Leonid Vasiliev

Leonid Vasiliev was a Soviet parapsychologist and chairman of the physiology department at the University of Leningrad, a past winner of the Lenin Prize and a key figure in the resurgence of Soviet psi research following the publication of "The Secret of the Nautilus" article in 1960. He argued that "the discovery of the energy underlying ESP will be equivalent to the discovery of atomic energy."¹

He stated in April 1960 that Soviet scientists had conducted extensive, unreported investigations into telepathy under the Stalin regime, predating American efforts, and that they had successfully performed telepathy tests over a quarter-century before the alleged U.S. Nautilus tests. He held that the publication of articles like Jacques Bergier's "Thought Transfer, Weapon of War" and "The Secret of the Nautilus" in French journals stimulated Soviet research, and used them to advocate for increased Soviet investment in the field: "Today the American Navy is testing telepathy on their atomic submarines. Soviet scientists conducted a great many successful telepathy tests over a quarter of a century ago. It's urgent that we throw off our prejudices. We must plunge into the exploration of this vital field."¹²

By the early 1960s Vasiliev was heading a well-funded parapsychology laboratory, and his work soon concentrated on "remote-influencing" experiments, such as attempting to telepathically induce sleep in a distant receiver. In a 1963 Kremlin edict, the Soviet minister of defense, R. J. Malinosky, declared Telepathy to be science- and technology-based, leading to the creation of the Special Laboratory for Biocommunications Phenomena at the University of Leningrad, with Vasiliev in charge; its goals included establishing "scientific proof of telepathic communications" and identifying the nature of the brain energy that produces it. His efforts, along with those of other Soviet researchers like I. M. Kogan, contributed to the establishment of numerous other psi research centers in the Soviet Union, and to the Soviet nomenclature around ESP being rewritten to sound technical, severing ties with its occult past: mental telepathy became "long-distance biological signal transmission," and psychokinesis "non-ionizing, in particular electromagnetic, emissions from humans."¹²

A DIA briefing on "Soviet Activities in Psychoenergetics," given to the Air Force in July 1987, opened its timeline with V. M. Bekhterev and "L. L. Vasil'yev (1919-)," under the headings "hypnosis," "automatic responses" and "long distance (1700 km)," and dated his "open publications" and "new lab, Leningrad Univ." to 1959-1965, with G. A. Sergeyev working in "Vasil'yev's lab" from 1965 to 1970.³