phenomena. He was also an experienced Bolshevik revolutionary, born to a family of Russian nobles. His genealogy traces back to the days of Ivan the Terrible. Some sources indicate he was a Ukrainian. Bokiy was first arrested at the age of 14, when he battled the czars gendarmes. He was arrested 12 times before the fall of the Romanov empire. Yet Bokiy also had time to be a student. Czarist Russia did not liquidate its enemies, or those it assumed to be enemies, unlike the Bolshevik regime he helped usher in.


Bokiy became leader of the Petrograd (Saint Petersburg, later Leningrad) VECHEKA (later OGPU). Bokiy operated undercover in the German-occupied Byelorussia, and later commanded VECHEKA troops in Turkmenistan. There, according to an early KGB defector, Georgy Agabekov (murdered in 1937), Bokiy proved to be a sinister person, prone to drinking human blood and eating raw canine flesh to improve his appetite. Yet Bokiy was well organized and had tremendous influence in the Central Committee of the Communist Party.


Agabekov was not too flattering in his description of other OGPU leaders whom he knew well. According to him, most of them were sadists, drunks, adventurers, and murderers. The only exception was M. Trilliser, who later interfered with Bokiy’s plans to go to Tibet. Agabekovâs memoirs were published in the West in 1930 and later in Russia in 1996.


But there were conflicting descriptions of Gleb Bokiy. Some people have been kinder when describing this man. He suffered from tuberculosis and was a workaholic. His Special Department was responsible directly to the Central Committee of the Communist Party and was quite independent. This, too, later cost Bokiy his life.


Bokiy’s Special Department was responsible for safeguarding Soviet state secrets. His people checked offices of high officials, made sure the safes were impenetrable, and installed secret alarms. The detectives and technical experts in Bokiyâs department were quite experienced and seasoned. Besides assuring safeguards for the dictatorship of the proletariat, Bokiyâs people worked with ciphers and codes. Different secret ciphers were developed for Soviet diplomats, the secret police, and armed forces. His experts were able to break almost any code. Their other responsibility was eavesdropping on and bugging various communications. Bokiyâs people had such enormous successes in this area of their work that the huge country was becoming a society like the one described in 1984 by George Orwell. Stalin knew how to use this omnipresent secret police apparatus for his own means.


And, finally, the Special Department was in charge of the occult projects in the Republic.


Bokiy as Rosicrucian


There was a part of Gleb Bokiyâs life that the KGB did not find out until later years. Bokiy was very much interested in the paranormal and became a Freemason long before the Red Revolution. In 1909, Bokiy was recommended to a Martinist lodge (a secret order of the Society of Rosicrucians in Saint Petersburg). Even as a student of a geological institute, Bokiy attended occultist seances. Revolutionaries, staff officers, aristocrats, and con men observed mediums at work. Those who belonged to the lodge included Nicholas K. Roerich, a famous Russian painter, author, researcher, guest of the Dalai Lama, and philosopher.


One of those who approved Gleb Bokiyâs initiation to the Martinist lodge was A. V. Barchenko, a biologist, occultist, and author of mystic novels. Telepathy was his special interest. In 1918 Barchenko was paid a visit by two VECHEKA officers. One of them was Yakov Blyumkin, a terrorist, martial arts expert, adventurer, spy, and person whose life was steeped in intrigues and service to his cause, the Bolshevik Party and the Revolution. Barchenko became a friend of the VECHEKA.


It is quite possible that the “Bolshevik professor of the occult actually was in Paris in January 1920, when the leader of the anti-Communist military émigré organization, Gen. Pavel Kutepov, disappeared without a trace. According to a respected Russian émigré, Barchenko protected the OGPU kidnapping operation from French psychics (Nikolay Cherkashinâs article in NLO magazine, 1999, â Professor of the Occult Sciences at the KGB Service).


Kola Peninsula


In 1921 Barchenko took part in a secret expedition to the Kola Peninsula, where there have been UFO sightings for centuries. Most of the research that took place in the area has been classified by Soviet secret police since the 1920s. This includes the mysterious Arctic hysteria, UFO sightings, and other phenomena we know almost nothing about. From the few files that have been released by heirs of the former KGB, we find out that in December 1924, Barchenko met with top OGPU people and shocked them with his reports.


In 1996, another expedition left for the area, to the Lovozro Lake. Valery Dyomin, Ph.D., headed this expedition in the Russian north. The expedition confirmed the incredible findings of A. Barchenko: a paved, two-kilometer-long road in the middle of nowhere, pyramid-like stones, and the image of a gigantic black figure on a rock. The expedition (its name was Hyperborea-97) also discovered ruins of an ancient observatory and strange structures at the apex of Ninchurg Mountain (Nauka I Religiya magazine, 1998).


Dyomin tried in vain to obtain the KGB/NKVD documents about Barchenko and his work. He was finally informed that Barchenkos files were burned in 1941 as the Germans approached Moscow. Apparently, this was done to preclude Nazi capture of important files. A RUFORS researcher, Eduard Gozhin, attended a lecture by Dyomin in 2001 and wrote down this information. He also heard Dyomin say that state archives in Russian Buryatiya might contain interesting information about this subject.


Back to Tibet


Apparently, the strange objects over Asian skies interested the Soviets back in 1920s.


The Soviets, like the Nazis, were interested in the mysterious Shambhala, a land allegedly located on the borders of Afghanistan, India, and Tibet. The Tibet area had long attracted the attention of the Russian military. Secret missions had been sent there before the Soviet era. Bokiyâs colleagues were interested in all areas of the anomalous.


Barchenko was getting ready to head an expedition to Tibet to search for the famed Shambhala, to discover the keys to the mysteries of the world. He discussed his plans with Tibetan monks and a Communist Mongolian official. And then Barchenko was paid another visit by Yakov Blyumkin, a dedicated OGPU officer moving up the career ladder. It did not at all hinder Blyumkin’s career that he murdered a German diplomat in 1918. On the contrary, the KGB of the period forgave him, and embraced its eager son.


Blyumkin informed Barchenko that his telepathy experiments were necessary for the Soviet defense industry and that the secret police would sponsor him. The scientist was not against cooperating with the secret police and wrote a letter to its head, the redoubtable Felix Dzerdhinsky.


Bokiy was given the responsibility to research the idea of an expedition to Shambhala. And so the Soviet secret police chief and a scientist who delved into mysticism became friends. Shambhala figured prominently in their conversations. A laboratory had been created and funded by the OGPU for 12 years, until 1937, when Barchenko was arrested in Stalinist purges. The files of his interrogations have been preserved, and excerpts have recently been published in Russia. A special black room was equipped for Barchenkos research in the OGPU building. Barchenko worked with shamans, mediums, and healers. Sometimes he lectured the OGPU people. One of those who attended the lectures was Boris Stomonyakov, deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Relations. He was responsible for China and Tibet. Chinese ufology and the ancient history of UFO sightings have been of particular interest to the Soviet intelligence services.


A group of highly placed Communist officials, Gleb Bokiy, and A. Barchenko, formed a secret society, the United Labor Brotherhood. It was a society of mystics whose aims were to discover ways to Shambhala and establish communications with the mysterious area.


At the same time, Barchenko openly promoted an idea of the creation of an International of secret societies to help Soviet Communists spread their influence. The Komintern leaders residing in the USSR welcomed this idea.


Bokiy was eager to depart to Tibet to look for Shambhala, but his enemies in the OGPU were able to sabotage his plans. Instead, Yaskov Blyumkin was sent to look for Shambhala under different guises. While in Western China, Blyumkin joined the Roerich expedition and traveled through the area under the star spangled banner. Roerichs expedition was officially an American enterprise and funded from private sources in the United States. The search for Shambhala was not as important to the Soviets as it was later for German Nazis. The Soviets merely sought to diminish and destroy British influence in Tibet. It was a new Big Game, and the British intelligence was aware of it. Its officers were able to block Roerichs expedition and stop the Soviet move into Tibet.


The Sighting


In 1926, as Roerich traveled in Tibet, his companions and the painter himself provided one of the first detailed UFO reports. On September 5, they sighted a huge, oval object moving at great speed. It was shiny as the sun reflected from it. Crossing the sky over their camp, the object changed its direction from south to southwest. The people below had time to study it through their field glasses. The camp, located in the Kukunor district not far away from the Humboldt chain, included well-trained mountain travelers and guides. The Soviet secret police asked Dr. Konstantin Ryabinin to join the expedition; he also observed the UFO in 1926. He was later arrested in 1930, and his diaries, notes, and Tibetan documents were confiscated. Dr. Ryabinin refused to defame Roerich and spent years in Stalins concentration camps, where he saved many lives in his capacity as a doctor. The most valuable information and data about secret knowledge he obtained in Tibet are still in the KGB archives. Dr. Ryabinin died in 1956 when the subject of Tibetan medicine was still a taboo.


Yakov Blyumkin, a darling of the OGPU, made a costly mistake. He was too arrogant, too sure of his powers. Blyumkin paid a secret visit to the exiled Trotsky during one of his missions after the Tibet debacle. Upon his return to the Soviet Union, Blyumin was arrested and executed. In 1991 the KGB entertained the idea of awarding him, posthumously, the order of Hero of the Soviet Union. But then the Soviet Union too ceased to exist.


Gleb Bokiy was arrested in 1937. Stalin did not forgive him his Bolshevik past and closeness to prominent Soviet leaders, many of them dead or executed during the purges.


The End?


Apparently, Stalin wanted possession of Bokiys secret file, containing compromising materials on Soviet leadership. We do not know whether the file actually existed. Bokiy was executed, along with other members of his brotherhood. His department was disbanded and dispersed into other KGB entities. Stalin ruthlessly crushed any dissent and any potential adversary. He had very practical aims and direct means of achieving them. Mysticism was of no use to him. Bokiy’s and Barchenkos paranormal files were confiscated. Some Russian researchers believe that the FSB (modern KGB) keeps them in their archives.

Paul Stonehill is a Soviet-born author, lecturer, consultant, broadcaster, and free-lance journalist. He is the author of The Soviet UFO Files: Paranormal Encounters behind the Iron Curtain (1998, Quadrillion Publishing Inc.). Philip Mantle is an international author, lecturer, and broadcaster on the subject of UFOs. He is the co-author of Without Consent, Beyond Roswell, and, with Paul Stonehill, the soon to be published UFO-USSR.

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